Why is it an event at all. Its the same as opportunities or career missions, both task and reward wise. Not challenging even for newbros. Not rewarding even for newbros.
The thing with mixing tasks like fighting, mining and production is, people like to do what they like to do, they specialize their toons, and hate being forced to do what they dont like. In a sandbox game anyway.
What I’d like to see as an event if they want to mix some fighting, mining and production too, would be, spawn celestial beacons with special asteroids, like in mining missions, guarded, spawn special hacking sites to seed some special BPCs, guarded, craft some stuff in several steps and sell it to NPC stations. Some Agency stations maybe (where are those btw? how does the Agency exist not represented anywhere in space?). There was something of this kind when T3Ds were introduced i think, some Jove parts or something.
But every activity should count towards event participation. Mixing several activities should count more, reward more, but shouldnt be necessary or obligatory.
You obviously miss the point. What ccp has been doing for new player retention has been nothing less then counter productive. They keep pushing new players to the pve which frankly is some of the most boring aspects of the game. How is getting new players to grind rats or mine endlessly going keep them here? Conversely, pvp and the meta game are the single most exciting aspects of eve, yet ccp has been actively cocooning new players from pvp - where are the pvp opportunities for new players? How are they supposed to actually become aware of the whats out there? Sure if you have an enterprising new player - they can go out and find pvp, but it is not easy - and ccp makes no effort to help. In short, ccp would be better off making the game better for vets, while expanding pvp opportunities for all. IMO this would make the game more interesting/exciting and hopefully bring in new and returning players.
Wasnt that the point of f2p EVE expansion? Expanding of PvP opportunities is there in skills alphas can have, mainly no cloak and ships that are cheap and still usefull in PvP, like cruisers.
the fact is that new players go to the pve first no matter what ccp does. an event like this simply gives them an added reward for doing what they are already doing, it gets them logged in and out into space where opportunities for pvp and player interaction exist. or it gets them trying a different aspect of the game that they might not have tried before.
I agree, ccp should be doing more to guide players towards the pvp aspect. i’ve always thought that there should be something guiding them towards faction warfare (yes FW has its own problems, but it is one of the first environments where a new player, even an alpha, could really thrive in pvp)
Maybe something like an additional optional mission arc after the player completes the sisters of eve, one that gives them FW style missions, starting slow with “training” of capturing a fake plex in HS to teach them the basic mechanics, and then sending them into LS for more standard FW style missions. (but without having officially signed up yet, and without incurring the normal standings loss) and at the end of the arc they get given the option to join up.
however a player needs to do that at their own pace. and “missed opportunity” is a very real thing, and can have a negative impact on player enjoyment. if we give them an agency mission like “destroy a frigate in low-sec” sure it might get some people out there, but more likely than not they are going to die, and if they aren’t prepared for that pushing them in the deep end early will just leave them discouraged and unable or unwilling to complete it. discouragement is bad for retention.
Off topic, but about the Agency. So I completed the 50 point level, are there any rewards past that? I’ve done a couple of additional challenges, but why continue with no reward? Or am I missing something here…?
Update: Now have 72 points. No additional reward, nor any indication of any. Hey CCP, some clarification on this?
This isn’t for us. It’s for actual newbies flying alpha ships. The rewards are… really cheap ships.
If they put ships in the boxes we’d actually use, we’d be screaming bloody murder about how they’re trying to put capship (or battleship, or freighter, or whatever) manufacturers out of business by printing ships.
I’ll be honest, I now avoid these “tasks” out of spite. Even though it won’t take long to complete a mining or security mission, the rewards are laughably absurd. The Sunesis can be bought off the market after an hour of lvl 3 mission running.
The question is, how long would it take you as a noob to get to that point from scratch?
If you just started an alpha clone and worked your way up through the level 1 missions to the level 3 missions would take days. And that is if you knew what you are doing and knew how to run missions efficiently and didnt lose a ship.
I figure your average new alpha clone would take a week to get to the point where they could get a Sunesis.