Anyone notice the decline of players in Mission Hubs? I’ve been in Sukirah .06 (Domain) for a couple of years now, and it seems that its previous population of 25+ players running missions have vanished.
Could just be this system but curious if anyone else has noticed this elsewhere. Seems this may have started with the introduction of Alpha accounts, but may just be a coincidence.
Well if you’re right, can you blame them? Missions has probably been the most neglected content by CCP. Some, if not most, have not changed in over a decade. Even the loot drops are completely predictable. Used to be that you had an off-chance of something valuable but that’s been long gone. Would be nice if they applied some of that new AI tech to missions, with a more random loot table too.
In the last few months Alphas can no longer run T4 missions. This is likely the reaction you are seeing.
Overhauling the mission system is complex for CCP, it would require the focus of several developers and content designers. Abyssal and Triglavian content is the ‘hot new thing’ getting all their attention right now.
It is sad that mining and mission running, probably the single two most popular high sec PvE activities, have been essentially unchanged for 10+ years. How about a mining revamp that actually makes mining rewarding and interactive, CCP? Or a mission revamp that adds some random elements so you’re not running the exact same content over and over?
Both mining and missions to properly revamp is a massive undertaking. I’m sure it’s on their want to do list, but that is a huuuuge amount of time and money to gut those systems.
MIssions runners in High Sec have dropped off a lot. It mostly has to do with the fact that CCP has nerfed bounties on NPCs and nerfed to death the loot tables.
Appreciate the comments. Just for grins, I’d like to see some “Easter Eggs” occasionally in asteroids after you mine them completely, maybe some rare minerals or some such.
As far as missions go, yeah, they’re stale as a loaf of French bread from the revolution…
CCP did add special rocks - to drive interest in the new moon mining. Randomly/rarely, high-grade ores may be produced during a moon chunk explosion.
So that’s why there is so much competition in hisec exploration now.
Exploration is probably the only decent activity in highsec at the moment, I second all the above @CCP Missions in general need’s a total overhaul, I would also love to see Mission agents in Nullsec player stations as a service module or something we can hire , like hire an Agent to be in station y and give level 1-5 missions for the locals.
As a Nullsec player I think running missions in my local would be more active than spinning a haven, they should also be paying about a comparable amount of isk either in drops or bounties.
I don’t think the problem with missions is the fact that its the same content over again, it’s that so many other things have far better ISK/hr ratio. Most LP is so competed for they’re relatively worthless. To get the most out of missioning you also basically need an alt (or a corpmate slave) to clear up the salvage and modules. It is a surprisingly lot of work for maximum pay, which still isn’t as lucrative as some other activities with less effort.
Still, it’s easy and sure way to get ISK for almost no risk. Just not as much as you used to. And personally I prefer it that way,
And we have a winner. If “make more isk online” would be more about spaceships than making money, the game would be much better.
Maybe for some, but Eve has probably the best MMO market play. Making isk is the only thing some do, and its for fun.
You want to just fly around, then cool do it. Others want to make spread sheets and break down the most effective ways of making isk.
Well, it’s also partly because losing in PvP hurts tangibly, generating ISK is a concern for anyone who wants to PvP. Can’t count on faction mods dropping from every kill.
I mean, sure, I know some people only PvE / mine and never PvP (at least on that specific character), but thems the breaks. I solely missioned to cover PvP expenses, and back in the day it could take tens of missions to pay for the one clone, the implants (not even fancy ones), etc, though at least ships were cheap, even BS’s.
Not everyone grind for isk (where is old EVE community?) or just find way to fund PvP. Especialy when there are many better ways for this than missions. Some people like to just chill after work blaping f1 key for hour or two.
I came back from exploration to missions. Isk is in exploration (one day I made 5 bil just in hisec escalations) but after blocking lvl 4 missions to alpha competition only rise. Now finding site is success and you still get bunch of thiefs. Results are that you can’t make so much isk doing exploration now.
CCP is so terrible at fighting with bots…
Lowsec at the moment is PVE heaven. Vast swathes of unpopulated systems begging to be stripped.
Maybe, maybe not. Isk/h or isk/day doing lowsec exploration will be much lower (or same as in hisec) because you will be running if anyone will popup on d-scan. I also know from pretty good source that competition in low in terms of combat exploration is not much less than in hisec. Maybe we have different experience but it’s not a gameplay I look for right now.
Your source either isn’t that good or they’re in the wrong areas and / or playing at busy times.
I would personally choose losing the odd site to a prober than spending all day in the same (rare) 4/10s with several other Gilas.
You also have the added bonus of anoms that are actually worth running, clone rats and non DED sites with a chance of decent drops and escalations.
I help out with a few newer guys who are solely into hisec exploration and they have almost exclusively turned to turning over high quantities of hisec anoms to farm escalations, including those that lead to lowsec. This appears to be a much more fruitful method and whilst hideaways and refuges for example in Sansha space only escalate to 3/10s the potential for making a relatively tidy sum is still there.
probably just moved on to a different LP store. Looks like you would mainly be farming CN bcus in that system but the tags got expensive and the BCU price didn’t go up much, so you can get better isk/lp in other systems. Probably worth checking overall highsec bounties rather than one specific system for general mission trends.
LP is valuable if you know where to look, fed navy webs have been bouncing between 2500-3000 isk/lp pretty much since abyssal space came out, and there’s a handful of other items right around the same rates.
imo the isk/hr for highsec missions is pretty high when compared to the risk, most of the activities that beat mission running for isk/hr have much higher risk.
oh and forget loot/salvage it just isn’t worth it.