Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Missions currently serve a few main purposes.

1) They are a training ground - very new players learn the game's combat interface in missions, both the initial training arcs and also level 1-2 security missions.

2) They are a source of player faction and corporation standings, and security status

3) They are an ISK faucet

4) They are a (quickly exhausted) source of entertainment when you have a short playtime in game.

5) They are an activity that can be grinded repeatedly, by attentive human players, by semi-AFK players and by bots.

6) They offer some incentives to travel to more dangerous space, though lowsec-only level 5s and pirate faction missions in null.


Of these, I feel 1 and 4 are good for the game, 2 is a necessary evil only because of the importance of NPC standings and inability to get them in other ways, 6 is a good idea that isn't working in practice, and 3 and 5 are actively bad for the game, especially together. I have a few proposals that would adjust this balance.

These changes are one package. I do not suggest for a second that these be split apart, and some of these if taken on their own would actively hurt the game, not help it.



1) Sharply increase mission LP payouts and standings rewards. I'm thinking 250-300% increases here, and the reason will be clear when you look at suggestion 2.

2) Introduce an 8 hour cooldown timer on taking a mission from a given agent. So if you do one mission with the Apanake level 4 SoE agent, once you complete your mission, it's 8 hours until you can take another one from that agent. In more dangerous space, this cooldown would still apply, but only after two missions.

3) Add a small number of level 5 mission agents to high security space, but not necessarily for every corporation that has L5 agents. Only add those L5 missions that are gated behind acceleration gates to these agents.

4) Make the deadspace areas of level 5 highsec missions be CONCORD-free areas (warping into one would flag you as a suspect for as long as you remain in the area and ten seconds after you warp out). There would be a (dismissable) warning upon accepting the mission, and the acceleration gate itself would be red to indicate danger. This serves two purposes. One is to balance risk and reward, stopping people from just solo grinding L5s in officer-fit pirate battleships in relative safety. The second is to provide more opportunities for conflict in highsec, including for people that fear travelling through gates into lowsec.

5) Create a few new mission hubs in lowsec that have multiple L3, L4 and L5 agents in one system as locations in lowsec worth fighting over for medium-sized entities, and add system-wide cyno jammers to those systems. A 60 player corp might decide to try to firmly lock down one of these hubs and the systems nearby that its missions send you to, and bring out fairly expensive boats to speed clear those missions. That creates content, and might draw the attention of bigger fish.



The idea of these changes, when taken as a package, is to change the nature of missioning to be less about grinding in one system, and more about variety - but also more about player interaction.

Players that loot in their missions would now have loot in several places, providing the opportunity to contract someone else to haul it for them, or to sell it where it is, or to take the risk of moving it themself. Players that mission in super-blinged boats would travel through more stargates than now, but also less predictable stargates, which would dramatically change the mechanics of ganking these people.

The option to 'dabble' in PvE content in areas that are safer than lowsec but more dangerous than highsec is something I wanted back when I was a new-ish player that was terrified of gates into lowsec. Like many newbs I believed they were all permanently gatecamped, a fear I didn't shake until after giving up my old carebear ways.

The chance of PVP in a level 5 highsec mission would be low, but non-zero, and so players could practice the sorts of dilligence that will serve them well if they later end up running PVE content in low, null or WH space.

The increased standings ensure that people that grind missions as a short term necessity for things like broker fees or jump clones aren't forced to spend longer on a task that feels like a chore to them, and the increased LP rewards make up for the reduced ISK income from bounties. LP stores are a net ISK sink in the economy too, and so these changes would reduce gamewide inflation somewhat.

mission bots are evil, but i hear much less of them these days. if other ppl want to run lots of missions, then let them.