I dont know who needs to hear this but player missions will never be better than NPC missions. For example NPC missions are great because they are consistent/predictable and reliable. This allows players to get better and better and do them faster and faster. Thats the game.
Player missions are going to be too random and you never know if its a scam or not. The time it takes to figure out if a player mission is a scam and if its worth it ISK/Hour wise you could already done another level 4.
I dont know why CCP seems so obsessed with corporation projects and freelance jobs. Maybe its because they dont know what else to do even tho there are countless of threads and comments for inspiration from a ton of different players on this forum alone. Anyway it is what it is. Take care.
Buy orders can’t get ADMs up in Null sec, nor can they encourage plexing in a particular FW system for a specific faction. (Bring Pirate complexes into the fold too!) The current freelance jobs don’t even resemble a buy order.
Tell that to all the player corps that do use them. If corps weren’t interested in them, then they wouldn’t be continuing to develop it.
You and i have a different impression of CCP. To me they seem keen on doing things and doubling down on them despite players not showing much interest.
Its well known that CCP does things in ways that are inconvenient to the player and has a habit of making projects and content that none of their players really care about or fine useful.
So your examples of CCP doing things that none of the players care about are two separate games (one isn’t even built yet) and a small list of people saying Freelance jobs suck? Yeah ok. Just ignore the fact that thousands of players are still interested in Vanguard, or the tons of corp and freelance projects that are up already (more than 50 freelance projects within 5 jumps of me in the middle of Low sec).
There are no player missions. Freelance jobs are not actual missions just free ISK from creators’ pockets for something that would players do anyway even if these jobs didn’t exists.
You do realize that in the sandbox it is up to you to decide whether you use a feature or not. If the freelance feature is not suitable for you in the current state, you can ignore its existence completely and go about your daily business as usual.
You also don’t even have the necessity to complain about it or write lengthy forum posts, as you can easily revisit the feature in a year or two and decide again if it fits you in the state it is in at that point in time. If so, then use it. If not, read my post from beginning.
I don’t know. I also play a game called City of Hero’s that has a great player mission system.
I think the problem is
How much control does CCP want to give over.
How can they give over creative control, without making the system abusable. (In city of hero’s. There are farm maps where the NPC’s are configured to be highest reward / least lethal. With damage aligned to 1 damage type that builds just negate.)
I think a dungeon creator - where you can create key events, NPC interactions and objectives. But the actual NPC population is generated by the game with little control. (Maybe things like picking the NPC family (Guristas or Serpentis and so on) could be useful. And a level system like the security missions.)
User generated content, with a thorough system, is a mostly untapped potential for EVE (You could argue interactions are that, but I’m thinking along the lines of story mods in games.)
Neither will freelance jobs. No one wants to come into some random null system as a neutral with no docking or any real promise of safety, and no one wants to let random people dock/give blue status to them. It’s probably easier to find renters who will actually pay you to do it anyway.
People have a fantasy of player missions in EVE its a similar fantasy to Walking in Stations. They sound great if you dont think too much about it. But it is what it is
CCP would have to first make a mission builder integrated with site editor, I dont know if they have that internally (so it can be adapted for players with some rules and balancing), but it would be nice opportunity to make one, if they dont have one yet.
