Missions & Complexes

I liked the pre-retribution missions. I wouldn't mind the rooms being randomised or the waves being randomised - etc. I wouldn't mind newer content being created to cater for the bored Vets. But I actually really enjoyed the old flavour of the old content. And would personnaly love a return to Pre-Retribution missioning - I hope we are just on a stepping stone towards something really really cool, (you have to break eggs/drones to make an omlette/new-missioning)

This is a bit of a mix, some people complaining about he new AI and others that missions are too predictable. I was away in 0.0 for some time and when I came back I went ice mining for some fuel, was amused to be jammed 235 km away by a Gurista's frigate, in fact I was highly amused...

So I needed to get my standings up with the NPC corp where my corp HQ is based, I had started that before I left for 0.0, so went back to it, hell was I surprised even though I had seen the new AI in 0.0 CA's, before there was only a couple of missions that I had to be careful in, not now, some missions that were easy are now a challenge, I ended up with some pretty tough combat situations, one storyline mission in particular because suddenly when my shield was quite low three frigates decided to point me, it was a real struggle to get out. In truth I enjoyed it, so far I have not lost a ship, but some corp mates have, I actually like this new AI.

I play Eve because I like the challenge, so I can live with the missions being this way, but the point made by many is that they would like more flexibility to select missions for the time they have, hell I would support that. But one thing I would do is not give NPC ships capabilities that are just stupid, and a 235 km range for ECM was just that!

I really don’t understand all of the people who are complaining about predictability in missions. 98% of what I do in game is run missions solo in high sec. I enjoy that. I understand some people don’t. Those people do other things.

The overall trend I’m seeing is people wanting to ‘improve’ missions by making them more like PVP. If I wanted an experience more like PVP, I would move out to null, or low, or W-Space. It’s not like there’s a shortage of people looking for a fight, or places I can get one. One of the strengths of EVE is that there are lots of different things people can do. If I want to curb stomp rats in my deadspace fitted faction battleship, I should be able to do that. If other people want to roam around in fleets not knowing what kind of fight they are going to get into, they should be able to do that to. Making highsec more like null and PvE more like PvP takes away from both.

@Jakob Anedalle
A Player made deadspace mini-game where missions happen sounds like a good way to make some dynamic and meaningful content.

In your Carpenter analogy, I'm actually saying that if the guy with the hammer and hand saw wants the same pay, he should be doing work to which the electric/pneumatic tools aren't suited: jobs which are best done with a hammer and hand saw.

Intentionally gimping yourself so that you exchange "profit" for "amusement", is certainly possible. However, I think it would be better game design if the challenge you placed yourself under was acknowledged by the system and rewarded....

"Amusement" and "profit" should have a direct correlation not an inverse one: this is a game after all.

In truth, my biggest problem with the current mission system is that no matter how many times I Intercept The Saboteurs, Halt the Invasion, or settle The Score the enemy faction just keeps popping up all over. You'd think the combined force of all us missioners would have some kind of visible effect on the enemy's ability to operate. It would be nice if running a mission actually had a meaningful effect.

For that matter, those mission agents are awfully reactionary in their deployment of pod pilots. Where are the capsuleers who are contracted to go build those spy telescopes, pirate radio station, forward operating outposts, and the like? All those deadspace pockets are so static and ephemeral. They should be dynamic and permanent: things that take time to build and represent value to the faction they are built for... (or the faction that takes them over... or the faction that destroys them... ect).

When I came back from a long absence from eve, I found missions to be mildly more challenging but soon it became predictable again, no matter how much AI was supposedly to have changed or EW making an impact.

The OP has some valid reasons because missions are just too EASY. A 9k LP mission for instance can be done in 20 minutes, pretty ridiculously fast.

There needs to be variation to the missions by either putting more randomness or by increasing more missions types (seriously there are too few) or maybe both. In it's current state, not only is it too easy and predictable, it's a massive isk earner per hour for such low risk (hi-sec).

When CCP is actually going to care about scraping old missions and replacing it with new ones is anyone's guess. Make L4 harder so that I can feel some sort of danger of losing the ships I have.

As to the lame ass gankers whining about how they're being targeted by NPC, go learn how to pvp in a pve environment

Ahhhh, now I see the whole point to this thread.



All this Talk Talk about missions being too predictable and too easy while giving way too much reward for very little risk isn't actually about broken mission mechanics. It's actually a stealth attempt by low / null sec ISK hoarders trying to get CCP to nerf the amount of ISK being paid to high sec mission runners.

Talk about Risk v Reward :

I recently got a storyline mission offer to courier 8000m3 from high sec, through low sec into null sec for a total of 17 jumps (shortest route) with the last 4 jumps being 2 in low sec and 2 in null sec.. The mission pay was a measly 350,000 ISK. The bonus pay was the same amount if completed within 52 minutes.

That mission surely isn't predictable nor is it easy or pay way too much ISK. Quite the contrary.

This game has lot's of options and activity's to pursue. If it seems like your current activity is getting boring and or redundant, try a different approach and change the way you conduct it. Better yet, just go do something else for a while.

What's so hard about that?

Anyway, this is definitely making me thirsty.



DMC

I am not interested in my missions simulating my PVP, I like to make ISK to buy ships I can then ultimately lose in PVP thats how i simulate my PVP. If there was going to be a change in missions, the only change I would like to see a higher LVL mission agent in High sec.

a. More challenging and more profitable,
b. Not capable of being completed in a standard fit T1 BS.
c. Requires a standings similar to and possibly in excess of the current lvl5 agents.

I'll go first,

(current opinion): I'm not a big fan of missions, but they used to be fun for a short while.

wishlist:
(easy):
more options in choosing what type of mission you're going to do (long vs short) (hard vs easy)
more options in choosing what faction it will be against

(medium):
A deadspace "dungeon" generator module which creates deadspace mission content on the fly, perhaps even adjusting to the player as they go. This would keep the content spicy much longer than the static content.

(hard):
Persistent player built deadspace "sandbox"

When reading I kind of liked the idea related to "harder missions for bigger fleets". Maybe the general idea of introducing missions that are really not meant to be made alone? Something around a 3-5 (5 for more casual players, 3 for progress orientated players with faction/tier2/3 ships) ship fleet would be something fun for corp fleets to fly. With the amount of ships and the better flexibility with tanks, snipers, support and stuff you could increase the randomness of the ship types like:

* switching them between armor and shield tanks or even give them remote repper support or diffrent ressitances (like strengthening the weakest one and lowering the other 3, just like a player might fit)
* varrying the balance between small frigs (or even cruiser+ with drones) and larger battleships
* varrying the weapon types, ranges and ammo used
* creating a few diffrent AI scripts and randomly distribute them along the (squad) spawns, so some spawns go berserk against you, some take tactical cares, some might turn head over heal and try to get away for a tank regeneration
* spawning in more ships... or maybe even parts of the troops warping out after their "leader" was pulverized. Giving you the gamble kick of killing the boss first (to instantly lower the incoming damage) or last (to avoid instant warp ins of more troops)
* giving them scramblers, weppers, vampires, dampeners at random

To maintain a certain overall difficulty maybe every variation should have a difficulty level assigned (a blood raider shooting ballistics doing kinetic damage would be considered more difficult than the expected EM/termal energy weapons or a combination of melee weppers/dampeners with long range dps would probably also be considered more difficult in general and encourage to have a flexible fleet setup) so they sum up all around within a +/-20% margin regardless of the randomness involved. I understand that balancing something like that would probably take more than a week on the test servers, but I am not sure if group PvE content should be just doing soloable missions with a bit more ease and slighty increasing the ISK/h by reducing the time consumed per mission. Adding these "fleet xy missions" (you could also think of similar mechanics for mining/trading missions) you could remain the other missions "as is" (normally continuing the minor balancing changes) and still add some additional content intended for people willing to encounter a "hard" and "unpredictable" mission while making it (almost) impossible for a solo farmer to run them for the increased ISK/h, since there will simply be no "optimal setup" for a mission like that.