Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Suggestion on improving Gurista Base Burner

1. Reduce Grind: Having the player kill waves of the same ships in the same pattern doing the same things in a single mission session is a step backwards in mission design to old Lv4 mission. Reduce NPCs to a single wave of 3 Dragonflies, followed by a single wave of 3 Mantii. Increase bounties to compensate.

2. Increase DPS slightly: Mission can easily be tanked by a T2 and T1 fit Battlecruiser without the need for Heat, manual flying, any form of e-war, full lv5 skills, cap boosters (limited resource tanking), links or drugs. Worse is that it can be tanked indefinitely with zero input (apart form initial module activation/orbit command from the player with a single very modest DED module.

Most other burners rely on intense, high activity burst with high chance of asset loss due to a single miss-click or other mistake. Often they include the use of organic time limiters via the required use of limited resource tank (cap boosters, nano paste, buffer) This mirrors PvP very well including the now very common use of overheating, EWAR and other PvP mechanics in PvE that have been until now extremely rare. This mission breaks that very engaging formula.

Additionally the lack of any penalty associated with declining Burner missions, while extremely important for newer players or players who do not want to engage in any burner missions at all, effectively pushes this mission into the same camp as Cosmos missions. The concept is great, the two very different groups of enemies make for a challenging scenario that I am enjoying building a ship around however the grind is not enjoyable as it limits creative problem solving by completely disallowing certain mechanics and forces reliance back on old Lv4 doctrine of perma tanking and grinding.

Make the problem we have to solve harder, not longer.

Thanks

PS. I (and others) have 'solved' the mission, however it is not enjoyable to run the mission as is the case of every single other burner, even the Blood base with its reduced rewards yes.

I feel that you missed the point of the suggestion. Currently this mission, rather unique even amongst burner missions, will join Cosmos missions in that at most an eve player will only ever run it once, or never. All other burners missions, for various reasons are being run a lot. CCP's metrics will reflect this when they review it 3 to 6 months from now, hopefully.

This is a suggestion on how to fix that inevitable problem. I'll be sure to bring it up again when CCP asks for suggestions on how to improve this burner mission when that time comes.

You were unable to pique my interest with your offer however, indicating that you will need to review what you know of mission running, mission runners and burners. Regardless, good luck in your mysterious endeavor.

From what I understand they want to eventually integrate the burner AI into most PvE activities, hopefully including nullsec anoms.

So if they make the wrong decisions with the burner missions, that might eventually filter down to nullsec.