Ever since EVE Online Legion was announced back at EVE Fanfest 2025, I’ve not been able to get it out of my head. Sure, the Angel Cartel Sarathiel looks incredible and the new Triglavian Marauder stands to disrupt the current meta in ways that we can’t really foresee fully just yet, but the real tentpole feature that has me fixated is the inclusion of freelance jobs.
A few years back I wrote about EVE Online building the tools for players to create their own quests – and this is essentially what this feature is. Giving players the ability to create jobs and tasks for other players, regardless of whether you’re in their corporation or not, opens up so many avenues to help give the directionless direction, and is a way potentially for new players to link up with corporations much faster than before.
How the team came to this point has been a long journey, one spanning multiple expansions and years of iteration. From the first corporation projects back with the Viridian expansion, corporations have been able to set objectives that matter to their pilots and the goals of the corp. However, Freelance Jobs aim to solve the age-old problem plaguing EVE Online: player retention.
“I think it’s a complete game changer,” EVE Online creative director Bergur “CCP Burger” Finnbogason tells me during an interview at Fanfest earlier this month. “This kind of Han Solo freelancer fantasy is so near and dear to everyone’s heart [who were] brought up in the 80s and 90s. That’s kind of what I followed when I was a kid and we lived out these fantasies of a kick ass freelancer.”
“Just being kind of a badass space guy,” EVE Online game director Snorri “CCP Rattati” Árnason added. “Like Firefly and all that, just go from place to place and do cool shit: kill pirates, haul, smuggle, that’s all kind of core to it.”
“I mean, giving players the opportunity [to have] the work they’re putting into the game to be actually meaningful,” Bergur continued. He likens it to the fact that you’re no longer simply doing the bog-standard NPC missions of ‘Kill five rats’ or similar quests that are found all throughout MMOs and RPGs, rather each Freelance Job you pick up is part of a greater whole.
This is something I’ve wanted since I started to play EVE Online back in 2017. One of the driving forces for EVE Online is the fact that players shape the universe of New Eden around them, from driving market forces through its complex in-game economy to wars that can have ripple effects from the frontline pilot to the miner in highsec space providing the raw materials to build replacement ships. But feeling like you are a part of this larger space opera often doesn’t come quickly, especially for new players trying to figure out some direction in the beginning.
The new AIR Careers program has done well in helping to provide that direction, and over the years the team at CCP Games has revamped the tutorial and new player experience a few times to try to retain players in New Eden like never before.
However, it’s still a constant struggle and a problem the team is looking to solve, and Freelance Jobs fits nicely here as both direction and a recruitment tool to get players participating in the grand story of New Eden’s capsuleers much faster than before.
Snorri likens the current system of tutorials, AIR Careers Program and more as sort of “treading water” till a player gets recruited. The current process for a new capsuleer sees them complete the tutorial and the intro, only to be spit out into the vast New Eden star cluster with a focus on AIR Opportunities – effectively AIR Jobs for players to do while they are looking to be recruited by the corporations around them.
“We’re putting Freelance Jobs at the top of that,” Árnason tells me when I asked how new players are going to know how to interact with the new feature. He adds that this is one reason why they made the new Corporation Palette system – to help Freelance Jobs stand out on this AIR Opportunities board in contrast to the “boring NPC jobs.”
Part of the process, according to CCP Rattati, will be to eventually retool the character creator as well to introduce the idea and importance of corporations from the get-go.
“The golden path we’re trying to build is to actually remove some of these weird things we do in the character creator, like ‘Pick your school,’ and all this stuff. We’re not telling you corporations are the most important thing, right? So we’re trying to over the next few years, we’re gonna keep working on that like it’s training, boot camp, but you should immediately be open to being recruited.”
Effectively, Freelance Jobs are a way for corporations to get out in front of prospective recruits and sell themselves as well as trial new players for their ranks. A bit like a blind date, as Snorri put it. Bergur says the team has actually looked at dating as a “good paradigm” for this.
“You meet someone, you don’t get married right away,” Bergur says. I added that where I live, Las Vegas, you do, but it was established that I live in a silly place and we continued.
“It’s not about starting the game and joining a corporation, but how can we ease people into it and start to build these connections, almost these asynchronous connections between people?”
By using Freelance Jobs, players will be able to pick and choose what they want to do and who they want to do them for. They can contribute meaningfully to the whole and, over time, grow a rapport with the players they are working for, leading into that avenue for recruitment.
Or you can simply be a mercenary for hire, performing jobs for myriad corps and building up a reputation among the corps as someone they can both rely on – and possibly use outside the existing job system in the future.
It’s also the philosophy that CCP Games knows that putting the tools to do this sort of thing will be better used in the hands of its players – who have proven with their wikis and other tools that they are, in some cases, better than the developers at keeping new players engaged in the content. It’s just a matter of finding them.
Community Developer Peter “CCP Swift” Ferrell echoed this sentiment during our chat at Fanfest, stating that the players at the head of these corporations don’t view it as CCP forcing them to make the tools and do the work, but rather have welcomed this idea because of the opportunity it presents to recruit new talent.
“Look at projects like EVE University that have been around for 22 years and have the most comprehensive wiki in the game. It’s better than our internal everything. They know they are better at keeping new players around than anyone else. So it’s not like, ‘Ugh CCP’s making us make the good stuff.’ They’re just like, ‘Sweet, I can get more people into my funnel, find more people for my corporation, find more people that might be a good fit for me.’ Because right now every group wants to recruit more. Doesn’t matter if you’re a veteran group or a new group, mining, exploration, whatever – everyone wants more people. They just struggle finding them because right now you just kind of scream into the void and just hope someone hears you.”
Personally, I can see myself diving into the Freelance Job system even years after starting, finding my footing, and being in a rather active corporation. I’m always on the hunt for something new to do in EVE Online whenever I play, but oftentimes I’m finding myself doing the same mundane tasks over and over again when I log in.
Freelance Jobs are sparingly used in my corporation, which makes some sense considering we are a small, lowsec pirate corporation that wants to gank people in our space. I could take a few bounties, but there are times where I wish we had something a bit broader to do other than…well…space piracy.
This isn’t a knock on my group, either. It’s the playstyle we all enjoy. But with Freelance Jobs, I’m feeling like I’ll be able to spread my wings a bit and have more to do that feels meaningful to New Eden versus just running an NPC storyline or trying to clear a nearby combat site just for funsies.
Indeed, when players have talked to me about trying to start EVE Online, it’s the directionless feeling that tends to do them in. Other sandbox games have a more clearly defined path to follow – such as the time honored tradition of punching trees to gather wood to build your first home. EVE Online is the ultimate sandbox, and with that comes with crippling freedom at times.
I truly feel like EVE Online Legion’s Freelance Jobs could be a game changer, like Bergur says. It’s player created content realized in a way that I’m not sure I would have guessed just eight years ago when I started covering this MMO. But, as gameplay producer Anna “CCP K1P1” Guðbjörg Cowden cautions during our interview at Fanfest, there is no “silver bullet” to fixing the struggles facing EVE’s retention issues.
“All I want to say is I think we should be careful, because I think nothing is ever going to be a silver bullet. […] This is maybe one component of it, but I think that we’re always going to have to look at it holistically – once we get it out in the wild, it’s like, ‘Okay, how are players interacting with it?’ Because half the time it’s like a left turn from what we’re expecting. […]
“I think a lot of what we’ve been pushing is iteration. It’s not like we’re going to drop it and never touch it again. And we’ve had a history of that, where it’s like ‘The NPE and we’ve now solved the new player experience.’ I think we are really pushing this idea where we’re putting it out, we want to see how we can fix it? Not fixt it, but how can we tweak it? How can we build on it? And I think that’s so super important because we just need to take that step.
“I think oftentimes we get so focused on what is the silver bullet, what is the one thing that’s going to fix everything, then you almost don’t do anything.”
Source: I Can’t Stop Thinking About EVE Online Legion’s Freelance Jobs And How They Can Change
