Freelance jobs were showcased at 2025 FanFest. Most of us predicted these were DOA, being either traps or tantamount to slave labor. Some folks though this might replace the tedium in agents (boy did they get that wrong).
A quick glance today seems to bear out that this feature is completely vapor. Unless I missed something ?
Pure vaporware.
I hope it is less than vapor. Even the emptiness of vacuum is too much content for this feature.
The UI is so ridiculously bad, too. I just had a glance over freelance jobs around Amarr. Most are mineral/ore deliveries. If you set it up as “Deliver this group of ores”, there is no way for people to check the market for the actual value of the ores. For those freelance jobs that only want one specific ore, selling them to market buy orders gives you more ISK than delivering them to the freelance slave labor tasks.
One feature I found particularly interesting
is the system that pays rewards when you defeat specific individuals or capsuleers affiliated with corporations.
It really reminds me of the bounty systems of old.
The problem is it’s not practical. It’s too much hassle to click accept on each and every one of your characters, so the previous bounty system was better because it was automatic and you didn’t have to sign up to claim the reward.
Are Military Campaigns using the underlying Freelance system? Maybe AIR missions were always using an earlier version of the Freelance system as well.
That being the case, I don’t see why we couldn’t have a continual batch of NPC-generated jobs to choose from?
When they announced creating Freelance Jobs, I for one envisioned more freedom to make jobs that reward both the employer and employee. I didn’t expect much, but we got nothing but hot air from this feature. What is so hard about making a “mission engine”? I really don’t see anything worthy of accepting, nor do I see any reason to post a job.
Even if you do post a job, good luck getting anybody to notice.
Good luck finding one that isn’t a) bait or b) slave labor.
If I were tasked with making a mission engine, the first thing to assure all the jobs getting equal attention is simple. Let’s say you have 2500 jobs in a system. Treating them like a deck of cards, it would shuffle them, draw off the top and display the first 10 jobs. When anyone picks that job, it gets sent to the bottom of the deck. If a job is complete, it gets discarded. When the jobs reach the bottom of the deck, it shuffles again.
I have seen several player generated missions where the payout is too small. I would have the player decide what needs to be done, but let the engine produce the reward range needed for the task. This would assure the employee is paid well enough. For example; delivering cargo to a red zone, would pay a lot more than just a few hops through high sec.
Freelance Jobs needs to be greatly upgrade in several areas or scrapped.
It’s too bad the CSM doesn’t relay any ideas to CCP. Perhaps they should create a Council of Stellar People (CSP) in order to help CCP consider some of these possibilities.
The CSM does relay ideas - just not any of ours - and just not ones generally outside of null-sec.
AIKO FOR CSP!!!
Well that’s basic common financial sense. You wouldn’t pay more for ore that you can buy off a market yourself. Say I needed 1,000,000 m3 of Plagioclase. The only way I would ever consider getting it through a freelance job, is if I got it cheaper than off of the market.
The problem is, why would anyone accept such a job, if they can just sell the ore to the market at a better profit? You wouldn’t. So, what is the point of freelance jobs again? EVE market system functions so well, that there is absolutely no point for jobs that involve acquiring a material item and passing it on to the job issuer.
Sure, but it completely defeats the point of most (all?) Freelance jobs. Which is what we all basically said at the time it was showcased the first time at FanFest. As an example, take this one:
• Mine 999,999,999,999,999,999 Veldspar in Onnamon
• Reward per unit: 0.0m ISK, Reward Total: 0.0m ISK
I remember people touting the Freelance jobs prior to their release on the forums. I don’t remember by name who did it, but there were guys who thought that it was gonna be one of the greatest things implemented in the game. I thought the whole thing was a joke, but I was wrong too – Freelance jobs are so bad they’re not even funny.
This is what most of the complaints about freelance contracts I have heard sound like to me:
A guy takes out a loan to open a restaurant and does zero marketing or advertising of any kind, then blames the bank and the guy who invented cooking when nobody shows up.
I’m still not even sure what this threads complaint is about. My take away so far is that some people think it’s CCPs fault because players set up shitty contracts? Are people new to Eve or something? I personally love Freelance contracts lol. I havent used them a ton, but every time I put up a contract for 200 coercer hulls in a random hs station at jita price, it usually fills within a few days. But I also tell people I have a contract up… I don’t sit there hoping it fills lol.
Banks in real life try to prevent scamming, not facilitate it; if you wanna go with that analogy. It’s not an adequate analogy for this anyway.
A more accurate analogy is – Meta (Facebook) providing a platform to sell/buy things/offer services – a function gets hijacked by scammers – people complain – Meta does nothing, doesn’t even read complaints. Which is pretty much what the freelance jobs feature is like in a nutshell: FB marketplace inside EVE Online. Except it’s even more riddled with scammers.
If you’ve found a use for it, good for you. You’re in the minority on this one. I personally don’t care. I get everything I need through the market and contracts, and this thing has no use for me whatsoever. I expect freelance jobs to remain an obscure dark stinky corner of EVE (kind of like Hypernet, but without the gilded paint and mirrors on the high walls) where unscrupulous vets will go to scam new inexperienced players out of their first earnings in the game. If one is into that kind of thing, have at it.
I don’t have a problem with scamming, the issue is that freelance jobs provide neither utility nor convenience. There are easier better ways to do anything they offer, and your costs and hassle are less, and you are also less exposed to scams. The idea of a freelance market is a good one, but like many things, CCP has failed to actually implement a useful system. As always, I suggest they create a council of veteran players to provide input and feedback, we might call this the Council of Stellar Players (CSP) and CCP could benefit from their expertise.
I have a problem with scamming. It rides along the same slippery slope as impersonation, fraud, RMT and character theft. And sorry, we have enough of this sh*t in real life without having to also deal with it in a hobby.
Not every one of us needs or wants to hold a mirror up to EVE to reflect real life…
You’ll counter with scamming is a part of EVE and I’ll counter that things have changed in the last 2 decades. Then you’ll counter with how CCP (now FC) doesn’t expressly prohibit it and I’ll counter that these “hapless” victims are potential future players you’re driving out of the game. You’ll counter that there’s no proof that this happens and I’ll say you have no proof that it doesn’t, either.
Essentially your argument boils down to “because I can, and because I want to, I should be allowed to”. It’s not a very good one.