Missions & Complexes

Burner missions and incursions encourage some kind of cooperation. There's no reason you'd have to have "regular" level 4 missions in nullsec.



Missions are one form of grass-roots income that can encourage people to move around, especially if mission agents would be rented for some period of time, similar to teams in their current iteration. So the station owner would bid for an agent, then that agent would be present for a while (a month?).



I'm in the same boat: for me the deteriorating standings only modify my market work. I do enough missions from time to time that I'm in no danger of losing access to my agents, regardless of whether CCP keeps standings as a barrier to entry (or "gate"). I don't mind gated content: after all, the point of standings is to model or emulate the "trust" built up by long & faithful service. If CCP decides that the empires will trust anyone with sensitive information (transaction data delivery is the outstanding case) then that's fine too. Completely nonsensical, but fine. It's their game, if they choose to dump turds in the sandbox that's their prerogative.

Previous gated content that I have enjoyed was in World of Warcraft, where to get access to raid content you had to complete a series of tasks at a higher level of difficulty than most non-raid PVE. So you had to complete a quest to attune to Molten Core, build the key to get to Onyxia's lair, acquire a key for Scholomance, build a key for Karazhan, and so forth. Once the barriers to entry were removed, Blizzard started simplifying the encounters and adding in features such as pick-up-groups getting a 10% buff every time they wipe.

So when I see people complaining about being unable to access gated content, I know what's coming down the pipeline: a rolling series of dumbing-down exercises so that your average F1-jockey can handle PVE missions. "Reading up strategies on EVE-Survival is too hard!" Okay, we'll reduce the number of groups of NPCs. "I get confused between the container of drugs and the container with the damsel" We'll add markers so you know exactly what you need to shoot and which containers to loot. "Why do you keep blowing up my drones?" Okay, we'll take away explosions from structures. "Zor is OP!" Okay, we'll give Zor shorter range weapons and take away his EWAR immunity.

How long until that dumbing down starts applying to PVP? "Oh, there there, don't worry about the fact that you got steamrolled, have a 10% buff to all stats until you can manage to get a kill of your own!" The PVPers wouldn't like that would they? Yet it's the PVPers driving this "gated content" issue.

From my POV, the solution to Faction Warfare tanking capsuleer standings is to stop Faction Warfare tanking capsuleer standings, not to remove standings altogether.

If missions were changed from good-better-best-progression to a matrix of ship size vs difficulty level, the standings "gating" would become near invisible since you'd start with the "easy" missions to make sure you're on the right track, then progress through the ranks at a sensible pace. Or you can just find a friend to take you on a dozen missions to introduce you to that particular agent.

The standings gate encourages player interaction. Removing the standings gate will remove what little player interaction currently exists.

Another thing is that standings provide a gameplay of their own: people engage in missions to raise their standings. They raise standings for the sake of seeing better numbers, and they suffer penalties if their standings fall too low with one faction due to spending too much time with another faction. The juggling act is part of the interest of the standings modification game. Take the standings away, and that game is lost.

In removing the standings "gate", CCP will need to ensure that some other form of gameplay becomes available for those people to whom running missions was the means to an end other than simply making ISK.

Removing the gate to certain PVE content simply because some PVP pilots are having a hard time is not a solution to any problem. Taking away the reason the PVP pilots are having a hard time is the solution to the problem of PVP pilots having a hard time. Don't remove standings, simply remove the tanking standings from FW activity.

Some options include splitting the militia out from under the umbrella of the faction, making all the NPCs part of the militia rather than the faction, adding "shadow" or "proxy" standings which only apply while the pilot is in a militia, and possibly considering a blanket pardon through a "repentance agent" who will reset faction standings to 0 upon successful completion of a series of demeaning tasks (e.g.: distribution and mining missions).

Well, one of the things I like about EVE is the harsh penalty for failure, and the fact that we're bowling without bumpers. When those gutter bumpers come up, you're not really playing ten pin bowls anymore: you're playing "roll the ball down the aisle and see what pins you knock over".



The agent could explicitly link to pages in Evelopedia ("There's a gallant resource for finding other capsuleers to team up with, if you want help just follow the link"). That's one big start, though CCP is talking about removing the in-game browser :\

Sometimes you just have to point out to people that there are resources available.



I'm sure that there are a few people out there who will take pleasure in ganking a noob in their brand new T1-fitted Raven. But those people are few and far between. If some people aren't quitting the game because it's too harsh, I would worry that the game is too soft.



Yup, it's like WoW's retention rate after BC. The hard part of the game got too soft to be challenging, and became more about who could run raids more times per week to get more loot.

DMC, I was determined not to troll in this thread but you are making it very difficult with your ridiculous assertions about this being the end of the game, me being lazy, and there being nothing wrong with the current standings mechanics.

It is true that I do not want to grind missions. That does not cause me any shame. I do plenty of grinding in game, what with stocking lowsec markets, trading all over the place and blowing people up. Well, maybe that last bit isn't grinding. But the point stands - I prefer to spend my time creating content and enabling other players rather than grinding single player missions.

Anyway, we had this argument a few months ago and the conclusion I reached then was the same as now:



The repair plan is excellent. But the fact that such a tedious plan is needed in the first place, plus the fact that you can't even repeat much of it, indicates to me that the system it is designed to fix is broken.

I am definitely looking forward to the revisions.

Fair enough - bye. I'm actually excited by some of the changes that CCP was talking about in the minutes and thought that others might be interested also.

+1

Last night I got my self set up to run some lvl 4s with an alt (that i want to train to tandem lvl 5 missions with, I use a carrier, but it helps to have a friend or an alt in fleet so that if the agent standings bomb I have a way to repair them by just having the other character pull missions). I did exactly 2 missions before I quit and went to do something else.

Sure a game should be a challenge and almost no one defends the deep an intricate nature of EVE as much as I do (as opposed to those who want to dumb it down). But grinding standings isn't a challenge, it's a soul rending grind. CCP is right (in this case) in that's it's not good gameplay.

I don't need to grind standings to run anomalies in any of the 4 parts of EVE (High,low,null,WH). I don't need standings to fight Sansha's Incursions. I don't need standings to do exploration. Missions should be more like the rest of EVE's PVE set up, not less.

So what I just read was.

Pirate: Okay, I am going to beat you up till you hate me. And once we are there, I want you to pay me to work for you like nothing happened.

Faction Agent: Whats stopping you from beating me up again.

Pirate: Nothing, I can come and go as I please being a pirate taking your stuff. You hating me doesn't factor in. You have to deal with me because......................................................


On a side note...if this was to happen....can I get back all my training into the skills that affect these standings.


I have allot of neg standing with the npc pirates...can we get those removed as well....why would they hate me after killing thousands of their legion.

Because being aligned with Amarr is enough punishment on it's own and anybody who wants to ditch them deserves a chance :)

Standings for POS used to be a thing and now look, I can spam POSes anywhere I want.
Ratting used to be the only way to repair sec status and now? Few hundreds mil in tags and you can go from -10 to 0 in just few clicks.
PVE is so limited (in terms of variety) in Eve that preventing players from experiencing all parts parts of it just because they had fun with some other parts is wrong. And grind is always wrong way to regulate gameplay, grind is bane of healthy games.

Standings against NPCs shouldn't prevent me from accessing PVE content in relatively short period of time. Eve is about people not about NPCs. I tanked my standings with NPCs, ok now should I spend my time on mindless grinding to get them back or maybe I could just hunt for some tags or just buy them and be done with grind I don't want to do and access grind I want to do.

Let's not forget some people would like to have some fun for their money.

I live in hisec now and my sec status is almost 0. You know why? Because I had few tags from rats, rest I bought and I can now grind L4s in hisec like nobody's business. In your face!

I was a bit confused about the bit where they talk about spreading mission runners out. I actually quite like the concentration around particular systems because these become minor trade hubs. They are admittedly very minor but still provide trading opportunities outside the major hubs which are reasonably accessible to newer traders.

Disclaimer: I don't have any such markets set up but have in the past.