Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Difficult missions where one will eventually die as more and more npcs increasingly spawn indefinitely as time progresses.

Isk reward is is dependent on number of ships killed and how long you survive for...

Mission parameters:
- The corporation you are missioning for is performing a raid or something that needs a distraction
- Your objective is to break off as much of the fleet as possible and deal with them till such a time that you die
- Mission completes when your ship dies in the pocket

Mission notes:
- Mission pocket has immortal tower that infinitely points you like a HIC
- Warp gate filters the required ship class for the mission lvl t1 frig 1, cruiser 2, battlecruiser 3, battleship 4 , battleship 5 (no other ship class may enter for the respective lvl, not even their T2 counterparts)
- Flying more then 300km away from the beacon located in the center of the grid counts causes mission failure
- Warp gate requires unique key that is given at start of mission (So that only one may enter)

Comments:
I do agree with the unfamiliarity and the dangers of brining in an expensive Battleship
- Missions of this nature are not released to you by their respective lvl 1 to lvl 5 agents untill you have standing 4,5,6,7,8 respectively which should get you experienced with missions enough to not do something foolish
- Mission warns you in red that the difficultly rating is that of a DED site with danger lvl ___ , that they are expecting you to loose your ship, and to expect to be permanently warp scrambled aka agent says, don't worry if you blow up, just being there should be enough to give up the edge we need
- Agent has remote talk capabilities and the mission is broken into parts so that you can pass on a later part where you really don't want to die

Being that T2 fitted battleships cost in the range of 200-350m depending on its tier
- the lvl 4 and 5 missions last a very long time and have allot of parts to them
- It should be designed so that if you manage to survive to the last wave, the kill rewards increase dramatically, enough that you will make + cost of your ship and fittings - insurance + normal mission isk running + salvage (since your not expected to go back for it) with T3s/ new marauders all multiplied by 1.1-1.2
- salvage will suck
- "If" you added faction standing bonuses that didn't hurt other standings you would get allot of attention but that may be OP and wreck the current "do lots of cargo hauling missions" that is currently place for it

Good idea in principle, but the expense vs payoff simply doesn't balance.

I'd rework it as a staged wave, you need to complete so many waves to end the mission, each progressing in difficulty, after that you get a message that would go like:

"Alright pilot, good job, that distraction has given us an opportunity to break in, our scanners show they're sending more guys your way. We could use the help if you want to stick it out, but no one will blame you if you decide to cut and run now."

You choose at that point whether or not you want to do the next wave, each time being completely optional, again they will get more and more dangerous (with scaling reward/bounties) until you will reach a point where your ship is likely going to pop or run out of bullets.

So you need to commit to so many waves just to get rewarded, and then you can scale the difficulty after that in a risk/reward setting, you can bail at any time, but you won't get paid for that wave if you do. If you run before you do the required number of waves, the mission is marked an automatic fail, with all penalties that failing a mission comes with.


Making it an obligatory suicide mission means it simply will get skipped, making it a "pick your own difficulty" where pilots can gamble their ship for a bigger payoff? That'll get picked up on.

The first problem that comes to mind is people not understanding what kind of missions these are. They would bring their officer fit faction battleships into the missions, die and rage. They would also be unable to get back their own loot without dying again.
Assuming the mission despawns when you die, the location would be lost anyway. There would be no chance of getting back your loot unless you save the mission location as a bookmark (which you won't do if you're unfamiliar with the nature of the mission).

Even more importantly, would this be fun / rewarding? Missions already make you want to mutilate yourself because they're so boring. This would just add the concept of certain death to missioning. First you shoot at a bunch of rats, then you die and hopefully you will have made a profit.

OP didn't mention anything about the number of players that can enter either. There's two possible scenarios here:

1) the number of capsuleers that can enter is limited to one so that these survival mission are purely solo. This raises a problem though: If the player who enters can somehow avoid taking damage while in the mission, the mission pocket becomes the ultimate safespot. Even if another player can scan you down, they can never get to you.

2) Several ships can enter the survival mission. This would surely lead to ganks where npc's take care of the tackle and most of the dps while the attackers get free kills. The attacker would also die but since when has this been a problem?
The mission would then despawn, the attacker could have a friend/alt warp in on his pod and loot the field.


Survival is fun in L4D. Probably not so much in EVE.