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

I also found it very interesting. And the mere fact that there are several threads on this topic now and that people are actually writing down long, structured and conclusive thoughts on the matter should enable CCP to grasp that they did something very wrong which needs correction.

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(off topic general explanations, feel free to skip)

I think it’s a bit too long but at the same time my feelings on the topic are too complex to be summed up in a shorter essay.

I have always been in the “non daily” team, for the first reason that it exacerbates biases in players and IMO a game that makes his playerbase worse is making itself worse ; and as well a making it less appealing for me, as it creates the need and provides the product at the same time instead of focusing their work on making the product better.
Dev time ( including testing, design, feedback loop etc we are talking weeks of man work for a simple feature ) being spent on player-altering mechanism is likely not dev time spent improving the user experience. In reality it can also be, it’s not necessarily exclusive - features can be used as a playtest with simple dailies and then used as the reward platform basis, but there is still always time spent against players rather than for players.

That being said you can’t discuss a feature without understanding it’s pros and goals first (least you do a strawman) ;

And what’s more you can’t say “remove it” to a feature that is already in place (as it would require more work to remove work and from the dev lead it means a net negative effect- yes I know, sunk cost but it actually is negative gain from an exec PoV, they HAVE TO give value to features in place) , instead you need ways to incrementally improve a feature to make it less toxic and more appealing, that is focus on its strong points and “round the edge” on its weak points.

I make that digression, because I noticed a lot of people (including me) requesting to remove features (with good reasons ! It’s me :smiley: ) but the issue is, those reasons were provided solely from the one-sided view of a player, and therefore going against some … untold rules that are likely to be present. As much as a player opinion can be nicely constructed and make sense, if it goes against exec goals it’s a waste of time from a constructive discussion target.

That being said, thank you for taking the time to read my (previous) long post.

/digress

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@Power_Armor It should but will it? We would first have to trust that CCP even read some of these threads and that if they do would understand that action is urgently needed. Alas, we almost never get updated on such matters. If it’s positive we would only find out by logging in one day and discover that the 8 dailies are back, no note in patch note or anything.
If it’s negative then players will engage less with it CCP will be left with more questions than answers and so will we.

I think that CCP DO listen to the player base, I found many proposal I made actually implemented, the issue is that the way players see the game and exec want the game may be fundamentally disjoint.

What we want is not what they need, and reciprocally. What’s more they may not know what they want, and so do we ^^

That being said, I think we already have a good start, as it seems to me that CCP already agrees that player satisfaction is more important than players paying (alpha, the new thing that gives skills), which avoids the greedy loophole of “only doing things that bring money” and which in turn would actually make the game worse, thus dooming us all.
Remember that most companies have a very small prevision range, 3 months usually, one year at most, and so what is usually better is what brings money in those 3 month time frame, event if it is “rorqual online” and the game needs drastic measures to get healthier 3 years later.

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Another interesting post ( all of it ), and thank you for going more in depth. You see things from an interesting perspective and I appreciate that.

I’m not afraid of long posts as long as they’re not preachy, haughty or self-serving.
Yours aren’t too long and do not have the aforementioned characteristics.

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I’m glad they do listen once in a while and I agree with you that what the execs want and need isn’t necessarily what players want.

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At the end of the day, we have to remember, they are making the game, not us. They have designs and concepts that they want even though we dont.

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@Geo_Eclipse_Oksaras That’s true. We players do not have the full and complete picture of what CCP wants and where they want to take the game. Not only that but complaining will avail us naught.
I’m happy to log in and do what I enjoy doing. I’m also happy to leave issues like Player Retention, balance and coding to the Devs. It’s too easy to criticize when we don’t have to deal with it so I will slow down on complaining and criticizing and I still congratulate the arts team who do a fantastic job.

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There is no scenario where manufacturing will ever be difficult. Not without making very specific out of the way tasks akin to the FW tasks. Even if you have to do two separate jobs it’s easy. But even that easy task is still more than simply bringing up the character select screen, which was all it took for years. I assumed they merely wanted people to actually log in with characters. But with this change I guess that’s not the goal either.

The issue is two completely different activities genres that aren’t necessarily related. The miner should not have to do missions (not even mining missions, which are just dumb and shouldn’t even exist in-game) or shield rep somebody. I think the Faction Warfare tasks should be removed in their entirety as that requires a specific corp alignment/character state and being in a particular region. Seeing as they fixed salvaging (you no longer need to be successful) they should bring that back. And mining should be static like manufacturing, but based on a raw amount and not m3 (as obviously anything other than veldspar takes more time). They could also make modifications like having to do a set number of security missions and 50LP for courier missions. But why should it be artificially time consuming in a way that detracts from the things the player actually enjoys?

I don’t think the point should be to make a chore. Which is what CCP seems intent on doing. If they don’t want people to have the SP then just get rid of the whole thing. I’d love for them to state honestly and openly what their goal is with this stuff. What it is they want to achieve.

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To add to what you wrote, i repeat here what i wrote elsewhere on the difficulty to do the daily tasks:

How am i supposed to apply damage or repairing someone if i’m not in a corp, live in highsec and don’t want to lose my ship?
How am i supposed to do missions if in the space where i live are no agents?
How am i supposed to get Evermarks if paragon stations are not reachable for me? - either because traveltime is too high or my security standing is too low so i can’t do the missions without getting blown up
What if signatures to be scanned takes ages, because i suck at scanning and they are very scarce in the space where i live - like 1 in every 5 systems?

That list goes even on, depending on your location, playstyle and other circumstances. While this is a plus for Eve as it shows the diversity in the universe, this is a problem when you design “AIR daily goals” to be supposedly doable for everyone without keeping your game design in mind.

That is why people are asking for 2 goals of each track including doubling of goals, as this is the only way for those goals to become doable at all. Or if that is out of the question a complete redesign of the goal content is needed.

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I think you and some other posters are mis-perceiving the primary point of game mechanics like Daily rewards.

First, you’re analyzing it here from the perspective of a vet player with multiple captains that can easily move from task to task. “Dailies are easy if you have 1 pilot positioned to Manu, 1 running missions, 1 in a WH, 1 doing Abyssals” etc. Also the “players only want the rewards” part…

Well sure, for Vet players, 10k SP and 1M ISK is useful, but not truly meaningful. So of course they want the rewards in few clicks, because the rewards aren’t worth spending more than a few minutes on.

For multiple players I spoke with who were still either working on their first few million SP and with less than 10-30 million ISK or so, these rewards were meaningful, they were worth spending time on, and having pilots able to mission, mine, scan, PvP, Abyss etc. wasn’t exactly trivial.

Take a look at a typical 8-mission list:

(from Ancient Gaming Noob blog: The Ancient Gaming Noob )

Sure, some vets could cheese the daily there in 5 minutes or less. But for newer players that’s incentive to try Manufacturing, Mining, Scanning, Mission Running, and PvP or fleet PvE all in one day. And to figure out how to “combo” their rewards, like run Security missions with a fleet-mate to get the LP, Kill NPC, and Shield boost rewards all together.

Who the heck cares if vets are getting paid a dribble for 5 minutes of clicks? Even if 100,000 pilots a day are completing 4 tasks for 10k SP and 2 million ISK, that’s a drop in the bucket. EVE pays out roughly 5,600 billion ISK per day.

The point should be to keep players coming back, keep EVE top of mind to more players, give both new and old players some incentive to log in and check every day. And for once, that system proportionately benefitted newer players more than older ones.

Giving new players more reasons to engage with the game in those first few weeks (when they normally drop like flies) seemed like a fairly good idea to me. But then, it’s always been difficult to restrain CCP from finding fancy new ways to shoot themselves in the foot. Any time they come up with something decent, it’s generally only a matter of time until they reverse it or remove it altogether.

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