Drusilla
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Posted - 2003.10.21 13:17:00 -
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And what about level 5 agents? making agent missions require corp/group participation has one REALLY, REALLY major flaw:
Since missions are typically time consuming and tedious, expecting ONE player to spend enormous amoutns of time doing repetitive, time-eating missions is bad. Expecting GROUPS of people to do it is just plain silly. Why?
Because the rewards are low. There are agent mission players who focus on them with all their might that ONLY started making decent cash off them with the addition of implants and the high value BP drop. And you know what? In terms of ecomonic profit, they've been dumb to do so. Why?
Because with an equivalent amount of time invested, instead of doing many L1 agent missions to get an L2 agent, then many-many L2 missions to get and L3 agent, then many-many-many missions to get implants, they could have made ENORMOUSLY larger amounts of money doing nothing more than mine plagioclase or scordite in a 0.9 zone. The reason the agent mission guys can sell implants fo rmillions each is because players doing other things besides agent missions have made enough cash to pay that much. And while the agent mission player is flying around in a frigate or cruiser, the guys showing up to buy the implants are showing up in battleships.
Short version - if agent missions at L4 and above will be designed with the idea that groups will be needed to complete them, or single players with battleships and high priced gear will be needed to complete them, almost noboy will ever do the missions unless the reward is large enough to merit giving up whatever other profitable activities they could have been doing isntead.
Economics students will recognize this as the theory of opportunity cost. If your normal job lets you earn $1,000 in an hour, why give that up to go do another job that pays $10 per hour? If you have 5 guys each earning $1,000 an hour, why would they all give that up so that one mission can pay the group $10 to split between them?
For group-required missions, or missions so tough they require a battleship, the reward must be high enough to make trading other lucrative activities for agent missions.
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