Missions in EVE Online
Much as I love EVE Online - now that Empyrean Age has killed off the weird stargates issue that was rendering it impossible for me to play - there is one aspect of it that really bugs me: time limits on missions.
An EVE session goes like this: I log in, do some trading, poke at various skills, decide they're not high enough yet for me to do worthwhile production, and go to do a mission or two. Midway through a mission, something comes up - a friend arrives, I need to go eat, the cat has a conniption fit, whatever. The net result is that I need to leave the machine, potentially for some hours, and probably will have more needful things than EVE to attend to when I come back.
But if I leave the mission there, I'll miss, at the least, the time bonus, and possibly fail the whole thing if I leave it for a few days. And that will do damage to my standings - damage that will take a large number of missions to make up for. Sure, it's realistic that the agents want things done before a certain time. But it means that very often, I wind up sitting in front of the machine, calling, "I'll be there in a minute!" into the next room at three-minute intervals for fifteen minutes or half an hour.
The sensible thing to do, of course, is not take on missions until I'm sure I can finish them, and/or to play more often. Possibly in wintertime, when I'm in and online more, this will be less of a problem.
Posted by Drew Shiel at June 19, 2008 12:38 PM
