I am just playing through the AIR Career Programm - for the SP, not the content. But I was just shocked at how bad you can ■■■■ this up.
I am speciffiaclly speaking about the mission: Soldier of Fortune: The Stand (5 / 10)
The mission states:
you will die
fly cheap
Fair enough. I expeced to die. But I hoped there was some fun to it. But no, chapeau! You outdid yourseld in shity mission design. This was the absolute 100 / 100 in useless missions.
Just imagine, you would have waves of increasing difficulty. Players could brag that they made it to 4 / 20 or something.
But no. You send players into a room, where the first (tigger) friggate is just laughable - it’s one hit.
The triggered spawn then insta webs you to 20m/s and sensor dumps you into oblivion. So you can’t even target back.
I tried to warp in / out and get an angle - untill I realized: It is supposed to be like this… Shitty.
If they ever make a steam awards category for abysmal mission design - I will recomend you!
I did that one yesterday. I tried so hard to figure out what I was supposed to do until it dawned on me: I was simply supposed to have my ship blown up, no more no less.
I think that mission tries to tell us something: there is no combat in EVE except in the huge battles. All the other encounters are quick butcheries.
No wonder the help section emphasizes “fly cheap”.
Yes, the point of that mission is to show you your ships will explode, and there’s sometimes nothing you can do about it. When a newbie’s venture is captured by a T3C in a wormhole, the battle is much the same.
Seems to drive that point home rather well, based on your complaint.
Player engagement though a scenario being interesting, and educational value aren’t opposed… typically they’re actually aligned.
A bit of effort to make the NPE missions more engaging would likely improve their educational value.
For the combat missions this could be a Kobayashi Maru situation where the player (who is in a combat fit ship) does have some agency to attempt to fight back (compared to your venture/t3c scenario), but the odds keep stacking up the longer they survive. (Could also be a good way to introduce bubbles as the objective could be clearing a bubble or 2 to “rescue” a ship before the waves start)
Also… I’ve long found it odd that the “you get blown up” was limited to a single 1 of the career paths… you’re just as likely (if not more) to lose a ship mining, or doing exploration so it’s a wonder why there’s not an equivalent in those 2 mission chains. The industrialist one could have you doing a delivery and get gatecamped by npcs, or get jumped while undocking from a station.
If the goal really is to teach people that “getting blown up isn’t the end of the world” of course.