AIR Dailies: There needs to be two of each activity type for dailies

Council Of Stellar Management Assembly Hall
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As it stands a player can no longer do one activity type and complete the dailies. Prior you could do Enforcer, Explorer, Industry or Soldier of Fortune tasks. Now you must do multiple types or use EMs. But EMs are not infinite.

If you do PvE Combat it’s now impossible to actively complete the daily without diverting from your natural playstyle to scan, mine or do faction warfare/Logi. Miners would have to do security missions, scanning, Logi/FW, etc. Reconcile that with the following from Revenant Updates: Reshaping New Eden

Focus on the activities you enjoy the most,

It’s literally the exact opposite. You must do multiple activity types, not just “the activities you enjoy the most”. We could just do the activities we liked the most prior (unless you were a miner). Now that isn’t enough. Again, EMs are not infinite. And to use them for this would drain them quicker than you would acquire them through dailies. Once they are gone we’re still left with an inferior system. Attaining them thru Paragon dailies is just another unwanted activity (that would require you remain within reach of 12 stations) that contradicts the quoted statement by CCP above.

With this new update and the increased flexibility it brings the number of daily goals has been streamlined to four, ensuring that capsuleers have meaningful choices without feeling overwhelmed,

They haven’t been streamlined. They’ve been diminished. It DECREASED flexibility. The options have lessened and may even be impossible to complete depending on where you are. And who exactly would be “overwhelmed” by eight tasks, two of each activity type?

“Earn 50 LP AND kill 25 non-capsuleers?!?!? Oh, no!! My brain is going to explode doing a security mission AND blowing up rats in the process!!! Thanks for making it were doing missions and blowing up NPCs in the process is no longer enough to complete the daily. It is so much easier and convenient to stop everything I actually want to do to go mine 2000 units of ore.”

This is the most ridiculous drivel I have ever heard. And an open insult to everyone’s intelligence.

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I agree with you 100%

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Well, I’m not that smart but I agree with you anyway.
CCP needs to give up the candy bag!

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I would be fine if they put it back to 8, but only if you can do a max of 4 in a day.

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Thank you for taking the time to post this @Shion_Ishii. I had submitted a ticket that voiced your exact thoughts, only to be directed here by a GM. I agree with everything you said 100% and would like to voice a couple of additional points.

Asides for this action being completely counterinuitive and ridiculously contradictory to the comments they made in the patch notes, CCP should keep in mind these additional points as well:

1:] New Players
As a new player, the dailies would have been crucial for me to get started, had they existed at the time. They would have allowed me to work towards fitting the starter ships & then skilling up to get into other ships a tad quicker, while not making it an overly-generous handout. It would have taken a LOT of the monotony out of the early stages of the game…monotony that likely drives a lot of new players away.

You want new players in your game to increase your player base and to continue to generate revenue. Got it. It’s one thing to draw them in, it’s another to actually keep them. With this change, you have kneecapped new players by cutting AIR Dailies flexibility in half. Do you think new players are going to have ships fitted for the each of the various possible dailies? Unlikely.

Do you think they would be more likely to stay with the old AIR Dailies system? Absolutely. Do you think they would be more likely to quit without it? Absolutely.

Years ago (before dailies existed), I tried, to no avail, to get a number of my IRL friends into Eve. They all quit rather quickly. The reason was always the same, ‘it takes way too long to make any sort of progress’. Had AIR Dailies existed then, they’d probably still be playing today.

Now, the one tool that you had to help with this, you’ve essentially destroyed.

2:] Playstyle Conflict
Everyone has their own chosen playstyle, career, etc. The dynamic and truly non-linear sandbox characteristics of Eve was what made this game so great! But you have just made a change that completely contradicts that ethos.

What if I don’t have a ship kitted for scanning? What if I don’t have one fitted for remote armor. A better question…what if I do not have ANY inclination whatsoever to do either…ever? Your change to AIR Dailies is basically telling me that you don’t care how I want to play the game. It looks like an attempt to tell me how you think I should play.

Sorry, that ship won’t sail. I would never give another penny to your company again if I thought you were drifting towards that ideology.

3:] Game Balancing
I’m not certain if this change was made for game balancing reasons or not. If so, the concern was unwarranted. Judging by the relative lack of outcry from the players regarding this change, it’s clear that there are many seasoned players who will not be negatively affected by this at all. However, there are a great number of players who will! So, taking that into account along with the points made above & below, you obviously have much more to gain by reverting this change than you stand to lose.

4:] A Lopsided Return on Investment
So you tried to smooth it over by allowing us to use EM to complete the goals. How utterly ridiculous. It’s simple math. The needed time and resources spent gaining EM, just to waste on AIR Dailies every day does not match the value of the rewards gained from it. This makes the entire idea pointless and counterintuitive.

5:] An Unnecessary & Pointless Grind:
Following up on point four, I absolutely will not be grinding for EM just to feed AIR Dailies. Whoever concocted that idea should be fired. There are a near infinite number of things one might prefer doing in Eve, but grinding for EM would likely rank near dead last for most. Furthermore, If I wanted, what amounts to, a ‘Dev-enforced grind’, I’d go play World of Warcrap or some other braindead game instead.

See also:
https://forums.eveonline.com/t/air-daily-goals-why-has-the-daily-goals-been-reverted/470057
https://forums.eveonline.com/t/daily-rewards-reduced/470032
106 posts in two days between the two threads and not a single one is in defense of this change!

I ask that you take all this into consideration. Given the feedback you’ve received in just two posts, it should be abundantly clear to you that this change should never have been made in the first place.

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The dailies aren’t that significant to me. However I did direct a number of newer players towards them as a reliable source of ISK and some SP.

From the feedback I got, newer players were more likely to engage in different activities when they could see they were going to “get paid twice”, in effect. The extra activities also gave them some decent extra income (relative to a new player). I had several message me to let me know they had just bought their first cruiser with funds mostly raised by doing dailies.

I’m not sure why CCP thought giving players more options to earn more rewards that are really only relevant to newer players was a problem that needed fixing. For a newer player, picking up an extra 1-2 million ISK or so per day by being able to complete some of the 8 activities was a pretty good deal. And one that couldn’t really be ‘abused’ by vets because a couple million ISK is nothing to them.

CCP honestly needs more ways to get various players, but especially newer ones, trying out different parts of the game. Not cutting back on options while increasing the cost. This nonsense about spending Evermarks giving you more “focus and flexibility” is just sad. CCP thinking once again that if they just spout some BS spin-doctoring in a dev blog, players will fall for it.

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For the past few months I’ve been doing the Daily Goals for the big SP reward to speed up training Capital Ship skills.

I usually would complete 5 to 6 different tasks within an hour thanks to some of the tasks being doubled. The extra ISK was great and even after completing the 12 days to collect the big SP reward, I still logged in to do the Daily Goals just to get the extra ISK and SP’s.

Now that CCP has severely cut the amount of ISK available by reducing the task options from 8 to 4, I won’t be doing the Daily Goals anymore after completing the first 12 days for the big SP reward.

Basically they just removed any incentive for me to continue spending time on them after collecting the big reward… In fact, that change will cause me to not log into Eve as much as I did when there were 8 task options available.

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This unnecessary and unwanted change in the name of “streamlining” is ridiculous and should be reverted. This was one way I would stay engaged with the game after I did my daily PI resets…yet another conversation. I would stay on for only the twenty minutes it took to reset my PI if it weren’t for the option to easily complete my dailies with my CHOSEN playstyle.

REVERT these UNWANTED and UNPOPULAR changes!

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I changed my mind. I’m still not that smart but I never cared for dailies, log-in reward and the whole shebang so I don’t care if CCP reverts it or not. I’d rather they have nothing. It’s a game, not the Salvation Army.

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I was so glad for the change that firstly made the AIR dailys useful and foremost doable by introducing 8 different or sometimes same activities and as a bonus then doubling the daily skillpoints. Before this change they were rightout not doable for everyone and they are again now not doable for everyone without spending EM which is then again not so much available for alphas, enlarging the group which is unable to complete two goals for the skillpoints.
I’m not defending that it should be possible to complete more than 2 goals again, i am talking about getting the 2 done for the daily award.
Beyond that the wording that was used to praise this change as an increase in flexibility is what disturbs me the most. Whoever wrote that has no idea of how the game is played and should not be in a position to either write those statements or decide for them to be implemented. My options are to grind EM now for activities i can’t do. Therefore i have to travel to paragon stations. Then i have to do those mission activities instead of the daily goal. How is this increasing flexibility? It is just and enhanced time and isk sink for a then comparatively void bonus that you get for all the time wasted.
Summed up, the daily goals make no sense anymore. Either you can’t do them or you have to invest more to get them done than you earn by completing them.

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This was implemented so you could have time to play vanguard!
Which vanguard crashes upon launch. Dont forget to go to discord to find out why!

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OP, extremely well put. Whilst I think the original dailies needed some tweaks, I think the change they have made is counterproductive to their message of Focus on the activities you enjoy the most.

What would you like to see instead of the system that they have implemented?

I was thinking that they should develop 4 tasks for each of the AIR paths (enfocer, Explorer, Industrialist, SOF etc and then allow the player to choose 2 of those paths so we are back to doing 2 of 8 tasks that are more pertinent to your interests.

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I like that change.
It’s more clear that this is trying to force player to play a way devs imagine, rather than rewarding little but consistent behavior.
It made me completely ignore those dailies. The SP were good, but the need to have specific activities for each alt is just nuts.
Before I would log all my alts and start a job for each, took like 10min top for all alts when there was a double job entry.

CCP are turning rewards into a daily chores.
Sorry, I play the game to enjoy it, not to put more stupid responsibilities upon my self.

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After the made the change to the dailies I’ve lost my interest to play eve, I even have 3 omega accounts for 2 years and even though it’s a waste I’m going to be taking a break from EVE there are other developers out there that have interest in making their games fun. I’ll just go play something else till they bring the better dailies back.

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I’m having the same feeling and i am still trying to get over it. The feeling comes from the history of what the mechanic was supposed to be. At first it was an incentive to just get people to login daily by offering something little bonus you won’t get otherwise - copied from how mobile games try to keep their attraction. Then they combined it with needed player activity and named them AIR daily goals. Back then there was exactly the same uproar, when the AIR daily replaced the daily logins items, because just like they are now again, they are just not doable for some characters due to location, character skills, player skills and more reasons.
Instead of giving a good feeling and incentive to login, you have a feeling now again that someone didn’t like this and gave you the boot. While it doesn’t keep me from playing EVE, it gives a bad overall emotional push.

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I personally was using the dailies to get the SP, the more difficult it becomes to achieve that i will simply stop doing them. I feel they are there just to get the daily login count up anyway, which is fine, but as soon as it stops becoming convenient for me, ill stop.

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Tbh, I think most people are upset because you cannot do “easy doubles” any more. Means “Manufacturing one Item” x2 with 3 clicks on the station (start job, cancel job, confirm), and basically get 10.000 SP in like 5 seconds. Ammo does cost nothing when doing 1-run jobs, neither the mats nor the BPOs, could be even done directly in Jita and was often enough to cover like 80% of the monthly progress this way if you checked the days where you had 2x manufacturing.

Same for the 50LP if you had an L1 Agent nearby or the 5 Sigs if you lived in a WH. the 25 NPCs when you’d run Abyssals. You’d always go for double goals and burst them within a few minutes. Now you have do to 2 different activities and people simply don’t want that… if we are honest, people don’t want to do the dailies at all, they just want the rewards. The activities themselves are just an annoying price to pay for the SP. They are neither interesting nor challenging nor creative.

CCP should really think about that daily concept at all, it doesn’t increase any acitivites that would bring valuable content to the game or motivate the players to play more or longer. They just waste their players time with activities they actually don’t really want to do, but do them anyway just to grab the rewards.

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You’re absolutely right.

That’s why CCP changed it, they didn’t want players to take advantage of it. After all, all those rewards are expensive treasure troves!!
1000003572

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There are several reasons for dailies from an executive PoV:

  1. It artificially increases the player activity count, as player without a will to connect / goal suddenly have one. That metric is important as it is one that is used to evaluate the health of the game.
  2. It also makes that metric closer to the number of people who can enjoy the game. It’s important because it can make training alts, covert cynos, 3-D PI farms, infiltrated WS alts etc. count.
  3. In the two last versions, it also counts for players rather than accounts, and this is a good thing because it requires to log in an alt rather than fetch them from the reward screen.
  4. It gives the players a habit to log in the game, which is important for retention : people have their own life, it takes time to get into Eve, people may just give it a small try, access to only simple activities because of low SP / invited by a miner parasite corp, and then only remember it for its chore-like start.
  5. And of course it’s very useful for new players from a rewards perspective, as it gives them valuable rewards while they still learn about Eve.

I’m not saying it is good, I’m saying it promises better and more accurate metrics, as well as helps player retention by rewarding them for being consistently active.

That being said, there are some issues.

  1. If the rewards per cost is too low, it will be ignored. That’s what we have now. What we had with account log in screen.
  2. If the implementation is too complex/random, it will be also ignored. Also what we have now. Before it was okay with 8 because you could just wait for doubles to appear and do the least-requiring activity .
  3. if the activity requires a high entry cost it will be ignored. For example repping other capsuleer needs them to take damage. So you need an alt that you shoot and rep at the same time, which is very expensive. Another example is scanning X sigs : you need to be able to find X sigs. In WS it’s fine, but in some places in NS there is 1 sig every 5 systems.
  4. if the reward is too high, people will do that in priority to other activity. If the activity requires too long of a time, people won’t do other activity at all. This is detrimental to the game, as “daily login online”.
  5. If the reward is linked to the end of a completion cycle, like now end of month, the fear of missing out for players will make them hate the game whenever a RL event prevents them from getting those rewards. That’s why it’s bad to have most of the rewards at the end of the cycle. Personally I hate it even when I had the monthly rewards, because it plays on the sunk cost bias of players and there is no way to prevent it, but to NOT play a game where your bias are exacerbated. That’s why I said I’m happy of this change, because I was frustrated of the correct previous reward/cost implementation while hating its abuse on our biases. Note that it was also present previously (log in account screen), but nobody cared so … whatever.

I think I had other points but I forgot them as I wrote those.

My general point is, that there is good and bad, and limiting it to “people are upset because not easy to do” is a bit too simplistic.

What I would say if somebody asked my opinion (which is not the case)

  1. keep only the 3-days cycle. Remove the “everything is lost at end of month”. More on that later.
  2. add ALL option every day. No double.
  3. give weight for daily activities depending on the time it takes. manufacture = 10SP. Scan 5 sigs, rep people, 100 SP. Gain LP, mine, 50SP . Adapt later.
  4. people only gain daily the MAX of the SP of the activities they did. If today I complete rep and manufacture, only the highest SP is granted (100 for rep). Basically when I complete a rewards, the SP of remaining rewards is updated to reflect the actual gain. If I rep someone, all other rewards show “0” SP with a tooltip “only the highest daily SP reward counts”
  5. a cycle is completed after reaching either 300 SP total OR doing 5 days of activity. When a cycle ends, the excess SP over 300 are kept to avoid people having a threshold effect.
  6. you can add a multi-cycle, like 2 times 300 SP/5D
  7. The SP reward for each activity should be decreasing in the cycle when you only do that activity. Something like mult = (cycle days completed + number other activities completed in that cycle) / (cycle days completed + number of activities completed in that cycle). With that method you will have only half the reward if you stick to a single activity past first day.
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@stefnia_Freir Very interesting post.
Thank you.
o7