I’ve got into a situation where storyline missions keeps popping up as soon as I finish one. I currently have four storyline missions in journal (not accepted) and a ticket submitted to CCP to ask what to do with them.
The thing is, no one from CCP looked at the ticked for a couple of days and the timer on those missions is ticking.
So, a couple of questions for the community - if you had a similar situation:
If I start doing them, will it count as an exploit? I only got them because of an obvious bug and I will clearly benefit from them.
If I don’t accept them, and let them expire, will I get any penalty (ex. standings hit)?
Have you been doing missions for various Factions or various level’s of Agents? The game keeps track of your mission count and some of those Storyline offers may have been waiting around for quite a while for you to complete a 16th mission.
Like if you run the level 1 Epic Arc a few times, you’re actually completing missions for various Factions and Agents which will add up over time and eventually give you a bunch of Storyline offers.
Now if you want to spend some time, you can actually check your character’s interactions page to view what you’ve done for each Faction, Corp and Agent. You can also research the mission details in Eve Survival Mission Reports to see if you really want to run those missions.
Personally, if they’re against Pirate Factions then I’d just run them. But if they’re against any of the Empire Factions, I’d decline them since I don’t like to incur negative standings with Empire Factions.
Storylines are generated after every 16th mission done for the same faction and same level. So if you been doing level 3 and level 4 then after 16 missions of each level youd get 2 storylines.
Aa mentioned above, you wont be penalized for not accepting them.
I know about 16 missions rule and I’m pretty sure it is a bug. After all, I have been playing (on and off) since 2007.
I’m only doing missions for one agent and one faction for a couple of months now (not that I’m that active anyway). I’ve opened AIR menu and saw that I can get some extra skill points if I finish a few distribution missions. So, I went to a distribution agent of the same corporation as my main agent, finished 2-3 missions and the the storyline spam began. The four missions I now have in my journal are all from the same corporation/faction, just different agents.
Just screenshot your affected standings before and after running any of them that you choose to run.
It may be a bug, or it may be that you simply racked up 16 completions at different mission levels for different agent/corps at roughly the same time.
Update your ticket with the information that you’re running them to provide additional information on the possible bug, include your screenshots of faction standing changes, and let them know you’re willing to have the standings changes reverted.
It’s not the sort of thing, in my experience, that CCP is going to be overly concerned about. Unless it turns out that everyone is getting it and running storylines non-stop, of course. In which case your report will help them fix it.
(Edit: oh and there’s a few agents out there who have storylines they’re just ready to hand out, distribution ones that take you in a circle sorta thing. “16 missions completed” storylines, the agent involved will message you directly.)