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EVE Online: Mission Running... Why and How
MMORPG.com EVE Online Correspondent Tom Yeates writes this article on running missions in EVE Online.
In the beginning...
Allow me to set the scene. You've installed EVE Online; you're on a 14 Day Trial or perhaps you actually own the game and decided to start afresh. Maybe you have dabbled in other aspects of EVE, but you haven't touched any of that "mission stuff". Well, then this article was written for you. It is by no means a definitive guide, but will hopefully provide you some insight into how mission running can benefit your character and your corporation and how to find an agent to get started.
I was like you once... Fresh, brand new and in some ways, overwhelmed by the enormity of the EVE Universe. How do you start off? What do you do? The in-game tutorial guides you through the basic principles of EVE and gifts you rudimentary control over the game interface but it doesn't tell you what to do afterwards. You may be left with a distinct sense that you lack an overbearing aim or a goal. There is no clear cut path, no levels to grind through. You are literally booted into the deep without apology or comment. Welcome to EVE Online.
The point of this callous 'dumping' is to give you the freedom to choose what to do. EVE is a game which requires you, the player, to have a goal and to set yourself tasks and objectives. So, this article is obviously assuming that you've grabbed a cup of coffee, tea, or in fact any other beverage, sat down and had a long hard think about where you want to head with your character and that you have thought about running missions as a means to grow your own ISK crop. So, the question is - why mission running? Why not mining? Why not manufacturing? What kind of missions? These are important questions, affected by multiple variables.
Firstly, character creation is an important process in the short term for an EVE Player. Aesthetics aside, the character creation process defines your starting skill set and starting attributes; so of course if you have started out as a research character and now suddenly want to jump into combat, you would subsequently have to learn the combat skills in order to do this. The lesson here is that it pays to have an idea of what you want to do from the get go in order to give yourself a head start in that direction. There are of course many varieties of missions such as research and development missions; courier missions; mining missions and of course kill missions, so it's not necessary to choose combat in order to excel in missions. However, for careers like mining the likelihood is that you will want to actually go out and mine ore and then refine or sell that ore rather than do missions involving small scale mining. Combat tends to be the most common mission type and is a primary focus for many combat players who do not have a foothold in mining or manufacturing.
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Secondly, some players simply don't like the industrial side of EVE. There are definitely some people out there who are content to let others craft tools of destruction whilst they simply use them in order to get their hands very...very dirty. To put it simply - there are a lot of players, perhaps even like yourself who simply want to "blow stuff up". For these people, mission running is a welcome opportunity to unleash death upon their enemies and earn some ISK in the process.
The Benefits...
Missions in EVE Online provide several benefits to a player. Primarily, they reward your actions with ISK - garnered from bounty from NPC pirate kills and as a direct reward from handing the mission in. They also boost your standings with the particular corporation you have been working for. Whilst the benefits of ISK rewards are obvious, standings are less so and if you are anything like me, they may leave you confused as to their actual purpose.
At the simplest level, your standing with a corporation affects which agents you have access to. Missions range from Level 1 to Level 5, the higher your effective standing with a corporation, the higher the level of mission agents you can access. However standing affects a multitude of different things in EVE Online, such as access to Jump Clones - an advanced cloning technique used to cut out long distance travel; the ability to anchor player owned structures (also known as PoS's) inside high security space and, for those industrial minded players out there: standing affects the amount of minerals you lose in the refining process. Your standing also contributes to your own corporations overall standing, so you are not only helping yourself but also your entire corporation. So, missions are a key part of increasing your standing with your faction, and the corporations within that faction. An interesting note to make in this area is that if you have a high faction standing, for example a high standing with the Caldari State, then that automatically opens up higher level agents in every corporation within that faction. This enables you to start working for a corporation you might have never completed a mission for at a higher level. The lesson to be learnt here is that Faction standing is very useful!
The Know How...
Now that you have been freshly equipped with knowledge of the benefit of mission running - you're hopefully still interested and would like to know how to begin. This is quite a simple process. First you must identify a corporation you wish to work for and a "division" of that corporation. So the logical step here is - what sort of missions do you wish to do? Maybe you're aiming for combat missions in order to rid New Eden of hideous and swarthy, rum loving pirates...or something to that effect. Perhaps you are a traveller at heart and seek to run a series of courier missions rather than have your ship put at risk. Alternatively you could be a budding scientist and be seeking R&D agents and their associated missions. Whatever your choice, there is something for you. In all likelihood you will be working for corporations that fall under the umbrella of your chosen race, for example the Caldari State. If not, this doesn't matter. To find out all the corporations within your faction use the "People and Places" search function (set to Faction) and type in your faction's name (Caldari State, Minmatar Republic, Amarr Empire, Gallente Federation) and "Show Info" on that faction. You will find all the corporations within that faction under the "Member Corps" tab.
Obviously there are a lot of corporations here and you are expected to choose only a handful of them. It pays to do your research and good advice would be to seek the highest available quality agent that is relatively close to your start point. Feel free to do some heavy travelling if you decide you dislike the area you are currently in but to save you that time, look around and find an agent that suits you nearby. For example within the Caldari State, corporations like Home Guard and the Caldari Navy have a plethora of agents within reach of the starting stations.
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Examine a corporation, and use the "Agents" tab to provide you with a list of agents both available and not available to you amongst the different "divisions" in that corp. These "divisions" are important as they determine the type of mission you will receive. The clue is usually in the name: Surveillance, Security, Command and Internal Security are almost exclusively killing missions, whilst R&D and Mining speak for themselves. Others provide more of a mix such as Personnel or Accounting. Identify what you want and head for the location of the agent, once there begin a conversation and you will be on the right track for your first successful mission in EVE Online!
Some Tips...
There are several important things to note from here on out:
Firstly, the 'Journal' is a key part of mission running. In here are placed all mission offers whether you have accepted them or have yet to accept them. If you need to check details of your mission, you can find it in the 'Journal'. A word of advice is, when speaking to an agent, before accepting the mission always ask for more details and check the location of the mission to ensure you aren't straying anywhere you don't want to go. Very irritating to accept a mission only to discover it's inside a 0.2 security sector! Secondly, if you complete 16 missions in a row for the same corporation, you receive a special mission known as a 'Storyline' mission. You will receive an email from an agent requesting to speak with you. These missions provide a boost to your Faction standing, unlike normal missions which simply boost your standing with a specific corporation within that faction - this makes them very useful. They vary in difficulty, from simple hand-ins to more complicated kill missions with several parts. My advice is to complete these missions wherever possible, if not only for the standing but for the fact that you often receive decent implants or other modules/ships as a reward.
The final tip is something not often mentioned. Players are made aware during the tutorial that ignoring a mission or failing one will cause you to lose standing with that agent and his/her corporation. This often leaves players scared of saying "No" to an agent and refusing a mission, even if it is something which is beyond the player's capabilities. The good news here is, you are entitled to refuse one mission every four hours with no penalty to your standing. Keep this in mind.
The Aftermath...
Mission running in EVE Online is a rewarding, if sometimes gruelling process. The steady progress from lowly Level 1 missions to high powered Level 4 marathons is impressive and personally gave me a nice perspective on how far I had come since starting the game. Of course it's not all personal satisfaction, the ISK rewards increase exponentially and when coupled with salvaging and general looting it becomes a very nice earner for both casual and hardcore players.
Nice overview, very well written..
Nicely written, gives a good idea of what to do. (Edit:) -And what to keep in mind.
But after the tutorial, you are thrown around different lvl1 agents. The tutorial puts you through some of them, and you're referred to another agent, and from there, you can chose to finish theese agents missions - or you can feel "booted into the deep".
But I feel COSMOS missions have been left out. ): -And since "Faction standing" was mentioned as very useful, one should know that COSMOS missions provide "big" faction standing increase. -And that a COSMOS mission is only doable once, if you fail, you missed out on that "big", fat standing increase opportunity.
And salvaging could also have been mentioned before the aftermath, as this is a nice extra income.
"Big" because it's relative. And Storyline missions usually provide bigger increase - especially the complicated kill missions.
Is all of this mission running done solo or do you need a group at some point?
More generally asked:
Do you get far in this game as a solo player? Or even without a corp?
Don't get me wrong, I like grouping and stuff but don't want to be forced to group for decent progression.
Thanks in advance!
You can get very far soloing - The main reason I, myself, joined a corp was to get help with getting ships, skills and equipment - but, besides mining ops and 0.0 traveling, I've been doing everything solo until further.
Missions are basically said to be group-events at around lvl4-5, but even before that it might be useful.
You also have to group up, if you want to go 0.0 - because many are hostile against uninvited guests.
Also complexes usually require groups, because of the amount of NPC pirates (rats).
But, as said, a corp is a lot of other things than doing missions together. It's help with practically every aspect of Eve.
I think the title says it all , why mission run and how the heck is it effective past cruisers.
Cuz its not.
Why not make mission running more random, fun or have at least 100s of missions per level i mean the games old enough you could add a few missions. I mean how many times do i have to safe the same exact guy from the same exact bad guys. I mean all pilets in eve must be trippin on acid or something.
Sorry if i have offended i just really like eve ... and hate just about everything about its combat and quests.
Do a mission for another agent, another corp, or in another security space. .5 missions differ from .6 missions, the same with .4 missions.
Or join faction warfare(!)
I've been doing the same missions over and over since I started playing Eve again (About two months ago, after a break of 5 months.. :P), and I don't mind. Mostly because doing the same missions allows you to test different fittings and dmg-types, and you can figure out how to do these missions faster and faster (Atleast anything but courier-missions (: )
The agent I'm currently doing missions for, gets his guns stolen at least twice a day. xD
Oh, the amount in them isn't that higher than most stageaggros in Level4. It's just those nasty Energy Neuts, Battlestations firing Citadel Torps that can one-hit kill any battleship, giant AOE-Weapons, changing aggro, nasty respawns and other nasty things. ;)
The PvE in Eve does not end with level 5 missions, but (sweet irony) the higher up stuff is only available to those who group up and live in outer space 0.0, where they will have to defend themselves in pvp.
Nice, thank you. That's what I wanted to hear
So complexes compare to PVE instances or dungeons in other games, right?
I will get on the trial as soon as i get some free time, I need a break from all those elves and orks stuff
Thanks again!
They are not instanced, that's the huge difference.
I have been running missions more or less solo for three years and I never get tired of them. I started running missions for gallente faction then the caldari, minmatar and even some amarr agents because I like to keep my standings against the four main factions close to 4-5. Running missions that way also have the benefit that I get very different missions now and then from different agents.
For the last year I have been able to solo all level 4 missions and have used the time to try out different ratio of armor tanking versus attacking power, tank versus gank :) Mostly I run missions for the ISK bounty and reward but I also loot and salvage most wrecks to get modules and rig parts. I refine most of general modules that I get but sell the more expensive on the market. The rig parts I use to manufacture rigs to sell on market.
I like to be independent so I did train most industrial, mining and marketing skills to be able to do some mining now and then and I can produce most of ammo, missiles and drones that I use in my missions and also build my own frigates, destroyers, cruiser, battlecruiser and battleships for my mission running.
You need frigates for level 1 missions, cruisers for level 2 missions, battlecruiser for level 3 and Battleship for level 4 missions. If you like to try level 5 missions then you need group of 3-5 pilots in good ships.
Train the Social skill to 4 and then Connections skills to at least 3 to hurry up to get to higher levels in mission running. Good luck and good fun in mission running.
A nicely written intro. Very well done.
Thanks for the comments and discussion all.
I'm aware it's not the "perfect" article but glad some of you appreciated it. The points about salvaging are well noted as are COSMOS missions. I'm not hugely up on COSMOS missions, I have only done a handful of them personally - but you are right and they deserve a mention!
I did most of them for Amarr and Caldari.
For story arcs, they are genius. But they deserve a whole article for themselves, because of the sites you find. It's not very well known, but there are some very well built deadspaces in cosmos, that only few people have the key to.
Museum Arcanum in amarrian regions is just one of them and relatively well known, but there are others, like the hidden maze at a sun somewhere near zimse.. ;)
Very interesting! Will have to pay more attention to that!
What exactly is a faction?
Great insight, Howatch, concise, informative with very useful and essential things any player needs to know especially the not so experienced ones like myself.
Some people like running missions in Eve, and some people do play Eve casually on one account. If you try out the game and you really like it, then great, you’re happy, that’s what counts; this post of mine isn’t intended for you.
If you’ve been burned by a gaming company before and you want to go into this with a healthy dose of skepticism, then read on.
Things that fans will not tell you, because most of the current Eve population is either old fanboys in denial, or new and ignorant, or quit and left don’t care enough to visit a forums like this.
First and foremost, pve in Eve is paper thin, shallow as a street puddle. The latest expansion that supposedly included many new missions was only 39Mb. Can you imagine how little content there really is in a game when you call 39Mb an ‘expansion’? You’re reading that correctly. It wasn’t 390mb, not 3900mb, I mean 39mb, the size of a few Youtube videos.
Missions in Eve are like quests in other games, but that’s not quite accurate. More accurate is to call them “dailies,” a short list of repeatable quests done a zillion times, day after day, week after week, month after month, to grind money and standings. If you mission in Eve, you will know the missions by heart because they repeat for you, no matter what you do or where you go, over and over and over.
Deadspace is likened to what other games call dungeons, but the fact is, there are NO dungeons in Eve. There are NO group or raid activities in Eve comparable to those in fantasy mmorpgs. There are only a few shallow, super simple ‘dungeons’ and then those dailies we talked about. Yes, you can group up to 10 people to do some missions, but the rewards are evenly split between everyone, so almost nobody groups unless they absolutely have to, and people very rarely have to unless they’re struggling when first starting out or when they’re doing some seldom accessed L5s.
Why is missioning. and pve in general, so limited? Quite simply, some people will be happy playing any game doing almost anything, even something as simple as the old video game Pong. CCP knows this.
Eve isn’t a ‘content’ game, never has been. Most of Eve revolves around pvp. CCP, who makes Eve, does NOT make a product that revolves around making content to entertain you. CCP makes a sandbox for people to play in, not an amusement park.
Lemme put it this way. Usual mmos are like Disney World. Wherever you go, there are things to entertain you, whether you’re solo or in a group. Eve is more like a giant laser tag place where they don’t do much to entertain you, the entertainment comes from making teams and shooting the lasers at each other.
Ok, so the pve content is lacking compared to other games.
What else.
CCP promotes gold selling. They and the players ostensibly hate ‘gold farmers’ just like any other game, but in a situation of gross hypocrisy, CCP sells you gold. You can buy gold on the black market like any other game, or you can buy it legitimately on the CCP website by using their GTCs, game time cards.
Here’s how it works. PlayerX uses a credit card to buy a game time code that’s for 60 days of game play for 35 dollars. PlayerY, or a front character made by CCP themselves, or a gold farmer, take your pick, then trades game money for that GTC code. CCP sells you the game money if they’re the one who made the front character, and CCP in any case makes 17.50 per month on the game time through this method when the code is applied. If that sounds all kinda weird and a little complicated and screwed up…. That’s because it IS a little weird and strange and complicated and screwed up.
Bottom line is that few people ever go through advancing from square one. People buy gold from other players, or gold farmers, or CCP, either on the black market or on CCP’s website. Either way, people use real life money to get what it would take months for a new character to ever earn starting off in a newb ship, and CCP rakes in the profit of that real life cash.
If someone has more real life money than you, they can buy anything and everything to get ahead of you in the game, legally and with CCPs blessing, thereby making all that missioning you do kinda useless.
CCP also sanctions character trading on their website.
You might have heard that skilling up a character can take years.
If someone has more real life money than you, they can just buy a character years ahead of you, with CCP’s blessing, also making whatever you do seem kinda useless.
Btw, when you run missions, your mission ship doesn’t have enough cargo space to hold your loot.
It’s not like other games where you can kill something and pick up the loot. In Eve, you have to kill things and then you have to dock up and come back in some other ship to pick your stuff up.
If you want to make it real complicated, you can have one killing ship, one cargo ship, and one ‘salvage’ ship that takes apart ship wrecks for their parts, three ships all running at once on three separate accounts. That sounds kinda fun and kinda cool and kinda interesting the first time you do it, but believe me, after the second, third, forth mission it gets real annoying real fast. That’s why the people who do ‘mission’ as a career are super casuals who don’t do it enough to get sick of it, or they are gold farmers, or, the majority of people are pvpers who only reluctantly do missions as a necessity to make the money required for pvp gear.
Can you get far in the game solo? No.
Missions are designed to be doable solo, yes.
The thing is, Eve was designed as a pvp game, and there are no battlegrounds. There are no places where people are matched by size, experience, gear, rating etc. Eve is a free for all pvp place. Sure, some people try to run around killing things solo, but it’s very very rare. Why would you fight solo when you can get your buddy to come along?
If you come solo, I’ll bring a buddy.
If you bring a buddy, I’ll bring my group.
If you bring your group, I’ll bring a big fleet.
If you bring a fleet I’ll bring my whole guild.
If you bring your whole guild, I’ll bring my whole alliance of guilds.
If you bring you alliance of guilds, I’ll bring my coalition of alliances of guilds. Get it?
Yeah, super casual people can have fun solo, but the game was designed for you to pvp, for you to pvp with a bunch of other people, otherwise you’re a midget crushed by an angry mob and all the missioning gets you nowhere alone.
Skilling up a character takes forever.
If you’re not one of the people who pays a bunch of real life cash to get ahead with a bought character on CCP’s website, then you’re in for a long wait. Long time fanboys say that this adds depth the game, but it’s really just a huge block to make people never reach any goals, so they keep paying for a subscription.
If you haven’t heard, skilling up works not like experience in other games. You don’t kill things and get experience points and level up.
Skilling up, gaining skills, getting what fantasy mmo people would call ‘experience’ and ‘levels’ happens in Eve according to the real time clock, whether you’re logged in or not. That means the person who plays 10 minutes in a month just to log in and change skills to train, versus the person who plays 5 hours per night every day for 30 days, both players skill up at the SAME rate.
Casual players really like that feature, but the catch is this…
CCP did not make skilling up like that to help casuals, that was NOT their intention. CCP made skilling that way in order to SLOW EVERYONE DOWN. Yeah, it takes years to skill up a character. You can mission everyday for 10 hours per day. You can have three guys doing 8 hours shifts to keep a character playing 24/7, doesn’t matter. Whether you log in 5 minutes per month, or if you have a character running 24/7, the whole process is designed to keep you going SLOW, so that you’ll be paying a subscription FOREVER to advance.
Don’t think missioning gets you lots of experience and levels and advancement and stuff like questing does in other games, because it DOES NOT do that in Eve.
Alrighty, I’m sure I could point out more flaws in the game, but there you have some to ponder if you’re thinking about playing Eve.
Like I said above, some people have fun in the game and that’s really what counts, so if you’re one of those crazy people, then great, wonderful, more power to you. I personally spent too long chasing the pot of gold in Eve that doesn’t exist, that’s why I quit and am so critical of that game. .