I was talking with Locke about "Things I wish CCP would do." It is what I consider a pipe dream. Something that I have absolutely no understanding of the process for or the resources to do. However, it is something that I'd still like. The good things about pipe dreams is that they are acknowledged to be just that. I am not trying to be a mini game designer. I don't sit on my lovely, high horse and roll my eyes while going, "that is so easy why won't you fix it." If anything, my own projects teach me that simple tasks can still carry an enormous amount work to create.
Pipe Dream:I wish there were more missions. I'm not asking for new mission code. I am asking for more missions that do exactly the same thing that the current missions do. While the thought may send some into screaming fits where they bleed from the eyes while screaming before pagan alters, I don't think individual worshiping habits are a good enough reason to ignore mission running. People mission. They run Epic Arcs. They run Cosmos missions. I personally do DED complexes. All of these things have backstory. Many have storylines. I've written before that missions are the key to Lore in Eve and a link that seems neglected.
- an illusory or fantastic plan, hope, or story
I wish, in my pipe dream, that every time things are added missions and lore are added into the game about them. I wish that with each expansion cycle new missions, DED complexes, and all of those PvE things that fuel the game were added to. Instead of players doing the same handful of missions every day, twenty expansions in, the mission list would be enormous.
It would all be shooting red crosses. But it would be red crosses in different patterns.
I wish for new Epic Arcs and long continuing storylines. I wish that the game and the lore were not so disconnected.
I of course, in my dream world, can assign people to do this type of thing. I'm sure mission building sucks and is boring. Fortunately, my dream employees are dedicated to putting a handful of missions in each expansion. Because I do not know it seems that missions are not a 'big thing'. Of course they may be a massive huge pain or so mind numbing that they are avoided.
Maybe I will learn that Odyssey is mission paid attention to finally.
Dream... dream dream dream... dream... dream dream dream...
Yeah, I agree. Missions ought to be the backbone of EVE, not a sideline.
ReplyDeleteHow about player-designed missions. It can't be that hard to make a structured flow diagram about a mission. Number and type of rats, number of rooms, random spawn loot, bounty etc. The player who comes up with the best mission _and_ backstory wins a plex.
All of a sudden, hundreds of missions would creep up that fit into the existing schema - as you describe above.
I agree. I had put this in one of those "make missions better" thread. I don't know how feasible it would be, but if a mission could be expressed in a well known form such as XML then you could have players submit them. Crowd-source your mission making.
DeleteThat would also be an intermediate step toward procedurally generated missions, so delivering such a format in one expansion could lead to the bigger goal in a later expansion.
I know that "Read Eve Survival" is the first step everyone tells missioners, but memorizing/replicating what patterns to use is not nearly as fun for me as figuring it out on the fly. It also would make PVE more of a stepping stone to PVP, which is what I seem to hear a lot of voices saying is a goal.
I'll add that I'm not expecting that would be "easy". In fact I have a bit of a mini-rant in my blog about Eve players who assume programming their favorite wish list item would be easy. I'm glad to see here that neither of you two make that leap. :)
Delete(http://evechecklist.blogspot.com/2013/10/things-i-know-nothing-about-and-you-too.html)
Agreed, grinding missions is boring enough even in games with thousands of missions to choose from where you aren't always grinding the exact same few missions all the time.
ReplyDeleteI don't much like missioning. Still, some people do, and it seems to me that designing a couple new level 4 missions per release would really spice it up for them, without really costing that much. How much time could it possibly cost? Especially if you get players to do the design work, as splatus suggests.
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ReplyDeletePVC Pipe