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[Louella Dougans]

Pve has a whole bunch of odd situations that come up regularly.

Missions for the Amarr Navy in the middle of Domain where apparently a diplomatic meeting between the Gallente and Minmatar is taking place.

RSS missions that prevent the Amarr navy from virus bombing Ashab and Penirgman.

Theology Council agents telling you not to let any religious Amarrians know about your genetically modified cargo.

And ofc, the never-ending invasions of the likes of Dodixie or Motsu.

How do you deal with that? Someone asks you "how was your day?", and you've run into these sorts of things, how do you reply?

[Seriphyn]

Yeah, I do find it consistently immersion-breaking that the military hub of Coriault is always being invaded...Jita would have been the same before it was nerfed.

I think simply, most people say "I've been doing work for the Federation Navy in Dodixie" and leave it at that...avoid elaborating etc. Most of the things that occur in missions, like preventing biological warfare attacks, is news item material, really.

Then again, US/UK submarines deploy special forces to random countries that no one ever hears about on the news, and you would never expect them to be involved with...

"Fiji? We sent SAS commandos to Fiji?"

[Vieve]

I trashed an alt because of one of those "odd situations".  Okay, multiples of those odd situations.

There's a Level One Federation mission (the "Greater Good" sequence) that requires blowing up CONCORD escorts, SOE relief transports and, to top it all off, a Minmatar colony for the sole purpose of making a documentary saying how awful the Amarrians are¹.

One fine day in EvE, my poor alt got nothing but offers to do this mission.  It didn't matter which Federation corporation agent he talked to, all of them offered this mission.  He turned all of them down, 'cause, well, he was an ethical son-of-a-bitch.

I decided to get rid of him shortly after that.  His having 'exposed a conspiracy among leading Federation corporations' made a tidy RP excuse for his disappearance.

¹Without providing an explanation as to why the hell the Amarrians had a mining colony in Federation space, of course.

[Alain Colcer]

Louella, what you mention is THE main reason i think why missions should be revisited and the "engine" or process that assigns them to players redesigned.

There are various different variables that need to be taken into account really:

1) Missions would be much more interesting if there was LESS rats, but with more difficulty and their "payout" was less by direct bounty and more by turning in their dogtags to the authorities. (A-la sleeper?).

2) Missions in "home" regions (that is, the NPC corp owning the station is located within the parent empire sovereignity), can be against enemy factions of any kind, but never portray huge hidden bases or colonies, only "infiltration fleets". The exception to this are pirate factions, which by their very nature could have several smuggling locations or staging bases.

3) Shady or non-ethical objectives could exist in various forms, but such missions should have filters as to which corps can or cannot "issue" said mission. Fed Navy could not send you to fire on Minmatar supply convoys, nor Federation Customs send you to fire on CONCORD.....its just dumb.


In all aspects, the capsuleer is a privateer or hired merc, so the less than "legal" tasks could land on your lap very often, but i don't envision an agent giving you assignments that will put them in a very very bad public light should any of the details be discovered.


Also standings per se should be worked around these points:

a) A Corp has "partners" and "competitors". Partners are strategic alliances or relations (Fed Navy + Fed Intelligence for example), and competitors should be either the enemy factions or coporations that would be negatively affected by your work towards your current agent.

b) Firing on a ship of a given faction, should diminish only very slightly the standings, but to a corp, not the "nation" behind it. IE: firing on a caldari NPC in gallente space should get your Caldari Navy standings into the negative, but not the whole Caldari state.

c) Faction standings should be a "composite" of certain government or nationalistic corporations, and not a straight number out of doing missions for any corp. For example: Standings with the Gallente Federation should be a compound of working for the Fed Navy, Fed Intel Office, Fed Customs, Fed Administration, Senate and President. But if only worked for Roden Shipyards, Creodron and Duvolle...no Empire faction should be upset, only the competitors of said corporations (Kalaakiota, Khanid Innovations, etc).


But well.......it is not going to happen, CCP ginger once mentioned the standing mechanics is soooo complicated and old code that is very difficult to mess with it.

[Casiella]

They've been doing a lot of work with old code lately (primarily by tearing it out and replacing it, aka refactoring). Here's hoping someday this gets the same attention.

[Syylara/Yaansu]

As I've said elsewhere, I rarely consider my PvE activities to be IC at all.  Where I do acknowledge work done, I operate like Seri, preferring to remain ambiguous about the exact tasks performed or interject tasks/reasons more in line with their backstory.

For example, Syyl and Yaan are viewed positively by a number of State entities for the manner they conducted their investigations when they were conducting them...not for blowing up stuff :9.

[Silver Night]

I mostly just haven't run missions (outside of corp group activities) for years.

Back when I did run missions, I mostly did a couple years of courier missions :X.

[Saikoyu]

Honestly all missions are rather imersion breaking if you look at them, with the six day time limit.

"What have a pirate invasion in this system and we need you to go out and take care of them right now.  But if you can't get to it in six days, well, you won't get paid as much, but its okay."

I'd be with Bruno on this one mostly.  I wouldn't mind any mission, including faction warfare, have less rats that were "fit" like player ships, and with the same weaknesses.  As long as they don't shoot my drones too often. 

And I'd go further and say that with incarna, all of the shady deal missions should be removed from the normal mission rotations and only be available to piltos who get out of the pod and talk to an agent in person.  Because who is going to broadcast a mission like that over the air? 

By the way Silver, exactly how do you make isk then?

[Merdaneth]

I would absolutely love it if completed mission increased sec status, and failing them lowered it, relatively speaking. There would always be the same number of high and low sec systems per region.

I use mission as an RP tool when appropriate, simply ignore all the odd stuff when inappropriate (can you believe the number of 'destroyed stations' I have seen. Destroyed by pirate invasions and what not. Thousands upon thousands of stations....

[Z.Sinraali]

I am not an in-game literalist, so I ignore it in favor of something more dramatically appropriate/less silly.

[Alain Colcer]

They've been doing a lot of work with old code lately (primarily by tearing it out and replacing it, aka refactoring). Here's hoping someday this gets the same attention.

I believe there has been a lot of work on these areas myself, since you can now see more text and there have been a little more variety on the mission design in general.

Still i think there should be a really large review on the whole feature, myself as most of those who answered this post, consider missions outside of the IC view or as very vague IC arguments, which is a bit sad, because they could be considered IC arguments to stirr conflicts in several cases.

[Casiella]

18 months, amirite? >.>

[Ken]

I rarely consider my PvE activities to be IC at all.  Where I do acknowledge work done, I operate like Seri, preferring to remain ambiguous about the exact tasks performed or interject tasks/reasons more in line with their backstory.

For example, Syyl and Yaan are viewed positively by a number of State entities for the manner they conducted their investigations when they were conducting them...not for blowing up stuff :9.

I am not an in-game literalist, so I ignore it in favor of something more dramatically appropriate/less silly.

These.

[orange]

So the isk in your character's wallet is OoC isk?  Or do the mighty egger that they are have a mysterious benefactor?  Or did they make all their wealth through trade/a solid paycheck?

*typing on phone

[Hamish Grayson]

I'm sure the Gallenteans and Minmatar have diplomats stationed at Embassies in the Amarr empire and that these diplomats have reason to negotiate from time to time.