Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I posted this over in General Discussion a while back but realize this is a more suitable location.

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Agents are constantly sending us to go fight gallente/caldari/min/amarr/pirates... whatever their enemies are.

These are, of course NPC pilots who we have to go kill for whatever reason. But, in fact, it makes sense that we capsuleers would be some of the biggest prey there is and agents would have very big reasons for wanting us to go kill other capsuleers.

So, what I'd like to see are agents that give out missions like normal, but whose missions run parallel to another opposing agent who is giving out a similar mission to another player character. That is, you are supposed to go kill EACH OTHER.

Now, one problem with this is timing, and another is distance. There are a few ways around this.

First, the missions could run like: Agent A says to player A "Hey I might have something really important coming in soon. I'm expecting intel about system intruders. Let me know if you are ready to respond when I ask. There are potentially big rewards and if you Don't respond when the time comes, some punishment"

Agent B says something similar to Player B but when two players on opposing sides both get 'queued' up in this way the agents convo pops up, wherever the players are and says something like "ok, here we go, enemies spotted at X location. go there and eliminate the threat or guard area for 30 minutes (or something)"

Now, both players race to the site and fight. One wins.

the site could be some middle system though the best bet might be a super secret jumpgate that takes both players to a neutral deepspace completely isolated non-system grid.

Only players assigned can get there, and only in ship sizes specific to the agreed upon terms.

Could also expand this to include some certain number of fleet members with similar ship restrictions.

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Now, obviously, this is a LOT like scenario or arena fights in other games, but with some (I think) very important differences. First, this is just a mission like any other. Well, obviously tougher and riskier and maybe more rewarding, but in game terms -- just a mission.

You have to travel to get there. There's no 'arena' or imaginary battleground (even if this is effectively what a deepspace, disconnected location is) that breaks game immersion. When you die, you lose and get looted, etc

These kinds of missions could easily be expanded into other types of contests. 'Races' in distribution missions or even combat objectives that involve 'racing' an opponent while not actually killing him, etc.

Imagine the fun of being told "there's some data in a dish and we need you to go fight your way there and hack it for us -- but watch out, there's a gallente capsuleer who (you can't kill for some concorde reason) who's trying to get to it first."

Or, as I'd prefer, the same mission but where you can kill him.

A year of small fleet encounters given away by agents and I think we'd see a whole lot more players trying non-structured pvp. It'd build skills and confidence and would allow constant practice for things like tournaments. In fact, it could feed right into a tournament or ladder structure.

Of course this 'ladder' structure would again be embedded into the eve environment - sort of like how WWI aces were sent out specifically to hunt the red baron. Aces were pitted against aces, and eve agents will do this too.

Again, I know I'm gonna get bashed by people saying 'go play Wow if you want arenas' but I'd of course want all of this to be embedded into usual mission 'go kill badguy and travel somewhere to do it' game dynamics

This is the casual pvp I'd like in eve.