Del Narveux
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Posted - 2005.12.23 12:10:00 -
[1]
Most of this has already been suggested, but heres my two cents on cosmos:
Overall its a good thing, it adds some flavor to the game and is not just some random agent asking you to do some random thing with no explanation of why anyone should care. It also combats some of the 'unique encounter' appeal that more traditional mmorpgs offer. But, the missions are really not all that different from regular agent missions (namely, R&D stuff) and running the complexes is too much of a grind. Eve already has the problem that if youre not mining youre probably shooting stuff, cosmos doesnt really do much about this.
-The skills to build cosmos stuff should be fairly commonplace. Specifically what I would like to see is two level 1 quality -19 agents put in each cosmos constellation, which give a 3-4 mission string whose final reward is one of the constellation's relevant skills (i.e. talocan tech or guristas hax0ring in the caldari one). The missions themselves would be very basic and generally serve as an introduction to the basics of how cosmos operates, with adequate hints to get the player used to the general mechanics of cosmos (theres a difference between a bit of mystery and exploration and forcing players to flounder about for 3 hours while they try and figure out omgwtfbbq is going on here). In return, jack up the cosmos skill ranks so they take at least twice as long to train.
-Reclassify all the agents so that the ones whose missions will require one of the miniprof skills (i.e. retrieve 4 pieces of talocan parts) are Archaeology or Intelligence agents, exclusively. As someone who only has one of the miniprof skills its extremely annoying to talk to an agent and find out I couldnt even do his mission without 3 weeks of skill training, and be forced to take a standings hit. Cosmos should not put everything in front of the player's nose but the basics should be clear enough that people dont get screwed, e.g. if hes an archaeology agent I know that at least one of his tasks for me will involve archaeology. This should be extended to the other agents too actually, the current mission types seem a bit scattershot (and not everyone shows up in a warship).
-Do something about the masses of scrambler frigs in the low-end complexes (maybe the high end ones too). They dont really add anything to the plex, except ensuring that unwary pilots get ganked. A couple of them are okay (as long as theyre not immune to EW as they are now, though this may be an RMR bug) but expecting someone in a frig or cruiser doing a level 1 or 2 mission to go up against 6+ in some levels is just silly. Also it might be good to split up the aggro groups a bit more--most of the levels look like theyre designed for several unrelated people/groups to be doing at the same time, but the npcs tend to aggro in just one or two big swarms.
-Revamp how you get cosmos components. Make it so that to get the modules, instead of just killing some npcs and looting the cans you have to solve some puzzles and stuff, maybe a series of gates or switches or something or even integrate those oft-ignored computer mods like cargo scanners. As it is, its just too much of a grind to really be interesting for more than about an hour. The opportunity I see with the miniprofessions is to add some non combat oriented things to do, other than mining and trade stuff--having to spend all your time fighting off mobs of npcs, like you would in a regular complex or misson (or cookie cutter mmorpg for that matter), really cheapens the experience.
-Either tone down the difficulty of the high end complexes or, better yet, increase the reward. One of the big problems cosmos faces is that half of it requires at least one strong bs to complete, and people with a strong bs have access to much better ways to make money. As with the above point, this cheapens the miniprofessions and screws over everyone who trained them.
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[SAK] Alumnus--And Proud Of It! -- aka Cpt Bogus
Is that my torped sig cloaking your base?
 Originally by: Wrangler
Well, at least we have forum PvP..
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