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Dev blog: Size Matters: Introducing Burner Missions

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JP Nakamura
Union of Intergalactic Miners and Nano Assemblers
#101 - 2014-08-14 18:15:09 UTC
Milton Middleson wrote:
Quote:
Burner Missions pit you against a single enemy NPC. This NPC is an extremely powerful frigate with stats based on those of a player flying a pirate frigate with officer/deadspace gear, pirate implants, and [b]command links[/b[


Will the NPC have a CS or T3 somewhere on-grid that I can kill?


If we can boost off-grid, what makes you think the NPCs can't also?

CCP: 10+ years of Harvesting players Tears  (latest efforts being Source Limited Edition, and Alliance Logo Revised Policies)

Vincent Athena
Photosynth
#102 - 2014-08-14 18:15:23 UTC  |  Edited by: Vincent Athena
CCP Fozzie wrote:
Neuting these NPCs won't have any effect, unfortunately.

Although these NPCs will be using some improved tactics compared to other NPCs they still rely on the same back-end. However simultaneous work is being performed on improving our NPC and content creation tools, and these missions will serve as excellent testing grounds for future NPC advancements.

I definitely understand the desire of many people to be able to run these missions at will, but unfortunately these missions will simply be too good to make them available all the time. I really like the idea of doing something with long cooldowns like the epic arcs in a future iteration, thanks for that feedback.

Another option would be to make them available in a manner similar to storylines. Whenever you finish a L4 mission, you will, at random, get a referral to another agent. That other agent gives you the burner mission. Now you have time to get your friends together, and take the mission. If they are not on-line, you can continue doing normal L4 missions with your current agent until you can get your fleet together.

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Ancalanna Hareka
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#103 - 2014-08-14 18:25:18 UTC
Oh, lovely. So I'll have to grind a bunch of boring missions to get access to an interesting frigate mission? Well, my anticipation of this interesting new content just went down the drain. :(

Why can't you just make them give roughly the same ISK/hour rewards as regular L4 missions and make them directly requestable from standard L4 agents? Then the battleship L4 grinders can take their battleship missions and I can play around with my Tristan or Wolf vs a single or couple advanced rats?
Chas Deferens
Intrepid Strides
#104 - 2014-08-14 18:28:21 UTC
Dave Stark wrote:
Dev Blog wrote:
The fact that these missions can only be received as part of the random level 4 security mission pool should prevent them from being too farmable.

and you've just made them, useless, and ****** content.

if i'm doing level 4 missions, it ain't in a goddamn frigate. it's in a ship that can't do them, it'll get instantly declined and disregarded.


Pfft I know, right? Who owns more than one spaceship? Geez CCP stop failing.
Matthias Azaharel
Local Spatial Phenomena
#105 - 2014-08-14 18:40:50 UTC
I really like this new direction for PvE content. Two things concern me:

1. As everyone and their grandmother's cat has already said, I would prefer this to be a separate agent system as opposed to having to grind the grindy level 4 content to get to the interesting stuff.

2. Only 5 missions to potentially pull (will this be limited further depending on the race of the agent, as normal missions are?) feels a bit limited and feels like the newness and mystery of these missions will wear off really quickly, especially if each enemy uses only a specific build. Once you have a fit that counters that, it seems like you never need to change your build again. Given it's only frigates, it would be reasonable to have a handful of frigates each fit for each specific encounter.

On the other hand, I understand this is supposed to be a sort of proof of concept and more content along this line can be added later. But that's also the line we got about incursions so... I guess time will tell.
JP Nakamura
Union of Intergalactic Miners and Nano Assemblers
#106 - 2014-08-14 18:48:39 UTC
Altrue wrote:
Only five different opponents? I like the concept, but the whole fact of having these missions inside the regular level 4 pool makes it soooo uninteresting.

I don't want to grind stupid missions just to have a fun one from time to time.

Creating new content and integrating it to 11-years-old, broken and boring content, is very, VERY dissapointing. We would be better off without burner missions an with a brand new PvE system that actually rewards teamplay.


I think this is the Mission Equivalent of the Ship Painting Test.

CCP are actively working on revamping mission running, and these look like a test they put together to:

  • improve mission variety ... a little
  • test new ideas that will become more important as the mission authoring tools come on-line
  • see what changes need to be made as they are in the middle of iterating on the mission authoring tools (and related backend code)


The only difference is that since this is the direction CCP wants to head with missions, they aren't going to refer to it as a "test", and give the community an idea that it has a choice.

In reality though it really feels more like a taste of things to come.

CCP: 10+ years of Harvesting players Tears  (latest efforts being Source Limited Edition, and Alliance Logo Revised Policies)

Nam Dnilb
Universal Frog
#107 - 2014-08-14 18:48:47 UTC
Matthias Azaharel wrote:
I really like this new direction for PvE content. Two things concern me:

1. As everyone and their grandmother's cat has already said, I would prefer this to be a separate agent system as opposed to having to grind the grindy level 4 content to get to the interesting stuff.


I am pretty sure the main goal of this new mission line is to reach out to people who have locked themselves into leveling their raven. You won't reach these people if you don't put it right under their nose, breaking up the grind.
Dracoth Simertet
Red Federation
RvB - RED Federation
#108 - 2014-08-14 18:49:03 UTC
Was really looking forward to this and the new missions do seem really cool, but having to run level 4 missions to get to this new content totally puts me off.

Lower the rewards as needed but add the option to request these missions.

o7
Drac
Obsidian Hawk
RONA Midgard Academy
#109 - 2014-08-14 18:50:07 UTC
If you did a seperate agent for those, then you have to limit on how many times you can do them per day, say 1 mission per empire per day or something like that.

Next - add some secrecy to the ship fits FFS give them some surprise ewar or something exciting, maybe change gun lay outs so its not the same burn over and over again.

EX - make the serpentis one have drones
guristas - make him have a variety of things like i dont know, a guristas bomber where he shoots torps at you etc

This is a good direction but you HAVE to keep the player guessing on how they are fitted and what they will do.

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Also please support graphical immersion, bring back the art that brought people to EvE online originaly.

Winter Archipelago
Autumn Industrial Enterprises
#110 - 2014-08-14 18:51:16 UTC
Since these are supposed to be high-level pirates in these frigs, can they try to pod the player, as well?
Dark Drifter
Sons of Seyllin
Pirate Lords of War
#111 - 2014-08-14 18:56:50 UTC
in responce to the question at the bottom of the DEV BLOG:

more of these missions

true exploration missions: tell me to go find xxx in xxx kill/loot/investigate

WH missions: send me in to them

multiple mission selection

multiple path (objective) missions

add random faction spawns to missions (V low % chance of spawn)

Obil Que
Star Explorers
Solis Tenebris
#112 - 2014-08-14 19:00:17 UTC
Now if only you would combine these new frigate sized wormholes with these frigate sized bosses somehow...
Mike Azariah
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#113 - 2014-08-14 19:09:58 UTC
Five missions means that if it was a specific agent that only gave these missions it would have a much higher rate of burnout.

If you want to run these but cannot be bothered to grind L4's to get it then make friends with someone who would otherwise toss the mission to the side because they cannot afford two ships. (looking at you, DS) They lead you to the site and then you run it. Dagan was made to give people a reason to get help. This is, possibly, another similar case.

PvE content, as so many of you complain, has been ignored for too long. So they do something, something new. Be happy. Try it and then campaign for more of the same if you like it.

(If only hisec and PvE had some guy who represented them) Me

m

Mike Azariah  ┬──┬ ¯|(ツ)

Dave Stark
#114 - 2014-08-14 19:10:46 UTC
Chas Deferens wrote:
Dave Stark wrote:
Dev Blog wrote:
The fact that these missions can only be received as part of the random level 4 security mission pool should prevent them from being too farmable.

and you've just made them, useless, and ****** content.

if i'm doing level 4 missions, it ain't in a goddamn frigate. it's in a ship that can't do them, it'll get instantly declined and disregarded.


Pfft I know, right? Who owns more than one spaceship? Geez CCP stop failing.


moving ships isn't the issue.
if i'm doing level 4 missions, i ain't doing it in a frigate and they're just going to be skipped.

i'd have loved to do these missions, but i have to go out of my way to access them. or, i'm going to ignore them because they're getting in my way when i'm doing level 4s.
Corraidhin Farsaidh
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#115 - 2014-08-14 19:17:58 UTC
Mike Azariah wrote:
Five missions means that if it was a specific agent that only gave these missions it would have a much higher rate of burnout.

If you want to run these but cannot be bothered to grind L4's to get it then make friends with someone who would otherwise toss the mission to the side because they cannot afford two ships. (looking at you, DS) They lead you to the site and then you run it. Dagan was made to give people a reason to get help. This is, possibly, another similar case.

PvE content, as so many of you complain, has been ignored for too long. So they do something, something new. Be happy. Try it and then campaign for more of the same if you like it.

(If only hisec and PvE had some guy who represented them) Me

m


I'm all for this change, it's something I've argued for in the many PvE threads and this is just the start. It also sounds very much like the backend that generates the missions is getting a revamp to which can only be a good thing.

For those missioners who don't want to run these as they don't like frigs...just skip them or hand them to someone else. Those who don't want to run the missions other than these? Just skip those missions and come back 4 hours later. Look on these missions as optional frantic interludes for those who generally PvE and want something different.

These could also be handy for taking newer pilots into for PvP style encounters. Just replace their frig if they lose it and they will thank you for it. This might also help player retention.
Gilbaron
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#116 - 2014-08-14 19:19:00 UTC
the idea is interesting

putting them into the normal lvl 4 pool is stupid, i'm really interested in trying them, but i'm not gonna start farming lvl 4s just to get one.

the amount of intel you provide seems to be too high.
Dave Stark
#117 - 2014-08-14 19:19:36 UTC  |  Edited by: Dave Stark
Mike Azariah wrote:
Five missions means that if it was a specific agent that only gave these missions it would have a much higher rate of burnout.

If you want to run these but cannot be bothered to grind L4's to get it then make friends with someone who would otherwise toss the mission to the side because they cannot afford two ships. (looking at you, DS) They lead you to the site and then you run it. Dagan was made to give people a reason to get help. This is, possibly, another similar case.

PvE content, as so many of you complain, has been ignored for too long. So they do something, something new. Be happy. Try it and then campaign for more of the same if you like it.

(If only hisec and PvE had some guy who represented them) Me

m


it's not about "not being bothered" or "not affording" anything.

the demographic for l4 missions is a battleship. the demographic for these is a frigate.
the two are chalk and cheese. that's why it's a dumb implementation of the idea.
Hakaari Inkuran
State War Academy
Caldari State
#118 - 2014-08-14 19:22:14 UTC
Ancalanna Hareka wrote:
Oh, lovely. So I'll have to grind a bunch of boring missions to get access to an interesting frigate mission? Well, my anticipation of this interesting new content just went down the drain. :(

Why can't you just make them give roughly the same ISK/hour rewards as regular L4 missions and make them directly requestable from standard L4 agents? Then the battleship L4 grinders can take their battleship missions and I can play around with my Tristan or Wolf vs a single or couple advanced rats?

Go on SiSi and grind the burners until you've had your fill.
Obil Que
Star Explorers
Solis Tenebris
#119 - 2014-08-14 19:26:46 UTC
Dave Stark wrote:
Mike Azariah wrote:
Five missions means that if it was a specific agent that only gave these missions it would have a much higher rate of burnout.

If you want to run these but cannot be bothered to grind L4's to get it then make friends with someone who would otherwise toss the mission to the side because they cannot afford two ships. (looking at you, DS) They lead you to the site and then you run it. Dagan was made to give people a reason to get help. This is, possibly, another similar case.

PvE content, as so many of you complain, has been ignored for too long. So they do something, something new. Be happy. Try it and then campaign for more of the same if you like it.

(If only hisec and PvE had some guy who represented them) Me

m


it's not about "not being bothered" or "not affording" anything.

the demographic for l4 missions is a battleship. the demographic for these is a frigate.
the two are chalk and cheese. that's why it's a dumb implementation of the idea.


The hipsters are invading your neighborhood. Watch out!
Mike Azariah
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#120 - 2014-08-14 19:27:56 UTC
Dave Stark wrote:

it's not about "not being bothered" or "not affording" anything.

the demographic for l4 missions is a battleship. the demographic for these is a frigate.
the two are chalk and cheese. that's why it's a dumb implementation of the idea.


I don't know if you run missions, Dave, but when I do I slowly build a stable of ships in that hub so I can run the specifics (Like a cruiser well tanked for the Recon 3/3 L4 mission) and I also keep a fast ship to commute to other things/places. Adding a good frigate or two to that stable will be just fine with me. Is it an extra expense? Yes, but one I am willing to pay for some variety

m

Mike Azariah  ┬──┬ ¯|(ツ)