Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Since now CCP has the technology and knowledge to add smart AI into NPC ships (They react to your fitting, they fight like in pvp,etc). CPP is able to add these intelligent AI into missions, for example called "Elite" missions.

You would be able to choose to make the standard missions we already have in the game, or make Elite missions which have this new improved AI (maybe with better rewards)

This doesn't mean that the missions would be much harder, a lvl 3 security standard mission would be more or less the same difficulty as a Elite lvl 3 security mission, the only difference is that they react in a intelligent way depending on your fitting. They would still be able to be killed by the same quantity of DPS and they would deal the same damage (Of course it could become a little harder, but not that much, if you react to how they move).

PVE missions, in my opinion and in the opinion of many that prefer to do PVP, think that they are boring, repetitive,etc. (They need an overhaul but that's another story).
But not many people realize how important PVE is for EVE Online, even if you have been playing for years and %90 of that time into PVP, sometimes you feel like doing things on your own, relax, experiment with little risk, or just while you wait for your friends to be online.

PVE missions are useful for those situations, and also very useful for new players that want to make money without much risk, with intelligent AI implemented into missions, would teach the new players even better how to do PVP.

I don't see any reason for these "Elite" missions not to be added into the game, you still have the choice to do the old standard missions.

Ages ago they developed a tool for creating branching missions ...
that gave us the SoE newbie mission, and not much else.

more dynamic choices has been a frequent request from players over the years
it's never arrived, it might one day, but I'm not holding my breath

if we look at the econ dev blogs I think it is pretty clear players spend more time doing pve and building things than they do pvping. I'll admit I do think the way pve is currently set up incentivizes the wrong things, almost all of it is solo content and the risk reward balance seems off. But as a whole PVE is very important to the eve experience.

Just a smarter AI but no better dps and tank would not make them "elite". Maybe unless you give all the ships like 2 e-war modules or enable the mission rats to warp out and flee to other systems when they realize that they're loosing.

Maybe we should introduce some battleship-sized burner missions?

No need to make it optional, just make it the default AI of the game. Scale it according to what you bring into the dedspace pocket, the way capital escalations work. Go solo and get the base spawns, bring friends and get tougher spawns (more risk, more reward).

I'd add some things like mission 'bosses' needing to be warp disrupted/scrammed or it escapes (gimping the chance for that shiny drop). I'd love to see CCP decouple pirate factions from specific regions. That would discourage min/maxing because you won't know that you will always face one NPC faction and no other (and hence it's damage type and resist hole). Random spawns and triggers (make Eve-Survival obsolete).

All that would make PvE more like PvP (omni-tanks, tackle modules, maneuver more than hit orbit and F1). 'Combat' PvE should be a better training tool than it currently is.
There would be no more 'care bears' because they would have the same PvP skills as anyone else, and their ships would be an actual threat to attack as opposed to a lucky gank like it is now. Imagine if your first reaction to a neut in local, or a catalyst in your mission pocket wasn't to safe up, but rather an opportunity to turn the tables.

Also make L4 missions require a small gang (basically make them what L5's were supposed to be but in high sec). There needs to be more small gang/intro level fleet PvE content. It's way too obsessively solo in an MMO, and gets players started on a path of remaining forever alone in a game with 100,000 other subscribers.

Truly co-op combat PvE pretty much begins and ends with Incursions. Making L4's like scaled down Incursions would encourage players to seek out one time fleet mates to run them. This would allow players to experience snowflake fleet roles that pretty much only exist in PvP-- tackle, EWAR, boosting, FC....As it is, there is pretty much no 'career' in PvE for a Tackle specialist, or an EWAR guy. When I was a newb I poured a bunch of training into EWAR because it just sounded like an interesting role to play-- only to find out that it's almost useless in PvE like missions, which like most newbies was what I was doing at first.

I want pve like that, I just don't want it at the expense of current pve. Like CCP Larrikin said, sometimes you just want to npc and chill, and the current pve is rather good for that. however when you do want to step it up and do some group pve well, there aren't many options and those options aren't always very accessible. having something that is a bit more challenging and can scale to what you bring would be awesome. When I was with signal cartel we did some wormhole content in a group, the payout was a bit low for me, but for a lot of the newer players it was better than anything they could do solo. I'd rather do that kind of thing, but you can't do it too often as you run out of sites to run.

This is EVE. The NPCs need to be controlled by players.

Let's call it a Player Controlled NPC or PCNPC for short.

The PCNPC is presented with an anonymized interface (no location info, no mission runner names, no local, etc.) and control of either an uber-ish NPC (think burners,) or general control of a swam of NPCs, think RTS like interface.

The PCNPC would be rewarded with LP (e.g. pirate faction LP) for winning, whereas the PvE runner would get enhanced standard rewards for winning.

Something like this could scale up with gangs and could encourage PvE players to taste PvP since the PvE player would have better control (i.e. risk management) going into it, i.e. it minimizes a discouraging instant-WTFBBQPWND-one-jump-into-low/null-sec encounter.

The PCNPC could loot a PvE player wreck if the PvE player deliberately chooses a more difficult risk/reward PCNPC encounter (e.g. PCNPC Level 5 mission.)


It could also be turned into a faction warfare thing, where the success of PCNPCs advance a pirate faction.



Finally, if you still have doubts out PCNPCs, imagine if Sansha invasions were controlled by PCNPCs...

There is nothing stopping them adding more content, without deleting L4s, anomolies or ded complexes, and particularly there is nothing stopping them adding content that has ewar , rr ships etc that have to be done by figuring out what spawned in front of you, instead of reading eve-missions.blah for the solution. ie CCP doesn't have to have NPCs with points that immediately kite you to death if you don't achieve tackle asap.

if the levelled missions stay in the game, then CCP can tune other new content to be variable, be amenable to or require scouting, or searching, require people to have a wide selection of ships they can fly, require people to be able to fly t2 ships, because the missions perform the task of offering progression content and income for low skilled, low wallet players.

They could even make new content nearly impossible, so that its a bit of a trophy to beat it, or so that people can offer specific helper services.

The only reason I haven't done more burners for example is that I feel like doing L4s about once every 2 years, so its not that I don't want to do burners, its because the mechanism of spawning them is the same random **** that spawning an escalated ded from an anomoly is.

No matter how you change AI, it can get simplified
No matter how you change it within a month youll be bored
No matter how you change it there will be people against pve just like mining
No matter what you do, all jobs in games like this get boring

htfu as ccp says

This is the same claptrap PVPrs throw around as that walk around all puffed up at the idea that their way of smashing buttons is superior to someone elses way of smashing buttons.

I like my PVE to be PVE, not fauxPVP. The challenge in real PVE is in finding new ways to do it, new fits, new approaches. "PVP-lite" PVE narrows the choices down to "omni tank, over heat and hope". Screw that.

You can have that nonsense, I'll keep enjoying real PVE (thankfully a CCP Dev responded to me and confirmed that real PVE was also part of their plan).