Let's Fix the Mission Board and Remove Instance Hopping - The Broker

Zebwen

Z
Cycling mission boards. It's stupid, it's immersion breaking, it feels like you're having to "con" the game into doing something it should be doing already, but we're still all doing it. Why? Because it's necessary.

Also, what kind of impact is all these hundreds or thousands of people constantly re-logging having on the Frontier servers? It can't be good? It's like their own playerbase is constantly DDoSing them.

So, let's propose an in-game mechanic that allows us to perform this necessary action in a way that makes sense within the boundaries of the game world. A method which satisfies the need to find extra missions but also provides an in-game barrier to doing so.


The Pitch:


  1. Mission boards remain largely as they are: a randomly assigned set of missions for the minor faction contacts at the station. A player goes to the board and receives a free list of missions to choose from. New players get access to missions.
  2. This mission list is time locked. Cycling the mission board by hopping instances wont change it, it's bound to your account for a set time. Let's say 15 minutes, but it doesn't really matter. Point is, you can't force the game to issue new missions.
  3. There is another contact in the list, one at every station. This contact is The Broker.
  4. The broker exists for one reason, you can pay him a fee and the service he provides is to go off and find you more missions, let's say 10, he gives you a list of 10 new, randomly generated missions. He pulls in his contacts, speaks to characters in high or shady locations, and provides you with a fresh list of missions to choose from.
  5. The broker's fee is dependent on how specialized a list you want him to provide: you want only massacre missions? OK, but that criteria will cost you 50k. You want only data delivery missions for a specific faction? OK but that's two criteria, so that's 100k. You have three criteria? That'll cost you even more.
  6. Pick the missions you want from the broker list, but it's still not enough? OK, pay him again and get a new list.

So, couple of things to point out here. I don't actually care what the buy-in price is for the broker, prices mentioned above are just an indicator, but there's a couple of critical points to this mechanism.

  1. It's disposing money out of the economy - this is important, there aren't enough disposal methods right now and I believe this is contributing to the top-down weight of the in-game "economy" right now.
  2. It's providing in-game pain, rather than stupid instance-hopping pain to essentially do the same thing.

Another important point here. A VERY important point:

Marco Qwent

Marco Bloody Qwent

Also, any other mission pickups LIKE the Marco Qwent one - Can't find the mission right now? Pay The Broker, he will go find it for you. No more 5+ hours of cycling mission boards.

This idea is open to styling and modification, but I truly believe it is the best way to fix this ridiculous mechanism that we feel forced in to.

Zeb
 
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Adyin

A
That sounds like a really good idea to me. Mainly because, I am right in the middle of trying to spawn that damn Marco Qwent mission, and I'm getting so jaded by it, that it is really starting to grate on me - I just want to unlock him - and move on!

The immersion factor would also be cool, in terms of adding "story" content to the game. For instance, with Marco Qwent, it could send you on a small journey, to speak to varying people at say, perhaps, the crew lounge (or a bar - you get the idea) - you will need to grease a few palms OR, it sends to you to that damn 0.22ly station in Alpha Centauri - y'know, the one we have all done out of a sense of..."I'm doing this damn thing, because I won't sleep at night, if I don't see the bloody thing through, even though I should've given up when I realised it was a 1hr flight, and that's just the end of it!!" That would be cool.

Point is, this mission board flipping is getting old....the game deserves a mechanic to do it 'In-Game', and not something that forces you out of the immersion, making you feel cheap and dirty, as though I was doing something wrong.

I love this game...no, it's not a a game, it's an experience...and I want to stay in the experience, while I experience it :/ (eh?! :p)

Good idea, mate - get's my, two-big-thumbs-up :)
 

ZZleeZZ

Z
Great idea.

Board flipping is the biggest irritant in the game right now and this would be the perfect way to not only fix it but also to create a believable mechanism to replace the need to do it.
 

Exiton

Exiton
In 2.3 I'd come to the system in war state in fully combat fitted Corvette, and the faction I'm allied with that takes part in the war would offer me... mining missions only.

In 2.4 we were promised more diversity in mission generation.

Instead I'm now getting 4 times the amount of mining missions. No amount of relogging spawns massacres.

I'm very sad.
 

Zebwen

Z
Stellar Gambit said:
Last I heard, Frontier don't consider boardhopping an exploit, so its very low down if at all on their 'things to do' list
Click to expand...

I don't consider it an exploit either, so I can understand their priorities when planning the dev cycle. But I'm hoping they don't underestimate how much of an impact the mechanism has on people's enjoyability of the game. It really grates on me having to do it all the time, and while it might not be an exploit, it certainly feels like I'm doing something wrong, you know?

Zeb
 

Adyin

A
Stellar Gambit said:
Last I heard, Frontier don't consider boardhopping an exploit, so its very low down if at all on their 'things to do' list
Click to expand...

I understand what you are saying, but this is a suggestions board - seems a tad counter-productive to just try and imagine, what would be a priority, and what would not. We know Frontier have a lot of other priorities, but if they see this and think it might be worth doing, then it's been worthwhile suggestion. At the end of the day, something needs to be done - last night, just having missions returned to the board in open and solo was a damn chore and board flipping MUST have had a lot to do with it as the resource grab on the servers will be high.
 

racer1

racer1
Why not just add a refresh button, stick it behind a timer (30 seconds?) to reduce server load if necessary.

Surely any station servicing thousandths of people will have no shortage of missions.
 

Adyin

A
racer1 said:
Why not just add a refresh button, stick it behind a timer (30 seconds?) to reduce server load if necessary.

Surely any station servicing thousandths of people will have no shortage of missions.
Click to expand...

Yeah, at the absolute least, this would be a solution. The exiting to 'board-flip' is madness.
 

through the hole backwards

T
Board hopping ruins your immersion , not mine. You play your game etc. Mission boards already cycle ever fifteen minutes or so . Leave it alone and fix something important instead.
 
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Zebwen

Z
through the hole backwards said:
Board hopping ruins your immersion , not mine. You play your game etc. Mission boards already cycle ever fifteen minutes or so . Leave it alone and fix something important instead.
Click to expand...

That's fine. This board is about suggestion and feature requests, though, not about development priorities that we have neither insight to or control over. If you have any suggestions on the idea itself they are welcome, but if not the comment feels a little pointless.

racer1 said:
Why not just add a refresh button, stick it behind a timer (30 seconds?) to reduce server load if necessary.

Surely any station servicing thousandths of people will have no shortage of missions.
Click to expand...

My only problem with this is that it makes it almost TOO easy, and people will spam refresh. Putting a financial barrier to it makes more sense to me and adds to economy disposal, which is important.
 
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kingbankai

kingbankai
Zebwen said:
Cycling mission boards. It's stupid, it's immersion breaking, it feels like you're having to "con" the game into doing something it should be doing already, but we're still all doing it. Why? Because it's necessary.

Also, what kind of impact is all these hundreds or thousands of people constantly re-logging having on the Frontier servers? It can't be good? It's like their own playerbase is constantly DDoSing them.

So, let's propose an in-game mechanic that allows us to perform this necessary action in a way that makes sense within the boundaries of the game world. A method which satisfies the need to find extra missions but also provides an in-game barrier to doing so.


The Pitch:


  1. Mission boards remain largely as they are: a randomly assigned set of missions for the minor faction contacts at the station. A player goes to the board and receives a free list of missions to choose from. New players get access to missions.
  2. This mission list is time locked. Cycling the mission board by hopping instances wont change it, it's bound to your account for a set time. Let's say 15 minutes, but it doesn't really matter. Point is, you can't force the game to issue new missions.
  3. There is another contact in the list, one at every station. This contact is The Broker.
  4. The broker exists for one reason, you can pay him a fee and the service he provides is to go off and find you more missions, let's say 10, he gives you a list of 10 new, randomly generated missions. He pulls in his contacts, speaks to characters in high or shady locations, and provides you with a fresh list of missions to choose from.
  5. The broker's fee is dependent on how specialized a list you want him to provide: you want only massacre missions? OK, but that criteria will cost you 50k. You want only data delivery missions for a specific faction? OK but that's two criteria, so that's 100k. You have three criteria? That'll cost you even more.
  6. Pick the missions you want from the broker list, but it's still not enough? OK, pay him again and get a new list.

So, couple of things to point out here. I don't actually care what the buy-in price is for the broker, prices mentioned above are just an indicator, but there's a couple of critical points to this mechanism.

  1. It's disposing money out of the economy - this is important, there aren't enough disposal methods right now and I believe this is contributing to the top-down weight of the in-game "economy" right now.
  2. It's providing in-game pain, rather than stupid instance-hopping pain to essentially do the same thing.

Another important point here. A VERY important point:

Marco Qwent

Marco Bloody Qwent

Also, any other mission pickups LIKE the Marco Qwent one - Can't find the mission right now? Pay The Broker, he will go find it for you. No more 5+ hours of cycling mission boards.

This idea is open to styling and modification, but I truly believe it is the best way to fix this ridiculous mechanism that we feel forced in to.

Zeb
Click to expand...

Meh...

After 2.4 dropped I didn't need to board cycle for missions. If I played open full time I wouldn't do it but I only play private/solo. Missions do need to diversify a little but that can be fixed by jumping to a different system. And good lord they need to pay more. Transport weapons 90ly for only 155,000 cr???
 

Daynen

D
The fact that engineer missions are a random spawn AT ALL is not excusable. After all the rep grinds I had to do to get to friendly with the Eurybia blue mafia (not cordial, as the INGAME ENGINEER SCREEN SUGGESTED) there is zero excuse for making the invite mission a random spawn. None. Ever. There are things that should be somewhat unpredictable and things that should be absolutely consistent. Engi invites, for all the crap needed to use them, should NOT be in the former camp.

That said, I think mission boards just need to either fresh missions as soon as you accept them, or persist across mode switches. One or the other. Nerfing the value of missions to reduce the lure of exploits does not solve the problem. It's a problem Fdev created for themselves and they need to stop fooling around and solve it.
 
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