Missions & Complexes

Yes, thanks for supporting my suggestion that mission invaders be suspect flagged at warp in to raise their risk compared to the reward for stealing the item.

It's funny how many of these tough "pirates" want to keep Concord protection while they trespass in the missioner's mission site waiting to steal the item.

You are totally right that the lack of any suspect flag while they are in the missioner's pocket means there is little to no risk at all to the mission item thief.

Faction standing and experiencing game content are the main rewards for running these missions, not ISK.

And, the missioner loses both of those upon failure, failure which the mission thief can currently cause with little to no effort/risk to themselves.

The market value of the item mainly effects the risk/reward equation of the thief, not the missioner.

If the implant price falls, the reward for stealing the mission item also drops because the thief cannot extort as much ISK.

This results in more risk/reward balance for both sides.


The inflated value of the implant is definitely a factor in the current imbalance and causing a problem.

Thanks for pointing this out for us, Princess Achaja... I mean..."Loraine Gess." Or do you prefer "Riot Girl?"



Edit:


Even if the market price of the mission reward item does fall, the relative loss to the missioner is lower than that of the thief.

Lower market price... lower reward for mission theft... lower incentive for mission item theft... less mission thieving. Missioner's risk of theft is lowered.

Lower risk of mission theft... higher incentive to missioners... more people run these missions.

More people run the missions... more opportunities for mission theft... and balance is restored.


In addition to adding a suspect flag for trespassing, these all help to even out the risk/reward imbalance on both sides of the equation. And, results in the potential for more play counter-play interaction.

The only thing that changes is that the mission thief no longer gets a free lunch, or in this case, several months of free game time at relatively little to no effort/risk.


TLDR

Game balance is good. Balanced risk/reward is good. Player interaction is good.

And I believe that a suspect flag for trespassing/mission invasion will provide all of this.

I would take all of that all over a higher profit margin on the one-time sale of a mission reward item any day.



Double edit:

Unless I was a ganker/griefer/"pirate" or, in this case, the mission item thief***

Another Princess Achaja alt?

Quoted from the Unique Mission Item Theft Rebalance thread in Features & Ideas:





I know that it can be a really scary concept to actually have to assume risk as a "pirate" and open yourself up to getting shot at, instead of hiding behind a broken game mechanic, but you can handle it. I know a real pirate could.


Be the pirate that you always wanted to be... embrace the suspect flag for trespassing and illegal mission invasion... open yourself up to a little counter-play and PvP....

Don't be so scared.

It's really not going to be that bad.



TLDR

The suggestion is for a suspect flag which is global, not a killright, triggered when the player chooses to trespass/invade into the missioner's site.

If a suspect flag is applied at warp in, anyone wishing to assist the missioner in defending against the invasion would be legally able to ( (ie "anyone in local want to help me kill this mission item thief/griefer?")

If gankers/griefers/"pirates" or thieves want to invade a mission to steal or grief, let's at the very least make them a valid legal target immediately when they do it.

Not to mention that's requiring the mission intruders to not be smart enough to pop the mission loot rat themselves, therefore denying the Runner the opportunity entirely.

No Theo it's not the fault of the mission runner it's a failure in the game to protect Carebears, but without that there would be no reason for apparently half the population of EVE to play. Without victims there is no game, and Carebears make such great victims that there's no incentive to change it.

Estella didn't read the OP closely. The mission invaders shot the critical NPC, not the OP. And even if they didn't, they could have. There's nothing stopping them from killing hostile NPCs.

There are two real problems here. One is CCP's failure to educate new players. There are millions of fine details that don't really matter except in the most arcane circumstances. But there are core mechanics and situations that every EVE player needs to know and needs to practice, no matter their age or play style. Among those things are situational awareness, aggression mechanics, scouting/intelligence gathering, war mechanics, basic self-defense, and what-is-possible-and-permitted. The tutorials only touch on these in the most tangential ways. It's one thing to show people how a probe scan works; it's a whole different thing to show people how it can be used by some crafty bastard.

Other games have a better built-in teaching method for noobs because of the theme-park, guiding hand structure of those games. EVE puts too much pressure on noobs at the start. Not only do they have a million things to learn, they've also got very little in ISK or assets, so losses are a big deal. When the protect-my-stuff mentality sets in, the urge to create a pacific status quo overcomes all other instincts. Trial and error is not a good way to train noobs, especially in a game where money and the time it takes to generate it is so critical to everything.

The second problem is that, in the particular instance of Cosmos missions (and regular missions to a lesser extent), having everything riding on scooping a single item from a can is kind of silly. If you look back through EVE history, they probably made it that way as one of the early conflict drivers. In practice, it doesn't work out to be anything other than a pain in the ass and dissuades people from even attempting it. The people who are most interested in sampling that sort of content are not PvPers. I'm sure most don't complain, post, or petition and just move on or wander away from the game. (One poster has proposed an unworkable solution; I've offered a second one. But really the easiest would be to just update the missions so that scooping an item isn't necessary at all.)

All that said, there are lots of precautions that the OP could have taken or methods he could have used to mitigate risk. When I run any mission with mission critical loot, I have a cloaky alt with a tractor beam on grid. There are also hard-to-probe T3 fits to buy yourself time to either complete the mission if you can or warp out before the site is probed down. Doing general research on Cosmos missions would have revealed that stealing mission critical items is an ancient, relatively common occurrence. Given that everything IS riding on a single item and knowing that EVE is full of crafty bastards, scouting the system over a period of days would probably have been wise. If you see lots of combat probes on scan in hisec, you can be pretty certain they're looking for a mission runner.

BTW, this is an L4 Cosmos mission, and L4 Cosmos missions are on par with L4 epic arcs. They are not intended for noobs.

When people I know play the game, the advice I give them is read, read, read. It's a shame that EVE requires so much research, but if you want to succeed, there's no getting around it.

I think maybe you've switched into bot mode. Since I'm the person who sent you there in the first place. You can stop spamming now. Your "solution" is going nowhere.

You know what? This is a great idea!

This idea will let gankers actually fly into your mission in real PVP ships, with logi and ewar and totally ruin you're mission experience without having to worry about CONCORD.

I retract my earlier statements and wholeheartedly endorse Abul's idea!

Hisec pirates and mercs rejoice!

Yes, but it won't change the fact that they will still be able to come in to your mission and steal your loot. All it means is that they will change up their tactics.

If you really want this fixed, then you need to request that CCP make it so the COSMOS mission be spawned randomly, and not in the same system. The fact that the mission spawns in the same system every time is what makes it so easy for them to do this.

Bwahaha! PVPers fitting expensive mods in hisec? Not likely. And if they do, it means they will have some serious backup.

Besides you are thinking someone else is going to scan down the same mission to take out a pirate/griefer? Yeah, right.

As I said in your other thread. You are just turning mission sites into hisec pvp arenas. I'm sure that is exactly what mission runners want.