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.