Along with that change, 60 different level 1 Event Agents (15 per Faction) known as Tutorial Agents were forced into early retirement due to Aura NPE single handedly ending ‘The Endless Battle’ mission.
Those 60 Agents gave a one time Faction standing increase for mission completion.
This use to be the new players very first ‘real’ mission which could only be completed once per Agent in the life of the character. Part 1 was a simple Encounter mission against a single NPC which when destroyed, would drop a small specific item to be returned to Agent. Part 2 was a simple Courier mission to transport a small specific item to a nearby Solar system.
A small amount of Corporation and Faction standing was gained for completing that mission. The Agent would then refer players to 1 of 60 (15 per Faction) Career Agents for more advanced training on the various careers available.
Basically, the incorrectly named ‘Tutorial Agents’ didn’t give any instruction or information to new players other than refer them to the Career Agents. The old ‘Tutorial Agents’ were actually Political Liaisons for their specific Faction. Those 60 Agents were a good source for gaining a 1 time Faction standing increase.
This proposal has 2 different options, 1 simple and 1 complex, for the 60 Tutorial Agents (15 per Faction) and their mission called ‘The Endless Battle’.
Option 1 (simple):
Bring the old ‘Tutorial Agents’ back out of retirement and change their Title to ‘Political Agents’. Have them continue offering ‘The Endless Battle’ mission with a slight change to their ending dialog so they don’t refer players to the Career Agents (Currently done by Aura NPE).
Option 2 (complex):
Have the new ‘Political Agents’ (15 per Faction) split up into 5 different Agent levels, 3 Agents per level from level 1 to level 5. Have them all offer ‘The Endless Battle’ mission series but have the mission difficultly and reward increased to match the higher Agent levels.
These new ‘Political Agents’ and their mission offers can only be completed once per Agent in the life of the player’s character, just like the old ‘Tutorial Agents’.
Hopefully the code is still available and with some slight programming, Option 1 could be implemented very easily. Option 2 would of course take more time and work to implement but it’s much more preferable.
Thank you all for taking the time to read this proposal.
Why? I don’t see a reason why. I’ve been looking at the original thread’s initial post as well and there’s no reason given either. Maybe i’m missing it, or maybe it’s self evident and i’m not aware of the reason, as i never did that mission.
I’m not for or against it; i just don’t know why. So i ask. thanks!
Ah! i’ve read this simply as description of the agents, instead of the point.
Thanks for clearing that up!
As they can only be done once, and because having more options is always better than having less options, i think this should be added. anything that reduces tedious grind should be encouraged and if this standing boost gives an actual benefit in the real world (less grinding to reach higher levels), then it’s a good thing.
But now i have two follow-up questions:
If it’s not a boost actually giving a noticable effect, then there’s no reason to run these missions, except for enjoyment. the standings gains would be non-tangible, as in: no reduced grinding later on. if the boost is noticable, then it helps the player reaching lvl4s faster to make income.
if the “Political Agent” missions take longer than the reduction of grinding through missions later on: PAmissions + “grind to lvl4” >= “current grind to lvl4”, then there is no point to it.
So, my questions:
is there, or what is, or how big is the noticable effect in the real world for the player? (aka less grind = hours saved?)
when every new player does it anyway, while not learning anything new (as they’re political, not tutorial), then why not instead have the bonus applied to all new players right from the start, to save them the grind?
When gaining Faction standing, the amount gained is percentage based which can be increased by level of Social skill trained which is then added to what the character has left to get to +10.0 standing.
With no levels of Social skill trained, those old level 1 Tutorial ‘Political’ Agents gave a 0.25% increase to Faction standing. Basically if a player has low positive / neutral or negative Faction standings, that increase combined with the Social skill trained up turns into a nice increase and is a great help in gaining Faction standing. Multiply that increase by 15 Agents per Empire Faction allows players to quickly and easily gain Faction standings.
Those Agents were accessible by both old and new players. However the only time they were actually mentioned was during the players first few hours in the game. Those Agents were also located alone in stations within deadend systems. As such they weren’t publicly well known and rarely ever accessed by the playerbase.
Before I created the Faction Standing Repair Plan back in 2010, I did research for 3 months and added every single Event Agent available for Faction standing increase. I then shared ‘The Plan’ with the playerbase which included those old ‘Tutorial’ Agents. That knowledge resulted in more players accessing those old ‘Tutorial’ Agents in order to repair negative Faction standings or to increase low positive Faction standings.
However as I mentioned in the proposal, CCP eventually replaced those old ‘Tutorial’ Agents with the Aura NPE and then later removed the Aura Agent as well. Now those stations in those deadend systems are empty, making those systems wasted content due to players having no reason other than mining to even travel there.
There’s been too much content removed from the game within the past 1/2 decade. My hope with this proposal is to add more content as well as give more options to the playerbase for improving Faction standings.
Well, now you’ve done it. i hope you’re happy, mister! Plugged all holes i’ve found; gave good reason and a lengthy explanation; indirectly included how you always had something of a connection to faction standings, with people benefitting from that connecrion over the years and thus exposing how you actually know this stuff; making perfect sense in seeing a content hole and that it shohld be plugged and mentioning the classic “think of the lonely dead-end systems”’.
i have nothing to add, except the seal of approval. now i gotta roll into another thread.
Even though Option 1 in the proposal is easier for CCP to implement, I think Option 2 is the better choice since it would allow players more control on maintaining, repairing and or boosting their Faction standings.
i agree. it’s good you gave two options, because more… you know how it works. they can choose between minimal effort and more effort for a better experience. whoever proposes it at the csm meetings will likely go for option two, present a middle ground and if there’s no other way, at least try to get option 1 delivered.
i think this is also good for new alphas, to push more “identity” into their heads. factions exist, therefore loyal members must exist, therefore pushing a propaganda controlled narrative in the early days (of course i’m exaggerating, but hey that’s how it works in real life), is potentially beneficial.
this isn’t player features and discussions and i’ve never figured out why there’s two places for people to propose ideas. are there any benefits from posting it here, instead of there? curious.
‘Player Features & Ideas’ sub-forum is where players can post suggestions which are then refined with the help of other players.
‘Assembly Hall’ sub-forum is where those finished ideas are posted as a proposal for players to show support as well as be reviewed by CSM members who then hopefully bring it to CCP’s attention.
I wonder if anybody even bothers to read threads in this sub-forum.
Anyway, this proposal is still good, it won’t have a large impact on current game mechanics and it can be added to the game easily with minimal programing.
I don’t know if it can be added easily with minimal programming - it’s been a long time since those Aura missions were in the game and they’ve not been part of the NPE for a while (and the NPE has gone through like 3 iterations since then).
Is the purpose here to create new missions? Or just to give more faction standing? Because it would probably be easier to just increase the faction standing gains from existing missions if that’s the concern.
I will say that we asked for new missions, as was noted the minutes, and that was viewed as being extremely difficult to add.
Thanks, it’s good to see a CSM member active in this sub-forum.
I wasn’t proposing to implement the original 60 Agents back into the NPE. I was just stating a little bit of history as to what happened to them and why they were removed.
Basically it would be both. Each of these 60 Political Agents (15 for each main Empire Faction) would give Faction standing increase only once in the characters life. That would give players more options to help repair and increase their Faction standings without having a large impact on the game.
Increasing the amount of standing increase from Event Agents currently in-game won’t help since they can only be accessed once in the characters life. Currently, after a player has accessed all Event Agents, the only recourse left to them for repairing and or gaining Faction standing is either through Storyline missions or through the Epic Arcs.
Those options take time and if a player does Security missions against Empire Factions, they basically cut off access to that section of the game. Sure, players can bounce over to the enemy Factions and run missions to counter the negative standing hits, however that also takes time. Basically humans are lazy creatures of habit who don’t really like spending a lot of extra time doing something else just so they can then continue doing what they actually wanted to do.
The original 60 Agents and their original missions were already coded a long time ago, all they actually need is a few little changes. Having them added back into the game would give players more options and content to access, which is always a good thing.
Anyway, thanks again for reading this proposal and for posting, at least I know there are indeed people reading threads in this sub-forum.
I understand - my point was that I don’t know where that code went or if they still have it lying around, or how it could be plugged back into the game without being part of the NPE. One of the reasons why they’ve continued to remake the NPE over and over again is that previous versions were so difficult to edit, that they wanted a new system that could be tweaked without having to redo the entire thing.
That’s the thing - I don’t know if they would want to do the work to put these back in, if they were one time missions.
Can’t they buy tags off the market to turn in to CONCORD? Or is that only something you can do with security status?>
That’s the thing - “all they need are a little changes” when it comes to that kind of ancient legacy code tends to be a lot of big changes that these guys don’t want to do.
I understand CCP’s constant changes to the NPE. I think it’s more about new players being able to understand and learn the game than CCP Dev’s dealing with Legacy Code.
Anyway, the issue is that players are basically pointed towards mining, running missions and doing exploration. Running missions messes with Faction standings and most don’t realize it until it’s too late. This proposal will give players more options to repair and or boost their Faction standings.
Yeah, those tags are strictly for raising negative security status, not Faction standing.
Thank you very much for taking the time to read and reply to this proposal as well as mentioning it to CCP.
As a longtime player who totally screwed their faction standings back when I was a newbie I can totally appreciate any way that’s introduced to help repair standings. Thanks to DMC and Brisc for taking up this issue.
