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Revising the mission system
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Jazz Styles
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#1 - 2011-11-29 23:43:17 UTC  |  Edited by: Jazz Styles
In this post I’m proposing a new way of thinking about how missions can work in the Eve universe. The CSM have outlined two popular ideas for redoing the mission system into something more dynamic, and introduce some more pvp-style elements. I want to take that one step further and outline how missions could be used as training for real pvp, eliminating the differential between pvp and pve ship setups that can be prohibitive to encouraging pve’ers into the exciting world of pvp that Eve offers. This would not force people to pvp of course, but 'normalizes' the combat styles so the gulf between pve and pvp is narrowed substantially.

Firstly, the mission levels. NPC ships would be redone to be comparable to player ships in terms of power, so far fewer ships would be needed, and the challenge would be almost like a simulation of pvp fights - it's still pve though, and having done both styles, I can safely say that the pvp style of combat (even against AI's) is far more interesting.

Level 1 missions:
• Suitable for rookie ships and tech 1 frigates, designed for newer players learning the ropes.
• Simple missions usually involving taking out a couple of smaller ships or hitting a small depot.

Level 2 missions:
• Suitable for well equipped frigates, assault ships, interceptors and destroyers.
• Expect to face multiple lesser enemies, and also provide tackling for NPC allies in order to prevent the enemy target from warping out, failing the mission.
• Intended for players to learn the basics of tackling in pvp combat. The benefits and drawbacks of afterburners vs. microwarpdrives should be apparent.

Level 3 missions:
• Cruiser level combat, with wider scope of targets.
• Missions vary more as the capabilities of your ship have increased. Includes taking out lone pirate cruisers, light escorts, and providing escort for NPC allied battlecruisers and battleships in story-based set piece battles.
• You may be escorted by frigates who will tackle targets (NPC allies).
• Electronic warfare will be used. This will teach players how to use ECCM, ECM, tracking disruptors and sensor dampeners.

Level 4 missions:
• Battlecruisers, tech 2 cruisers and the like are recommended. These are more advanced missions where the stakes are much higher.
• You will be tackled in these missions if not careful, so ship losses are more likely.
• Capacitor warfare will be present, so players can 'get their learn on' about cap management.

Level 5 missions:
• Battleships recommended for this level of mission.
• These are elite missions, where you face powerful enemies.
• You WILL be tackled in missions of this level, as well as having to deal with electronic & capacitor warfare, using everything you’ve learned up until this point.

Complexes:
• Again, far fewer enemies would be present, but of greater power and intelligence; otherwise they’d remain similar to how they are now.

The primary target of a mission will usually need to be warp disrupted in order to prevent it escaping (in level 2 and higher missions)

Improved AI should be used here as well, since fewer, better equipped enemies will need to fly smarter. If you’re familiar with the mission ‘Worlds Collide’, you might have noticed that some of them are smarter than usual, switching targets every couple of minutes. This isn’t full sleeper-level AI, but it’s an improvement, and I think it would be appropriate for these missions.

The general skill level of enemy NPC’s in missions could vary according to the mission level: Level 1 missions = level 1 skills, level 5 = level 5 etc. Just a thought.
Jazz Styles
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#2 - 2011-11-29 23:44:35 UTC  |  Edited by: Jazz Styles
Missions of all levels can be available in Highsec & Lowsec. The difference between them should be rewards; Lowsec missions should bring in much higher rewards than Highsec (x3 at least), but with players equipping their ships in a more PvP oriented way, they will be more prepared to deal with being probed out in lowsec and attacked by pirates, and this should lead to more interest in lowsec missioning.

Mission goals can be made more dynamic with the same mission; having different varieties of primary target to kill will keep players on their toes; in PvP, you rarely know what you’re going to be facing.

Additional NPC targets could be spawned in as extra players enter the mission, so that it is always a little more challenging when there are more players involved.

Ship losses are more of a possibility with this system at higher levels, which should not be frowned upon as this is something players need to learn as well; losing your ship isn’t the end of the world.

Loot drops are greatly reduced from the current system due to the reduced number of rats. No meta 0 items drop at all, to allow manufacturers to actually make some money from building them. NPC bounties, mission isk and LP rewards should balance this out, but reducing random drops from missions will make mining and other industrial activities more profitable and attractive. Salvage drops should be increased to compensate for fewer rats (or salvage prices will skyrocket!)

In addition to all of this, I would like to see another combat agent type brought in that offers quicker missions for casual players, which is something I’ve talked about before on this forum (Split security agents into FleetOps and StrikeOps perhaps). They can still have the same general themes I’ve raised in this post, but should offer quick strikes on targets, and deal with fewer enemies so missions can be accepted and then handed in within 15 minutes. The entry gate should be locked after three players go through to limit exploitation of the smaller missions; these are for individuals or small groups – if players want to do bigger missions with a lot of friends, they can do the fleet agent missions.
The Eve player base is getting older, and some people have families now, yet they’d still like to see internet spaceships blowing up. This is a segment of the market that should be catered for, so that CCP can bring in more money Blink

Players should be able to accept and hand-in missions remotely from space, unless a mission item is required to be brought back.

For creating all the new enemies, perhaps the devs could develop a version of the current ship fitting UI that lets them save fittings as NPC’s, in order to customize the in-house loadout on NPC ship types for these missions (just a time-saving measure I thought of). So the loot that is dropped is stuff that they were using on their ships, basically.

Rewriting the mission system is a huge task no matter which way it goes. Missions affect all aspects of the market, and adjusting them is going to require some careful work, but I hope some or all of these points can be used as a springboard for future development of this aspect of the Eve Universe.
Nestara Aldent
Citimatics
#3 - 2011-11-30 05:09:48 UTC  |  Edited by: Nestara Aldent
Can you tell me what's the point of all of this if you're an indy pilot and just want to mine and produce and not fight?

Current system is fine. Those who wish to pvp will pvp, those who don't will just stay away. How you'd feel if somebody forced you to mine and not pvp for example by adding mandatory mining missions for anyone with low security status to get the status up... Fine? Oh, wait...

That's the catch.

Missions should be redone in a way that npcs get better (sleeper) AI, not by trying to "teach" anybody to pvp. Also "teaching" somebody to pvp might well be impossible, because he either don't want to, or has only average reflexes and hand eye coordination, so no matter how much he practices, he'll just be bad at it.

I saw it in FPS games. Bad players never learn the game.
Jazz Styles
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#4 - 2011-11-30 05:15:46 UTC  |  Edited by: Jazz Styles
Nestara Aldent wrote:
Can you tell me what's the point of all of this if you're an indy pilot and just want to mine and produce and not fight?

Current system is fine. Those who wish to pvp will pvp, those who don't will just stay away. How you'd feel if somebody forced you to mine and not pvp for example by adding mandatory mining missions for anyone with low security status to get the status up... Fine? Oh, wait...

That's the catch.

There's nothing stopping you from running missions with this system as you do now, just that there will be fewer, smarter enemies and your ship fitting and tactics will be different. Instead of perma-tanking 18 angel battleships and thinking you're awesome, you might be dueling two battleships and having a hard time of it.

Nothing about this forces actual player vs player. This whole idea is to narrow the gap between pvp and pve fits, as well as the tactical thinking behind the two different ways of fighting. This way, missions will feel more like pvp fights, even though they're not, and you can still grind them like mad but now you might have to think a little, and not be afk in your domi P

Just to clarify: don't confuse 'teaching' with 'preaching' : although you will make use of scrams, webs etc, the missions won't be telling you to use them like they're reading from a lesson plan. It's just something you'll need to figure out to do them properly.

The current system is broken and boring - CCP know this, and there is an overhaul on the way, so get ready for change one way or another. And hey, at least I'm not suggesting level 4's go into lowsec only P
Nestara Aldent
Citimatics
#5 - 2011-11-30 05:21:43 UTC
Well wait then... Trying to "teach" someone to pvp and adding some elements to missions like cc use, and boosting AI of npcs are two different things.

Narrowing the gap between pvp and pve fits is very good. Actually pve should be challenging enough so you must think about risking a billion worth in ship and modules in pve...

And I still think, not Concord, but pirates, and Empire factions that hate you... they _must_ pod you when they blow up your ship.
Jazz Styles
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#6 - 2011-11-30 05:27:45 UTC
Nestara Aldent wrote:
Well wait then... Trying to "teach" someone to pvp and adding some elements to missions like cc use, and boosting AI of npcs are two different things.

Narrowing the gap between pvp and pve fits is very good. Actually pve should be challenging enough so you must think about risking a billion worth in ship and modules in pve...

And I still think, not Concord, but pirates, and Empire factions that hate you... they _must_ pod you when they blow up your ship.


Perhaps I'll revise my use of the word 'teach' in the OP...
Anyway, you see my point about the challenge! I think podding in the higher level missions is fine, provided the enemy can catch you Blink
Honestu Pravus
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#7 - 2011-11-30 05:46:37 UTC
I agree... 0.0 missions deserve more because of inherent risk.

I disagree because I too have no wish to PVP but I think that there should be equally protected high risk missions in high sec as well.

For that matter, you could have missions that require you to jump through a worm hole to retrieve something, and give the mission time frame like a week because you may just come out 300 jumps away...
Jazz Styles
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#8 - 2011-11-30 05:51:50 UTC  |  Edited by: Jazz Styles
Honestu Pravus wrote:
I agree... 0.0 missions deserve more because of inherent risk.

I disagree because I too have no wish to PVP but I think that there should be equally protected high risk missions in high sec as well.

For that matter, you could have missions that require you to jump through a worm hole to retrieve something, and give the mission time frame like a week because you may just come out 300 jumps away...

To reiterate: this isn't about forcing people to pvp. This is about making missions work in the same style, so the gulf between the two styles isn't so great. You'll never have to pvp if you don't want to, but for those newer players who do, they'll have a grasp of the basic concepts from their time doing missions. If you read my post properly you'd see that I specifically mention that all mission levels are available in high and lowsec, just that the lowsec ones are worth a lot more.

And if people want to do those lucrative lowsec missions, their ships will be pvp fit for the most part anyway, so any players that want to attack will be facing a properly equipped foe instead of an isk pinata. Cool
Rina Asanari
CitadeI
#9 - 2011-11-30 07:45:37 UTC
I may agree that missioning needs a bit more variety. Currently it's the style "shoot the smallest, tackle frig first, eradicate those who aggroed you, switch to the next smallest target still remaining, repeat until nothing red remains, then use acceleration gate". Simple enough for a bot. Sure, neuts and EWAR make for some variety.

Now comes the catch:

Why limiting the ship types? If someone heads into a frig engagement with a large-gunned BS, he has a problem he made himself and some lesson to learn as well. It's the often-cited "sandbox", and if it means if someone wants to build a small sandcastle with a backhoe (and not a toy one), let him try.

Next, one has to keep several fittings and a broader range of skills for missioning than for PvP. With PvP you can specialize into one EWAR/tackling/whatever and leave the other ones at basic levels, if at all, for now. With missions requiring any role (be it as tackler, as jammer, whatever) you would need to skill ALL of them or you need to have a choice which role you want to fill.

Lastly, fleet command in PvP is done via TeamSpeak. "point on X" or "x first target, y second" is said and done very quickly, something you simply cannon convey with the current UI. So missions cannot simply mimic PvP engagements, since someone doesn't have the means to counter them effectively.
Jazz Styles
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#10 - 2011-11-30 09:16:32 UTC
Rina Asanari wrote:
I may agree that missioning needs a bit more variety. Currently it's the style "shoot the smallest, tackle frig first, eradicate those who aggroed you, switch to the next smallest target still remaining, repeat until nothing red remains, then use acceleration gate". Simple enough for a bot. Sure, neuts and EWAR make for some variety.

Now comes the catch:

Why limiting the ship types? If someone heads into a frig engagement with a large-gunned BS, he has a problem he made himself and some lesson to learn as well. It's the often-cited "sandbox", and if it means if someone wants to build a small sandcastle with a backhoe (and not a toy one), let him try.

Next, one has to keep several fittings and a broader range of skills for missioning than for PvP. With PvP you can specialize into one EWAR/tackling/whatever and leave the other ones at basic levels, if at all, for now. With missions requiring any role (be it as tackler, as jammer, whatever) you would need to skill ALL of them or you need to have a choice which role you want to fill.

Lastly, fleet command in PvP is done via TeamSpeak. "point on X" or "x first target, y second" is said and done very quickly, something you simply cannon convey with the current UI. So missions cannot simply mimic PvP engagements, since someone doesn't have the means to counter them effectively.

It's a fair point about the ship size restrictions; there are missions that currently have them, and I was keeping within that theme, but sure, they can be removed.

Missioning doesn't require broad skills at all, just uber tank and some dps. PvP does require more skills, as such, but you would NOT need to have them above basic levels for the mission system I propose. Giving the player a choice isn't a bad idea, but a general pvp fit of web, scram, dps and buffer fit or tank is all that's really needed for just about any mission. This wasn't meant to be a tutorial system where it runs you through how to use each type of ship, but rather, to have you deal with the various scenarios where you are facing an enemy getting remote reps, or light ecm support etc.

The fleet command stuff wasn't meant to imitate a proper FC, but to demonstrate the basics of how its done. I'm fine with dropping the idea and leaving proper experience of this concept to pvp fleets and months of training. There's nothing wrong with adding voice commands from NPC commanders and the like to give the player orders tho Cool
Nestara Aldent
Citimatics
#11 - 2011-11-30 11:01:36 UTC
Now adding NPC commanders with voice commands is a bad idea.

Don't forget the Russians and the Japanese. And by the way anybody else who doesn't know English very well and plays in a corp with his countrymen because of that.
Jazz Styles
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#12 - 2011-11-30 11:33:17 UTC
Nestara Aldent wrote:
Now adding NPC commanders with voice commands is a bad idea.

Don't forget the Russians and the Japanese. And by the way anybody else who doesn't know English very well and plays in a corp with his countrymen because of that.

Ugh, you're right, let's scrap the whole idea.