I wonder if this is, in part at least, a reaction to the broken missions that'd cause the mission board to break?
What I mean by this is that there were missions generated for over 50 Million Credits to carry 20-30 passengers one system away, but to a station 4 million ls out - basically just over an hour in Super Cruise.
I started taking these higher-paid missions a while ago, I think I picked them up in the Haghole and nearby systems with the destination being 36 Ophi-somethingorother. As I played by literally "following the missions" I sorta stumbled on this location by accident, but I'd never seen bulk passenger missions paying 5 million cr+ before, just the odd VIP. So I started taking them - often two or three all going to the same location - and earnt some good money for what was generally a fairly relaxing hour in my Type 7. As my faction rep grew, as well as my trade rank, the payouts on this missions started getting a little silly. However, who am I to refuse a well-paid mission? They started getting a little hairier too, with regular interdiction attempts, but the Type 7 appears pretty good at evading.
However, once I became Allied, or at least Friendly, with the factions in my various pick up stations, along with rising to the rank of Elite Trader (too quickly) I'd often land and see only missions for 50 Million credits or more. This was calculated via a combination of my Faction Rep, my Elite Rank and the distance to the station. Basically, to cut things short, FDev got the maths wrong and these payouts were higher than intended - despite them deliberately adding the distance multiplier. As a "quick fix" (which was in no way a fix) they appeared - at my location at least - apply a 50 Million Credits cap. So, these missions would be offered and you could accept them, but you'd instantly get a "server error" message and the mission board would crap out. Not elegant. So, not knowing what was going on at the time, I'd exit to the menu, then go back into the game to try to fix the issue. This would sometimes sort things, so I'd now get a working mission from that faction. However, I'd then go to look at the next factions offering and there might be another broken mission, so I'd exit to the menu again and re-launch. Without even realising it, I'd started "board flipping" before I even knew what that was. So, I'd land at a station, take any missions and go. However, if I landed and was presented with broken missions, I'd "board flip" to fix this. I'd then take and missions offered - assuming they weren't broken again - and be on my way. It became very frustrating, and the load time of both the Mission and Passenger board (I'd stack up on both types of missions) became quite dire, and sometimes wouldn't load at all.
So, in essence it seems that FDev got their maths wrong regarding the payouts on certain missions - they never intended them to be so well-paid, based on what I've read. They then basically broke all well-paid missions at my particular location - even "board flipping" didn't fixed them, I had nothing but broken offers or nothing at all. They've now utterly broken these missions in regards to payout, no reasonable middle-ground based on a tuned down version of the prior equation calculating payouts.
All that said, it does appear that the more reasonably-paying VIP missions still exist, though not in great quantities, at least based on my location. I think I found one 6.9 Million Credit VIP mission to my distance destination station...not really worth it alone unless I can pick up multiple other missions going to the same location in surrounding systems.
I guess my personal ideal scenario is to be able to skirt the systems surrounding one with a distant station, picking up Passenger, Cargo and data type missions to a same destination. It's satisfying to be able to stack several missions, then deliver all of them to the one destination. The chain interdictions can be fun too! As I do this in a moderately Engineered Anaconda now, this is FUN. That's what I was doing at least, with payouts as they are now targetting these distant stations is worthless.
So, to be clear, this post was not a "whinge", it was simply a request for information. It seems odd to me that FDev have evidently taken some time to look at the issue of excessive mission payouts, but surely it'd not have been much more of an effort to just tone down the formula a bit? Maybe simply reduce the distance multiplier - which appears to be the route cause of the payouts growth - rather than kill what were quite fun missions dead.
Thought: If I can do 20-30 million credits an hour doing multiple trade / mission runs, why is it so offensive to some to be offered one mission paying 30 million that happens to take an hour to complete? I like doing the former, as it's more involved, but I also like to do the odd longer run too when I want to relax a bit more.
Scoob.
