Missions & Complexes

Let the agent give mission from the complete pool.
Make missions more unpredictable.
Create more missions.

Randomly generated missions. The main reason missions are "easy" is because they're predictable. If every mission had the possibility of a 'Stop the Thief' type ambush (suddenly get hot-dropped by a swarm of webbing/scramming frigates,) you would see more people trading gank for actual tank, thus lowering DPS, thus lowering the speed at which missions are run.

Sleeper AI, fewer ships, and encouraging PvP style fits are always peachy ideas.

Fewer ships would also mean less bounties, less loot and less salvage. Faster missions would probably mean less LP gains. This would reduce the effects of the level 4 isk/mineral/salvage faucets, and could have an amusingly drastic effect on the economy. It also might encourage more cooperation between industrialists, miners, and combat pilots.

Speaking of the lower end (level 1-4) missions, I would make a mechanic that scales enemy strength according to the number or size of a fleet (go by total mass maybe?). You could perhaps do away with the mission level system entirely that way.

This is to make those missions a FLEET operation. But still be able to be solo'd, which I believe is important especially to new players not 'in the know' or with people to help them out. All types of missions would work this way, so for example a Distribution mission being run solo would have a smaller cargo size and likely weak or no rats as resistence during the mission- but a fleet might have a cargo requiring more than one ship to move, possibly a gauntlet to run in deadspace with stronger NPC's if you enter as a fleet or in larger ship classes.

Level 5 missions and Incursions (essentially level 5+ missions) already favor or require fleets, dedicated roles, and high end fittings meaning that new players aren't really within their scope.

Low SP toons are stuck with boring, way too easy or way too hard solo missions. Where max tank and DPS is all that matters, tactics rarely matter beyond orbit at optimal, EW is rarely better than another DPS mod to clear NPCs, and fitting to kill specific NPCs means zero challenge, zero 'practice' for PvP, and zero respect from most other career paths in Eve. Yes, you can take a fleet into missions, but it's simply not worth it for low end missions- they are too easy to get useful gang practice, and dont pay out enough to make it worth it to form up fleets, run an op-- for a mission a solo ship will finish in 10 minutes anyway....

The often strong difference between fitting requirements for PvE and PvP means new players are forced to choose between them for some time- usually ending up with PvE which they at least have a chance of survival with. But it breeds care bears.
I know it's heresy to say here- but bear with me- I have to give credit to WoW for their Dungeon Finder tool (I haven't played in years but did when that feature was introduced) for making the MM part of MMO very easy to access on short notice, and with little commitment beyond that one instance.

I would tie the Fleet Finder into mission running, make it safe to form fleets (no remote rep scams by losers picking on newbies for jollies) with strangers, and make it easy to team people up together on a more or less equal footing. Not the arena combat Eve players are so loathe to speak of (and I agree), but somewhere that T1 gear looted from missions (whatever meta level) is as viable as fittings that cost 200x the cost of the hull. There newbs could learn how to PvP before being tossed into low sec with a grip of countdown timers, aggression rules, remember not to warp out to gates, etc etc etc...
I know there is a point of pride in hanging in there for that famously steep Eve learning curve-- but then don't complain that people are so hesitant to even dip a toe into low or null sec. For me, missions should all give a chance for solid training for PvP. The current structure may do that for the highest end of missioning, but you really need to grab players early on or they (like me) end up spending WAY too long care bearing.

In the end, I wouldn't change the PvP (so put the flamethrower down) and simply make low end missions more like the high end ones. Only always leave a way to solo- for newbs, shy folk, casual players, and people only doing it for standings or something.....always though, with a focus on preparation for that open world of PvP.

Edit- forgive the length, folks...

one more idea- missions that you only provide support in.

For example a combat mission where you are supposed to run EW or logi (probably at the T1 level) and not be a solitary warship dispatched to wipe out entire fleets single handed.
Interesting elements of the game like EW and logi tend to go unused in lower end missions, and useless in PvP until you are at a high level.

make anti faction missiosn available to anyone whom wants them and. remove sec increase from all misisons.

also pooling missiosn is bad..

if missiosn are pooled for everyone to pick from you are gonna get assholes like me wh get 10 alts... get 10 enemies abound.. and farms them all week..

having a pool of missions for everyone to pick and shoose from is bad.

I would not change them to much becouse low sp skill pilots and new players need this to both build up some isk in EVE and as something to fall back on.

I how ever would make wider broad sweaping changes to NPC's and remove loot drops and replace them with 1 run bpc's.

I would not change rouge drones or Drone goo. If a person likes to mine at the end of a Mega Pulse Lazer reather then a Mining Lazer or striper I realy dont have a problem with that.

I both like and dislike the ideal of pulling from the hole mission database. It's going to make it much harder on the new players trying to just learn there own races ships and it's going to cut the isk making of older players that have worked hard to find good mission giving NPC's.

I would fully like to see all missions revamped and more new missions like Dread Pirate Scarlet added to the game.

A even better option is to have 1 NPC agent offer you 3 or more missions to pick from every time once you hit 8+ standing with that agent.

But my ideals have never been very popular.

Well, so what?
If you take E-Abound or WC multiple times, the payoff value and bounty's drop, after some time you would get more from Duo of Death. That is one way to prevent same mission farming that could be implemented.

I find this amazing that the missions haven't gotten any attention... since, forever. And it has since the dawn of time, been horrible.

And it's probably the thing most players in EVE pass their time with.

This pretty much sums it up. More missions would be fan.freagn.tastic. I like running missions, they are my main source of income and all MMO's work this way. Grind missions to obtain upgrades! Increasing difficulty would almost require increasing payout of the mission, or pilots wont "grind" them. Adding more can mean adding more difficulty, dont mess with the current ones. New missions mean more happy players which means more low and hi sec pilots in the grand scheme.

1. More missions
2. More missions
3. More missions

Im Mr Jack Black and I endorse this message.

Acceleration gates that *require* modules: Warp Scrambler or Warp Distuptor & Stasis Web.
NPC's who will pod-kill, and deal substationally more serious DPS, - yet not so much that 1 player can not complete them.
Incursion/Sleeper AI-Lite.
Soloable small numbers of npc.

Similiar rewards as per current L1-5 missions.

NPC Tears in local.

Try running L4's in NPC 0.0 for environment forced size limits. The T3? Pop them on Gates & undock.It's at worst a shame too many of the hard-to-probe are mostly T2/meta4 fit.

The unfortunate issue is that pvp fit ships can't casually fly pve missions, while conversely pve ships are great fun to hunt down in pvp fit ships.

There's something to be said for casual single player flyable missions. Their only problem is that they teach/require PVE fits that are incompatible with the rest of eve's PVP fittings & related activities.