Assembly Hall

Missioning is probably one of the most done activities in EVE (afk mining doesn't count as an activity) that a very large number of people do. While I realize that most people on the CSM have a primary focus on PvP, null space issues, and things like interface, since a ton of people do missions, and in an ideal world, some missions could be a bridge to PvP in learning of fitting and tactics and such, I would like the CSM to ask the DEVs to start a levelacide plan.

What is levelacide?

Basically going through missions one agent level at a time (maybe agents and how they offer missions can be improved as well), figure out what is good, what needs worked on, and if there are some new missions that can be added or some older missions that just need to be deleted. Maybe some small gang and fleet centered missions (with lower requirements than incursions or pvp) could be added. If you don't have a fleet, one could be given to you (think solo queue, but with EVE players).

Now, why an EVE solo queue? Mark Rosewater correctly points out that in gaming, people generally do what they are rewarded for doing, even if they don't like it. PvE EVE generally rewards players for solo activities. The last mission in the SoE arc is probably the only PvE battle a player might ask for help with... if he doesn't have a good ship. If he does by then, he can solo it. Now one can point to incursions, but that's a ranked solo queue and there is a bit of a bar you have to be able to jump over. Think of incursions as bronze or silver teamqueue.

So we need a step before that.

Basically, we need to turn missions into unranked normals and solo queue.

For lifetime soloers, step one is just getting people working with others from time to time. Null alliances and even RvB need fresh blood. Well there's a lot of fresh blood that's busy missioning for ISK/hour. I'd like to think that some of them could be turned into pvpers and nullies. But the first thing that has to be done is get them to thinking that playing the game with others is both fun and rewarding.

Levelacide would be a great opportunity to add a Venture frigate into group activities.

No, asking for a reexamination of missions mechanics is not asking too much.

Just don't expect the world to change over night.

m

Absolutely right Dersen, didn't know where my mind was. I wouldn't mind fewer but better enemies at least some of the time, at least for solo stuff. And maybe for a few missions it might be cool if they give you a system, but force you scan down the target in addition to some other pvp like activities. Those are some of the changes I have in mind.

Also the fewer enemies don't just have to have bigger bounties, if there's only two or three per mission, maybe they could have more drops per ship like in PvP where a good chunk of the mods give or take survive.

That said, I think there needs to be a wider varity of missions. A few horde mode security missions like we have now aren't that bad as long as we have other options... attack the pirate mining fleet. Maybe an easy defend mission of some sorts. Guard the asteroid belt for 10 minutes or something. Join a friendly NPC fleet going after a small dreadnaught. Maybe some regions could have pirate hot spots (like incursions but not to that level) where you'll get missions related to those pirates.

Also a few missions with alternative win or bonus money conditions wouldn't be bad.

As for which ones need to be kept or which ones need a going over, that's a good question.



Thanks for the reply Mike, I won't get my hopes too high as I know these things can take time.

I was just thinking, when and if the devs were ever to look at missioning maybe we could get some missions that use the hacking system that was just added.

Example: we need you to go hack a serpentis comm satellite we found. If you succeed at hacking without getting noticed, you get some bonus reward of some sort, if you fail the hacking game, the mission can still be completed but you have to fight through a few level appropriate NPCs and you'd loose the bonus reward.

Another thing that could be PvP like is to attack a pirate mining fleet. You'd have to go in, pop some mining vessels and get out before escorts arrive to get the bonus.

I also think it would be nice when if you kill a mission complete NPC or too many NPCs for those that have more than one or two foes, half of the enemies give or take would flee. So if my domi pops 3 battleships and 5 BCs, some of the other ones think twice about hanging around.