Mission Timers - Reopening an old wound with what we know now

[babelfisch]

A possible solution ?

Mission times out whilst still online = mission fail

Mission times out when offline = mission annulled (no repercussions)

To the simulation and to other player the results would be the same

Best proposal so far.

PS

There will be some people who say this is exploitable. You could just logout and don't get the rep hit when the mission timer runs out. But to be honest, I don't care, this is still a game and if someone wants to cheat himself by exploiting (without hurting others) I have no problem with it.

 

[Ideas Man]

Pilot, I have got a very important mission for you!
I need you to go and destroy a pirate, it is imperative that this mission succeeds as this pirate has been killing our men!
You have 7 hours to do it, after that we will, erm, forget about him or forgive him or something and also punish you because of *reasons* - yes, after 7 hours we will no longer hate the pirate but we will hate you - for some reason or other.

What do you mean you have better things to do? Hey, come back here!

 

[Kalearne]

A possible solution ?

Mission times out whilst still online = mission fail

Mission times out when offline = mission annulled (no repercussions)

To the simulation and to other player the results would be the same

Like this idea, although I wonder how to combat the old logoffski to avoid rep damage. I suppose it's no worse than the co,bat scenario and it does at least make them equally flawed

 

[Jex =TE=]

Second, a faction doesn’t need me to kill 3 pirates now or ever, the mission generators make no sense. The reasons behind them make no sense. While the effects of them seem to make a bit of sense on the local faction, the mission you did makes none. I just pick whatever is giving me money, who cares what faction it is.
Kill 3 traders? Fetch 4 tons of grain? Deliver a message? Only it does in increase or decreas faction influence and system stability. When you have thousands of systems who cares when one goes civil war? They’re all the same anyeay.

I took a kill 5 pirates mission last night. I killed about 15 because I still had ammo left. Pirates kept coming, flying up to me and saying ‘what cargo do you carry’ in their little shieldless Eagles. And they would have kept coming if I had stayed there. These missions are nothing but fluff.

Having the timer continue when you are offline only punishes players who don’t have time to have long playing sessions or have other things in their life they that are a priority over this stupid ‘backround simulation’.
To have the timer stop when you log off punishes no one but you get these people trying to argue against it because of ‘immersion’ or something ridiculous. Another terrible design decision in a terrible execution of an online only game.

This shows how bad a "procedurally" generated game works. The map is generated, the market is generated and the AI are generated and the missions are generated and it's frikkin obvious and kills immersion.

 

[Jex =TE=]

Pilot, I have got a very important mission for you!
I need you to go and destroy a pirate, it is imperative that this mission succeeds as this pirate has been killing our men!
You have 7 hours to do it, after that we will, erm, forget about him or forgive him or something and also punish you because of *reasons* - yes, after 7 hours we will no longer hate the pirate but we will hate you - for some reason or other.

What do you mean you have better things to do? Hey, come back here!

"OK sir I have some questions? Is this just any pirate or a specific pirate? If it's a specific pirate, why is there a time limit so stupidly short - have you seen how big the galaxy is? I've been reading stories from old about these people called "cowboys" and they would have "bounty hunters" but they were never given a day to do it in - in fact, they had no time limit to get their bounty. Now if it's any old pirate, I don't understand the sudden concern about getting it done quickly. Any old pirate would suggest you have a piracy problem on your hands so why can't I organise a squadron to go take them out - oh you mean that's not possible in this universe, ok. So why is there no urgency to get all the pirates then? Why just one pirate? You do know you can do this yourself right? Just fly out and you'll randomly find one and they're real easy to kill and require no real effor......oh NOW I see why there's a time limit!"

 

[spacejumbofudge]

People always defend the current way, even if they have to go through weird logical hoops to do so. You can see how religions and their respective bibles have lasted so long despite... you know.

I think an interesting angle to look at this is - if the game currently used online timers only, would anyone argue for realtime timers and would they get support for that?

The fact is that this is a problem that effects one side of the argument and not the other, and the claims that 'fixing' it would in any way have a negative effect on the people who don't find it a problem are very tenuous.

 

[Sir_Robin]

A possible solution ?

Mission times out whilst still online = mission fail

Mission times out when offline = mission annulled (no repercussions)

To the simulation and to other player the results would be the same

Best proposal so far.

PS

There will be some people who say this is exploitable. You could just logout and don't get the rep hit when the mission timer runs out. But to be honest, I don't care, this is still a game and if someone wants to cheat himself by exploiting (without hurting others) I have no problem with it.

Gets my vote too.

 

[Tarman]

Oh god a carousel topic. Everyone who's worried about that life they talk about should hoversnnailmeme out of this thread or waste even more time than these mission timer issues.