More on the missioning system (proposal)

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
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I would cross link my original post here, but I’m sure with a little bit of scrolling down you will find it. I would like to suggest further enhancements to my original post, which I will attempt to mirror here. At some point I will even photoshop some windows and screenshots so you can get a visual of what I’m talking about.

So my original post had several ideas on the mission system improvements. In a nutshell those improvements were:

  1. Create a new UI window that pops up when you talk to an agent. This window will show a series of buttons for various options. Each mission category (L1 - 4) has its own set of missions that range from rediculously easy to insanely difficult (as it currently is in game). Separate the standard missions for each level into 3 difficulty categories. Separate all faction missions into their own category. Separate anomic missions into their own category. When you talk to an agent the UI window pops up, you choose the type of mission you are looking for, and the agent then spits a mission at you.
  2. Remove negative faction standings from cashing in storylines while increasing positive faction standings, so missioners don’t get a negative faction standing unless they want to.
  3. Bring back high yield/faction mission loot. Make fighting against rogue drones profitable again. Make some of the missions have a chance of dropping faction loot, like fed navy MWD for example.
  4. Introduce benefits for having high standings towards NPC corps. This should be related to personal standings, not PC corp standings. If your personal standings are high with say, Caldari Navy, then you should have ISK bonus percentiles to your mission reward/bounty.

Those were the suggestions in my OP. A lot of the rest of my post talks about why I feel this will work, why it’s needed, and it’s a detriment to the game how the mission system is so lacking. It literally pushes people out of EVE.

To further augment the overall idea of my mission overhaul, here are some new ideas to add to the bucket list of things:

  • Security License: Storylines (the ones that no longer destroy your standings) now have a chance of offering you one of these items as a reward. They would bind to you personally, you would not be allowed to trade or sell them. You can only have one installed so if you get multiples, then oh well, you have to trash them, unless you get a better one. These licenses add a further bonus to your ISK pool for each bounty received. They would operate in 4 tiers, one for each level of agent:
    i) Bronze - adds a 2% bonus to bounty
    ii) Silver - adds a 5% bonus to bounty
    iii) Gold - adds a 15% bonus to bounty
    iv) Platinum - adds a 25% bonus to bounty
    These licenses would only be applied if you are working within the empire for which they are issued. For example, if I have a Gold amarr license installed, then I only get the payout of 15% while missioning in amarr space. If I had a lesser license before installing the gold license, the gold license overrides the previous bonus. The 15% would apply until I receive a Platinum license, then I would have a 25% bonus to bounty.

  • Reduced LP from missions: LP should be more of a reward for running incursions. This would reduce the effect SOE missions have on the game and would discourage the majority of the mission crowd to pool up in a single system where gankers are abundant. By reducing LP from missions, you would be more justified in offering mission runners more ISK, especially with bumps in corp standings and by installing licenses. This will also justify offering the player addition rewards based on faction loot drops. It’s harder for missioners to buy loot from the LP store but they can now start finding them in random missions instead. Of course, these drops will be limited and rare, less rare than finding a faction drop in null sec. But I won’t even talk about how overpowered the consistent isk generation is in null sec.

  • Increase the raw isk rewards for lower level missions. Receiving 50K for completing an L1 is a joke. L1 mission runners should be able to earn at least 5 mil an hour, not the 200K it currently sits at. The baseline L1 mission reward system should be doubled in ISK value for L1’s and L2’s. L3’s should be all about getting your standings towards the NPC corp you are working for so you get bonuses to mission reward and bounty. The L4’s are all about that high level mission grinding where you get the platinum license, bonus to mission rewards and bounty.

The NPC corp bonus system explained:
NPC corps should offer bonuses on mission rewards. The more you work for them, the more they like you. Remember, you are the one eliminating their enemies, keeping their assets safe. They should be more than willing to offer you some sort of extra compensation. These bonuses work off both mission reward+bonus and also bounties of NPC’S. Here’s how it should work:

Standings of:
0 - No bonus
1.0 - You get a 2% bonus on mission rewards and bounty
2.0 - You get a 4% bonus on mission rewards and bounty
3.0 - You get an 8% bonus on mission rewards and bounty
4.0 - You get a 12% bonus on mission rewards and bounty
5.0 - You get a 20% bonus on mission rewards and bounty
6.0 - No change from 5.0
7.0 - No change
8.0 - You get a 30% bonus on mission rewards and bounty
9.0 - You get a 40% bonus on mission rewards and bounty
10.0 - You get a 75% bonus on mission rewards and bounty
Note: The bonus to bounty from licenses sits on top of the bonus to bounty offered by this system
Note also: That obtaining a license applies to ALL NPC’s within a faction’s territory (even low/null sec)

Once again I know there will be a lot of naysayers out there, complaining that it’s too much isk made in high sec. But I’m here to tell you, once again, IT DOESN’T MATTER. Even with these changes made to the game and a 10.0 corp bonus + a platinum license, that makes a 100% bonus to BOUNTY, you are still only earning about 75 mil an hour as a high level mission runner. Which is more than fair, considering the insane market rigging going on, the insane cost of all items in the game now.

It’s time to see the missioning system as the backbone to the game, the new player experience. With changes to the wardec, now is the perfect time to impelement sweeping changes to how PVE works, and how much carebears can earn. It’s safer than ever to be a carebear. And that’s a GOOD thing. Because we want people to stick with the game, those who want to live the standard MMO life. The cries and whims of the nullsec crowd, constantly complaining about how much ISK the carebears make, well TOO BAD. The game has gone stagnant. It was once vibrant. People come to this game with visions of building themselves up and becomming powerful. And with a GOOD implementation of a proper PVE environment, CCP can breathe the life into this game it so desparately needs. Once again I’ve seen far too many people leave this game because of a wardec. The wardecs are gone, but now it’s time to look at missions. It’s the core experience of EVE. It should be. Getting into a good PVE corp, running the missions, building up your wallet, your ships, your skills. THAT is what will make people want to PVP, it will get them strong, it will give them the will to come at the PVP corps with some decent ships and skills to run them. No more pandering to the PVP crowd. Seriously CCP it’s time to consider taking EVE in a new direction. Because the current direction it’s in is making it hit a wall. I don’t want to see this game die. And for once, I want to have FUN running a high sec corp. YOU NEED TO DO THIS. Thanks

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More to the license system:

  • Licenses would be installed like an implant, in fact it would be a part of the implant system. You would add slots 11, 12, 13 and 14. This would allow the players to install a license for each faction they run for. You could add a new skillbook that allows the player to install licenses. So lvl 1 of the skillbook unlocks bronze level licenses. Level 4 in the skill unlocks platinum level licenses. Level 5 in the skill would relate to bountry received from Incursion rats, which would not be a part of the physical implant set (just a bonus). Each level of training would not only unlock the better licenses but would also give a 1 or 2% bonus to the licenses effect (so a max level license holder would see a 5-10% bonus to their license)
  • Each license slot would relate to a certain faction:
    11: Caldari
    12: Amarr
    13: Gallente
    14: Minmitar
  • Licenses are entirely loosable through being podded or clone destruction
  • Licenses cannot be bought/sold and only obtainable via the storyline missions offered by security agents, and are locked to your character
  • A license would be a physical object that you would carry around your cargohold, much like an implant

And once again, a little more on why I feel this is necessary. Because too many people want a PVE experience from an MMO. A space MMO where people come to play, want to play it for the PVE content first (in most cases). Very few people come to EVE and want to jump straight into the PVP content. These changes would help the community overall by offering new and seasoned players alike to build themselves up, get the skills they need, be able to afford moderately decent throwaway ships (like VNI’s for example) while not breaking their bank. They could even afford to loose their main mission ship for whatever reason and rebuild themselves in a relatively fast manner. The addage of “once a carebear always a carebear” is horribly false. Most carebears I’ve ever known were very interested in the PVP system. They just got rocked by it too soon and too hard when their corp got a war dec. But most of these PVE corps also offer light forms of PVP content. I know mine does. And so does every other PVE corp I’ve ever known. Everyone wants to at least try PVP but those people also don’t want it shoved down their throat. They also want to be able to establish themselves within the game to where they feel they can compete. It’s this level of satisfaction knowing you worked your way up to a certain point where you can do these things, this is what is lacking from EVE. It takes a special kind of player to run the PVE content while suffering wardecs and ganks and god knows what else (just look at the poor miners in ammatar space).

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More on the mission system.

Eve is a very solo game. Almost everything EVE wants you to do is solo content. Want to scan anomiles and hack? It’s a solo job. Want to run abyssals? It’s a solo job. Station trading, solo. Flying a freighter, well probably solo. Escalations, solo. Everything is solo. The only content that is NOT solo, is incursions or big pvp fleet battles, which never happen in high sec.

The thing about missions is that it brings people together. It’s the only thing you can do in the game, literally, that brings just a handful of people, say 3-4, maybe even 5 people, to do something PVE related. It’s an activity for a corp to train newbies up, to get people used to flying in fleets. It’s a foundation for building a group of incursion runners. People who don’t know how to fleet in this game are lost. Yet EVE forces people into the solo experience. It WANTS you to be all by yourself, playing this game. Yet another reason I believe EVE forces players into null sec.

Sure you could run abyssals in a group. But would you? Probably not. Most people solo them and wouldn’t want to group up for them. Besides, abyssals are not a great way for newbies to earn money in this game. The money is total garbage in the 1-2 abyssals, and the 3+'s are just too damn hard for their skillset.

So as a newbie playing this game, what do you do? Most people would jump all over the “join a good pvp corp”. But that’s actually a horrible solution. Because most good pvp corps don’t even want alpha’s in their corp. most pvp corps only want an alpha in as say a scout. And you can’t live your EVE life being a scout. If you are a legitimate newbie, your aim is to grow and make money. And that’s where high sec mission corps come in.

And this is why I am hell bent on having the mission system changed. It is not player friendly. It forces things down your throat that you don’t want. I don’t want to fleet up with my corp mates to have to run some faction mission, making me turn it down and completely stop missioning dead in my tracks. I want players, as a corp, as a group, to have something to do that is solid, and all it would take is a simple restructuring on how missions are run.

The hatred towards people who work the mission system is deep within the eve community. For some reason eve players hate, and I mean absolutely HATE the PVE guys who do mission content. For some reason, people believe that the mission system should be scrapped alltogether and people should be pushed around by the game mechanics, forcing them into null. These same people also believe that high sec should be removed from the game completely. I challenge you to make their dreams come true, CCP. I dare you to drop high sec and all its content and see what happens to this game. No? Then listen to what I am saying. Make missioning better. Make it streamlined. Make it REALISTIC for people to work it, and build corps around it, and give high sec dwellers a chance to grow and have fun within this game. And I don’t want some idiotic solution “just go to null”. I’m tired of that argument.

If you care about the longevity of EVE and want to see its playerbase stop shrinking, then listen to what I am saying. If you refuse to fix the missioning in this game, then introduce something completely new that corps can do as a group, that IS NOT INCURSION RELATED, that a small group of guys can pick up and hammer off, have fun, make some isk, grow, and learn the game together. Please. And thanks

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nope -1

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Sure, let’s increase mission rewards. But, because EVE follows a risk vs. reward balance, that means moving all level 3 and 4 missions into lowsec.

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That’s perfect, the destruction will help offset the additional resources being added.

It never did make sense to have high paying missions in “The Kiddie Pool”

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Missions ARE terrible. They make no sense. How can I save the same damsel multiple times? They don’t fit with the idea New Eden is a real universe. The break continuity, not to mention they scale indefinitely. They only exist because it was what MMOs had circa 2003, much like attributes. They should have been replaced long ago.

That said, the game needs highsec and it needs PvE content. I’m all for a revamp and expansion of a “missioning” system, but one more in keeping with the living universe that this game is trying to be. I don’t even mind if some of that is solo content so people like youself can get your spaceship on by yourself, but it should be in a way that connects with living game. Grinding repetitive content with no risk or link to the rest of the game adds nothing to the MMO experience - you might as well not be playing Eve.

So no, missions don’t need more rewards - they need to be revamped completely. Perhaps with a new system where players pick a side and compete or cooperate with the NPC factions earning rewards and making enemies, influencing the shared universe through doing tasks for the NPC entities. Something that doesn’t exist primarily as a maximum ISK/h faucet for bots and bot-aspirant players.

Think bigger than “more rewards”!

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Actually this is exactly what I’m going for. The game needs corp level content that allows players to fleet into small gangs to engage in consistent PVE activity. If I had my way, missions would be gutted completely and removed alltogether. I really hate the mission system a lot. I’m trying to think of ways to improve it. Alas the mission system is CCP’s tool they have given players to lower standings towards player factions so that faction warefare may be engaged. The whole system is a joke honestly.

If I had my way, there would be like a mini-incursion thing that was spawned upon talking to an agent. Kinda like missions. But they spawn incursions I guess? I’m throwing anything I can at this. I just don’t know anymore. I’m ready to quit the game… again. It’s sad. No one I know wants to play this game. They’ve all seen the reviews. Of the dozens if not hundreds of people I have encounted in my 40 years of life, almost ALL of them either quit the game to boredom, or they have seen the negative reviews and don’t want to play “spreadsheets in space”.

EVE desparately needs some way to allow gangs of 5 or so people to get together in their home system and run some sort of intermediate content that resides between running missions and running incursions. I am right, the high sec content is mainly solo based. It’s either incursions or get your butt down to nullsec and rat anomalies. I lived in null, I lived in high, I lived in low. All 3 are insanely boring because this game lacks 1 key element. The ability for people to “raid” to put it in standard MMO terms. I can’t stress this enough. Everyone in this game ends up soloing their content and quitting their current corp. Everyone wants to do something awesome and yeah you could be a newbie in a frig and experience the big fleet battles. But it’s meaningless content. You aren’t making an impact in that crappy little frig of yours. Even your T1 battleship will just get nuked down there. So what do you do? Go solo and anom rat.

My whole rant about the missions could be completely discarded by a proper, corp level fleet combat system that allows people to pull their content upon request, allows people to make a steady income and builds relationships within corps. And anyone who “-1 nope”'s that… is a complete idiot.

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PvE is not content.

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Oh and yes, the income level really does need to improve for high sec dwellers. That argument is rock solid. Rorquals and consistent anom ratting has given null players everything they need to never experience the rest of the game as long as they live. But again it’s boring as hell. BORING CONTENT. Get it through your heads CCP. Your PVE content is lackluster. The reason for it is because it doesn’t promote bonding between you and your corpmates. The PVP gets you together sure, but then out of an X amount of people only a handful are really ever any good at it or even want to engage in it. So the rest of those players are stuck doing their solo thing in their solo fit cruiser and won’t even wave to you when they log in. This game is built to divide you unless you are PVP oriented. Stop with this “everything must be PVP” mindset. My god the potential this game could have if your mindset were changed. I can’t argue this enough.

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Well now that’s your idiotic opinion isn’t it because every successful MMO on the face of the planet is built around the PVE content.

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Every PvE MMO is utter trash. EVE is a PvP sandbox, and that design concept is why EVE still exists long after most of its competition has failed and died.

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EVE exists because of a handful of whales that continue to pump thousands of dollars into this game. Get that one thing very straight here. CCP is in financial trouble right now. They are not doing well

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If by “rock solid” you mean “completely terrible”, then sure. Highsec income does not need to increase because risk vs. reward is an important design concept in EVE. Highsec has negligible risk, highsec should have the lowest rewards in the game and TBH should have most of its income removed.

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And if EVE was your PvE farming paradise it would be dead anyway. What’s your point?

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risk vs reward is a moot argument. I’ve debunked it a dozen times now. You can’t even compare rorqual moon mining earning over a billion isk an hour while in high sec you might be lucky if you earn 30 mil an hour

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Highsec has zero risk. 30 million per hour is excessive, it should be more like 3 million per hour to have an income level proportionate to its lack of risk. You should be glad that CCP breaks the risk vs. reward rule enough to give you even 30 million an hour.

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you think I want to play EVE exclusively to farm PVE content? God man just stop talking. You are too stupid to comment… or you are an obvious and not very well written troll. Everyone who runs PVE wants to do some PVP at some point. But the insane boredom they suffer while waiting for things to happen drives them out of the game. I’ve seen it far too many times

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Then why don’t you suggest taking out any safety at all in this game and see what happens to your beloved PVP puritan attitude and the game you love so much. I dare CCP to try it. I DARE YOU CCP.

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Then they don’t belong in EVE. What you don’t seem to understand is that EVE is not a game where instant gratification happens. Success means something because you have worked for it and defeated the obstacles in your path. Handing over tons of risk-free highsec farming ISK devalues that success and removes any reason to keep playing.

I acknowledge that the game needs a low-risk tutorial area for people to learn the game in. That space should continue to be fairly safe. But it should have, by far, the lowest income level available so that if you want to continue progressing in the game you have to leave the tutorial area and get out into the real game.

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