Assembly Hall

(edited to reflect new insight gleaned from discussion)

[ISSUE]
Running missions is so boring only bots would enjoy it.
At the moment, missions in EVE are static, predictable, imposed on the player and, frankly, rather less than exciting. What's more, the best missions are available at static mission hubs overcrowded by missioneers and, worse, bots.


[SOLUTION]
Much is to be said (and has been) for systems that randomise, vary or link missions in fresh ways to keep them entertaining. My idea does not have much impact on that.
Instead, I suggest that CCP rethink their system of providing missions to the players. This proposal details a way to offer the player a selection of missions at all times in a dynamic way by means of a mission board with a mission supply that reflects both player activity and local flavour.

[DETAILS]
Introduce a new station service called "The Mission Board" or the like.
- On it, resident agents offer missions much like the current contract system. Offered missions may be limited to select missioneers dependent on standings, security status (positive or negative) or militia membership.
- Missions would spawn according to system sec status, system sovereignty, system rats, owner of station, type of station, type of celestial body it orbits, maybe even local economy (reacting to unmet market demand or oversupply) or local (random, like disasters, plagies or famines) events.
- More importantly, spawn rate, reward amount and types of missions* all would depend on player population, ratting frequency, number of missions accomplished/failed and other player activity dependent factors. (It would be possible to fill up all missions on a well-served station. Thus, mission hubs would not remain static.)
- Missions on offer would expire after a preset amount of time.

Players could log onto the board when in station to see those available to them at any time. They could check out the mission objectives, rewards, collateral and level. Rewards would not just depend on level and standing, but also on the individual mission template, travel length, local missioneer activity, etc.

When a player accepts a mission, a short timer (around half a minute) is displayed, during which a mission is tagged as "under negotiation".
During that window, other players can (secretly) enter an incrementally lower reward offer and accept the mission themselves. The lowest offer when the timer runs out gets the mission (and is immediately charged the collateral to reduce griefing).
This system avoids missions to be snatched up by the first to see them after spawning or disappearing while a player is still reading the description.

Missions will have to be accomplished within a reasonable time frame (less time than now) and failure will have the price of the collateral and a standings penalty. Failed missions would (instantly?) become available again.

An associated new skill, "Missioneer", would determine the amount of missions players could have active at any one time. (This further serves to reduce the likelihood of griefers just hogging all missions in a station, but still allows dedicated missioneers to accept a number of compatible missions to fill up their cargo or save themselves multiple trips.)

The conventional mission system would be retained, albeit with reduced numbers of available agents and other modifications. Basically, NPC mission agents would offer "tours of duty", where players could "sign up" (gaining an instant status increase) to offer that corp their exclusive missioning service for a while. Players could only be signed up with one single NPC corp at a time. This obligation would be enforced for maybe a couple dozen successful missions before they are released. Players could, however, be dishonourably discharged at will or after a number of failed missions, but at the cost of a massive loss of standings.
These missions would focus more on story, so they would certainly include the current storyline missions as well as the factional epic missions.


[PROS]
- Players would be given choices and a chance to specialise in certain types of missions.
- Local mission supply would react to player activity.
- Missioneers would find an incentive to spread out and move from time to time.
- There would be indirect player competition on at least two levels.
- System security could easily be made to impact on mission rewards.
- Public missions, events or even black market/illegal missions could easily be implemented.
- Bots would have a harder time missioning.
- This would add incentive to visit low sec systems, since (initially heavily serviced) high sec systems will dynamically lower rewards over time.

[CONS]
- Missioneers would be forced to continuously adapt and remain flexible for maximum profit.
- Current agent standings would lose importance, so player investment would be lost.
- Would require careful balancing with conventional mission agent system.
- Some resources would need to be diverted to set this up and test it by CCP.
- Poor bots would have a harder time...

[TL:DR]
Offer missioneers a dynamic selection of missions to choose from instead of shoving them down their throats one by unwanted one. Also, let player activity impact on mission running in various interesting ways.



* Offering some of the current missions on the mission board would unbalance this by them being unreasonably profitable due to rat drops. This would could be avoided by modifying those mission rats to remain within the work/risk/reward ratio of other missions offered at that station at the player's agent standing.
Or it could be amended by implementing the Dynamic Missions concept previously picked up by the CSM, giving simple missions a small chance to (even according to a player's in-mission choices) escalate into something much bigger.

Generally a good idea however I would suggest that the whole undercutting people for the rewards is not a good idea.

I would prefer a system where say each mission is available for acceptance for a short period of time (10-20mins), anyone who accepts it in that time gets it. After that period the 'available mission' is replaced by a new one. Therefore the missions could remain dynamic to the systems but the possibility of losing out to 0.01 mission ISKers is removed.

*bump* because I'm stubborn

Quick side note to the silent auction, it MUST have a max payout listed in the mission discription interface so that players don't super overbid in the HUB's. Also I can see a massive ability to grief missioners, by bidding 1 isk on every mission so that you get every mission in a system. Any ideas to fix this, if not the silent auction will have to go and it'll be first come first serve.

Why not? But I think missions on the board might not have to be recognizeable as epic ones before accepting, instead players might encounter some kind of complication on the mission that allowed them to branch into an escalated epic mission. Conventional agents, on the other hand, would still offer epic missions as part of the storytelling and factional advancement they offer.



While it makes sense to spawn certain mission types selectively (just as difficulty and rewards should be adjusted to system sec), I'd rather see the likelyhood of such missions being spawned increased in those locations. There should *always* be a chance to get "lucky" and find an atypical type of mission/difficulty/reward.



Missions on the boards always show payout and maybe a bonus for expediency, as well as a collateral. The collateral is subtracted when you offer your bid and payed back either if someone else has outbid you for or at successful completion. Your default bid is the payout offered in the mission, but you can bid to do the mission for a lower reward. If you want to do the mission for no reward, you may do so. Expect rewards in that station to go down significantly if players complete missions for free!



This should really not be much of a problem. Idle bidding is discouraged by the collateral and the fact that you can only have a limited number of active missions. While they can be aborted, you lose the collateral and incur a standings loss, and aborted missions return to the board right away.
Of course, teh goonz can and will grief that, but they will only be able to do so very locally, as missioneers are not in any way restricted in moving to another station/system/constellation, indeed they will have to move about in order to maximize their profits. More interestingly, pirates might keep track of accepted missions (especially high-collateral ones with valuable cargo!) at a station and set up ganks correspondingly!



Indeed. Forum slaps me soundly every time I forget!

*bump* because I modified the OP, and because I really think this would add something fine to the game.

Yes. They added useful journal entries for convenience and - thankfully - a handful of epic arcs. After you ran the latter, missioneering was back to the dreary business it had been.

You focus your criticism on a point I noted: "requires some effort by CCP (better spent elsewhere). I'd argue the effort required would not be that great, but that is of course debatable.

How would you comment on the "pros" I listed in the OP?