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Player Features and Ideas Discussion

 
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Making Missions awesome
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Marshiro
MOE Corp
#1 - 2012-01-30 19:41:19 UTC  |  Edited by: Marshiro
PvE in EVE gets boring after a while. This can be improved with more imagination in applying the current game engine.

A much improved missioning experience can be done when each mission is carefully designed and crafted to be puzzles and challenges to be solved. With a little randomization, those puzzles will have different solutions every time that will require player analysis to run efficiently. Here I present a few simple designs where a smart player can run the mission at a far superior reward rate then any bot. With a little more imagination and combining ideas, some seriously epic missions that require a different approach every time depending on randomizations of the spawn can be made. Many of those ideas do not even require one line of new source code, just smart ideas by the pve content team.

One of the simplest challenge is simply pilots a different optimal course through the mission every time. By keeping the rats bounties/drop rewards low, one can promote blitzing such missions quite a bit.
http://i43.tinypic.com/xfyutv.png

One very under used idea is that of finding the right warp in with celestial objects in system. This is mandatory practice for any skilled pvper and can TOTALLY be made into a mission.
http://i43.tinypic.com/25sxxmo.png

Spider tanking is a critical feature in Eve. It can be made into a mission too. Bumping a moving target is one of those things that seriously favor skilled pilots and is always fun. Alternative solutions may involve damps, ecm and likes to isolate ships. With somewhat randomly positioned ship formations, correct solutions in picking the group apart needed to be sorted out on the fly.
http://i40.tinypic.com/k1272g.png

Traversal control against multiple targets and proper target selection is again, one important tactical skill. With a few randomly placed, static, high dps towers, one can challenge the tanks of ships quite a bit. One can again make bounties/drop so that it favors blitzing and finding the fastest course and targeting order to get through the mission is pretty complex.
http://i44.tinypic.com/2r5cars.png

If code is modified so that NPC on NPC combat is possible, this opens up a whole array of possible missions. A players may have to evaluate based on randomized tactical situation, what is the best way for him to do the mission. Which group of enemy does he attack? Whether to bring ewar and support modules? The complexity very quickly explodes. The following is just a very simple example.
http://i40.tinypic.com/21d0jnc.png

A few note on mission designs:
A few high powered rats is better then a massive fleet of weak ships. This is due to the increased effect of ewar, target selection and traversal control.

Rewards need not be a binary thing but special rewards should be possible for mission runners that go above and beyond duty. For example, one can spawn a high bounty rat and have it warp out after 20 seconds upon warp into the pocket, rewarding damage projections of a certain type (long range/high dps/high tracking/etc). Alternatively, one could spawn drops at a certain location that need to be looted within a short amount of time or it'd be destroyed by a trigger. There can be multiple similar rewards at the same time that is also location randomized to get the mission runner to think about how to do the "travelling sales man problem" in real time. ^_^

Such combinations of randomization and puzzles can also apply to multiplayer complexes and missions especially with some AI tweaks.

Missions is not some place you throw random rats in and call it a day. It is a chance to build a game with in a game.
Bearilian
Man Eating Bears
#2 - 2012-01-30 21:54:41 UTC
I think this is a good suggestion. there are sure to be mechanical coding issues, and balancing issues. but missions have a huge potential. although pvp is eve's priority, they should definately make pve more dynamic.
Hans Momaki
State War Academy
Caldari State
#3 - 2012-01-31 02:28:06 UTC
- I miss the point where we shoot stuff.
- combining PvE with PvP stuff is not going to work, aslong as you can't do missions well in a PvP-boat.
- Ideal mission design should support both, blitzing and shooting. Traveling 150km is not supporting the "shooting" part for most missionships (Slowboating more than 30km --> decline!)

+ more missions is allways good
+ Some PvE-love (which is needed)

no + 1 from me, sorry.
Gerrick Palivorn
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#4 - 2012-01-31 03:11:45 UTC
+1 I would love some mission designs where a pvp ship would be required and being able to hold down the mission objective with a point. Harder, fewer rats would be better than mobs of easily downed ships.

Level 4's should require a small group 3-5, and only level 3 missions and below should be able to be solo'd

Better AI and when the NPC's realize they are losing, they GTFO not stay around getting killed. PVE needs loving, this will help alot.

MMOs come and go, but Eve remains.  -Garresh-
Mike Whiite
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#5 - 2012-01-31 10:16:53 UTC
quote=Hans Momaki]-
- combining PvE with PvP stuff is not going to work, aslong as you can't do missions well in a PvP-boat.
[/quote]


That would require people to make new designs create new tactics and with it new fittings, wich actualy makes it more intresting.
Part of the boredome is that there is little to no change of tactics required while doing missions, chance hardeners and if flying missile ships change missiles and go back and shoot them again.

Personaly, when I'm not doing corp stuff, I started running missions in low sec, for the thrill and because you need to choose between fitting specificly for the mission or have some defences against gankers.

It actualy makes missions a lot more fun when you need to watch your back the entire mission instead of the half eye you need for the high sec ganker.

Missions rewards shoot be a little up though I guess, but not before there are good rewards for FW
Hans Momaki
State War Academy
Caldari State
#6 - 2012-01-31 20:14:04 UTC
Mike Whiite wrote:
Hans Momaki wrote:
-
- combining PvE with PvP stuff is not going to work, aslong as you can't do missions well in a PvP-boat.



That would require people to make new designs create new tactics and with it new fittings, wich actualy makes it more intresting.
Part of the boredome is that there is little to no change of tactics required while doing missions, chance hardeners and if flying missile ships change missiles and go back and shoot them again.

Personaly, when I'm not doing corp stuff, I started running missions in low sec, for the thrill and because you need to choose between fitting specificly for the mission or have some defences against gankers.

It actualy makes missions a lot more fun when you need to watch your back the entire mission instead of the half eye you need for the high sec ganker.

Missions rewards shoot be a little up though I guess, but not before there are good rewards for FW


Sure, but It would also require to get new ships too. Which is.. bad. Missions have to be accessible. The need to have multiple ships is a greater entry barrier, which is bad. Take Dread pirate scarlet as an example. As a missile user, I have no chance to kill her prior to last pocket without gimping my fit for PvE. It's just not possible ;) That's the point with PvE and PvP... you need to change the whole system to allow pvp fits to work in PvE.

I can see your point on lowsec missions too, although I ask myself where the fun part in bringing a bycicle to a race track is..
Sure, you have to watch your back to not getting hit by those race-cars, which might thrill you to near-death. But you know how forcing players to do this works, if not, take Lv 5's as an example ;)

Missions need to be better, yes, but forcing players to use different fits, differents ships and whatnot for every mission is akward. Not only akward design, it's an akward system, and it get's worse if you consider that missions are there for farming ISK/randomloot. It would be a hell of an annoying hassle to deal with this.

Oh, and I like to have relaxed farming.. I visit 0.0 if I'm bored.