These are all great points.

Missions have really become impossible lately as CCP has kept trying to slap a bandage on the hemmoraging mess that is mission mechanics.

PvE content is supposed to be challenging, interactive, and fun for both the single player and the group of friends who mission together.

Well:
1) Yes the missions are challenging, but in terms of always being out of range of your target and cannot get back into range. (battleship traveling +2.5km/s? Really?) Rats starting 100km+ from wher you warp in. (good luck Amarr laser boats) Constant targeting jamming so that you cant even shoot once in 20 minutes.
2) Interactive?? Not really, Just follow the guides out there and you can pretty much AFK these missions.
3) Drone missions are also just about worthless to run. Way to nerf into the ground
4) Single players running a mission? Not likely to happen with a L4 mission unless you have 3 hours to kill or have spent crazy ISK fitting out your ship, and then it is too easy.
5) How about making it so that missions escalate in terms of difficulty depending on how many players are in there in the same fleet? That way corporations can have mission running nights without having to downgrade to cruisers to even contribute.


Kean

This dude is stupid.
Have not ran into a mission i could not do solo.
That's also without warping out and without alts.
Lrn2EVE

QFT


3 hours for a L4???????


That speaks volumes.

last time i spent three hours in a mission i had fallen asleep on a drone domi.
t2 fit so i dunno if that fits into the "or have spent crazy ISK fitting out your ship," part but i guess everything is all relative.

im gonna guess he flys a shield tanked, autocannon abaddon.

We often hear "EVE is a PvP game, PvE is secondary". To this we would like to respond that EVE is a sandbox and shouldnGÇÖt necessarily favor one side over the other. What you do with it is up to you: all player activities should feel as appealing and rewarding no matter which choice you take, as long as you are willing to live up with the consequences of your actions.

"Me been playing EVE missions long time."

I respect the development team's efforts to raise the sophistication (have to think a bit) and intensity level (have to adapt to aggro) of mission environments.

The stated purpose of these changes has been to more closely align missions with PVP experiences... namely: adrenaline rushes, 'pucker time', 'ooo sh*t I didn't see that coming', a hilarious sense of achievement, dealing with the unexpected, variety and virtual NPC taunting.

The attempt involved making the E War more challenging. The result: just made alotta carebears and pirate alts angry.

Now the developers are considering dropping the number of targets to make the E War a bit more do-able.

I have a different suggestion:
Stop trying to fix the old mission structure that you already know is broke.

Alternative: Just randomize the content of the encounters a bit more. I would love to encounter the unexpected.

How you ask? (Remember, I am deluding myself... goading really... into thinking someone will read this and agree).

1) Vary the number and positions of ships encountered much more dramatically. I understand that this will make existing 'mission guides' nearly obsolete. Too bad.

2) Make the NPCs sometimes do odd things. (Like act afk for a few tics, select a random target but not all the time, play defensively, spew random taunting nonsense like real pirates, warp out, orbit the player at the wrong radius, randomly summon help, etc.).

3) Randomize landmarks and buildings but still retain the theme of the mission. (Produces a cheap eye candy reaction).

4) Randomize damage types.

5) Randomize NPC tanking somewhat. The player should begin a mission with some idea of what to expect here, but its way too damn predictable.

6) Place the warp launchers in odd spots.

7) Randomly place a 'welcoming committee' of aggressive ships (not too overpowered for the mission level) at the warp in location.



You get the idea...

-Spaminator

"Me been playing EVE missions long time."

I respect the development team's efforts to raise the sophistication (have to think a bit) and intensity level (have to adapt to aggro) of mission environments.

The stated purpose of these changes has been to more closely align missions with PVP experiences... namely: adrenaline rushes, 'pucker time', 'ooo sh*t I didn't see that coming', a hilarious sense of achievement, dealing with the unexpected, variety and virtual NPC taunting.

The attempt involved making the E War more challenging. The result: just made alotta carebears and pirate alts angry.

Now the developers are considering dropping the number of targets to make the E War a bit more do-able.

I have a different suggestion:
Stop trying to fix the old mission structure that you already know is broke.

Alternative: Just randomize the content of the encounters a bit more. I would love to encounter the unexpected.

How you ask? (Remember, I am deluding myself... goading really... into thinking someone will read this and agree).

1) Vary the number and positions of ships encountered much more dramatically. I understand that this will make existing 'mission guides' nearly obsolete. Too bad.

2) Make the NPCs sometimes do odd things. (Like act afk for a few tics, select a random target but not all the time, play defensively, spew random taunting nonsense like real pirates, warp out, orbit the player at the wrong radius, randomly summon help, etc.).

3) Randomize landmarks and buildings but still retain the theme of the mission. (Produces a cheap eye candy reaction).

4) Randomize damage types.

5) Randomize NPC tanking somewhat. The player should begin a mission with some idea of what to expect here, but its way too damn predictable.

6) Place the warp launchers in odd spots.

7) Randomly place a 'welcoming committee' of aggressive ships (not too overpowered for the mission level) at the warp in location.



You get the idea...

-Spaminator

several problems:
1. whenever you "randomize" the positions of things in space (2d or 3d), you always have to invest significant manhours to ensure that it still looks nice and there are no potential dead ends (like a warpgate inside a station or large asteroid etc.)

2. there are hundreds of missions out there already. if you try to overhaul all of them, you are not only looking at another tremendous time sink, you are also bound to break several of them without the testers noticing which will result in carebear tears, stress, hotfixes etc.

3. with missions being the primary source of ISK and LP items, any major change to the system eill inevitably stress the markets and cause major shitstorms, potentially even a second summer of rage. i mean, just look at the people you represent: CCP pimps the NPCs by a shadow of a hair and makes them go for drones and suddenly the world is ending and missioners' heads explode. and yet these are paying customers and CCP cannot afford to lose them.

TL;DR good idea but risky and not worth the effort.

what about stop messing with ppl income? making missions and standard ai harder slows down pvp funds for normal players, add new stuff if you wanna make a challenge for pve, like wh or incursions

Pretty sure missions are getting an overhaul and NPC AI was just the beginning.

"Me been playing EVE missions long time."

I respect the development team's efforts to raise the sophistication (have to think a bit) and intensity level (have to adapt to aggro) of mission environments.

The stated purpose of these changes has been to more closely align missions with PVP experiences... namely: adrenaline rushes, 'pucker time', 'ooo sh*t I didn't see that coming', a hilarious sense of achievement, dealing with the unexpected, variety and virtual NPC taunting.

The attempt involved making the E War more challenging. The result: just made alotta carebears and pirate alts angry.

Now the developers are considering dropping the number of targets to make the E War a bit more do-able.

I have a different suggestion:
Stop trying to fix the old mission structure that you already know is broke.

Alternative: Just randomize the content of the encounters a bit more. I would love to encounter the unexpected.

How you ask? (Remember, I am deluding myself... goading really... into thinking someone will read this and agree).

1) Vary the number and positions of ships encountered much more dramatically. I understand that this will make existing 'mission guides' nearly obsolete. Too bad.

2) Make the NPCs sometimes do odd things. (Like act afk for a few tics, select a random target but not all the time, play defensively, spew random taunting nonsense like real pirates, warp out, orbit the player at the wrong radius, randomly summon help, etc.).

3) Randomize landmarks and buildings but still retain the theme of the mission. (Produces a cheap eye candy reaction).

4) Randomize damage types.

5) Randomize NPC tanking somewhat. The player should begin a mission with some idea of what to expect here, but its way too damn predictable.

6) Place the warp launchers in odd spots.

7) Randomly place a 'welcoming committee' of aggressive ships (not too overpowered for the mission level) at the warp in location.



You get the idea...

-Spaminator

When was the last time CCP added new level 1-4 missions? I've been here since 2008 & can't recall a single time they did. The missions are simplisitc in general, a warp gate here, a few structures there.

last time i spent three hours in a mission i had fallen asleep on a drone domi.
t2 fit so i dunno if that fits into the "or have spent crazy ISK fitting out your ship," part but i guess everything is all relative.

im gonna guess he flys a shield tanked, autocannon abaddon.

We are reading this thread and it contains some good ideas. We are always looking for new ways to make PvE more exciting and more unpredictable but overhauling the entire mission system is not a task to be taken lightly. This will impact a huge percentage of players and requires a lot of thought, planning and most importantly - communication with the player base before we make any adjustments

Of course you have to think about it and clearly communicate - it will affect hisec masses after all. It's not like in case of removing static 2/10 DEDs from lowsec - that only affected a few very insignificant players. And it was not FW lowsec so who cares, right? But I'm sure all devs are aware that 25 pages long thread with 500 posts from lowsec pirate community and 5 posts from devs not even involved in said change - you know about that but you are just too shy to participate in discussion.

Yeah, you are always very eager to communicate and talk when hisec masses cry their eyes out about bumping and ganking, but god forbid you could think and communicate about how much you influence pvp communities in your "looking for new ways to make PvE more exciting".

That might give you an idea who the masses really are...