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EVE New Citizens Q&A

 
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agent missions
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wayrow11
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#1 - 2016-06-01 07:36:24 UTC
i have been doing L1 mining missions as no other level mining missions are available to me yet . My Q is how many times do u have to repeat the 2 missions offered by agent before being able to do L2 etc. All agents seem to offer same missions lol
Do Little
Bluenose Trading
#2 - 2016-06-01 08:07:54 UTC
Every 16 missions you will get a "storyline" mission that gives a much larger boost to your standing.

You can also increase your standing sufficiently for Level 2 missions by running the missions offered by career agents
http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Tutorials_-_Opportunities_and_Career_Agents_in_EVE_Online

The Sisters of Eve Epic Arc will also give a substantial boost in standing with the faction if your choice and can be run every 3 months. http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/The_Blood-Stained_Stars

Level 2 missions require standing +1 with agent, corp or faction. Level 3 missions will be available with +3 standing. Level 3 mining missions have a significant combat component. A well tanked barge with drones or clear the room with a combat ship before mining.
Kitty Bear
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#3 - 2016-06-01 22:24:08 UTC  |  Edited by: Kitty Bear
Check the "Agent Finder"
You can open it from the Agents Tab whilst docked in a station, or off the Neocomm listings.

When it's open tinker with the filters, eg select Security & hi-sec
You will then be able to see if you have any L2 agents available
simply right-click on the agent and select set destination


In other games, an NPC will signpost you to newer level appropriate opportunities
As eve doesn't really have levels nor signposting
You have to chase things down for yourself, the "agent finder" is the tool given to you to do your own signposting




edit
There are only so many missions available from each class (Security, Mining, Distribution)
check http://eve-survival.org/wikka.php?wakka=HomePage for all mission related info & walkthroughs

it would be nice be nice for CCP at some point to spend some effort improving this, but if they did there would be a few people who complain about "wasted dev time", I imagine it's buried somewhere in one of the many to-do lists at ccp-hq
wayrow11
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#4 - 2016-06-02 02:46:38 UTC
As usual the info provided has been very helpful thank you all kindly
Wombat65Au Egdald
R I S E
#5 - 2016-06-02 03:21:54 UTC
There is also a third party (not CCP) out of game tool you can use to locate agents. Since this tool runs outside of the game, it doesn't take your character's standings into account. Because of this, it cannot highlight which agents you have enough standing to get missions from. http://eve-agents.com/
Memphis Baas
#6 - 2016-06-02 04:51:15 UTC
There are several skills on the Market under the category "Social." They deal with agent missions and rewards from missions. One of the skills "Connections" will give you 0.4 standings with everyone, for each level you train, up to +2.0 standings (typically people train it to level 4 = 1.6 standings). So if you need to get to +3.0, you can train the skill Connections to level 4 (takes 3? days) and you're already at +1.6 probably +2.0 with what you have already. Worth it.

Otherwise agent missions are a grind for standings. You do missions with one agent in Caldari Navy until you get +3 standings with Caldari Navy, at which point all the level 2 Caldari Navy agents unlock. You switch to a level 2 agent (because it's more efficient) until you get +5 standings with Caldari Navy, at which point all the level 3 agents in Caldari Navy unlock. Once you unlock level 4 agents, you switch to doing missions for loot and cash, because that's where the payouts are.

The empires (Amarr Empire, Caldari State, Gallente Federation, Minmatar Republic) have alliances and hatreds. You can show info on an agent then click their corp picture then click their Empire picture to see the info for the empire and the alliances.

So regular agent missions only increase your standings with the corp (Caldari Navy). However, every 16 regular missions you will be offered an important / storyline mission that will increase your standings with the empire (Caldari State) - that means all the corps in the empire too. However, when your Caldari State standings increase (they love you), your Gallente Federation standings decrease (they hate you for helping their enemies). And Amarr and Minmatar are affected too, a bit less.

Some regular missions will send you to kill, for example, "Federation spies", that means Gallente Federation. If you shoot them they will really hate you. You can tell who you need to shoot by reading the mission description and looking at the Objectives line. You should avoid making any of the empires hate you; you can decline a mission from any agent every 4 hours, with no repercussions, to facilitate this.
Wombat65Au Egdald
R I S E
#7 - 2016-06-02 05:43:41 UTC
I'll expand a little on what Memphis said. I'm in the process of unlocking level 4 security missions with one NPC corp in each main NPC empire.

In the 'lore' of Eve, Amarr and Caldari are allies against Gallente and Minmatar. As you gain standings with one of these empires, you'll gain a small amount of standing with it's ally, but lose standings with the other two empires. The storyline missions will have the greatest effect on your standings, but regular missions that ask you to fight one of the other empire factions can also have a significant effect on your standing with that empire.

If your standings with any of the empire factions drops to -5 or lower, you can be shot on sight by NPC patrol ships from that empire if you try to fly through their space. Stay above -5 standing and the NPC ships won't shoot at you, but you may find it hard to get missions from NPC corps which are members of that empire.

Is it important to keep your standings up with all the empire factions? That depends. If you want to be able to use highsec space for all the empire factions, yes, standings are important. If you don't care about highsec and don't expect to spend much time in highsec over the long term, then empire standings are not that important.

Can you fix bad standings? Yes.

Killing NPC pirate ships will help improve your standings. The improvement is small, but it's there. Different pirate factions effect your standings with different empires.

Every empire faction has three rookie/starter systems. If you complete each set of career agent missions in a rookie system, you get a small standing increase with that empire faction, and you are not restricted to the empire you started the game with, you can run the career agent missions in the starter systems for the other NPC empires.

Your character is Amarr, you can run the career agent missions in Caldari, Gallente and Minmatar space a total of three times each, once in each starter system per empire, and twice more in Amarr, assuming you've already run the career agent missions in the system you started the game in.

There is an "epic arc" set of missions commonly called the "Sisters of Eve Arc". You can repeat this mission arc once every 90 days. In the second or third last mission, you are asked to team up with an NPC from one of the four empire factions. You get to choose which empire you team up with. Successfully completing that mission will give you a standing increase with whichever empire that NPC was from, without damaging your standing with the other empires. You cannot run this mission by itself, you must run the other mission from the story arc to get this mission.

There are also "Cosmos" missions you can run which will improve your standing with the empire of your choice, but these missions do effect your standing with the other empires. http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Gaining_faction_standings_fast

There is also "The Plan" which is a guide on how to improve bad standing with the empires.
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=10212
http://web.archive.org/web/20160228065009/https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Faction_Standing_Repair_Plan

Dharyn Ryndal
Doomheim
#8 - 2016-06-02 13:09:41 UTC
Hey all,

This thread was very helpful for me as I try to wrap my head around missioning in this game.

What threw me off was accepting missions for an agent and then returning and getting another over and over without the succession of missions ever taking you anywhere else or leading to anything different. Of course, my only point of comparison is games where one quest giver leads to another quest giver and you progress through the world by following their lead.

Here, it turns out, the same entry level mission giver will gladly just keep giving you entry level missions... forever.

I might try to branch out more after reading all that everyone shared here.

Thanks!
Memphis Baas
#9 - 2016-06-02 14:04:19 UTC
That's because this game is procedurally generated; they have a few mission scripts and otherwise the enemies, locations, and loot are random. Today you save the damsel in distress who is a Gallente female from a rich celebrity family, tomorrow you save the damsel in distress who is an Amarr male from a poor, but nobility family.

And also because the focus of this game really is PVP, it's a PVP strategy game that's played at the "you control a single unit" level. The missions are just a source of cash, so you can buy some PVP ships and lose them in silly ways.

They did introduce some story "arcs", the Sisters of EVE one is the newbie'est and most popular one, but there are a couple others. And otherwise "incursions" are the equivalent of killing world dragons with a group of 40, and wormhole space is sort of like a raid zone but not quite.

This game is based on the principle that the devs will just give us some ships and balance the combat mechanics to be fair, and otherwise let us do as we please and entertain ourselves. This allows a very small dev team to produce a huge MMO. But trying to set up AI, scripts, quest lines, triggers, and the convoluted dances and coordination that you see in other MMO boss fights, it's too much work.

So basically from their point of view, why do it, when they can just release some citadels (a housing system) and make some changes to a ship or two (carriers), and we can take that and get months of entertainment and wars out of it, increased subscription numbers and the works.

They're going towards scripted raids with Sleeper / Drifter combat AI and events, but it's still a minor tangent in the game's overall focus.
Wombat65Au Egdald
R I S E
#10 - 2016-06-02 14:39:47 UTC
Dharyn Ryndal wrote:
Hey all,

This thread was very helpful for me as I try to wrap my head around missioning in this game.

What threw me off was accepting missions for an agent and then returning and getting another over and over without the succession of missions ever taking you anywhere else or leading to anything different. Of course, my only point of comparison is games where one quest giver leads to another quest giver and you progress through the world by following their lead.

Here, it turns out, the same entry level mission giver will gladly just keep giving you entry level missions... forever.

I might try to branch out more after reading all that everyone shared here.

Thanks!


This can be explained in a general way as "Theme park vs sandbox".

In a theme park, all of the entertainment is designed for the customers by the park owners. You get to play the games the park owners provide to you, and that's about it. Most MMO's fit this description. I also play Lord of the Rings Online, which is very much in this style. You run the quests the developers created, you run the raids the developers created, you follow the character progression the developers created, you follow the storyline the developers created, etc.

In a sandbox you have some sand, some items for shaping the sand (buckets, spades, etc), but what you do with that sand is up to you, with minimal rules from the owner of the sandbox. This is Eve. We have space, we have ships and modules, we do have some rules about some things we shouldn't do, but everything else is up to us, the players. The objective here is to entertain ourselves and each other with the tools Eve provides. PVE, Player vs Environment, is not the main objective of Eve. PVE can provide a source of income to buy ships and modules to shoot other players with, but PVE is mostly a sideshow to the real game of Eve, the other players.

Another point is character progression. In most theme park style games, you're expected to level up your character, acquire better gear, attempt harder content, with an "end game" to aspire to. Eve does not follow that pattern. A level 1 agent will only give you level 1 missions and even if you unlock level 2 missions, the level 1 agent won't try to direct you to a level 2 agent, you have to direct yourself to a higher level agent. Also, the big ships, the titans, carriers and dreadnaughts are not really the "end game content". There are plenty of players who have been in the game for many years who spend most of their time still flying frigates and destroyers and cruisers. Bigger does not always mean better in Eve, although if you use missions as an income source, those missions are generally intended to use larger and more powerful ships. Level 1, destroyers, level 2 cruisers, level 3, battlecruisers, level 4 battleships, but a pilot with the right skills and knowledge of the game could run level 3 missions in an advanced model frigate or destroyer, and level 4's in an advanced model cruiser.

Eve does not have one single end-game to aim for. Your end-game, is whatever you want it to be, but it's mostly up to you to figure out how to get to that particular end-game you aspire to.
Iria Ahrens
Space Perverts and Forum Pirates
#11 - 2016-06-02 15:17:33 UTC
Dharyn Ryndal wrote:
Hey all,

This thread was very helpful for me as I try to wrap my head around missioning in this game.

What threw me off was accepting missions for an agent and then returning and getting another over and over without the succession of missions ever taking you anywhere else or leading to anything different. Of course, my only point of comparison is games where one quest giver leads to another quest giver and you progress through the world by following their lead.

Here, it turns out, the same entry level mission giver will gladly just keep giving you entry level missions... forever.

I might try to branch out more after reading all that everyone shared here.

Thanks!


Yea, when you said you kept getting the same two missions, I started to think you might still be working for the tutorial agent.

My choice of pronouns is based on your avatar. Even if I know what is behind the avatar.