The latest example concerns the new level 4 missions. On Monday, CCP Seagull published a dev blog about the upcoming Hyperion release. In the blog, she mentioned a new type of level 4 mission:
"Take on a single, powerful enemy using fitting skills and combat tactics in new optional level 4 missions for frigate size ships that will be available from all security agents in Empire space. An upcoming dev blog will present the new missions."Immediately after the dev blog was published, CSM member Xander Phoena was on Twitter touting how great these missions were and how many ships players would lose because of the level of difficulty. Now, I realize that getting new PvE content is a big deal, but sometimes I get a little selfish and think about how I play. For me, I don't do security missions, which is what CCP Seagull's description made the new content sound like. Also, I thought the missions were designed for more than one player, which is not a problem since I usually dual-box security missions on the rare occasions I do them. Although, looking back, I probably have not done a combat mission of any type since I finished my big Minmatar faction grind back in December. If I exclude COSMOS, storyline, and epic arc combat missions, I probably have not done a combat mission (i.e. a regular security mission) in over a year. So I Tweeted out that I probably wouldn't do them.
Afterwards, I kind of felt bad about that. I can understand Xander's excitement. CSM members get a lot of grief about the state of the game and helping push out (I'm assuming the CSM was involved in internal testing) new PvE content shows that CCP is listening to the player base and, by extension, the CSM. I probably should have waited for the more detailed dev blog was published, even if Xander couldn't contain himself.
I do have to say that the new burner missions don't sound bad. Players will need to at least fit tackle and prop mods like they would in a PvP environment. I suspect that sensor dampeners will come into play as well for the kiting NPCs. Perhaps more importantly, the missions are part of the regular security mission pool. The descriptions of the NPCs make the missions sound more like storyline missions, but adding the missions to the regular mix shows that CCP is updating existing content and not just making a new class of mission.
So even though the new content doesn't fit my play style, I'm glad to see CCP add the new missions. And in the future, I'll try to think before I tweet.
