Game suggestions, mission system overhaul, newbro retention

This Topic has been moved to Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Just so you know,

New bros have a higher chance of sticking around if they encounter pvp. Not just killing others but new players that are killed illegally tend to stick around longer than those that arenā€™t.

Yeah the mission system is old and could do with an update. I believe ccp do intend to either overhaul it or replace it with something else. All the new pve you have seen in the past 5 or so years is ccp testing various ways to make pve and seeing which ones work best.

Burners, drifters, roaming npcs, mining npcs, fobā€™s, all the events of the past few years and abysmal space. So itā€™s ā€˜on the agendaā€™.

That said, your expectations are out of whack and so are your figures. Hisec players (especially mission runners) risk very little and therefore the rewards reflect that. You canā€™t have every hisec player printing buckets of isk because of what it will do to the market. Null sec players make a ton of isk with capital ratting, and itā€™s widely understood to be ā– ā– ā– ā– ā– ā–  up. It is not a good idea to then mirror that in hi-sec. Hisec incursions as an example are arguably far more rewarding than they should be and hiked plex prices.

What youā€™re asking is to do to hisec missions what rorquals did to mining and the mineral market. The answers no.

Make them more fun, more engaging, less repetitive, less bottable - but the rewards should reflect the riskā€¦

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But then Incursions are one of not so many group PvE activities. They have to have enticing rewards to lure players in and not fail like Resource wars.

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For an incursion level payout, I think there should be serious risk.

I mean, a very real risk of losing you ship every time you do oneā€¦ and at the CCP level a statistical rate of loss that competes with the isk payouts (elevated payout for elevated risk, of course).

My opinion is that throttled-down payouts will be fine across the board if the intended ship loss level were lower (T1, T2).

However, isk making activities have been throttling up so we can all afford to be losing much more expensive ships.

Itā€™s totally screwing the noobs who canā€™t fly that stuff because (Even if they could fly it, they canā€™t afford it) all the older players can pve a tendu or faction cruiser in a couple hours.

Those are endgame ships and weā€™re treating them like theyā€™re disposableā€¦ because the isk is so easy to get. That keeps us in T3s and trigs and faction superhulls and it keeps the noobs out of pvp.

I think income needs to get nerfed hard across the board. The amount of time you lose when you lose a ship is the true cost.

If we drive those time costs up enough to where losing stuff above a t1 hull hurts even older playersā€¦ weā€™ll see more T1 fights that noobs can compete in.

And thatā€™s good for the game.

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I wonder if they could build into these high payout activities a randomized escalation that varies (from not enough to entertain a small fleet to hopelessly overpowering) that would force you to sometimes have to disengage and flee in the kinds of fleets that are running these things.

ThT would make it a lot more interesting.

Throw in some warp scrambling, bubbles, webbing, etcā€¦ to really push a fleet.

Iā€™d also like to see some NPCs in these scenarios give some gate navigation dilemmas (fleet splitting, fc timer decisions, stuff like that)

If we arenā€™t going to nerf the isk theyā€™re making, letā€™s make them earn it.

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tldr: Load of care bear crap

-1

Yup, they are lesser humans who really should not have rights to play any game and definitely not in EVE.

People who win in PvP are all greifers.

EVE should be changed into a PvE game because those people are not good people and donā€™t deserve EVE.

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Trouble here is like goons and rorquals.

We have our advantage now and REALLY deep wallets. If isk sources are nerfed it just takes new players even longer to catch up with us.

Itā€™s why itā€™s so damn important to be strict about buffs, once they happen they canā€™t always be easily taken away. Old ccp were better at this than the current ccp.

The main argument I see against all this is inflated market prices. Everyoneā€™s worried about inflated market prices. But you have to remember ā€¦ you HAVE to rememberā€¦ that CCP themselves set a lot of the market prices by the base cost of their seed items. If it were cheap to buy BPOā€™s and cheap to build the items, then the cost of said items wouldnā€™t be so high. There is a lot of artificial market rigging going on by the game itself. CCP has directed the market to be inflated to these heights. Besides, how can you possibly complain about the market prices when buying a carrier in delve space only costs 500 mil, yet buying a paladin in Jita is 1.5 bil?? I bought my revelation in delve space for 1.2 bil and they used to cost over 10 bil before the market prices got inflated? So the market prices are inflated in high sec where the money is low, and itā€™s NOT inflated in null sec where the money is extremely good. Seems very lopsided to me, and you want it to remain this way? People in high sec have a hell of a time trying to grind for items, especially when they are new. Whatā€™s a new player to do? They canā€™t be 100% pvp uptime the entire time they play, well Iā€™m sure they could, if the corp were good and supplied all their ships and skillbooks. But Iā€™ve never seen a corp like that before, and when push comes to shove, the answer to making some isk even in a PVP corp is ā€œrun some anomaliesā€.

Iā€™m not asking to grossly boost the mission rewards. Iā€™m just asking to streamline mission running, so that those who have invested 2.5 bil into their mission ship can at least have some hope of paying it off. Yeah, there is some safety in running missions, but does that mean the game has to give you peanuts? I mean if it takes 3 or 4 days as a seasoned vet to grind up to just buying and fitting a T1 battleship in the inflated market of EVE, can you imagine what itā€™s like for a newbie?

In my experience, too many people have come to this game looking for the mission system, wanting to grind the PVE, getting a solid skill base and some ships in the hangar, and THEN going for some PVP just to see what itā€™s all about. In my experience thatā€™s been 90% of MMO gamers out there. And in the 13 years Iā€™ve been playing this game I have seen far too many paying subscribers come and go because of the BS mission system and the gayness of getting wardecced. Thank GOD itā€™s gone. But if you want to see these PVE/mission corps grow and flourish, and actually provide a base for the newbies to come in and grow, to learn how to make the game profitable for themselves, get themselves into incursion ships and ultimately into pvp. This is what most people want when they come to the game. And the reason you see so many people in this game jump straight into PVP is because the ones that stay are the handful that actually do that. So I will say this again, we are looking at what 10 - 15 thousand players and 10 thousand alts, where the server should have 100K players and however many alts. And they could have had that at one point if they didnā€™t listen to the whiners about how bad the market is going to get. And look what happened. The market quadroupled anyway. Everything now is insanely expensive, except the null only items, which are now actually very cheap. Do you think there was some rigging going on much? Maybe by some of the alliances and maybe by a few of the devs who were their friends?

Itā€™s time to abandon this thought that EVE is a PVP based game. This mentality is what has kept the player base small, and has pushed countless thousands away from it. Iā€™m serious when I say I have personally seen hundreds leave this game because they came specifically wanting to grind out the PVE, and left because of a war dec. You can call them weak or whatever you want. But at the end of the day, the game mechanics failed them, AND THEY TOOK THEIR MONEY WITH THEM.

So in short Iā€™m not buying the whole ā€œthe market will get inflatedā€. Iā€™m asking about a consistent 50 - 75 mil an hour from solo L4 runners who really have their fits nice and tight and are high SP, vets of the game. The reason for breaking up the L1 - 4 agent missions and utilizing a new UI is not for the seasoned player who can pick whatever he wants. Itā€™s for the newbs, for the game itself to give them the option of doing something a little harder. You would be surprised at how many ships are lost in missions. There are some damn hard missions out there. Being able to pick and choose what you want to do is exactly what this game needs. And this would go hand in hand with the new war dec mechanics, allowing these PVE corps to focus on building up a solid base of missioners. Missions teach people how to do combat, they get people used to working in fleets. Itā€™s a friendly ā€œhelloā€ from the game community to newbies who want to work the mechanics of EVE and get themselves to a point where they want to tickle their toes with some PVP.

Allowing mission runners to make solid isk will not hurt the market or ruin the game. But what it WILL do is draw your standard MMO player to EVE, bringing their money with them. Forget these alpha players who want to plex their accounts. We are talking about the hard MMO market here, the guys aged 25-50 yrs old who have no qualms with paying to subscribe. CCP needs these people and for gods sake, Iā€™m telling you how to retain that market.

And one last thing. Make faction warefare OPTIONAL. I donā€™t want it forced down my throat as a mission runner. So separate faction missions and drop the whole destruction of rep through storylines. Thanks!

:roll_eyes:

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IV been thinking a lot about the missions, and over all system in eve. The idea that goons farm 6.5 Quadrillion isk a month in rats is insane, this tells me that we need to make some sort of change to the system that would prevent a lot of the current builds, and any other builds from taking place.

As a designer i want to say this can be done in many ways, but im not exactly sure what is best for eve at the moment (just due to little thought about it).

What i can say is that im getting ready to put a big post up on why retention rates are low, and youā€™d be shocked to know the truth.

Retention rates are low because the majority of online MMO players want to come to an MMO and grind, run the missions, build themselves up, do endgame content with their friends, etc. With eve, you are forced into the PVP life, and the PVP life is boring. The PVE life is boring, because missioning, what SHOULD be the core aspect of this game, is lackluster. Too many people complain about the carebears making money. And CCP in their infinite stupidity has listened to them. CCP wants this game to be a PVP only game. The PVE thing is an afterthought. Well CCP has pushed away nearly 100% of the gaming market because of the ā€œbe a PVP guy, loose everything, over and over and over, and grind small amounts of isk in anything remotely close to safe-ish spaceā€. They PUSH people into pvp. And I canā€™t stress enough that most MMO players, especially the ones with money, want PVE, and they want to get strong. Like it or not, EVE is an MMO. You canā€™t get around it. And as an MMO, it is missing some core MMO things, like, missioning.

How many players do you think World of Warcraft would have retained if your toon could be killed by any person, at any time, anywhere in the game, and your death is permanent? How many people woudl have stuck with it? Iā€™m going to go on a limb here and say, about the same amount of people that have stuck with EVE. A meagre 20,000. Meanwhile, because of WoW being bred as a proper MMO, retained over 3.5 million players. Those are numbers CCP can only ever dream of. Because their attitude of ā€œthis is OUR gameā€ has definitely come across in the gameplay of EVE. And with the Nullsec guys who the Devā€™s have pandered to for nearly 2 decades. This hatred towards guys making ISK in high sec, and the mentality of EVE being a nullsec only game, has got to come to an end.

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Psychopathy is traditionally a personality disorder characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits.[1]

`

The concept and subsequent reification of the diagnosis ā€œpsychopathyā€ has, to this authorā€™s mind, hampered the understanding of criminality and violenceā€¦ According to Hare, in many cases one need not even meet the patient. Just rummage through his records to determine what items seemed to fit. Nonsense. To this writerā€™s mind, psychopathy and its synonyms (e.g., sociopathy and antisocial personality) are lazy diagnoses.

not how it is in eve online.
First you canā€™t get to someone easily. People wanted to gank me for a long time and they did not success in HS . Sure I was not in a slow BS. I even was able to make ded3 when they were trying to get me (you know, catalysts without prop mod are pretty slow). I donā€™t know how much they paid in locator agents.
Second that is already possible in nullsec and people still live there (or so was I said ā€¦ maybe it was bots ?). There are also missions in ns.
Third the death is not permanent. Itā€™s a simple cost. Itā€™s ā€¦ annoying . But not perma death.

Indeed but getting your ship blown up and loosing all your modules and implants is pretty much akin to physically loosing your character in any other MMO. Of course you would still keep the levels you worked for (standard MMOā€™s here). But imagine if WoW had done what EVE does, and allowed it to happen anywhere, at any time, and at great cost to the player. I did this as an example to show that the majority of MMO gamers donā€™t want that kind of experience. And CCP is hardcore hellbent on providing that kind of experience. Until recently that is. Itā€™s this attitude that pushed away the vast majority of MMO gamers and made them play other games, taking their money with them. Now the player base of EVE is slowly dwindling down and even the hardcore peeps are leaving the game because they are bored of the nullsec life. Iā€™ve seen it, even recently. Just didnā€™t want to play anymore, EVE isnā€™t offering anything new. What we need is fresh blood here, we need those standard MMO players to come back. And the missioning system is that ticket. Giving the PVE corps all the tools they need to retain their players and make the game fun for them. Not forcing PVP down their throats, or encouraging them to live the Null life. And honestly, itā€™s not just about saving EVE. Itā€™s about making the game more fun than itā€™s ever been.

Thereā€™s too much hatred towards carebears being able to farm isk. Everyone worries that it will drive the market crazy and discourage people from null sec. Well Iā€™m here to tell you, thatā€™s all based on a bunch of nothing evidence. I would say the opposite, PVE corps and decent rates while missioning is only the beginning. For a new player, knowing they will only ever see a titan down in null, is encouragement enough for them to get down there. I think this whole re-design of the mission system definitely needs to be tried and tested, and if after 6 months to a year, it really truly doesnā€™t work, then revert it back to what it was. But I guarantee you, after 3 months of really refining the mission system and implementing these changes, player retention will be at an all time high, and so will new subscriptions. Numbers will jump straight up, as people tell their friends about the game, and old time players who quit the game years ago will come back. And they will all bring their money with them. And the game will be fun to play and rewarding to grind in high sec.

As for the psychopath part, well thatā€™s the nature of EVE. You almost have to be one to stay alive out there. As I have said, thereā€™s nothing wrong with it. Itā€™s a lifestyle you choose. And the game allows for it. So by all means, you do you. But for the newbies and carebears, these player types seem to rule the game and call the shots, and CCP only ever listens to them, and it seems these guys that live in null sec get all the goodies, all the extra ways to make income, all the benefits. And itā€™s sad, because it makes people quit the game, it drives your standard MMO player out the door, and the community laughs and name calls them on their way out, thinking they are being funny and smart, while the reality of it is those people are leaving and taking their subscription fee with them and going somewhere else. So CCP is loosing money and this ship needs to be course corrected because thereā€™s an island out there and sheā€™s heading straight for it.

I think the only problem with this post is that 432% of players disagree 235% of those being eve playerā€™s.

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You are deluded. For many items cost = cost of materials that come from players(OMG!) plus markup cost set by players(NOWAY!) and further affected by offer/demand dynamics(HOLYCRAP!).

One of your suggestions - return full salvage for meta modules - will cause the return of ā€œgun miningā€ and rise of prices for those meta modules on market (because they will yield more minerals) and devalue dedicated minersā€™ work.

Your Delve exampleā€¦ They have their internal market where they buy minerals materials much cheaper compared to trade hubs which results in cheaper manufacturing cost and cheaper product. Players accept those cheaper prices because they dont have to haul (plus alliance policies) those millions/billions of m3 of ore/minerals to trade hubs. Nothing of that have anything to do with CCP or market rigging.

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There we go to the inflated market thing. Well missioning hasnā€™t changed since 2009 and the market has quadroupled anyway. The mission system has NOTHING to do with market prices. Even if a high skilled player running a marauder with a full set of high grade implants worked the mission system Iā€™m proposing, you might make 100 mil an hour, maybe. This is about comparable to running vanguards in a fleet. You are SO WORRIED about market inflation. I really donā€™t give a rats ass about market inflation. The market will inflate itself regardless. This decade old argument of "itā€™s going to inflate the marketā€™ is total crap. You want market inflation? Look at rorqual mining down in null sec. Itā€™s becomming nearly impossible for high sec mining corps to do their thing with CODE being a massive force working against high sec mining down in ammatar space. Itā€™s not profitable to mine in high sec, itā€™s not profitable to build in high sec. Everything in that sense happens in null sec where the null alliances are rigging the market.

Once again the market is what it is because of RIGGING. Not because carebears are earning slightly more money. You are INSANE for thinking this. Your argument is completely invalid, itā€™s not based on facts. Itā€™s not based on anything. So CCP should stop reading this ā€œthe market will get inflatedā€ and start looking at the stranglehold these majour alliances have on mining and production, as well as the cost of BPOā€™s from the market.

This isnā€™t a cry for making more isk either, this is a callout to streamline missions, make them better, make the system as a whole more fun to work, give newbies a reason to stick around, allure to the standard MMO player that is looking for a game to fund. You can have your market fluctuations all you want but the reality is CCP needs to do something, and do it soon, to increase their player retention. And Iā€™m telling you, the mission system needs to be the backbone of the new player experience. Not sucking people down to null and flipping the bird to the ā€œgay carebearsā€ and laugh and sneer at people that want to live in high sec. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH ALREADY.

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Just FYI: for the last 5 years price of modules and ships didnt change much outside of some episodical stuff that gets more popular (higher demand) or less. The only price that is constantly rising is Plex.

Rorquals dont produce ISK, at all. If anything they are ISK sinks because there is fuel cost, ore refining fees, manufacturing fees and market fees at the end.

Your post is a lot of words about nothing. You mix mission rewards, mining, CODE, market, CCP, conspiracies and other stuff. You clearly want more isk but for some reason you cant explain why those changes are good for the game.

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No.
I played other games with perma death. Eve is lol to that respect.

I played diablo 2 in hardcore mode self-loot only Ladder and killed Baal in Hell. At this time there was still bugs of souls who would insta kill you or spike maledict in the act IV . Later on I also kill Ć¼ber diablo . One mistake, one misclick, one potion missing, one bat of an eye when the lightning soul becomes visible, or when nihlatak kills a corpse, and I lose all the hours invested in that character. None of my friends were able to go pass nm act 3 with the same restrictions.

Sorry, Eve is super easy in that regard.

Where is there hatred ? I can only see jealousy. And when people insult the other or being ā€œminerā€ or ā€œcarebearā€ it only tells about their stupidity - that they are unable to discuss with someone who does not share their goal in Eve. Being mentally challenged is THEIR issue, not yours.

Just report them for insults and donā€™t feed the trolls.

It does not.
I tell you why : you can make more money in HS doing missions than you can in NS. in HS you need less focus so you can run several alts at the same time, while a super pilot can only run one, and a mission runner in NS needs to be very careful not to lose his ships in the undock, canā€™t use his alts to farm in parallel.

So I tell you : try to farm in NS, try to farm in HS, and check for yourself which one is best. THEN you can laugh when you see people claiming about ā€œB isk/hā€ without factoring in the preparation time, the cost of the alts, etc.
The only thing better in NS right now is mining. That is, until someone booshes your 1B excavators.

Respect.