Zen and the Art of Internet Spaceship Maintenance

Welcome to the thirteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

The first banter of this 2nd year of EVE Blog Banters comes to us fromZargyl from A Sebiestor Scholar, who asked the following: On the EVE Fanfest 2009 page are pictures of prizes for the Silent Auction that was held during the event. One of these photos was entitled “Design your own EVE mission”. My question now would be what kind of mission would you write if you got that prize? What would the mission be about? Would it be one using the new system of epic mission arks? What would be the story told by it? Feel free to expand upon his questions and put together your very own mission!

I used to run missions a long time ago back when we lived in Solitude but I confess that was quite a long time ago so my knowledge of missions may be a bit off. I doubt it matters much though. Other than the epic mission arcs I haven’t read about any major strides in this area so I’ll assume they are pretty much the same as they always have been.

In my experience missions are typically pretty similar in a number of ways. One of the  ways is that they are fairly universally good. By this I do not mean that they are of good quality. What I mean is that you are always being asked to attack the ‘bad guys’. These ‘bad guys’ are also always NPCs. These two qualities come together to make EvE missions a pretty bad representation of what EvE in my mind is all about; PVP and interactions with other players.

My solution is to make a mission where you are required to go out and suicide kill someone in empire. Perhaps the larger the ship you kill the greater the LP or Isk reward for completing the mission. Though we weren’t asked to make sure the mission does not unbalance the game somehow I can see how this might be an issue having legions of players out suiciding other players to complete a mission. I think this would probably be one of the missions you maybe only get once and is probably part of the ever discussed NPE (New Player Experience). A mission like this would get players accustomed to the idea that sometimes morality takes a back seat to immediate needs in EvE. Since this would most likely be a one time mission and mission runners gain security status from missions and ratting I don’t think security status will be an issue.

So there you have it. Kill a mining Moa in Dodixie and receive this lovely set of implants.

Other Blog Banters:

1. Aether – Teach a man to fish…
2. The Captain’s Log – More Missions Please
3. Nukes Thoughts – Untitled
4. Roc’s Ramblings – The Cave of Time
5. The Wandering Druid of Tranquility –  It’s another episode of Design Star: EVE Style
6. A merry life and a short one – Fatal Rabbit
7. The Elitist – Guristas Invasion
8. Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah – Mission: Tangled Webs
9. Eve Trader – Missions with Player Adversaries
10. A Missioneer in Eve -Missioneer, not mouseketeer
11. Corrupted Datacore – Repercussions
12. CrazyKinux’s Musing – Your mission, should you decide to accept it…
13. Inanity and Doom – A Question of Impact
14. Adventures in Mission Running – I can haz spaceship?
15. Hands Off, My Loots! – No Witty Title
16. Level Cap – Epic Battles
17. A Pirate’s Life for Me – Choices in Missions
18. Achernar – Confidential Report
19. Diary of  pod pilot – Distressing The Damsel
20. Zero Kelvin – Gentlemen, We Have a Problem
21. More to come…….