Missions & Complexes

Recently several members of my corporation has used the buddy program to get their friends into the game. Great thing is with all the ship balancing is their is option with every hull and every race to have them in a relevant ship type for any fleet comp. They are always heading to low sec and losing ships, but now getting some kills, which is good fun for them.

My fear is very simple, Missions suck. When I was 90 days old or less I used an armor cane to run lvl4's. I had to continuously warp in and out and it may take me the whole time of the bonus pay to finish the mission. I also had to switch out to a bs to finish the site. But it was possible for me as a new player to develop a way for me to do lvl4's. I used the cane to pop frigates and then some cruisers, even pulling agro carefully. Maybe only killing one or two ships at first until I drop enough dps to make it work. Finishing the mission with a BS to take out all the large bs after most frigates were off field. I lost a lot of ships doing this, but i had fun.

The new AI is here to stay and is better than the old completely boring system. But the payouts on lvl4's is so low even with super shiny ships the pay is low. The payout on lvl1's through lvl3's is very low as well. My concern is it is hard to mission for a few hours as a new player and then be able to afford both new skills books and losing a ship in low sec by ship I mean a frigate.

Too much isk being in eve is not the issue of a new player, CCP broke eve with incursions, then FW, and True sec and capital nerf's allowed super power blocks to develop in null sec.

Much ship balancing has been done but was needed very badly, since I joined people have been demanding ship balancing, and we got station walking instead. CCP has refocused on the game and making it better, but one change I believe has hurt eve a lot. I play eve and stayed for two reasons, my first war decks were fun and overpowering, I decided I wanted to get revenge. But the other pragmatical concern is isk and how to make it. Old bitter vets could help me in lvl4's which i had the standings for but could not do or solo, taught to to read eve survival and how to kill spawns tags last. Since then CCP has nerf'd missions a lot, even changed how standings work, mission quality and so on. All steps have decreased what all players can make in missions.

Also another concern is faction standings restricting corporation standings with npc's. CCP has promoted Faction Warfare a great deal but for a completely new player FW is not the best option. They get bad standings in empires and have no isk, and need help to fix their faction standings back to zero, but even if they have Caldari Navy standings at or above 2,3,5 they are unable to get any other missions than a lvl1. CCP has allowed people to fix standings with security tags, why not let a negative faction standing toon running missions for a corporation within that faction to fix that standing.

I believe CCP will address this issue but too late to save the new players of today, making it harder to get more new players of tomorrow to join eve. My concern is that if these are not addressed or even address in a DEV blog that some may leave eve finding nothing to do or finding it too difficult to over come some of their new player mistakes.

Getting bored of high sec mission running? Try something more rewarding and exciting.

Or maybe it's to get people out of high sec.

I kind of agree. While there are things that can be seen as issues, profitability isn't one of them. For relatively safe, relaxed and reliable source of income, L4 missions net a good profit.

Maybe one option is more flexable missions for example a max skilled pilot gets a more difficult missions while a newer player gets a slightly relaxed mission. I do other things than missions for my isk. I only run missions to help new players along and into the game. Or to grind standings for my refining alt, and trade alts.

Not at all. I made an alt 6 weeks ago for some reason idk why but with 6 weeks of training, she has Caldari Frigate V, Railgun Spec 4, Blaster Spec 4 and all gunnery support skills to 4 along with a few basic fitting skills. She can rat belts just fine in a T1 Merlin. It's a little slow, but for a new player, the income is just fine. 4 decent belts is 20m isk, not including loot or salvage, for a total of about 1 hour of work. That's not bad for a new player at all, plus you can get a little excitement instead of running boring, unrewarding missions all day.

But you're his friend. You can take him into hostile space and help him rat belts and teach him all the skills he needs to survive. I mean, you do know how to do that stuff, right?

It's simple. If ISK is what you seek... leave highsec. You don't need to be a vet to make isk in non-highsec!

Mission rewards are OK. You can earn for a PLEX within a day. Of course, I'm talking about having proper skills and knowledge. In case you enjoy slow missions and just poke the NPCs out because you're doing something on a side, you can earn enough ISK for the PLEX within few days of casual playing. Rewards are just fine.

Now, if you have problems with new players as you say you do, then you're doing it wrong. I had few players 'under' me, and I've told them exactly what they should skill-up and exactly what they can do. If you're not doing that, that may be the reason why you can't do various things with them.

Your viable options

1. LOW-sec belt farming.

Take a bunch of destroyers\frigates and go in LOW-sec. Farm the belts and look at the wallet getting pumped by selling clone soldier tags. I would not tell you to take them in NULL-sec since you can earn a lot more from the clone tags at the current time. The market is still not flooded with tags. If you need some guides about LOW-sec ratting, here's a post: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=3183650#post3183650. It's very profitable, and very easy. Especially in masses.

2. HIGH-sec level IV missions.

Since you're their mentor, you should know how do they feel. Do they want to farm missions? Is there someone who wants to salvage? Can you fit up few salvage destroyers so the functions are split amongst mission runners? What races are they flying? What weapon system do they have? Do they like missiles? You have to ask them all about their wishes and desires. Once when you know what they want to do you can compose fleets. There's no excuse of being low SP. I've been flying support ship (Shield Remote Repairer) and my 'starter' friends had only cruisers. And it was a 'success'. Of course, it's not the most optimal way to finish missions but still. If you want stand behind them, then just stand behind them as a real friend or a mentor.

Luckily I had two Caldari pilots and one Gallente pilot. We've been using combinations of Drakes or Caracals (one member really likes the Caracal) and the Brutix. Everyone was shield tanked and everyone was kiting. Brutix had rails and others had the Heavy missiles. I was flying the Osprey. As I've said, it's not the optimal (the most ISK efficient) way to farm them, but they can do them in that order. It was engaging and fun. We've finished even the 'hardest' missions in Serpentis area: Blockade, Assault. They're hard because of sensor dampening.

3. Exploration (LOW-sec & NULL-sec).

You can fit up the basic frigate fit for exploration and go for it. Teach them what clone jumps are, how they can get it etc. With empty pod and few cheap frigates, you can go in NULL-sec and earn serious ISK. Even if you die, and lose everything it's still going to be an experience but honestly, you should not die if you know what you're doing.

AND YES, MISSIONS HAVE TO CHANGE

But not the rewards or anything else. They have to refresh that content. But still, they should not change them in a way where a casual guy comes from the hard work and has to PvP for the rewards. They have to stay as they are (the concept). Some loot tables have to change (drones) because they suck.

I would go in a direction to create two types of 'security mission':

- The missions which you're familiar with as they are now. But CCP should maybe create the new missions, or do something about their content.

- The PvP missions.

PvP missions would be more engaging. Lesser NPCs, but they will warp-off when they're damaged and similar. It would be a great way to star the PvP lessons. Maybe even put a battleship inside and if you don't kill it within some time limit, he sends a distress call and then his 'buddies' show up to help him out. And because of that, the PvP missions should give you more income than the normal ones, but the loot\bounty tables should not change in normal ones.

I'd say the problem was more that you jumped into soloing level 4's wayyyyyy too early. For starters, even with great skills, a T1 BC will have a hard time with the vast majority of level 4's. Your BS of choice should be able to keep range on or web cruisers, and have a full flight of lights to take care of frigates, and I'm surprised that having to constantly warp out, and swap ships, and take longer than bonus to complete missions didn't raise some sort of red flag that made you think "maybe I'm not ready for this". Level 4's are not meant to be done by "new" players, there's just so much more going on in them than level 3's; the most notable things being the need for much higher dps and tank, many more web/scram frigates, and more trigger ships that either cause new spawns or room aggro.

Although I don't go throwing away frigates on a daily basis, for all the long time that I stuck to level 3's, I never had problems buying anything I actually needed, and could get most of anything that I wanted for just playing around with.

As far as the standings thing goes, all that the agent cares about is your highest standing towards that agent. My Minmatar standing is -0.8 after diplomacy (-3.0 before it), and I am able to do level 4 missions with any agent from the corp that I've farmed standing towards. (word of advice: raising your Connections skill to 3 is easy and quick and lets you jump right into level 2 missions with any corp you meet)