Dynamic agent qualities (CSM)
Note: Rendered obsolete by 2011 changes to agents.
Stats
Raised by: Dierdra Vaal
Submission Date: 22-05-2008
Issue ID: 0049
Summary
This issue is derived from the initial thread. A current problem in Eve is that mission agents have a static quality. Higher quality leads to better rewards, so agents with a high to very high quality will always be more popular than lower quality agents. This leads to certain systems being very busy, as many pilots all wish to use the services of one specific agent. Meanwhile, many other agents of the same corporation and the same level go unused. Even worse are the instances where a system or constellation has many high quality agents. The best – or worst – example of this is the Motsu/Saila/Aramachi mission hub, where the high quality agents are so popular that the amount of players in the constellation cause so much lag it becomes hard to enjoy the game and play it like it was intended to.
To encourage players to spread out over the available agents, this issue proposes to make agent quality a dynamic attribute, inversely derived from the amount of missions that were completed or offered by the agent the day (or week) before. The more missions are offered or completed by a specific mission agent, the lower that agent’s quality will be. Likewise, agents who did not complete or offer many (or any) missions will increase in quality. This will encourage players to spread out, and discourage the forming of mission hubs. It will also end up increasing the quality of low sec agents compared to that of high sec agents, as high sec mission agents have always shown to be more popular. This in turn might encourage low sec mission running.
Potential Solutions
Dynamic agent quality
Let agent quality be inversely related to the mission activity of a certain agent. More missions leads to less quality. This will encourage the population to distribute itself more evenly amongst the agents, discourage the forming of mission hubs and might even encourage players to move to low sec.
Move agents out of mission hubs
Examine the game for current mission hubs (examples are the Motsu area, Irjunen, etc) and move agents to avoid having high quality agents in the same constellation. Policies (informal or formal) should be made to avoid the placing of new high quality agents near existing high quality agents. This change would perhaps be easier to implement, but only solves lag-related problems that mission hubs cause.
Remove agent quality
Removing the quality attribute of agents would make all agents of the same level equally desirable, and might encourage players to seek out agents in less populated – and less laggy – areas. This solution does have some disadvantages: all agents of the same level would become nearly identical, and this system does not directly encourage players to spread out evenly over the available agents. It could be likely that since all agents are the same, many players will stay with their agent and not bother to move, as a move does not inherently yield higher rewards – just a possibility of less lag.
Relevant Forum Threads
Votes
Dierdra Vaal: Aye
Inanna Zuni: Nay
Bane Glorious: Aye
Tusko Hopkins: Aye
LaVista Vista: Aye
Jade Constantine: Aye
Ankhesentapemkah: Aye
Leandro Salazar: Nay
Serenity Steele: Nay