Missions & Complexes

Maybe we need to do away with the 4 levels. Make it so that we have - say - 8 levels; up to lev 6 in hisec, add lev 5 and 6 to make the "make them harder" people happier. I don't see how making them harder helps much in the long run but hey - I'm far from being an elite pilot.



This has been said over and over - yet it does not add variability. Simple difference does not grant variability, just randomness. Your preparations will be exactly identical for all missions, because you'll be unable to prepare - your choices are meaningless as you've got no information to base them on. The only thing you can do is scout, get back home, change fit and get back there - which few will do.
Thus, randomization basically REMOVES options, you'll just make the massive tank more of a dominant strategy.




Agree on this, incursions have a certain barrier to access as they require a fleet/gang - and you'll have to adhere to their rhythm and standards. Unless you're in a friendly corp that does incursions, you'll have a hard time getting up to par.
Adding one more level would help.



A reasonable bounty+loot in a good L4 mission is 40m (WC, anire) - which means you need to run 25 of them a week to theoretically make a billion. For us who don't play 7 days, it's 4 a day. And this is fully theoretical - dunno about you, I don't have that kind of time, and I don't think I make a billion a month.


Income in missions is one of the lowest in eve's PVE - you can go lower with mining, planetary interaction and agent research. And the last two are mostly offline activities anyway.
I'm not sure where you got your numbers or how your income is, but I suspect you play a whole lot more than anyone I know.

Haven't got any implant there so far.... but I've run it like thrice (just got back after 3 years). Bounties are about 30mills according to eve-survival and my experience. Rewards and LP amount to 8 millions. 40 mills of loot and salvage seem a bit like stretching it, tho my initial number might in fact have been low.



Well, I got brought to hull in my proteus in a "buzz kill" mission I helped a friend with - warped out <40% hull. Since then, I kinda stopped considering that "immunity". Oh and while I didn't have 95% I did have 88% on explo. I still sometimes have to warp the ishtar out of a WC gurista room to save my neck.
All in all, I agree with you, the risk is minor. But considering the amount of missions it'll take me to replace the stuff I use to mission (I usually fit T2, mostly), I wouldn't call the rewards "insane" nor the risk "trivial" - not always.
But as mentioned I'm not an elite pilot, far from it.



Randomness in distances, aggro, triggers, spawns? nice. AI being smarter? I'm not complaining. Small numbers and stronger NPCs? I'd love that.

Randomness in resists and damage types? that will just end up reducing the options. Right now I can prepare. If you randomize resists, I have to guess - I don't see any way to infer the damage type I'm receiving, if I'm missing something I'd love to hear about it - or experiment; but exeperimentation takes time, risk, and if it's useful for just one instance it simply isn't worth it over an omnitank. Moreover, if I have a mission 3 systems over and I don't know what they're fielding, I'll use an omnitank and the sturdiest ship I've got... instead of knowing that I can (example) blitz that mission with a nicely fit AF instead of bringing a BS that will have to clear it.
Randomize that, and people will simply push even more towards the currently dominant strategy of massive tank . And I bet you will, too, because the objective of missioning in eve is making money or standings. The challenge is part of the fun, but it's not the objective of it - if you just want challenge and fun you can do L3s in a dessy (or AF, for more chances) and be challenged all you want. Or go WH plexing. Or take on the epic arcs.

People fit a billion worth of BS or HAC because they want to REDUCE the chances and increase survivability. It's part of the fun in eve: fitting your ship at best for the job - which includes fitting two specific hardeners and a repper instead of omnitank and two reppers to make sure you can maximize your DPS. If they wanted a challenge, why the heck do they fit a billion worth of repper for that 80hp/cycle? Use a T2, you can buy it off the market in jita and mission to your heart content.

Part of the sense of accomplishment comes from the fact you used to take 4 hours for a worlds collide and, through careful fitting, skill selection, tactics, and ISK spending, you turn that into a 90 minutes job. Or less. But if it's random... then your preparation is, simply, meaningless.

I once had this crazy thought that id like to smuggle Minmatar slaves out of Amarr Empire for LP

Hey OP, this thread got all over the place.

Yes room for improvement has been around a long time.

They did just add isk to drone missions and that was a nice bonus.

I doubt will see much more until the game has it's next major revamp.

Nice chatting say hi to your 50 year old single mother for me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3e3KOCD_Pg

Those tight moments feels great when You survive. I think this is what many want from missions.

Instead of 100% predictability like
- fitting Reactive Armor Hardener and other explos and then having the smallest amount of local repper or Logied.
- or flying to 60km from the tower and sniping them all in 10-15 mins with no danger.

Slavery is forbidden in the State. Just thought I'd mention :)

I used to run missions regularly, but I haven't touched them in years in any sort of regular manner. That being said - I can still run missions in my sleep, even with several years having passed between now and the last time I did them semi-regularly. This is a problem - if I can go back to missions, not have to adjust anything, and just breeze through them, I have no incentive to try them unless I am truly desperate for isk (I'm not... before I go back to running missions I'll laze about in WH's, return to nullsec, try FW, or... go back to running incursions ::shudder::).

So what is wrong with missions as they are right now?

1. They are repetative. If I do damsel in distress, it is the exact same damsel in distress that I have done umpteen hundred times before already. Absolutely nothing changes about this mission, or pretty much any other mission either. This makes them excessively boring as well.

2. They are too easy. Yes, we do want them to be completable by both beginners and people who have been playing for years, but they are still too easy. Any mission I do, even if I don't remember it perfectly myself, I can go find a guide online. If I am going against serpentis, I toss on kin/therm hardeners and call it a day. If I'm going against guristas, the same.

3. There is no benefit to playing with friends. Actually, friends/alts are actually a detriment, because it spreads the isk around, and more time is wasted traveling than actually shooting rats.

4. It resembles PvP in no way, shape, or form. This means that a PvE ship has precisely nothing in common with a PvP ship, which makes a PvE ship nothing more than lunch for any PvP ships, and dissuades people from doing any PvE in anything resembling a risky situation.

5. There is too much travel time. Yes, it is better to spread the server load out a bit, but having to travel 2-4 systems away to run a mission just makes me not want to bother. Especially if I am trying to stack up multiple missions at the same time, and having to take a PvE fit around multiple systems away also dissuades people from doing missions in more dangerous space (aka, lowsec).

6. There is no randomness. If I do damsel in distress, I know I will get x amount of isk, y amount of LP, and thats it. It may vary by a few hundred thousand isk here or there, but not by any significant amount. Adding variation and the possibility to find either a tasty spawn, or some faction loot would vastly increase the excitement, even with the current poor implementation of the mission system as is.

Potential solutions in the next

Interesting thread. I agree: Missions are too boring and repetitive, should be revamped. But a lot can be done without having to remake everything from scratch, not all changes involve lots of coding, I should think.

First wish: More variety. More titles, but also a little less predictability. You should be able to prepare for the job, but you should not know everything. The exact composition and deployment of the opposition could be randomized just a little bit, an extra bonus room could appear sometimes, the odd ewar or webbing attack which forces you to improvise a bit. I wouldn't think adding a tiny bit of randomization in those areas would require much coding, even new titles could be made fairly easily by using some of the old ones as templates. There are plenty of good suggestions for wholly new types of missions in this thread, and those would require a lot of work, but that need not be the only way ahead.

Second wish: More sense. Rats are too stupid as they are. A fleet should work together, even rats would do that, and you should not loose aggro just by warping out and back .That is silly. I am one of those ridiculous soloplayer-carebears for whom the possible rewards rarely are worth the risk of low-sec or null, but even so fights should be at least a little bit challenging.

Third wish: Less travel distance. At most one gate to and from mission, and dump the 50 km slowboating between acceleration gates. There is absolutely nothing gained by keeping a waste of time.

And then this is sort of important to me:

Actually, there is a third reason for doing missions: Getting (grinding!) rep with a NPC corp in order to use a station for industry, or getting rep with a faction in order to be allowed into their high-sec territory. But maybe I am alone in doing missions for such reasons, at least it has not been mentioned much. Anyway, the ISK are not unimportant, and I like having something to shoot at that won't pod me at the end of the fight, even if I loose. But grinding rep is the important reason for me. Therefore:

Fourth wish: GET RID OF THE "STORYLINE AGENTS". Make any agent give out a storyline mission (but not, please, not the "materials for war prep" ever again) once every 16 or whatever normal missions of a certain kind and level. This really is part of the "more sense" wish - That would make much more sense in the context and spare you the silly "Sorry, I only work with people I trust" note you get when you request another mission from the SA even though you have standing 8.1 or something. Wait - why do you grind standing past 8, refining is free after 6.7??? Well you wouldn't, but the corp you ARE grinding for doesn't have a storyline agent, so you get shifted to someone you are not interested in!! Silly, stupid, nonsensical arrangement in every respect. Having your favourite, trusted agent reward you specially once in a while is far more logical. That, at least must be doable without a lot of coding.

More suggestions: Rep should count for a lot more, both in terms of station office fees and goodies and, as suggested earlier, in terms of increased hostilities from pirates etc. Negative rep could even pull missions where you yourself was the hunted one, getting a warning from the agent about a party of the faction in question being after your skin and waiting for you at your next jump or outside the station. That party should really pack a proper and intelligent punch. And why does your bloodline etc never, ever get used for anything at all in this game, even though you spend a lot of time reading about it and selecting it when you create your character (at least the first time)? Lots of stuff for more "epic arcs" there. Bloodline should matter. Also to the missions you get. But creating that is work-intensive.

And while we are at rep and the LP store: A rebalancing between the relative values of tags are overdue. It does not make sense that tags from midrank officers or grunts are far more valuable than top rank tags. One should look into which items are actually most sought after and the required tags should be chosen accordingly.

And this I like:

Good idea. It does not make sense that all those structures are completely worthless - they should be "minable" like wrecks and roids, when their inhabitants have been disposed of. But that really has nothing to do with the topic of missions per se.

Stray thoughts late in the night....

again we have more suggestions involving what missions should do for the player and what rewards we should get.
THIS IS NOT IMPORTANT!

edit: what I do like are your ideas on rat AI. Of course better rats would mean better missions. I also like the idea of having more interaction with the scenery in a given mission even though that could imply more payout per mission.

If it isnt fun, it doesnt matter what you get for doing it. Also the time it takes to slowboat around a mission and warp to other systems is important. It creates more choices for the player which is always good.

"do i sacrifice that extra tank mod to go a little faster? or do i play it safe and complete less missions per hour"

those are good questions to ask yourself.

Lets face it, with the exception of randomness most of the fixes listed by players might as well be just go fly Incuriosns;

More Pvp like
resulting in PvP in omnitank
group play instead of solo
better NPC AI
More powerful NPC's

And if done on a smaller scale (smaller fleet) its the same as go run a c3 or c4 WH, with the exception of the chance of PvP.

And again, people not realizing you will kill an entire profession (rigmaking) and cripple non mining industrialists.

Sounds a lot harder to revamp missions than most people think IMHO.