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Missions & Complexes

 
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How to fix the PVE experience for Mission Runners and retain your unhappy players

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Ronan Connor
#81 - 2013-02-04 16:33:59 UTC
Traidir wrote:
I'll go first,

(current opinion): I'm not a big fan of missions, but they used to be fun for a short while.

wishlist:
(easy):
more options in choosing what type of mission you're going to do (long vs short) (hard vs easy)
more options in choosing what faction it will be against

(medium):
A deadspace "dungeon" generator module which creates deadspace mission content on the fly, perhaps even adjusting to the player as they go. This would keep the content spicy much longer than the static content.

(hard):
Persistent player built deadspace "sandbox"


(current opinion): Missions are somewhat the main income to me. Besides I like them to try out new ships when I have learned them. Mostly I love it to go in there with friends and burn through them like a hot knife through butter.
Since I do have the skills now they are also relaxing to me. At the start of EVE i did mining, but soon stopped it cause for the lack of income and cause always to have look over my should in mining belts was not what I think is relaxation.
With the drone nerf though, drone ships are no longer fun. Sure you can mostly work with sentries, but as long drones are considered like ammo but not treated as such, I prefer gun or missile boats.

wishlist:
(easy):
Quick wins like Traidir stated. Choosing some frame parameters like I want only missions against Angels. Or telling my agent that I dont do faction missions.
Another skill which reduces the denial time 45 minutes per level. Which then is at lvl 5 only 15 minutes I would have to wait. When I am in station, I want to accept missions remotely (when my mind is copied to a clone a simple video call with my agent should be possible).
When I choose not to go to low sec in my map preferences, why should I get missions which take me to low sec?

(medium):
Introduce another agent type which suits the needs of very high skilled endgame player. This agent type could be intelligence and incorporate some strong challenges to single player and teams. Like sleeper AI, randomized mission types. This missions should range between lvl 4 and 5. Teamplay will be recognized by the system which makes the mission harder (but from 100% to 200%, maybe 100% to 175%). The more player you are the better the chances are on survival. When you play alone the chance is 1 in 16 to be destroyed. In a double team it could be 1 of 32, three player it would be 1 in 48 etc.

(hard):
I like the idea of player designing missions. Like fittings or different games already showed the creativity of gamer is nearly endless.

Besides I would love the idea of a "lifetime - video - epic - arc" which is bound to your skills and overall skill level. The idea is similar to Star Wars: The Old Republic the get in some story lines which can be changed via your choices. Meaning you can choose to be bad and the next step would take you to shoot your own race or even to gank somebody.
In between you would get small video sequences which tell more of the background story of eve.
Of course this epic arc would accompany you till say 100 million SP.

Also I would like to see more "bonus pockets". Like a rat is dropping a bookmark for a radar site, mag site, grav site etc.
---

On a similar note, I would like to see that missions are much more the origin for a lot of stuff. Sayed bonus pockets come to live when the rat is killed and the bookmark drops. Therefore this could enrich more the scanning sites.

Also wrecks in missions. If i decide I abandon wrecks, they should be scan able after I turned in mission. Also if i dont blue them then a timer should start of 2 hrs. After that time runs out those wrecks should be scan able as well. (wrecks now would need to be on the grid for 3 hrs instead of 2).
Mining - a lot of asteroid belts could vanish, when more random mining belts of all sorts of ore would spawn in missions. Those mining belts could be smaller but with bigger rocks. Those belts would vanish the next downtime.
For further infos see my proposal: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2226452#post2226452
Jet Fuel
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#82 - 2013-02-04 17:05:33 UTC
Easy, Medium and Hard are already in the game. On a scale when you consider the ships, equipment and training needed, missions levels 1-5 already equal easy-hard.

I think the monkey wrench is the casual hi-sec player which is the bulk of the game's audience, imo, and skilling "offline". Meaning people who log in, do a few missions, set up their skill queue and log off. So you get a situation where you have players with the skills but not the funds or real expierence with the game all jumping straight into Level 4 missions and getting their bums handed to them. I'm not sure how in the world you would fix that other than taking out the real-time training all together.

If you scale the missions too hard, you drive away new players and casual players (and those are the players who pay the bills). If you make them too easy then you risk experienced players getting very bored and walking away. So to me, the choice is how to seperate those 2 groups of people? While being fair to both.
Zatryna Oramara
Amarr General Drilling and Construction
#83 - 2013-02-04 17:53:11 UTC
Jet Fuel wrote:
Easy, Medium and Hard are already in the game. On a scale when you consider the ships, equipment and training needed, missions levels 1-5 already equal easy-hard.

I think the monkey wrench is the casual hi-sec player which is the bulk of the game's audience, imo, and skilling "offline". Meaning people who log in, do a few missions, set up their skill queue and log off. So you get a situation where you have players with the skills but not the funds or real expierence with the game all jumping straight into Level 4 missions and getting their bums handed to them. I'm not sure how in the world you would fix that other than taking out the real-time training all together.

If you scale the missions too hard, you drive away new players and casual players (and those are the players who pay the bills). If you make them too easy then you risk experienced players getting very bored and walking away. So to me, the choice is how to seperate those 2 groups of people? While being fair to both.



you totally lost the point of the easy medium and hard, those are things which would be easy, medium or hard to IMPLEMENT by CCP. An easy fix that could be tossed in tomorrow, a medium one which could be included in an expansion and a difficult one which may be a long term fix (multiple expansions ie. a dream possibility)

btw I love this idea, it condenses ideas of what people want for the devs! its perfect!

Easy:
-remote accept/complete. and usually requiring me to bring back the pointless drop is annoying and seemingly unnecessary (especially when that drop is 90km away and my ship travels at 50 m/s)
-choose what you want to fight against or at least, things you dont want to do. perhaps allow more of this with higher level missions. as a high lvl capsuleer with high standing arent I pretty important (to an NPC corp)? As such I can make some demands like, dont send me against the Blood Angels etc.

medium:
-corporate missions! I would love the idea of accepting a mission for the corp, such a mission will require at least a small fleet and should scale according to level. L1s can be completed in frigates so an L1 corp mission should need 3-5 frigates. L4 should need 3-5 battleships. You may need to do actions which are IMPOSSIBLE for a single person to do, IE have to accell gates into two rooms which must be completed more or less simultaneously. Ideally this would result in a larger standing bonus for the corp (although this would require a change to the standing system).

Hard:
-more randomness in missions, have a basic structure but randomize locations and enemy types
-fix NPCs so they fit ships like non-idiots. Why is this amarr ship shooting me with missiles and IR Beam lasers from 15k away? This does not have to equate to being harder but having AIs be stupid in such a way takes away from the immersion. (saying WTF?? every time a rat shoots at you and wanting to shake your head makes it obvious there are intentional, pre-programmed faults)
-more missions in general
Dunkle Lars
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#84 - 2013-02-05 19:21:58 UTC
CCP Affinity wrote:
We are reading this thread and it contains some good ideas. We are always looking for new ways to make PvE more exciting and more unpredictable but overhauling the entire mission system is not a task to be taken lightly. This will impact a huge percentage of players and requires a lot of thought, planning and most importantly - communication with the player base before we make any adjustments



And that is exactly the problem.. CCP statements are always: too big a task, we're so freaking worried to **** off someone bla bla bla.. And thus EvE never moves forward.

Well try to be bold for once.. You were 10 years ago when you launched EvE. And I think most players wouldn't mind e.g devotion an entire expansion solely to fix missions. At least not the ones I talk to.
Morrigan LeSante
Perkone
Caldari State
#85 - 2013-02-06 08:04:23 UTC
The thing is, the only people angry about missions seem those who don't run them.

Those running them tend to feel either
a) they're fun
b) they're a suitably straightforward means to an end (funding other activity)

Those looking for more engaging PvE are at liberty to do incursions, level 5's etc. Those looking for other stuff do...do that other stuff.

You see, when you get down to it, for most people, PvP is quite expensive so needs to be funded somehow - which means you need a regular and pretty predictable income stream (and missions are better than mining Blink)
Lord Zek
Abnormal Experience
#86 - 2013-02-06 09:47:03 UTC
* Remote accept/complete

* Mini profession missions
** In X system you need to scan down site, jump to it and clean it out
** Go to site "hack" containers and fend off reinforcements... faster you hack more lewt you get (1st can completes mission, further cans drop more and more lewt.... also harder and harder to kill reinforcements)
** Salvage/Analyze - same stuff (reinforcements)

* "Role" Missions (newbie training missions have a bit of this..)
** Fly in to group of CONCORD/Navy/Mercs... and help them clean out stuffs
*** By Tackling (or taget escapes)
*** Remote repping
*** Plain slaughter fest (where you need to primary what NPC FC says to)

* "PvE PvP" Missions
** Against NPCs in common PvP fits, less npcs, but you need to bring PvP-ish fit (scram at minimum)
Carniflex
StarHunt
Mordus Angels
#87 - 2013-02-06 10:52:06 UTC
Traidir wrote:

The missioning system flies in the face of this with content so predictable (and boring) that you can safely field billion isk ships in high sec missions: reducing your risk while increasing your reward. Moreover, no matter how many missions you run and how much of their infrastructure you degrade the enemies never really get weaker: there's no point of 'community interaction' to the content. Essentially, missions become a meaningless, grind.


I would argue that all PvE content is, in the end, just isk grind. After you know what and how to do and field your billion+ isk PvE spanker all thats left is pushing the buttons and, in some locations keep an eye on local or dir scanner. Be it then null sec anoms /plexes, incursions, sleepers or hi sec missions.

Running your PvE carrier in null sec anomalies is not inherently more riskier than running your faction pimped marachiel in level 4 missions.

Here, sanity... niiiice sanity, come to daddy... okay, that's a good sanity... THWONK! GOT the bastard.
MissyDark
Carsultyal
#88 - 2013-02-25 15:03:08 UTC
To make missions entertaining you need to understand your audience first. Solo players, who like to play it safe. There is plenty evidence of that - overtanked cap-stable ship fittings, dropping missions that cause inconvinience (like against gallente faction for caldari missions), etc.

Unless you want to make this audience most unhappy, you probably should go along with their expectations. Now to the missions. They suck. Still, leave those missions as they are. Make new kind of missions and see if people migrate. Why? Because that will measure your success in making it interesting experience as opposed to forcing the changes and having significant part of playerbase hate you and cancel subs, because now their 5 bil fited CNRs are no longer uber. Also, more variety means more things to do and that is a good thing.

I hate the mind numbing grind of missions but i dislike interactions with other players more, so this is my way of making money. I expect measurable income that outweights the boringness.

How I imagine an interesting mission? The lore is already there - agent says I need to silence an informant. Good, I'm on it. However instead shooting 100 red crosses as a time sink I'd rather spend that time scanning the informant down with probes, following him through a minefield manually avoiding proximity charges and finally having a 1 on 1 with the said informant, where I could employ variety of tactics - engage him in full jamming fitted rook, speed tank in vagabond, paint and drone in a drone platform ship, snipe from 120 km in a vulture- basically anything that requires more in preparation and execution than slapping on a heavy tank and maxed-out DPS possible on particular ship.

What I do NOT want to experience is uncertainty of what is waiting for me at the mission site, because the only solution to that problem is preparing multiple ships/fits, flying in a cloaker/inteceptor to a mission site, identifying red crosses as mission template 3 and going back for a proper ship to kill them in absolutely safe fashion. It is still boring, with more flying between mission and the station.

I also do NOT want to be forced to cooperate with other players. I know, MMO and all, however as an over 30 year old guy I do not have anymore the time to play long hours that are required for guild/corp life. Missions are a magnet for solo players and a very few places in Eve where we can log in, do a finite set of tasks for an hour, have a certain reward of +x mil in my wallet and log off. If you try to force me into mission system that does not let me, now a casual player play, I will not play due to lack of time. This is not WoW, your player base are mostly adults with a life, not virgin basement dwellers.

I also do NOT want artificial limitations and NPCs cheating. I want to be able to cap drain them, jam them, basically do the same things I can do against a player. Right now they can move at crazy speeds no matter the ship, are immune to ewar.

You have to remember that mission runners do not accept risk. They will avoid it at all cost. Making "cool" risky missions with unknown enemies and effects inside will end in players creating workarounds and whining about having to go back and forth to the station to change ships, or even worse, having cooperate with other players.

While you are revamping missions/adding variety I'd like to beg you to remove the damn beacons, warpgates and "phenomenas" that disable my warp drive. Those things do not exist outside mission environment and serve no useful purpose except for underlying mission mechanics on your side. Not to mention make it difficult for a cloaked ship to creep up on a mission runner in order to gank him :(
Karig'Ano Keikira
Tax Cheaters
#89 - 2013-02-26 11:00:18 UTC
Personal opinions:
facts:
- EVE lacks 'small group' PVE, something for fleet of 3-5 people. Level 5s don't really fill that role due to fact they are in low-sec and since new AI change require either expensive setup of 1-4 people (expensive pve ships + low sec = big nono) or medium sized (5+ group) of cheap ships. Incursions don't really fit that role because a) you need 'top level gear' and b) you need 8+ ships, pushing it into medium sized group. WHs are closest, but again it is 0.0 content. Playing level 4s in group sucks - basically it cuts your profit for anything above 2 (perhaps 2+salvager) ships, not to mention it provides no challenge whatsoever.
- low sec mission running is pointless - if you count in risk of ship loss x chance of ship loss and extra preparation time required, ideally extra alt for scouting... profit is far far below high sec missions - this is bad
- missions are far too static, making them boring on the long run

opinions:
- allow level 5s in highsec, drop their income to lvl 4 level per ship (base it on 3? perhaps even 2? ships). This should ideally provide more interesting small group content without boosting income above lvl 4s income; idea here is variety of content not increase of profit (if anything, mission profit might need slight nerf)
- Boost all low-sec mission income (currently risk vs reward for low-sec missions is lousy unless you 'own' the space). Ban caps from missions in low sec (basically every missions should have gate); more income = potentially more low-sec missions runners = more targets (in ideal world)
- randomization would be great - randomized pocket composition, random triggers, random 'boss' NPCs in missions... actually any change would be welcome here; if it makes missions harder and less bot-friendly, all the better
- more exploration content would be great - despite being marketed as exploration, it is actually very static - site X is always identical + has identical signature level = not very interesting
Tarpedo
Incursionista
#90 - 2013-02-26 12:10:15 UTC  |  Edited by: Tarpedo
Rutuli wrote:
add new stuff


Really. Add new stuff (new type of missions) - instead of trying to fix (more like ruin) existing content (which was fine from players' point of view) and disguise debugs as yearly "expansions" for 3rd year in a row without actually expanding anything but Dust.
Makavelia
National Industries
#91 - 2013-02-27 00:25:37 UTC  |  Edited by: Makavelia
Missions are boring as hell.

It's a nice idea to try band together some players to run L4's and it might work out well for many many players at the expence of a few who want to ''blitz'' L4 alone in their machs... then station spin it for how epic they are *bling y blingy

Making the misison harder would mean less people can solo it and that means the market is not flooded so high with faction ammo etc etc etc. This obviously means those who group up can expect to split a few ways but the splittings is worth far more than current.

The solo player will not lose out becuase he can do L3 missions and with the added value on LP (for less of it being easily farmed) the L3 missions will gain a boost in reward too. This is a nice thing for people who like to run solo or who like to fly their BC's etc etc and still make some worth while isk for the time spent.

If missions become fun and more people do them then exploration will get a much needed breather from the 20.000 players fighting over 3 small parts of eve space. So exploration will also get a BUFF thnx to this change.

The missions will likely be ran like litle mini incurisons and this will be nice training for people to move onto actual incurisons.. so the incursion comunity get new breath of players who have better understanding of fleet operation.

If a lot more people find the misisons fun and stick to high sec to ''safely'' farm good isk they will have a lot more isk to spare. This means they will much more likely spend spare money on real pvp fit ships to go off doing pvp in spare time and for fun.

S othat is a buff to the pirates.. since they get fights that are actualy respecteble instead of ganking some pve fit exploration ship.. or what eve rother kinde shity low value pvp.


I think CCP had the bold plan of all this ''effort, risk, reward'' but in reality it don't work. The core of the game (pve) sux ass and the risk is often not worth the reward or the effort is not so high so the reward is ****.. people lose to much just to have the chance to gain some. The players can be nicely challenged in high sec pve and have the isk to choose for themselves when to go pvp. That's realy the idea i owuld be pushing as a game developer. It is more fun for all involved if they engage with pure intent of a fight and not so hung up on how much is in the wallet.


Ofc i don't mean just giv eplayers easy isk.. but i don't think you should be forced to goto NUL sec just to make the kinde isk where you can lose a BS / BC every other day and have it covered. That's probably why so many people spam frigates and cheap cruisers becuase they can't make the right level of isk from all the time they spend in high sec


BTW: Tonight in my 150 mil exploration ship (and 200 mil pod maybe) that i roamed low sec with.. i ran 2 rad sites and a mag site. I made 20 mil isk but it took maybe 2 hour.. including finding the sigs and scanning etc.

350 mil on the line to make 10mil per hour ;p. This is why 20.000 people are looking for combat sites only. Not enough isk to buy ships!!.
Inkarr Hashur
Skyline Federation
#92 - 2013-02-27 02:15:40 UTC
The existing missions are fine, don't get rid of them. Fix the damn TD and SD issues though. If you want to add new content then do that. Add NEW CONTENT. Not mess with old content. We've all seen Blockade and Worlds Collide a thousand times already. Blockade 2.0 isn't suddenly exciting just because pirates will warp away if you bring them close to death. Just add in a new agent type who offers new content for people.
GyokZoli
Divine Sanctum
#93 - 2013-02-28 16:41:56 UTC
Daniel Plain wrote:
...

I like your way of thinking.
Orlacc
#94 - 2013-02-28 17:00:16 UTC
So you come to a sandbox game and expect the devs to create content for you? That is sad.

I know you have heard it before, but there is a lot more to EVE than missions.

"Measure Twice, Cut Once."
Jayson Kassis
Carbon Industries
#95 - 2013-03-01 01:52:40 UTC
Orlacc wrote:
So you come to a sandbox game and expect the devs to create content for you? That is sad.

I know you have heard it before, but there is a lot more to EVE than missions.


Shhh, the adults are speaking. Go do w/e it is you do in your sandbox.
Vigil Catharsis
Sessrumnir's Chosen
#96 - 2013-03-01 05:29:29 UTC
Orlacc wrote:
So you come to a sandbox game and expect the devs to create content for you? That is sad.

I know you have heard it before, but there is a lot more to EVE than missions.


I love the "Sandbox" tag and how much EvE is attached to it.

Analyze better what in terms of sandbox there is in EvE, you can't make custom ships or modules, half the space is owned by NPCs with its restrictions.

EvE is far away from being a full "sandbox", take a look at low sec and null space, most of it reassembles a call of duty match, people just kill each other for killmails or giggles instead of economic reasons. I remember in Ultima Online I would gank miners to take their loot and make a nice profit, not to "feed" on tears.

Now addressing to the OP topic:

The whole mission aspect of the game needs a revamp, 1/2/3's can't barely help pay the bills of a newbie, let alone net any meaningful profit to a few months old pilot.

Agents, mission types (distribution and mining are a niche and should be scrapped or get replaced by something better), corporations, missions levels, low sec and null sec missions, should be completely redesigned from scratch to be more dynamic.

300 pilots doings missions in region X for faction Y should affect the offers available and its rewards, crippling rival npc's corporations, etc.

There shouldn't be an endless offer of missions neither should they be static and easily taken apart like a factory worker in an assembly line. There can exist a PvE experience that benefits from sandbox type of mechanics. All there need to exist is effort and some fresh ideas by CCP to make it happen.

The whole, let the players make their own content, is a lazy excuse for 10yr old outdated mechanics with no sight for a future revamp.
Olga Umame
Kreos Heavy Unified Logistics Technologies
#97 - 2013-03-01 07:13:31 UTC
I wouldn't mind building up to level 5 missions, but I'm not going to fit something for missions and then get hosed by a passing fleet of 200+ turds out to shoot anything that moves.

Level 5 missions being restricted to low sec is kind of lame and doesn't exactly fit into a PVE mold. Maybe Im just a wimp.