Mission Board Rework: How to fix the single worst aspect of mission boards

I never board flip, that being said, I am not always satisfied with the mission options I get. I think there are to few of them. More missions and in categories, for more easy find, would be better.

The problem is I don't think they can put more missions on the boards. They tried that in 2.3 and the mission servers couldn't handle it and kept crashing, so they dialed it back to the "old" amount of missions. This is one more reason why offering focused missions to the player is a good option, since simply increasing the amount of missions randomly generated is not an option.
 
But what about those sessions that follow on from a pub session where you log on, not remembering where you logged off, or what ship you were in, and plan on letting the mission board decide for you what it is you might drunken try to do? This happens quite often... and if I were required to make a decision and then request specific mission types... I'd end up sitting there, thinking about my ship, trying to understand where I was, what gherkin best options were, and never leave the station. Sometimes it's better to let the boards decide your fate.
 
I think that part of the problem isn't so much the mission flipping itself, but the fact that missions are generally simply so effective at ramping up reputation, influence and credits, which in turn drives players to continually board flip until they have fully stacked the ones they want to maximise their profits. If most missions weren't simply "do activity X, except earn several times the usual profit", but instead were specially against the grain for a particular station or offered unique gameplay not found elsewhere, then we probably wouldn't have this issue.
 
Disconnect / connect is part of FD emergent gameplay and they have it incorporated in their dev. Latest proof, guardian ruins.
It is not only the mission board that needs a rework but most of the game mechanics.

Annoyingly this is true... While I really liked the new guardian ruins and related game play, I'm not making that journey multiple times... So I will just annoy myself relogging to get the stuff to unlock the things.

It's not like I head out there often, and why would I?

You should unlock the guardian items by doing the guardian related things, once.
 
I think a better method would be to make the need to flip boards unnecessary in the first place. This can be accomplished by allowing the player to request a type of mission before the board is generated. Think of it like the mission givers asking the player “So, what kind of work are you looking for?” and then they see what they have available which would interest the player.

For example, if a player wants to do some mining they could select “mining missions” at the mission board interface, and then the boards would populate with only mining missions. No salvage missions, no data point scans, only what they are looking for and lots of them. They might not have any missions of that type, maybe mining missions aren't currently being offered in Deciat, but at least the player could easily see that right away rather than flip the board for 15 minutes only to leave frustrated. There would still be an option of “random” which would provide what we have now, lots of different types of missions if players wanted that.

This would make the game much more convenient for people to play the way they want to rather than need to fight the boards themselves. It also makes adding future new mission types to the pool very easy for Frontier without fear of board real estate being compromised. And it would greatly reduce the need to flip boards in the first place, if not outright make it unnecessary for 99% of the players.

+Rep

Very cool

I also thought it would be cool if they could just add a "refresh button." After you hit refresh a five minute countdown would display showing how long until you could refresh the board again.

I'd also cache the mission board so if you did board flip you'd see the same list and countdown - problem solved!
 
+1 from me Mengy.
I really like the idea of requesting which type of mission you are looking for.
It would increase immersion and reduce frustration and server load. C'mon FD make it happen.
 
I don't get why people stacking 20 missions is an issue, every mission has a timer on it, if the player can get the missions done in the time frame then they should be allowed to stack as many as they can find, making types of missions easier to find too would be a big help but for some reason players are expected to take one or two available missions at a time and be happy about it, which for casual players wastes there time as there travel to and from a starport to refresh a mission will cut into everything they do,, just make the timer failure or abandon mission have a concequense, that way people will take what missions they can manage and solve the board flipping issue
 
Not finding what you want is actually one aspect that continues to make this a "game". Sometimes your get a "good" board sometimes you don't. That's life...

As I've said elsewhere, I also don't think all the options to choose your payout is an improvement. It just complicates the board analysis aspect even further. I find myself now spending three times as much time looking at the board(s) and all the various opportunities they offer. "Elite: Accountant" it should not have to be...

In fact, getting a "cold" board has often led me to go try other things I might not have normally done...

Just "asking for what you want" is going to make the game even more of a grind. Not so much as more time involved, but just doing the same thing over-and-over again... If there is nothing to encourage folks to try new stuff, boredom is going to come much quicker...

Changing the way Mission Boards work is no substitute for adding new content in any case...
 
Not finding what you want is actually one aspect that continues to make this a "game". Sometimes your get a "good" board sometimes you don't. That's life...

As I've said elsewhere, I also don't think all the options to choose your payout is an improvement. It just complicates the board analysis aspect even further. I find myself now spending three times as much time looking at the board(s) and all the various opportunities they offer. "Elite: Accountant" it should not have to be...

In fact, getting a "cold" board has often led me to go try other things I might not have normally done...

Just "asking for what you want" is going to make the game even more of a grind. Not so much as more time involved, but just doing the same thing over-and-over again... If there is nothing to encourage folks to try new stuff, boredom is going to come much quicker...

Changing the way Mission Boards work is no substitute for adding new content in any case...

but surely each to there own, If you like it as it is don't turn off the stuff you don't want and carry on as is, but if you just wanna do surface scan mission for example, then wheres the harm in asking for just those kinds of jobs.
 
People flip the boards to collect as many of the high paying jobs as they can. It really hasn't got anything to do with what type of mission, it has everything to do with the rewards.

That said, I have no problem, or might even encourage your suggestion. It's ok with me. But, let's not mistake the major reason for Board Flipping. Credits.

I completely agree. Board flipping isn't the problem, it's the amount of the same mission you can stack that is problematic credits wise.
If you limit the number of missions that you can stack of one type to an amount you can easily get on average on the missions board without flipping (e.g. say 5 missions), it completely solves the problem.

However, people won't like this and if you take it away (or only suggest it) the whining will be enormous. It should have been like this from the beginning.

The ability to stack 20 of the same mission just invites people to use exploits.
 
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but surely each to there own, If you like it as it is don't turn off the stuff you don't want and carry on as is, but if you just wanna do surface scan mission for example, then wheres the harm in asking for just those kinds of jobs.

Yeah - I get it... Now there is effectively three times the stuff to consider. But turning that stuff off basically removes the ability to consider it or see if something "new" and tasty pops up... The very point I'm trying to make...

I can certainly deal with it. I just don't think its a real improvement..
 
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Yeah - I get it... But turning that stuff off basically removes the ability to consider it or see if something "new" and tasty pops up... The very point I'm trying to make...

yeah I can see that, and a very valid point you make, if that's what your looking for in a board, but if like me your not looking for that, you can still turn it off, horses for courses etc, not saying your wrong in what you look for its, just that it might not be what you8r looking for all the time
 
Yeah - I get it... Now there is effectively three times the stuff to consider. But turning that stuff off basically removes the ability to consider it or see if something "new" and tasty pops up... The very point I'm trying to make...

I can certainly deal with it. I just don't think its a real improvement..

But you wouldn't need to turn it off at all? Just select the random option from the list and you'd have exactly what we have today.
 
People do this because they want to make massive amounts of credits for minimal amounts of effort, or to make massive amounts of Rank for minimum amounts of efforts.
Why? To Buy Corvettes and Cutters of course. Why? Because they believe these are the "best" ships.

A simple large font, bold-faced, stickied in every forum "There is No Best Ship" post from Frontier should stop a majority of this behavior.

There will always be that one person, and there's just no appeasing that one person.
 
People do this because they want to make massive amounts of credits for minimal amounts of effort, or to make massive amounts of Rank for minimum amounts of efforts.
Why? To Buy Corvettes and Cutters of course. Why? Because they believe these are the "best" ships.

A simple large font, bold-faced, stickied in every forum "There is No Best Ship" post from Frontier should stop a majority of this behavior.

There will always be that one person, and there's just no appeasing that one person.

I am hoping the buffed Type-9 will help this as well. The Type-9 is a viable end game trading ship for space truckers that is much easier to obtain than the Cutter.
 
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