Player Features and Ideas Discussion

While this game has shown great progress in emerging into the new decade, one of the aspects of the game that seems to be avoided like the paste-eating, unwashed child in the cafeteria is mission balance. Burner missions are nice, but all they are is a bone thrown to us to avoid looking seriously at how the current missions are set up.

So with this in mind, I'd like to propose a few ideas to help it along the way.
-Change storyline missions completely
-Add racial aspects to each mission
-Add new content with bringing back financial missions and adding new types of agents
-Add new options and rewards for higher corporate standing
-Increase the options for FW missions

So to start out, let's talk about storyline missions. Currently apart from COSMOS agents, they don't really offer much 'story', only decent standings. What I would propose would be to rework them so they focus on lore in the same way that COSMOS missions do. Examples would be Minmatar storyline missions could do things like attack amarrian compounds to free slaves, or run long hauler missions to move refugees. Amarr could be the opposite with attacking compounds to GET slaves and move them, caldari could focus on corporate espionage and gallente could focus on more traditional law enforcement and hauler missions.

Now here's where things start getting interesting. Each storyline mission not only has a chance to escalate into a larger story, but counts as points in a global faction pool, similar to how standing works. Once this pool hits a set number, you receive a message from a high-level general from the faction you're working for. This ends up in a multi-stage mission that's either security or distribution themed about something on-going in the larger game lore, like the Drifters or the Sansha incursions (some would involve going through the drifter wormholes into their space or into a separate instance in an incursion constellation). In addition to a massive LP payout (more than lvl 5s plus faction loot) they get special intel dossiers or artifacts that can be turned in to a Concord station with the promise of some Concord LP given in return. These items count towards global story progression, so it actually feels like people running these missions count towards progressing the living world instead of having it happen around and without them.

Bring back Financial agents and introduce Bounty missions. Financial agents would encourage you to acquire a certain number of items from elsewhere and sell them on the local market, while giving you a fairly decent-sized isk compensation as payout. These can potentialy be allocated more on trade hub stations or in dead areas in hisec to encourage market growth.

Now, bounty missions in this context are not related to the Bounty office in-game; that's player bounties from other players, while this focuses on NPC bounties on players. These would be introduced in the Factional Warfare stations (and pirates, but I'l get into that later) as the first actual PVP missions, and pay out massively. What they would require is actually going out and killing players. Lvl 1-4 agent ratings would scale based on the NUMBER of players killed, ex. would be lvl 4 agents requiring you to rack up a lot more kills than the single-target kill with lvl 1s. This gives players who like pvp an option to make a fair bit of money on the side apart from whatever drops from their victims. Example for target options would be for someone like me who is in calmil to go find x number of people in galmil and/or minmatar militia and get kills off their ships. Farming these with alts would be a bannable offense, so someone getting a bunch of pod or frigate kills off the same person repeatedly would raise some red flags, especially from newer characters over time. Please list any other ideas that would ensure this system would not be abused

Now while it would probably start with FW, I would like to see these pvp missions extended to the Pirate NPC corps. Instead of just some random enemy combatant as you'd see with FW, anybody in empire space, low or high would do. This gives actual pirates a profession to follow in the lore game, as there would be a LOT more of these in nullsec than fw space (fw pvp agents would only exist in lowsec, not hisec. Pirate pvp missions would be available in great abundance in every pirate station).

Now I'd like to segue from that last bit about pirate pvp missions into the last bit of this thread. After your reach 8.0 standing with an NPC corp, you have the option of joining them. This includes all pirate npc corps, so you can finally RP as a pirate! While joining a player corp is a big part of this game, we can also extend this concept to corporations. If the corporation has a high enough standing, they can join as a subsidiary of that faction in a similar fashion to FW corps joining under the banner of a particular faction militia.

That is not to say there will be pirate FW, but if you and your buds have great corporate standings with Serpentis or Guristas, you can join that npc corp just in the same way a corp can enlist in the faction militia. You just have to be very careful abount managing your standings otherwise you'll get a notice about not meeting reqs and getting the boot within a week. or so from the faction.

The same thing applies to ANY npc corp in the game, so people who are heavy into running Khanid missions can join up with the Royal Khanid Navy, or a corp that's already a subsidiary of that NPC corp. But as a corporation, you'd receive significant benefits from being a part of an NPC corp, like free repairs, reduced LP costs from the store, reduced or nil monthly fee on offices, etc. Basically things to encourage people who follow that faction to band together.


Thoughts? It's a bit to go over so take your time and ask questions as you have them.

I would like to see Missions like Intercept The Saboteur or Feeding Frenzy make more sense. These missions contain hauler NPC which either carry the mission objective (in case of the Blood Raider ITS or their destruction is the mission objective (in the FF mission). These haulers do not behave like haulers, they behave like combat vessels, charging at me with guns blazing. This is exhilarating.
Instead, in the ITS missions, for instance, they should try to flee from you. They fly away and their turrets only concentrate on shooting drones and they spew out lots of defender missiles to fend off your incoming cruise missile barrages. If you do not manage to kill them in time, they just warp off and your mission either fails or turns into another mission where you have to find the haulers again (reduced payouts in the then first part).
As for the FF mission, I would like to see the haulers stop charging at me and instead rush to the dysfunctional gate/damaged Megathron to deliver the construction materials. Obviously, they'd need to spawn a bit further away from their objectives than they do now to give you a chance. If they manage to get to the gate/Mega, your mission also turns into a second tier where you need to destroy either or. In between me and the haulers, a defensive first wave of Federation Navy vessels spawn with heavy dampening support. If you do not manage to send your drones to the haulers before they damp you, you are going to have a hard time. In addition, if your mission turns into the second tier, my greedy part of the brain wants to see more and larger Federation Navy waves spawn to get more tags, but my consciousness rather tells me that you should just grind the gate/Mega down as punishment for failing to destroy the haulers.

Similar things should be done to other missions involving Hauler NPC.

For vet players that's very true (those who actually stay in high sec, or make mission alts) but both pvp and pve combined are what keep new players interested. I've said for a while CCP needed to fix the PVE of this game if they wanted to retain more members. Rewards are one thing, but engaging pve helps pass the time when no PVP is occuring. The mentality those of us have accepted that PVE is simply a grind we must accept is rather pitiful considering so many other games have managed to make both engaging and fun aspects of their game.

CCP dropped the ball on this years ago, so while I'm unsure of a few of the OP's ideas, I firmly believe that they must turn some of their attention to the PVE aspects of their game sooner rather than later. In the sense of make it more engaging and group oriented, not easier with higher rewards.

And before anyone tries to make the argument that EVE is not like other games or is a purely pvp sandbox, that's not always a positive argument. Sometimes to be successful you must accept your shortcomings,learn from your competitors and adapt accordingly.

CCP is adding new PVE content - Seekers, Drifters with significantly upgraded AI, more challenging exploration with the sleeper cache sites. I have no doubt this new AI will find its way into a rewrite of the mission system but this is a major undertaking and the developers currently have a pretty full plate with sovereignty and structures.

When the time comes, I personally would like to see mission chains and escalations but make them viable for casual players with real life obligations - give us a pause button! No reason why the NPC rats can't wait patiently when real life takes priority.

It would be nice to pass some historic events sort of like a *holograph* played just for your sensors at matching points in epic arcs and the story to that posted in local as mission/anom notifications can be. Having such *cutscenes* in space around me while I could move through there (and get ganked) would be fabulous.

I'd also love the fluffy scope of storylines being way more generic and lower-profile: The most popular arc could be the lvl 1 SoE arc, rescuing all those named VIPs with 40 other guys doing it along with you any day of the year leads to some absurdity. Drastically lowering the implied impact of your actions would go a long way to enhance immersion in my opinion.
For example: Instead of rescuing VIP A from cluster-known legendary criminal B is bad, but being hired for being a capsuleer to lend protection to a sister's fleet of transport ships/frigs/shuttles heading to a hostage transaction, that one I could dig.
Simply changing around some text and turn down on the unique people coming into the story through your heroic efforts would do good.

Redesigning missions to have you running along with the employing corporation's fleet could vastly improve the unique character of a generic mission. Through the static version of *being solo* people are forced to drive the highest-dps, highest-tank, highest-warpspeed ship they can come up with. A Battleship to be comfortable in lvl 4s in most cases, the Tengu does fine but lacks dps. That's the thinking you employ for missions atm.
If instead the player were to assist an existing, weak fleet it could make for great choices on the player's behalf. The mission journal states that the enemy gang will use remote repair, so since your npcs got 500dps on their own you could either choose to bring your 1000dps golem and move through even faster while your corp's fleet is annihilated and you don't get much *secondary payout*, you could also choose to go as celestis, damp hostile logi or you could go as a blackbird and jam all their RR-ships and in the meantime your fleet plows through their fleet. Or you fly a capsuleer-logi and all your guys survive, but you gotta wait for them to work through some hp.
So you can still blitz the mission, get your fleet killed, kill enemy fleet, and get payouts - or a pvp-skilled EWAR character could run missions another, slower way and get payouts + *thanks* for keeping some of your fleet alive.
Having a baseline of dps against enemy dps makes it both more authentic/immersive, accessible for newer players or people that would like to pve in highsec without skilling into a certain machariel-fit, and add a lot of diversity and choice. Then those go-in kill-all missions would be labeled *precision attack*, *surprise attack*, *infiltration* or *assassination*. But general combat missions would translate to people getting used with not being the only guy fighting the bad guys.

To the pirate thingy, it sure would be stylish to camp guristas DEDs and save your fellow NPC-pirates from that evil capsuleer. Especially if all those guristas ships would be neutral, don't even need to bring your own falcon.

It would be wonderful if they put some effort into missions.

For one, they could randomize things a bit. Sure, you get sent after a particular guy or item, but the fleet size, composition, and various environmental factors need not be the same each time.

Bonus content or alternate mission paths could be unlocked through hacking, scanning or archeology. Missions could spawn missions, or mission items could spawn new missions once you dock at a station, giving unique value and potentially a reason to fight over a particular mission pocket against people that ninja into your pockets.

As someone who does lvl 4 caldari fw mission in a t1 frigate, I sympathize with you for completely opposite reasons. You and amarr got the **** end of the stick with fw missions, and they need a serious look-see. Dropping all ewar but increasing the number of ships seems like a good first step, although i do hear those caldari missiles hit pretty hard outside of pvp.

I think it's an awesome idea. Scanning down a paused mission runner and wonking him while RL happens would add some much needed content for elite HS pvp folks (CODE and Holysheet1 would love this feature). As long as a paused player remains in play - sweet sweet idea.

Paused mission runners might actually lure a few docking ring heros (such as Holysheet1) to actually enter warp for their elite pvp.

Let's get this done!

There definitely needs to be some changes to pve to make it more interesting. More things that are fun to do means more players stay, more people in space and more chances for pvp.

I do pvp i just think that there is room for both and that its time for some improvemts for the pve side of things.and not all pve has to be or even should be solo i would love to see more group pve in eve.