I’ve noticed that things seem to be giving greater and greater rewards, especially for the top 1%. I’ve just come back to see the price of PLEX has doubled.
Level 4 missions do not give enough isk. They are the gameplay played by the most average player, he who only has a couple hours to play. Being the main source of income for most PvE players, we have been left far behind everyone else.
Please increase the isk rewards for Level 4 missions; otherwise, they are a waste of time.
Thank you!
p.s. please do not turn this into a ‘how to make more money doing L4s’ thread
Level 4 missions were pretty good years ago. Salvaging them after the noctis was invented made it even better. But you could buy a plex for 1.5 billion back then.
Now with the inflation, and no end in sight, Level 4 missions aren’t what they used to be. But… this isn’t a problem easily solved. If the rewards are increased the inflation problem would also rise. Can we really do that?
The reason is because inflation is not coming from the Level 4 mission runners; it is coming from the corp barons. They have trillions of isk. They are the ones hoarding and buying all the PLEX causing it to go up in price.
Any inflation this might cause by level 4 mission runners is so small as to be non existant.
I’m against the idea of increasing payouts to L4 missions, and here is why:
The combined value of the bounties and loot/salvage is decent, especially for the longer missions
Missions are the only way to get LP and the only reliable and repeatable way to increase faction standings via storyline missions, so you could say that LP amd standings increase (corp and faction) are the real reward, the real reason why you’d do missions at all over some other form of PVE.
Those looking to make more ISK have better opportunities elsewhere. Want to stick to PVE? Do combat sites or Incursions or Invasions (more lucrative drops and bounties). Newbies want to score big ISK quickly? Do exploration (where a 3m Imicus with a week’s worth of training can easily score 50m in an hour of exploration). Want to make 50m/hr + rewards literally anywhere any time whether docked or in space, even while multitasking (eg. combat, mining, etc)? Do Project Discovery
Plenty of ways to passively increase your wealth (ie. money in your sleep): trading, planetary interaction, science, manufacturing, etc
If you confine yourself to the easy and cozy, you should not make anywhere near as much money as those who venture out into LS/NS and engage in harder PVE or heavy PVP. This is where the real money is to be made. I would not want an L4 mission running to make a quarter as much money as someone running combat sites in NS or even LS.
By the way, if you do Project Discovery while doing missions, you’ll get the ISK, LP, bounties, loot/ salvage, standings increases, and an additional 50m/hr + rewards from PD. If anything this is a massive increase from any previous point in EVE history.
Level 4 missions are for solo players who only have a couple hours to play. They need a decent source of income. Level 4s right now are not worth the time.
That’s what Abyssal space is for. You’ve got 20 minutes or less? Do Abyssal space. By contrast, L4 missions take up to 2 hours and require travel, might need to reject missions and then you don’t want to reject two or more in a given time frame without hurting your agent/corp/faction standings, etc.
Do multiple Abyssal sites. Better, more valuable loot. More challenge. More fun.
Missions are not for ISK. Never were, never will be. Their main rewards, the main reasons for doing them come in forms other than ISK.
As a player who has maybe an hour a day to play EVE, and enjoys running Lv4 missions at times, I have to disagree and say that Lv4’s make good isk for high sec.
Maybe not enough to grind isk to PLEX for omega if you have limited time, but if you have limited time, just sub. Even the full price of $15/mo is a bargain compared to buying a single console game once/month. And if you’re grinding Lv4’s to PLEX, you’re just working to play a game, and not really exploring the game to its full potential. Seriously, just sub, or float between alpha and subbing as the mood strikes you as I do for the time being.
You are welcome to argue that L4s are enjoyable and you find the ISK rewarding for the enjoyment and leisure you experience within your time constraints (I agree on this point).
However, even by Alpha-restricted money-strapped solo-operating HS standards, the L4 mission payout is complete and total crap (when not done in conjunction with Project Discovery) in relation to all the other things that could be done, again under those restrictions, in HS. I would never under any circumstance suggest to anyone that L1-L4 missions are a money maker.
I would advise doing them to do L1-L4 missions for other reasons: casual no-rush play, LP + standing rewards, controlled environment for trying new fits or solo/fleet training, but not making ISK as a primary motivation in relation to other active ways you can make money in HS (under the aforementioned restrictions).
This is very subjective. We can make it a bit more objective I suppose. I can make ~50mil isk in about 45 min farming certain Lv4 missions. Which has translated for me into about 1-1.5bil isk/mo, which in my book isn’t bad for limited time. But then we get back to subjective, as what is “enough” isk. But all I can say is that for my needs, that is certainly “enough”.
EDIT: I am also not ashamed to say that I do only lazy missioning, and that income for me is just relaxed fireworks watching and letting the isk roll in, not uber min-max missioning.
from the MER. Clearly L4s are not where the ISK is or where most players, even the casuals are playing these days. You should keep enjoying them if that is your thing of course, I really don’t think they need a boost. The new content is where the ISK should be, not stuff from 2005. They are beaten content, one I am sure CCP wants to move players away from. If you need ISK, there are plenty of other choices out there, some even more free of PvP than L4s such as Abyssal sites, you might want to check out.
(If you gonna say ‘paying for PLEX’ then it will be continued with ‘PLEX is not right but luxury’ and not, not everybody HAVE TO be able to play paying with PLEX. Going this way you can /thread right now).
farming in a VNI in NS is 60M/h. Just raw isk, not the loot/salvage.
Doing anoms in HS is 10M/h. Just raw isk(that is, bounties). Doing exploration of sleeper cache can net 60M/H in blue loot (that IS raw isk because it sells to NPCs). Exploration of ded sites nets maybe 5M/h ? (again, the loots gives much more but just in terms of raw isk generation)
so if you want to generate isks, the L4s are much better than NS anoms, or another activity in HS.
if you want to acquire isks, then buying plexes and sellingthose in Jita is the most efficient way.
I love your post. Totally agree with you. High-sec in general is very bad at providing players with opportunities and make things interesting. (see some of my recent threads about suggestions for improvements for more info).
Anyhow, thank you for bringing this to light. My biggest plight is with Distribution Missions - I enjoy these the most but no longer do them because the pay is abysmal, basically around 600k isk MAX with top social skills and the missions can be very short - same system, to many jumps which is nonsensical.
CCP really need to improve this system, and make the missions at least more varied and have this reflected in the isk payout.
Now, to the Level 4 combat missions - the battleship is one of the poorest ships in the game imo and unfortunately we are stuck with this as the main income generator in highsec if we want to do level 4 missions. This leaves you making isk at such a slow rate, while constantly losing your drones if you use them, and it’s mind-numbingly boring. I’d say there’s nothing more worse/boring in Eve or in any game i’ve played online than 1. Null ratting and 2. level 4 combat missions.
The payout per hour is not worth the investment in 1. time spent skill training to get max skills + fittings for Combat Ship and 2. Amount of ISK needed for said fit.
I used to have the same approach but now i’m just apathetic about the whole situation. I wish I could think positively about it again.
However - I see from some of your other posts that you don’t think there should be an increase in payment? Can’t say i’m a fan of this idea…there definitely needs to be an overall improvement in highsec payout and options to make gameplay more engaging and interesting long-term.
Even if what you say is true, it also completely misses the point: The wealth procured from higher end activities has never been in the form of ISK/Blue loot in the first place, always in the form of (non-blue) loot, salvage, rare drops, etc. This is why ratting, exploration, etc have always been a treasure trove compared to HS. To artificially restrict the wealth procured in these activities to ISK/Blue Loot is absurd and meaningless, an artificially self-imposed restriction of no practical value. Do not be adverse to selling to the market.
Actually, Distribution missions are the best, though not for the reasons you’d think, and I’ll tell you why: if you know how (I won’t go into details here), you can do a fuckload of distribution missions in an hour, more than 16 (which is required for a storyline); as a result, you can do multiple storylines per day (I’ve easily done like 6 or so in the span of 4 or so hours) in a cheap 20m ship all while semi-AFKing!!!, keeping in mind that Storylines are the only reliable and repeatable way to increase faction standing. Also, these missions only take a few minutes to complete (~1-~5 minutes), you can usually do two at once, and the LP reward is decent relative to how long they take (LP is worth far more than the ISK)
Wholeheartedly disagree. If this is how you feel, you may need to re-evaluate how you fit your ship and your expectations as to how each ship is intended to be used. I suspect one of the major reasons why you feel this way is because BSes are very imprecise, so their actual damage is far less than their theoretical damage. Remember: Actual Damage = Theoretical Damage * Precision; if the precision is lacking (relative to your intended target), your theoretical damage doesn’t mean jack ■■■■. There are ways to address this easily both solo and with the help of fleetmates. Feel free to reach out to me on my discord server and we can discuss further.
An example: One time a buddy and I were ratting in Tengus. His DPS was about 3x that of mine, but I was killing rats about 5x faster than him. Why? Because I was heavily fitted for precision, and he was only fitted for DPS.
To a large extent this is true, and it’s also one of the reasons why CCP is trying to shake things up to get these players out of their comfort zone both through incentives and disruptions. Whether HS players choose to budge or not, they’re missing out big time, but at least they serve a vital function: they give ISK via market to those of us who go out of our way to do more than just HS missioning, from basic indy to procuring and selling rare drops. Basically, they’re important for the economy if nothing else (ie. considering they’re rather isolated).
One of the many reasons mission runners don’t branch out is they literally don’t know what else is out there in the game (esp. if they don’t join a corp of knowledgeable + experience players to learn from), so hopefully the agency will help with exposure. Another major reason is, of course, risk aversion combined with time constraints.
I believe L4 missions (and maybe combat sites in general) could be updated to be more dynamic and exciting rather than static and predictable, absolutely. But ultimately I think the improvement needs to come in the form of enjoyment moreso than direct ISK payouts for the reasons I’ve described (namely that the indirect wealth procured in L4 missions is good relative to the low risk = low reward solo activity they are in the safe haven of HS).
