Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Missions in my opinion are the cornerstone of any good MMO and it saddens me to say that the missions found in EvE are some of the worst I've ever experienced.

A large reason for this is their fragmented design and lack of cohesion, doing missions in Amarr space is no different than doing them in Gallente or Caldari zones, sure the pirate types change a bit, but by and large they're exactly the same, down to the soulless flavour text that accompanies them. There's no reason to venture out and talk to different agents because you'll experience most of what they have to offer within the first two hours of starting the game, if anything you're punished for doing so because of the horrid standings system.

Standings, specifically faction standings, serve no other purpose than to frustrate the player. Doing missions in Amarr space for example, you'll often get offered missions that have you fighting Caldari rats, killing them results in you taking a percentage based hit to your Caldari standing, completing the mission doesn't increase your Amarr standing or give you a valuable item, it just serves as a trap for new players to get caught in.


Suggestions :

• Make a unified pool for all Loyalty Points, there's no reason to have them fragmented over numerous corporations


• Lower the standing hits when fighting faction rats or remove them altogether


• Each mission should increase your standings by a small percentage (depending on the agents faction), similar to how security status works


• Reward loyalists, someone that has maxed out standings with a certain faction or corporation should get a small badge that they could display next to their name

These changes are probably relatively easy to implement and while they don't completely remedy the underlying issues that missions have, they would give players a bigger incentive to do them besides just blitzing them for the ISK. In an ideal world I'd suggest a complete re-write and faction specific story arcs and rewards, but I realise how big of an undertaking that would be in terms of development resources required.

The PVE system in Eve is old and due for a revamp. CCP have been experimenting with upgraded AI for a couple of years now - Burner missions, Circadian Seekers, Drifters ... We expect new procedurally generated NPC mining fleets in November that call for reinforcements if attacked. So change is coming. The problem with Missions is that they require a vast amount of time and effort to create, but relatively little time and effort for players to figure out and get bored.

We need missions where the path depends not just on the code or what you do but also on what players in other missions do. Make missions interdependent and adaptive - create a true dancing landscape. Mission farmers will be utterly horrified at the thought - but it creates a system where every mission is unique.

Loyalty points are intended to encourage loyalty! Personally, I would like to see diversity in the LP stores. Each NPC corp should have a unique item or two.

Standings used to matter more and I believe they should matter a lot. If you are red to the local sovereign, it shouldn't matter whether you are in empire space or nullsec - you're a legitimate target. Choices have consequences! Having said that, I believe mission runners should have a choice - empire faction mission with high rewards or pirate mission with lower rewards. Likewise we could argue that players should be able to choose a lowsec mission with high reward or a highsec mission with lower reward. People are making those choices now by declining missions and moving to another agent but that's just busywork - it adds nothing to gameplay.

my thoughts on the unified pool is not a single pool for ALL LP but more a single factional pool ie all lp earned by rumnning missions for any galente corp go in to a galente pool cause there is times when you get the storyline mission for a totaly diferent corp than the one you are running missions for.

Dont forget, Caldari Goverment Corps are 8, and each of them have a military division, so a total of 16 Faction Goverment Corps in the State.