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Missions & Complexes

 
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Please make the agent missions more interesting!

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Jack' Sparrow
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#41 - 2012-08-09 11:20:14 UTC
Hi guys,

I've ran missions for quite some time, mainly funding other projects and PVP. So, here are my views on the current mission system and my opinion on what could be done to improve it to keep everyone happy.

(1) - Level 4 missions as they stand at the moment are good for making money, though they have been nerfed as we all know. The main problem with them is that they are repetitive and tend to get boring after running lots of them. I personally do other things while running missions but they should be enjoyable enough to not get bored of them. So generally I think that the current level 4 missions should remain but need an overhaul. By that I mean introducing new objectives within the missions, perhaps they could introduce a final boss NPC that may or may not drop a faction module in certain missions and, many other possibilities are available to. It would also be a good idea to add more missions to the game so that players don't get bored due to the fact that most of the time they run the same missions 2-3 times in a night if you play a lot.

(2) - After reading some other threads, players have suggested making mission NPC's dramatically tougher and more PVP styled. Though this is a good idea, I don't think that forcing players to run missions in this way should be done. Therefore, the solution for this would be to have two types of level 4 missions by introducing a new division of agents where the missions would all be new and the NPC's would have an improved AI. The works of these missions would obviously have to be looked into but it would give players the ability to run regular missions like they are now but improved and also give other players the chance to run a different style of missions if they didn't want to run regular ones. Also, though EVE is a multiplayer game, there are players like myself who enjoy solo activates as well as group activates so I think a good idea would be to have the option for single player missions and multi player missions, the second having harder NPC's, more NPC's, more rewards etc...

- I think that mainly covers it really. in a breakdown, all the mission system requires are more missions, new objectives, new missions on a different level of standard level 4's but keeping the standard missions as well. This should solve the problem really and make it more fun to run missions.

- Please give me your feedback on things I may have missed or not thought of, would appreciate it :-)

Cheers and fly safe,

Jack
Janty Hilanen
No0 Nooboships Corpor
#42 - 2012-08-09 12:34:52 UTC  |  Edited by: Janty Hilanen
Very good thread.

I tend to run missions quite a bit and the main points are:

- It feels very grindy - I think its the repetitive element of doing similar missions for similar people for similar reasons.
- We have no impact on the universe - Even miners can say we mined that whole asteorid belt between us, thus removing it for the others in the area, or mining a whole system clean. Theres always more missions.


To answer the question of how to resolve, you have to analyse the main reasons for why people run missions.

- I need to make isk - Mission running and Mining are the 2 main carebear introductory professions people get into, and MMO players from other games translate Missions to Quests and they see that as the natural form of progression.
- I need Standings - Very few people run missions for particular standing increases, but there are some.


I think you can address a lot of the above by implementing the following, (I):

1. Create missions of "Lore" - The payout for these can be inline with those of a similar level, but the content and backstory elements are more focused. More Epic story arc type chains, revisiting some of the historical sites within the Eve Universe. These missions could be exploration and well as combat, fly to eve-gate, scan down a mission specific signature radius of a old vessel, get attacked by something.

2. Increase difficulty/risk/reward of missions - If we could introduce level 1 - 10, with some still only being available in Low-Sec but allowing players to choose their difficulty based on the time they have available the resources at their disposal in terms of team mates etc. The life of a mission runner is normally quite lonely, this could add a more "MMO" type feel to small fleet ops. The missions could scale based on your reputation with the corporation, allowing for more drastic increases and decreases happening further down the tree.

3. Create Meta type Missions - Some kind of PvE - PvP Hybrid, where corporations would take action against Player Owned stuff. 1 Idea could be the bounty system, so once a player had a certain amount of bounty on their head other players could be given a mission to take them out. The system would need to be intelligent to know where the player is in space in relation to the player taking the mission, and know if the bounty is "Active" regularly leaves station etc. Another example could be a Corporation wants to take out another POS, or destory X amount of miners etc. This would increase conflict between players and transcend the PvE to PvP boundry making missions available for PvP players, and PvP available for PvE players
Velarra
#43 - 2012-08-09 13:49:36 UTC
CCP Affinity wrote:
I totally agree, it would be amazing to eventually have very race-biased paths available to you :) However, they need to matter in a way that doesn't completely limit and cut you off.. we never want to say no you can't do that because when you created a character and just picked the one with the prettiest face, you closed off an entire area of content to yourself.


It is very hope inspiring that you recognize this issue.

While the text is frequently VERY TINY SadUgh It's often surprised me the amount of new story content semi-regularly written up and quietly released in L2 & L3 missions, which i tend to run primarily for their story elements or for standings in the interest of RP.

Unfortunately i never run storylines anymore and / or participate in a number of other eve content elements purely due to travel rights concerns. Primarily as when not engaged in PVE, i prefer to retain the full ability to hunt, kill, / fly in any region of space both now and in the future. It's a trade off to be sure, - but really a bit of a shame that ccp Dev's work so hard on such content that only limits Immediately or over time player potential to appreciate their efforts.
Jack' Sparrow
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#44 - 2012-08-09 17:27:24 UTC  |  Edited by: Jack' Sparrow
I agree with a lot of your points.

For a start, missions certainly are very grindy and repetitive, there's no doubt about that.

Point 1 - I fully agree with, it would be nice to be able to run missions and discover the back story more and also see things and places that have been mentioned in the past. I also like the idea of adding scanner usage to missions since at the moment we never use it in missions and it would add a bit more challenge to the mission itself so would definitely like to see that.

Point 2 - also a positive move in my opinion, it would certainly give players the option to choose the level of difficulty they want to run missions at, as long as high security missions were worth running and also that the ability to run missions alone still was possible since though EVE is an MMO, some players like myself like to do solo activates as well as I guess many other players do as well from time to time. The idea of difficulty access by corporation standings would certainly be good, as it would give players a goal to achieve rather than just running missions for rewards.

Point 3 - a neat idea, I mentioned it my earlier post. It would certainly make missions more interesting as long as players weren't forced to run ALL missions in this style since like I mentioned before some players like to run missions on there own. But the principle idea of having this feature as an option would be nice to see.

Hopefully CCP Affinity may be able to give some input to my first post and yours, would be nice to hear their thoughts.

Fly safe

Jack

-

Janty Hilanen wrote:
Very good thread.

I tend to run missions quite a bit and the main points are:

- It feels very grindy - I think its the repetitive element of doing similar missions for similar people for similar reasons.
- We have no impact on the universe - Even miners can say we mined that whole asteorid belt between us, thus removing it for the others in the area, or mining a whole system clean. Theres always more missions.


To answer the question of how to resolve, you have to analyse the main reasons for why people run missions.

- I need to make isk - Mission running and Mining are the 2 main carebear introductory professions people get into, and MMO players from other games translate Missions to Quests and they see that as the natural form of progression.
- I need Standings - Very few people run missions for particular standing increases, but there are some.


I think you can address a lot of the above by implementing the following, (I):

1. Create missions of "Lore" - The payout for these can be inline with those of a similar level, but the content and backstory elements are more focused. More Epic story arc type chains, revisiting some of the historical sites within the Eve Universe. These missions could be exploration and well as combat, fly to eve-gate, scan down a mission specific signature radius of a old vessel, get attacked by something.

2. Increase difficulty/risk/reward of missions - If we could introduce level 1 - 10, with some still only being available in Low-Sec but allowing players to choose their difficulty based on the time they have available the resources at their disposal in terms of team mates etc. The life of a mission runner is normally quite lonely, this could add a more "MMO" type feel to small fleet ops. The missions could scale based on your reputation with the corporation, allowing for more drastic increases and decreases happening further down the tree.

3. Create Meta type Missions - Some kind of PvE - PvP Hybrid, where corporations would take action against Player Owned stuff. 1 Idea could be the bounty system, so once a player had a certain amount of bounty on their head other players could be given a mission to take them out. The system would need to be intelligent to know where the player is in space in relation to the player taking the mission, and know if the bounty is "Active" regularly leaves station etc. Another example could be a Corporation wants to take out another POS, or destory X amount of miners etc. This would increase conflict between players and transcend the PvE to PvP boundry making missions available for PvP players, and PvP available for PvE players
Lialem
#45 - 2012-08-09 19:44:44 UTC
Most of missions are kinda boring, but they did put in some good ones.
Ever done "The Anomaly"? That mission was really good, i really enjoyed the story and it even has 2 different endings.

Of course if you do a lot of missions you end up doing the same ones over and over again, so it becomes a little boring, but its not that easy to put in new missions every day.
Ginger Barbarella
#46 - 2012-08-09 20:41:12 UTC
The Epics (not SoE) and to a lesser degree the COSMOS missions follow a real storyline that I like as well. I'm sure we all have ideas for making missions better and more self-adjusting; it would just make EveO a better place to ride. :)

"Blow it all on Quafe and strippers." --- Sorlac
Conrad Lionhart
#47 - 2012-08-10 16:33:15 UTC  |  Edited by: Conrad Lionhart
I strongly agree with more diversity in missions, and for missions to explain the lore of the universe.

Some of the corporations seem to have interesting background as well, and there should be some corporation specific missions.

In fact, I feel like there is more diversity in level 1 missions. There was this creepy mission involving corpses, where the mission giver seems agitated and wanted me to just complete the mission quickly to make the bad thing go away. I then returned with a doll or something, and the mission giver... changed.
Antraman
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#48 - 2012-08-11 04:37:09 UTC
One thing I've always thought would be a good addition to missions is to have missions with an objective that requires solving a puzzle or requiring a level of tactical skill involving a small group of players...in the same vein as "boss raids" in some other MMO's.

I think the Incursions go a fair way towards this, but they are not as frequent as mission availability.

Having missions that require a small but integrated group each with specific roles, such as tank, medic ship, dps etc to complete the objective, with a "epic loot" drop or something would make things a lot more fun.
TotalRapeage
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#49 - 2012-08-11 06:37:29 UTC
Tatyana3033 wrote:
I've been doing a lot of missions recently waiting for my skills to catch up. What I've noticed is that missions are basically all the same formula in eve and probably the same as they were back when eve came out.
Eve has a rich back story so why the same old missions? Sansha and angels attacking for no apparent reason or benefit.

Maybe some of the pve could be modeled on how pvp and fw works instead of totally pve orientated. Have friendly and enemy AI ships that actually interact with the player.

An agent mission could go like this:

A number of pirates have been hiding in a wormhole in 'jita'. You then use a scanner probe to scan down the wh and think of a ship to enter the WH and fight the pirates. You receive contact from a stranded ship in the WH who you have to track down. If you find him he becomes a new agent in the WH and you work with him to kill the pirates :).

I know this might be a lot of effort for people who like to do fast simple missions, but I think its brings a lot more fun into the game and teaches people more than just how to press afew buttons and set up a decent tank on a ship.



No, they are not the same as when eve first came out...They were revamped atleast once if my memory serves me.
Jakob Anedalle
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#50 - 2012-08-12 02:21:43 UTC
Two different ideas:

1) PvP Mission. Often you get a mission which puts you in opposition to another faction. Given the large population of Eve, it would be cool if a new category of mission pops up when you have a person from an opposed faction also requesting a mission of the same level. Set the players against each other. Yes, the players would see that they are going into a PvP mission and the rewards would match the risk. Ex: Intercept vs Distribution: Player 1 has to run goods 12 jumps to a target location. Player 2 gets "leaked info" with Player 1's name and start and stop points. But this could apply to anytime you're acting against another faction. Maybe like Storyline++ in terms of standing rewards. Even better if CCP can use the "player matching" idea from DUST here to handicap the mission - if you're better than Player 2 you get less bonus. If you get a buddy to help then hey that's the social sandbox - and if both of you end up getting small gangs and run into each other all the better.

2) Crowd Source missions. I think I mentioned this elsewhere. Create a means to crowd source mission content - maybe an XML file, for instance. Have players submit missions, rewards them with fame and ISK. Perhaps let other players vote on the missions with high rated ones getting delayed bonuses and terrible ones getting dropped.

Trying out all the things to do here in Eve - it's quite a checklist. So I made a blog Jakob's Eve Checklist
Jack' Sparrow
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#51 - 2012-08-18 13:13:57 UTC
Threads gone quite, any other ideas guys? Cool
Beta Stryker
Yet Another Holding Corporation
#52 - 2012-08-19 07:42:24 UTC
Lialem wrote:
Most of missions are kinda boring, but they did put in some good ones.
Ever done "The Anomaly"? That mission was really good, i really enjoyed the story and it even has 2 different endings.


I took quite the opposite view of this in that The Anomaly went too far to the other end of the scale. Way too much running around to containers and random chit-chat. Not enough pew pew. I'm up for dialog boxes, but let me keep killing stuff.
Josef Djugashvilis
#53 - 2012-08-19 23:01:52 UTC
I have absolutely no knowledge of, or interest in the background/lore of Eve, but I would still like missions to be a bit more varied and interesting in their own right.

This is not a signature.
Zanmaru
Commando Guri
Guristas Pirates
#54 - 2012-08-20 00:02:09 UTC
They already tried to make agent mission interesting with epic arcs. The results were at the lower end of mediocre, and I think it's very telling that the concept has never been revisited. It seems the devs are at their best when it comes to enhancing the sandbox elements of the game as opposed to the more static elements such as missions.

You can throw exploration and plexes in there too. I mean, the ISK you can make is certainly exciting, but once you've seen one plex or exploration site, you're seen them all. These are some of the most dated elements of Eve Online, and I'm not so sure CCP is in the right state of mind to improve them.
Vrykolakasis
Sparrowhawks Corp
#55 - 2012-08-20 03:41:22 UTC
I don't know if I really care a ton about the story of a mission - admittedly I'd like them to be written in a more "sinister" fashion, like incursions are, instead of a lot of the cutsie stuff we see in many missions, but I do really like the idea of upgrading the gameplay. Mostly, missions cause us to shoot things while we move towards acceleration gates, and sometimes pick up items. I'd like to see (brainstorm):

- Missions with side rooms
- A lot more codebreaking/analyzing (as side objectives)
- Some sort of chance-based escalation system
- A new room system (for instance, instead of having so many acceleration gates, clearing a room gives you a new warp-to on your neocom)
- Chances of good rewards for destroying particular structures
- Friendly npcs to assist or that need assistance
- Multi-system missions
- Multiple possible mission outcomes
- The ability to fail an objective (not just time limit / lose your ship)
- Variable LP based on NPCs killed, time completed, etc
- Variable NPC spawns (possibly based on player fleet composition)
- Gameplay-altering effects (like wormholes, but smaller scale. An enemy may have an anti-shield tower that reduces shield resistances in a certain room, until it is destroyed)
- Small travel times, limiting boredom
- Re-coded remote effects (I want eccm to work against Guristas)
- Re-scaled and re-modelled mission objects (ships from the ancient New-Edeners are supposed to be huge, but these are *too* huge and, ideally, could use re-modeled to look less like "rocket ships". Additionally, many missions have weird, pixelated wrecks of stations, ships, etc that could use a serious re-model)
- Static clouds. Please. I hate that clouds always face the screen, and they would look a lot better if they were modified to look like actual 3d clouds in space.

Another thing; not strictly related but this reminded me of it: I think adding the rest (or many more) of the pirate ships to the game would be a good content addition with limited development time. The Guristas Raven, Serpentis Dominix, and Blood Apocalypse, for example. I have some other thoughts on this but they should probably go in another thread.
Nigel Sheldon
Hastings Militia
Solyaris Chtonium
#56 - 2012-08-20 04:06:49 UTC
I mix my game up when I come on with pve and pvp...I must be honest I prefer the pve as I don't have the time commitments I once had. Because of this, I am getting more and more involved with the back story, and reading through this thread a couple of thoughts come to mind.
I agree that it does seem a little crazy that bitter enemies can casual wander into enemy space to get some trading done without incurring the wraith of the local government. Missions to need to be a bit more diverse and involve local politics. On another note it would be amazing if in the backdrop of the game we saw in high sec local lore battles being played out. For instance we know Heth has conquest on his mind, maybe some more government battles running in the background, and ever changing boundries as systems fall would be a good idea, and easy to implement in DT.
I don't know, maybe I am just rambling, but more interaction in local politics within missions would make me smile
Dennis Gregs
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#57 - 2012-08-20 14:19:14 UTC  |  Edited by: Dennis Gregs
Zanmaru wrote:
They already tried to make agent mission interesting with epic arcs. The results were at the lower end of mediocre, and I think it's very telling that the concept has never been revisited. It seems the devs are at their best when it comes to enhancing the sandbox elements of the game as opposed to the more static elements such as missions.

You can throw exploration and plexes in there too. I mean, the ISK you can make is certainly exciting, but once you've seen one plex or exploration site, you're seen them all. These are some of the most dated elements of Eve Online, and I'm not so sure CCP is in the right state of mind to improve them.


One of the problems with the epic arcs is that they can be really difficult in comparison to regular level 4 missions. Don't get me wrong, a challenge is always welcome, but the fact that they are epic story arcs makes me think that they should be a little more accessible.

Anyway, my suggestions to make missions more fun would be:


  • Add more missions regularly. It should be no problem adding one mission per month or so. Even if it's only one person designing those missions I'm completely sure it's possible. Then they can be updated on the test server and tested till they are balanced before making it into Tranquility.

  • Add optional objectives. The extra rooms with locked gate was a nice start, but what if they had more mechanics to unlock them? For instance codebreaking and such. Of course the rewards should be appropriate for the time invested.

  • Minimize the use of acceleration gates. This might only be a personal pet peeve of mine and not a huge problem, but the worst aspect of missions is easily slow boating towards an acceleration gate, if you ask me. Try to keep this to a minimum. Also, in my opinion, single pocket missions, in which you are able to warp at any distance are a lot more fun than the rest. I understand that acceleration gates exist to make missions a bit more varied, but they are more tedious than anything.

  • Add more mission types. It would be really nice if we could have missions for more professions. Why not have missions specifically for explorers, for instance? They can require mix of the exploration related modules (codebreaker, analyzer, etc) to complete and perhaps some probing. As an added bonus, this would remove the cluttering of explorers in hi sec, since at the very least a fraction of them will be doing missions instead of scanning down actual sites.

  • Make it so I don't have to decline half the missions I get. Being locked out of missions because I got two faction missions in a row is not fun. There are people that farm for tags and don't care about their standing losses on faction missions. Other people want to do only missions against pirates. Why not have different agent types for those two kinds of missions? It makes sense from a 'lore' standpoint as well. A faction intel agent would probably not be the same as a pirate control police agent. Buffing drone mission bounties or loot slightly would be nice too...


Just some ideas.
Nhra
Royal Vinat
#58 - 2012-08-20 15:38:30 UTC
I think they should up the gain (isk/LP) but increase difficulties. Some missions are hard (40M each) and the others missions are so badass... without gain or a little bit, without flavoor
Akanamon
Ralph's Monestary
#59 - 2012-08-21 19:33:39 UTC
Chimpy B wrote:
I do feel that the PVE players of Eve are a little forgotten about.

Although I'm sure CCP have analytics running which show most people are PVPers, so that's where most of their effort goes.


Uh....

*gently shakes head*
Biomass MeNOW
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#60 - 2012-08-22 02:15:33 UTC
The old COSMOS mission arcs were excellent at illustrating some of the history and culture of the Eve universe. They were, and still are, pretty harsh meat grinders for the unwary.

But they were left to languish, untouched but to nerf some of the exploits, years ago.