Player Features and Ideas Discussion

In general, level 5 missions are pretty well balanced. They are one of the highest isk/hr PvE activities in the game, with the only other one that comes close being wormhole capital escalations (and they are arguable superior to those as well).

There are a few issues with them however:

Firstly, they come with one absolutely CRUSHING disadvantage, that no other form of PvE carries. A huge number of L5 missions are against Empire faction rats. Running these missions is completely unavoidable if you want to run L5s profitably. This means that whatever character you are using to run the missions will become effectively permanently barred from half of high sec (depending on what faction you run for, the opposing two factions will eventually ban you from their space).

The second issue. There is a massive inconsistancy with level 5s on what class of ship(s) is required to run them, that doesn't exist in any other type of PvE. Not "can run them", but is absolutely NOT POSSIBLE TO COMPLETE without using those ships. Most of the ungated ones can be run in a carrier, but about half of them have acceleration gates. Most, but not all, of the gated ones can be run in a marauder. Some require you to multi-box multiple ships, and are sketchy even then. One of them will kill a brick tanked carrier faster than a C5 capital escalation. One of them takes over half an hour to finish unless you multi-box, or use a super-cap.

These are the missions that are pulled from gallente L5 agents, I'll go through them real quickly and hit some of the major issues with them. I'll also note which ones force you to take standings hits to empire factions.



-Stray Amarr/Caldari Carrier(Empire): This one is a nightmare. You have to deal well over a million damage to the primary target, while taking heavy damage from fighter drones, and getting heavily perma-nueted. BARELY doable in a solo carrier. Needs to either be multi-boxed with capitals (two carriers cap-chaining or a sniper dread+smartbombing carrier) or run with a supercap to be made manageable. It's possibly doable with multi-boxed subcaps, but I wouldn't wager on it. A marauder would not be viable.

-Location, Location(Empire): I've only done this one a couple times, and it nearly killed my ded-space fitted dual-XLASB vargur. Doable with most of the viable setups for gated missions, but def not easy. I don't remember anything about the follow-up missions it supposedly has, I've never done them I don't think.

-Rogue Spy: Gated, but you can run it with any of the viable gated missions setups, but it can take a pretty long time

-The Big String(3 missions)(Empire): The first mission is ungated, but both the followup missions are gated. This is stupid. Also, the first mission forces you to wait 8 minutes for the main target to spawn.

-Convoy Attack(Empire): Gated, there is a HUGE gap in difficulty depending on which faction you get it for. If you get amarr, it's pretty trivial. If you get Caldari.... Well, I almost lost my Vargur before I came our of bastion. Managed to MJD out and warp-off. And you also have to grind a collosal amount of EHP for this one as well.

-Fate of Angels: Another one that is more or less okay. Doesn't give an empire standings hit, doesn't have a ****** up difficulty level. Is ungated. DOES take so long to shoot through all the rats that it is almost never worth running anyways.

-Mordus Headhunters: Gated, but I've never run it.

-Honor: Same as previous

-Liberate the Miners(Empire): This one is doable with some of the gated running setups. Will absolutely wreck your **** if you **** up though. BARELY doable in a solo marauder as I recall.

-Recover the Containers(Empre): This mission is just... Stupid. You take standings hits. You have to bring an indy in to haul stuff. AND you have to hack containers. What the actual ****.

-Mass Drivers(Empire): I've run this one, I don't remember it being terribly hard, so I will give it a pass aside from giving yet MORE empire standings hits.

-Sansha on the Horizon: This one is fine, runnable in a carrier or various other setups.

-Cleaning House(Empire): Easy. Runnable in a carrier, or most sub-cap setups.

-Cleansing Fire(Empire): Absolutely trivial. Can be run by a variety of subcaps solo, that are tottaly non-viable for most other missions. Ungated.

-The Fortress(Empire): This is a carrier killer. Marauders and rattlesnakes will get volleyed off the field in seconds. You could try spider tanking with brick tanked battleships... Except the nuets will alpha your capacitor. The only practical option for running this mission is blitzing the mission target (a CSMA with a moderate number of hitpoints) and warping off. Did I mention there are frigates with warp disruptors? The only *safe* way to run this mission is with a Supercarrier or Titan. Even with a carrier, you have a high likelihood of occasionally dying due to pure bad luck.

-Operation Wyrmsbane: This mission is fine. Straightforward. Not hard, but not trivial.

-Operation Wyrmslayer: See previous

-Reclamation(Empire): Way to easy. You only have to shoot two things and can be finished in seconds with decent DPS.

-Sansha Acquisition: This one is pretty much fine. See Wyrmsbane

-Breeding Facility(Empire): Absolutely trivial. this mission should just be removed in the interest of balance. Warp in. Blap a structure that dies in a couple volleys (pretty sure a high alpha ship could probably 1-shot it) warp out. Done. No significant danger. Ungated.

-Wrath of Angels: This one is pretty much fine. See Wyrmsbane. Would be nice if you didn't have to loot the can, but w/e. Can occasionaly bug and not drop the mission item, which sucks.

Cont.

The only problem that I see with L5s is that there are many of them, which you can blitz in carriers or marauders. No L5 mission should be blitzable.

Perhaps there should be some SoE/CONCORD agents giving non-faction level V's. Balance them so that they need a fleet but pay out accordingly.

Ed: On the slight naivety point I am aware of the isk/hr being lower if you take more people but that is a fault with the mision balance. They should be nigh on impossible to complete solo but ahould reward fleet fighting accordingly (Note I have no issue with someone multiboxing these, that is a skill in itself...). No lvl V should be possible to blitz as you should be required to put a fleet at risk in losec to gather the appropriate rewards

I don't see that as an issue. You obviously do not run missions against the empire factions with a char that is supposed to go into high security empire space. I have a dedicated character for that; he's happily slaughtering Minmatar and Gallente when he runs missions and has no desire to go into Minmatar or Gallente high sec at all, unless one of their Low sec stations does not have certain skills available. In that case, he just goes in there in his ceptor, gets the books and leaves again completely unscathed.

In the other case: Rivr is supposed to go into all High sec areas without any interference or combat triggers from the NPCs, so when I run missions, I pay attention to not ruin my status with one faction too much, and if that happens I run missions for that faction or an ally and repair it accordingly. With L5 missions, however, that's hardly possible as they are supposed to run completely against the enemy empires and thus you need to chose and carefully plan what you do. Therefore, I don't see a problem with the faction standing obliteration in L5s as you actively and deliberately accept that when you run them.

As the poster above me said, this is working as intended. you shouldn't be able to blitz or solo any of these missions. The fact that you can is a nice to have, not a right.

Pick a side in the factional split. Before I moved to 0.0 permanently, I ran L4's and 5's for Gallente and Minmatar. I also did FW for Gallente. Now I am -10.00 to Amarr and Caldari. Big deal. This character has an annoying message popup if I try to take him to Jita. That's about it. Your actions in Eve have consequences- this is a fairly mild one. And, you can work it off, if you want to. In the past you could not even do that.

my problem with L5s is they were taken out of empire after a couple of years being declared an exploit. Had a fleet running them so missions weren't that difficult but going to low sec stopped that as areas of low sec with the lvl 5s we were running were swarming with pirates.

I think that current mission systems should be rethink.

Lets talk about NPC Nullsec space and new players, all of them are coming from higsec , where usual income source are lvl 4 missions.

When they arrive they notice very fast that they can make more isk in higsec lvl 4 missions than running belts in NPC space.
What is also important they cannot run NPC pirate missions because they have already ruined standings , or are afraid that they will be cut off from going back to higsec.

After living years in nullsec i think that this game could only benefit if CCP could add few Higsec Faction agents to all NPC Nullsec regions.

Those could be lvl 4 or even lvl 5 agents - agents that could be good starting point for new nullsec groups , before they skill up and learn how to live in NPC Null.

As for the lvl 5 missions, they are to easy if you can blitz them in a carrier.
They should require multiple people running them.

If this annoys you and the Burners are anything to go by you should probably start looking for a new way to bear. Given they're going to the effort of making new tools to make missions interesting the future probably involves having a dozen ships for a variety of missions.

That you can solo the easy ones in lesser ships works just the same all the way down to L2s. Not that you're particularly wrong about them being a mess but when they clearly used all the tools available at the time to stop people soloing them it's hard to know exactly what you are expecting?

it's almost like it's intended.

Best suggestion is to just remove level 5 missions, problem solved. Solves OPs whine about faction issues, difference of gates vs no gates, different ships needed, reduces isk faucet, and definitely solves the issue of forum whining to solve an issue that is only perceived in the mind of the people who run them....when you have the choice, consider the options, and make yes/no to go for it, anything else is the associated outcomes that come with running level 5s (like asking for sec status to be removed and slow down CONCORD but let gankers run rampant in highsec...good idea? You decide lol). Hell, definetly another fix for the whine to "remove caps" since they would have no use for PVE then and helps remove afk cloaker problem from preventing you from running level 5s as well if the mission agent doesn't exist . Just have to think outside the capsule how it solves the issue or does it

Capitals are no problem. It is the nature of some, preferred L5s, which require the destruction of a low HP structure and then you can warp out. Catching caps with their pants down in an L5 is awesome, but it's fairly hard to accomplish as they can finish the mission fairly quickly and warp out before you can get things set up, especially for these ungated missions that are deadspace regardless and prevent lighting a cyno.