Missions & Complexes

Whoever designed the L4 Minmatar Epic Arc (Wildfire) doesn't play EvE or has only completed that arc once if at all, right?

Not only does that arc require a ridiculously high number of jumps, but it takes you to do some of the missions in Ammatar space, yet at least one of those missions (Heresiology) causes you to lose standings precisely with that faction if you kill the ships that are shooting at you.

This is incredibly bad design, as it means one may eventually lose the ability to do the Epic Arc as a result of simply doing it multiple times, especially if one also does Minmatar storylines, which cause negative Ammatar derived standings, i.e. one may lose the ability to do the Minmatar Epic Arc as a result of doing Minmatar missions. How silly is that?

Unless the purpose is to make this arc as annoying as possible by forcing pilots to go through hoops to complete missions without shooting the ships that are shooting at them, because of course having to go 11 jumps forth then another 11 back to do just a single encounter mission isn't annoying enough...

Not sure what you mean here. Are you saying the payout of the Retraction path is too low and you've done the other path 6 out of 7 times because of that? Have you checked how much those probes are worth in the market? I agree it's unbalanced, but not the way you think, and the reason could be how annoying this arc is, LOL.

I wasn't talking about the monetary value of each reward but now that you mentioned it, if you check the monetary value of the rewards from all the other Level 4 Epic Arcs, you'd see they are worth much more than the Minmatar rewards.

I was actually referring to the amount of Faction standing increase reward for the two ending pathways. Each of the other Empire Level 4 Epic Arcs all give the same amount of Faction standing increase of +10% Base (+12.5% with Social 5) no matter which ending pathway is chosen. However the Minmatar Level 4 Epic Arc is the only one with an ending pathway that gives half of the usual amount of Faction standing increase.

Retraction Path - Minmatar Republic Faction Standing increase = +5% Base (+6.25% with Social 5)

Revelation Path - Minmatar Republic Faction Standing increase = +10% Base (+12.5% with Social 5)

If you had continued reading my original posted reply in this thread you would have seen this : So yeah, the Minmatar Level 4 Epic Arc rewards are definitely unbalanced when compared to all of the other Level 4 Epic Arcs.


DMC

In many ways I find this type of complaint hysterically funny. We spend forever telling new players to get out an explore all that EvE has to offer. And then when we as vet players are faced with something that requires us to get out and explore all that EvE has to offer all we can do is complain about the travel.

This is getting messy, let's hope I don't make it even more so while trying to clarify it... :)

In your first post, you said "the rewards for each ending pathway is unbalanced", and then showed the total rewards for each path. I don't see how this could be interpreted in any way other than you were referring to the total rewards for each path, not just the standing increase.

What wasn't clear to me, and is the reason I said "not sure what you mean" when I replied, is what did you mean by "unbalanced".

I interpreted it as you meaning the paths were unbalanced with each other, i.e. that the rewards for one path were much better than for the other, because you reinforced that idea saying you had chosen one of the paths just 1 out of the 7 times you've done the arc and only because you wanted the probes for yourself, so I replied saying that yes, the rewards are unbalanced but the other way, i.e. the Retraction path that you've done only once has much better rewards than the other path that you said you've done the other 6 times.

I wasn't comparing the rewards of the Minmatar Epic Arc with the other Epic Arcs because I didn't interpret you were doing that either.


Not only did I also read that part of your original post, but I commented on the fact that you had done the Retraction path only once. I just didn't quote the original post in its entirety because I considered it unnecessary to put my reply in context. I don't want my posts to take more screen space than necessary to express what I want to say.

In each case the monetary value of the epic is too low to be considered interesting by it self. The plain standing gain however is interesting if you want to raise your 4 empire standings.

It takes several hours to make those arcs.

Not everybody does Epic Arcs for the same reason.

I have 9.90+ standings with everything Gallente and Minmatar, -10.0 with the Amarr and Caldari factions. I like missions against "enemy" empire factions more than missions against pirate factions, I like encounter storylines more than regular missions, and I don't let that negative standings crap get in the way of me having fun while making decent ISK doing missions.

Epic Arcs for me are just another type of missions that add variety and a much more interesting underlying story. I'm well aware how useful Epic Arcs are for grinding good standings with all factions, but that's not the reason I do them, at least not with this char, so the standings reward is of little significance to me (none actually for this char).

And I do find the ISK value of the final reward interesting. It's not like you get that as the only reward for doing the entire arc, rather it's a nice bonus you get in addition to the rewards you get for doing each of the missions.

So please keep in mind some pilots may actually do Epic Arcs for the same reason I do when making assumptions about which reward is more interesting or valuable...

Yeah I agree, not everybody does Epic Arcs for the same reason.

Granted some players do it for the special item reward while others do it for immersion into the story plot. However most players do it for the Faction standing increase.

In my opinion the Minmatar Epic Arc is unbalanced because one of it's ending pathways doesn't give the same amount of Faction standing increase when compared to all of the other level 4 Epic Arcs.

That's it, not trying to change the story plot, not trying to change the monetary value, just want to see the amount of Faction standing increase be equal like the other level 4 Epic Arcs.


DMC

I just finished the Amarr epic arc last night for the first time, having done the Minmatar epic arc a few months ago. Wow, what a difference.

I genuinely enjoyed the Amarr arc as a bit of content to explore. The missions were on par with an L4 security mission, the storyline cohesive and interesting. I even managed to finish the final mission without the huge grind of fully clearing the room. Happy with the rewards for the effort. I'll do it again in 90 days just to try to other branch.

The Minmatar epic arc is terrible by comparison. A slow grind with way too much travel (and I ran it in a Tengu, making the travel much better than had I brought a BS), a storyline I quit caring about halfway thru, and abysmal rewards for it all. It took me so long to even try another epic arc because the Minnie one was my first and I didn't enjoy it at all.

CCP had the right idea with epic arcs. Just wish they kept expanding on that content, add randomness to the spawns, and reduce the mobs in favor of stronger AI for fewer enemies. (basically what I wish they would do for all combat PvE)
But we know that things like missions (especially epics and COSMOS) are nowhere on CCP's radar right now.

I understand the lore and how capsuleers are supposed to take out waves of normal ships. It is just a lazy way of explaining the same boring mob based dungeon crawl that pervades MMORPGs. The progression from that to more advanced AI that relies less on mobs and offers more of a challenge is what players want. CCP deserves credit for trying to make AI more like player behavior. It's a work in progress but it's paying dividends.

I don't mind the mission difficulty for epic arcs being higher, it's an epic arc after all. I think it's another opportunity to promote fleeting up for PvE content. Especially if the AI mimics player behavior, so that it's much more like a PvP simulator than just regular PvE grinding. CCP has a bunch of ways to promote fleet activity in Eve- it's just a matter of making it happen. Not using the mission system as a sort of fleet/PvP training program is a wasted opportunity.