Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I'll present a totally different theory. A step away from the current 'agents' and into a more living world.
As the current agents system is a throw back to Avatar MMO's really, while we play a space ship MMO. And Docking/Undocking also involves a significant server load (Refer Brain in a box project for Dev discussion on that).

Imagine instead you enter a system and you pull up a 'beacon' list.
This beacon list replaces mission agents. Seeded through the system are a number of 'beacons' marked by the various corporations in the area that you have sufficient standing with to access whom hold stations in the system, or who hold sov in the system. As well as Concord for high sec. And possible pirate beacons anyone can access in low/null.
Immediately this means that you no longer have a massive concentration of lvl 4's in certain places, instead even mission runners will have to move around a little bit. It also means lvl 4's are not infinite & instanced, but exist in the same world, creating competition
These beacons will then have a variety of codes attached to them. I.E. 'Industrial, Science, Military, Transport'.
It is entirely possible that the Beacon may actually be a station destination. Example Military at station. 'X executive wants a fast capsuleer ship to nearby corporation owned station, as death threats have been made against them by 'insert opposing group here'' This opposing group may then make an attack along the travel route with a gate camp, station camp, or may never appear.
This mission then has several endings. Complete Failure, ship destroyed. Ransom, Capsuleer ends up paying opposing group isk after being tackled at a camp somewhere but gets to destination, failed delivery of exec(gets off somewhere along the way when you dock or takes an escape pod in a suitable system if you don't dock for too long), delivery of exec, & delivery of exec along with killing of all attackers. Each of these endings has different cost/rewards. But best of all because it happens in a space all EVE players pass through, i.e. gates, it can easily be influenced by other players.
To example other players influence, a lone gank destroyer hanging out may suddenly realise that the mission ship is low enough tank if he jumps in he can gank it and his buddy hanging around can scoop any valuable loot, while without the NPC's attacking it would have had too much tank. Of course a passing Logi could also see the mission ships tank wasn't doing well and start to repair it at the same time. Resulting in much more unpredictable situations, rather than the controlled enviroment most missions & most ganks occur in.

This would then hopefully create a more immersive experience where players are not continually going through the loading screen simply to pick up & drop off jobs, but when they need repairs, more ammo or to drop off loot & salvage. As well as interaction & competition for the sites.

Ideally this should come alongside a revamp to anomolies where they stop being so obviously labeled and a lot of simple 'curiosity' anomolies are also introduced, such as exploding gas clouds that do damage over time, strange radiation belts that may give the brief area of K space WH like anomolies & other such enviromental effects filling the 'anomoly' area, that then may or may not also have Rats in them. Imagining a random rat structure with active repping rats on both ships & towers in the middle of an exploding gas pocket so most ships active tanks end up simply tanking the exploding gas & not the incoming DPS, & other examples. As these two effects would make an individual solar system actually feel busy, rather than the current empty systems we have.

Trouble with the beacon list nevyn is that it may be too competitive. Incursions are kinda like that, and ppl can find it difficult to get in on incursions because they get rejected by other players. In a similar fashion u could get griefed by other players that dnt want u around. Which sounds great, and within the spirit of eve no doubt, but have u seen the amount of ppl that mission? Some players may be forced to travel much further than usual to find a decent site to make a buck. Again it sounds cool, but i think after a while ppl will find it detrimental to the game rather than adding a feel or atmosphere. Which brings me to my second point;

a lot of mission runners like their 'home base'. they run missions within one or two jumps and bring all their loot and salvage back to one place where they keep all their equipment and ships. they sort the good stuff from the bad, are able to refine with good standings, and then load it all into a ship and off to the market they go. This would be agonizing with a more nomadic system. having to move ur mission ship out to much further distances, and then go back and get ur salvage ship, and then take ur salvage to where ur hauler is and then find a decent station to refine in, which may be more difficult because u've been running any decent mission u can find rather than sticking to one corporation, because sticking to one corporation would limit ur choice and mean u have to go even further afield to find missions. And so comes a third difficulty;

Currently most ppl run missions for one corporation at a time, it means LP's aren't divided and standings grow faster to unlock higher missions. it also allows u to refine better, get jump clones etc etc. now in a beacon system, all the missions in a system will be made up for all the different corps that make missions, and ppl will be not only competing for missions, but specific corps' missions. So if u want to stick with one corp that will allow ur standings to grow faster and not have to divide LP's, then u will be very limited compared to to what u are now. some might say even too limited.

A great way to avoid the dock/undock is to allow missions to be accepted and completed remotely. Pools of multiple missions per agent that slowly regenerate as missions are completed would be great for those moments u get a long succession of poor missions, though regenerate slowly enough that u dnt just get an easy pick and chose. The more u run, the more u will end up having no choice of one mission at a time.

Missions where capsuleers complete again sounds cool, but who would run them? right now running a mission in low sec is like running missions against the clock or under the threat of capsuleer attack, and look at how many ppl run them...

What i would like to see though, is difficult missions with improved AI that require multiple players to complete. Similar in style to incursions, with payment distributed between fleet members like incursions, though with level 4 sized payouts. Fewer-tougher rats, loot and salvage on par with level 4's, and the missions generated by agents like typical missions.

it would be something that groups of players could run and work together without having to split LP's and bounties, and the freedom of flying them how u want.