Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I think that giving a little love to courier missions could greatly assist with player retention. They are very new player friendly and could do so much more than they do at present. I know CCP may be wanting to move players out of CCP content and into the sandbox proper but I think one of the key problems for player retention is people not knowing what to do when they are faced with the option of doing anything.

I think improved courier missions could be the missing link.

Since the Agent changes if you are wanting to do just courier missions then the grind has been simplified down to pick up at your agent's station and deliver 3, 4 or 6 jumps away at another station. But they could be so much more.

Just for starters (and off the top of my head):

1. what about delivering to a ship orbiting another planet that has to be found via D scan.
2. what about a longer one way trip (10 jumps) with a one time warp gate back to the agents system (as a reward for taking on a longer trip)
3. what about interaction with PI - collecting contents of a can pushed into orbit.
4. A trip into a wormhole (could be a mission specific one generated for the mission rather like deep space area created for a kill mission).
5. more trips into lowsec even for the lower ranked missions - or even a trip into 0.0!
6. delivery of illegal goods between two lowsec systems.
7. mission requiring running an NPC gatecamp
8. delivery to a station under fire requiring cloaky ship
9. mission to retrieve info from a site requiring hacking skills
10. as Incarna improves missions requiring more interaction with NPCs in stations

I am sure with an hours further thought that this list could be expanded and improved.

In essence bring back a bit of variety that was lost with the agent changes and above all bring a little risk into courier missions and introduce them to other aspects of EVE.

A little variety would even be welcome to those grinding standings for trading characters.

You may need to loosen up the decline option a bit for those not wanting to take risks or make certain agents give out the riskier missions so that total carebears could still haul in safety.

But I think with a little developer time this could be a very easy win and start to boost player numbers again.

Thoughts welcome?

While we're at it, there could be warp disruption bubbles while you are on the way to a mission generated station (like such stations seen in the SOE epic arc, that you deliver to a can outside them, you don't actually dock).

Ambushes would be kind of fun, jsut make the rats really weak (but with point), so you have to use your one high slot to take them out.

Maybe you have a corelli initiate pointing you, while corelli guardians attack - an attack that would normally overwhelm an Iteron I - but you only need to take out the point and continue on warp.

There was another thread about improving the variation and roles of the T1 industrials. This could be combined with more fun courier missions - give some an improved tank and DPS capability/a drone bay? (battle badgers?)

Not enough to turn them into a combat ship, but perhaps enough to give a T1 frigate like an Atron/Slasher/condor/executioner a challenge.
Then you can throw more ambushes into NPC courier missions.

shameless bump!!

New players retention is proportional to how long they survive before they get can flipped, ganked while mining, blown up by concord.

It's always interesting and funny to see stuff blow, this is what eve is about so who cares about new players retention?

Give us more tools and insurance for ganks and I want high sec to become like null but not depending on any sort of alliance because I want every one to play like I want, not like you want.