No love for the lone wolf :-(

[Polared]

sad panda face!

so wings missions really meant, convert all the decent material/reward missions in to wing missions!

I really thought adding wing missions was a good idea for the game, great for players who like to wing up and have something else to do! and yes, whilst they've sort of accomplished that, they've massively reduced the mission options/rewards for players that don't do wings! what was the point, why not have both? the only reason I can think of is that they can't think of any way to balance the rewards between the two types!

 

[Sylveria]

sad panda face!

so wings missions really meant, convert all the decent material/reward missions in to wing missions!

I really thought adding wing missions was a good idea for the game, great for players who like to wing up and have something else to do! and yes, whilst they've sort of accomplished that, they've massively reduced the mission options/rewards for players that don't do wings! what was the point, why not have both? the only reason I can think of is that they can't think of any way to balance the rewards between the two types!

There really needs to be some love given to Solo players as well. A lot of "features" that have been introduced into the game with updates are multipew only- which Solo players gain absolutely no benefit from whatsoever. Allowing NPC's to stand in as a "wing mate" would help to assist with this- or even NPC multicrew, etc. but it would also need careful balancing to ensure players aren't simply "botting" their way through game progression.

 

[Tex Arcana]

There really needs to be some love given to Solo players as well. A lot of "features" that have been introduced into the game with updates are multipew only- which Solo players gain absolutely no benefit from whatsoever. Allowing NPC's to stand in as a "wing mate" would help to assist with this- or even NPC multicrew, etc. but it would also need careful balancing to ensure players aren't simply "botting" their way through game progression.

I've just been staring incredulously at the rewards.
Their values make no apparent sense.
One here is a 90 kill mission for over 10 million.
Another (Same target faction, same system) is for just over 4 million and requires 178 kills.
*Head scratch.

 

[insanephoton]

There really needs to be some love given to Solo players as well. A lot of "features" that have been introduced into the game with updates are multipew only- which Solo players gain absolutely no benefit from whatsoever. Allowing NPC's to stand in as a "wing mate" would help to assist with this- or even NPC multicrew, etc. but it would also need careful balancing to ensure players aren't simply "botting" their way through game progression.

I agree that it's time that Solo players got some love. We've had Wings, Multi-crew and Wing missions that haven't really given anything to the lone wolf player. Admittedly you can do wing missions solo but often the rewards are somewhat disappointing for the work involved. NPC wing mates have been asked for pretty much since Alpha and the irony is that we've had them in some of the training missions that have been around since the start (Wolfpack tactics and Big Score if I recall correctly) . NPC crew is another thing that people have been asking for, for ages. I don't know how hard it would be to program, but I would have thought that the foundations of it are in multi-crew. Why is it that if I get a friend to fly my SLF I can see their Holo-Me, but if I use an NPC I can't. I suspect that the NPC images are generated with a different system to Holo-Me.

I'm not sure if NPC crew would make much difference in "botting", there have been stories of afk players farming res sites with turrets set to "fire at will".

 

[Hossi]

The thing with the Wing-Missions is the only part of beyond that makes me genuinely angry, mostly because I had really high hopes for these. When they presented wing-missions the first time in the life stream I was ecstatic! This was what I was waiting for. This was the solution to the constant need to to mode switch just to fill my cargo hold.
And then? FD decides to mix the brilliant concept of the 'personal CG' with some biowaste designed to force players into wings by cutting the mission reward to 1/4 for solo players. No really, thats what they did. The mission rewards are laughable low when you do these missions alone, but everyone in the wing gets the same reward. That means you can get 4 times the reward in a full wing, which brings these mission up to a reasonable level.
And the worst thing: 80% of missions have been replaced by these, so I cannot just go back to taking solo missions. They are not there anymore.

 

[Pville_Piper]

What do you mean? There's plenty of love as you can do wing missions solo. Just because they take much longer, pay quite a bit less than the equivalent standard missions for the time you put in and have crowded out standard missions to the extent of making them near non-existent or you're in your large pad ship and the only standard missions are to smaller pads... Small quibbles... Nothing to see hear folks, move along!

Realistically, the standard missions haven't really gotten less, especially for large pad ships, but wing missions has done nothing to improve this situation and it just galls you a bit more because all you see is all of these wing missions. Is it any wonder why people board hop all the time?

And of course, the latest exploit...

Spoiler

[video=youtube;fZg-P_gWgJk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZg-P_gWgJk&feature=youtu.be[/video]

None of this is every going to get solved until FDev sits down and figures out what the per ton profit and it's variables will be. You should get larger payouts for delivering/fetching items in a boom state, bringing in medicines to an outbreak state, food to famine states, smuggling weapons into a war state, ect... But this would make too much sense. No, they have to pump up the latest feature so much so that it creates a gold rush. When Multi-Crew came out they nurfed it so that you couldn't ride along and get paid tons of money for just logging in. But do they do that for wing missions? NO! You have to deliver anything and make big bucks.

And don't even go off on the whole escort thing. Interdictions are a non-event. You can avoid them so easily and escape them when you do get caught with your pants down or you're kilt up. Get over it. Maybe someday they will introduce proper wing escort missions but until they do be prepared to be bored out of your skulls waiting for them to happen.

 

[GG7]

I've just been staring incredulously at the rewards.
Their values make no apparent sense.
One here is a 90 kill mission for over 10 million.
Another (Same target faction, same system) is for just over 4 million and requires 178 kills.
*Head scratch.

I checked out some of the wing missions in Beta and found them to be lackluster payers compared to the additional amount of combat effort required for a solo player to complete them alone. They are most definitely beatable solo, but the payouts are basically identical to the single player versions, so seriously, why bother?

I agree that there needs to be some love for Solo players. That group is one of the largest if not the largest player group in the game, yet all the attention always seems to go for the vocal minorities.

 

[Riverside]

On the contrary, the majority of the game is available for the lone wolf and has been for years, it's co-op play that is finally getting some attention

 

[Tex Arcana]

On the contrary, the majority of the game is available for the lone wolf and has been for years, it's co-op play that is finally getting some attention

Implementation is a mess though.
To the point where there is next to nothing left.

 

[Riverside]

Implementation is a mess though.
To the point where there is next to nothing left.

Can you elaborate? I've played alone (in open) just fine for several years.

 

[zombieapocalypse]

Can you elaborate? I've played alone (in open) just fine for several years.

Same here.

 

[GG7]

On the contrary, the majority of the game is available for the lone wolf and has been for years, it's co-op play that is finally getting some attention

Thats simply not true. I can think of several major features introduced to ED over the last 3 years that are not accessible to solo players.

Wings and Multi-Crew come to mind. Both could be made solo friendly if FDEV provided NPC versions of your crew instead of their current humans or nothing approach.

There are many other spects in the game that ignore the solo player in favor of a multi-player focused approach to new game features.

Then there is the whole performance gap between Open and Solo that adds to the disdain for Open mode by most who know the difference.

If the game's performance wasn't noticeable better/smoother in Solo than Open I am sure some solo only players might reconsider. But after you have spent 5 minutes stuck in a blue tunnel for the 5th time in an hour trying to drop out of SC, it doesn't take much effort to realize that crap like that NEVER happens in Solo Mode.

So... You switch back to solo mode for another 12-18 months before testing the Open performance waters again.

 

[Polared]

What do you mean? There's plenty of love as you can do wing missions solo. Just because they take much longer, pay quite a bit less than the equivalent standard missions for the time you put in and have crowded out standard missions to the extent of making them near non-existent or you're in your large pad ship and the only standard missions are to smaller pads... Small quibbles... Nothing to see hear folks, move along!

I saw what you did there

Realistically, the standard missions haven't really gotten less, especially for large pad ships, but wing missions has done nothing to improve this situation and it just galls you a bit more because all you see is all of these wing missions. Is it any wonder why people board hop all the time?

Seriously, I wish it were just a question of perception, but in my experience at least, since 3.0 dropped, unfortunately it's anything but! yes rewards are all at the same level, but most of those missions have been switched over to wing mode! it's definitely the case that missions with material/data rewards that aren't winged are in the minority now and not at the same availability as they were before 3.0!

 

[zombieapocalypse]

I saw what you did there



Seriously, I wish it were just a question of perception, but in my experience at least, since 3.0 dropped, unfortunately it's anything but! yes rewards are all at the same level, but most of those missions have been switched over to wing mode! it's definitely the case that missions with material/data rewards that aren't winged are in the minority now and not at the same availability as they were before 3.0!

Wing missions should be a separate page, like passengers. I also agree that NPC wings and crew should be a thing, no reason not to have these as features (NPC crew were a thing in previous Elite games). The mechanics for NPC wings wouldn't be too different from SLFs.

 

[Canoe]

sad panda face!

so wings missions really meant, convert all the decent material/reward missions in to wing missions!

I really thought adding wing missions was a good idea for the game, great for players who like to wing up and have something else to do! and yes, whilst they've sort of accomplished that, they've massively reduced the mission options/rewards for players that don't do wings! what was the point, why not have both? the only reason I can think of is that they can't think of any way to balance the rewards between the two types!

Yep... I play 100% solo, and the Wing Missions take up about 85% of the mission boards.. :/

 

[zombieapocalypse]

Yep... I play 100% solo, and the Wing Missions take up about 85% of the mission boards.. :/

They take up quite a bit of space, but come on, it's not quite 85% is it? I'm looking at a mission board right now, and it's less than 50%. I still agree that they should be kept on a separate page, but let's not exaggerate for the sake of making an argument

 

[El_Hefe]

Its an online MMO sandbox game,it caters very well for solo players imo.

Show me any other game in the genre that caters for solo players so well?

From what i can see theres zero content locked behind MP.

Id agree potentially the thargoids are currently locked behind a solo difficulty wall but theres new gear/weapons coming along all the time to make that easier gradually.

Most 3.0 new features and quality of life updates dont only apply to groups either. Wing missions are the first time a wing can interact with the mission board as a group since the game launched. Hardly been recieveing all the love

 

[Pville_Piper]

Seriously, I wish it were just a question of perception, but in my experience at least, since 3.0 dropped, unfortunately it's anything but! yes rewards are all at the same level, but most of those missions have been switched over to wing mode! it's definitely the case that missions with material/data rewards that aren't winged are in the minority now and not at the same availability as they were before 3.0!

No, I was seeing this often enough in 2.4 when I was ranking up to get my vette. The mission boards at TUN, where I was allied with almost every faction, was at times, virtually devoid of missions to large pads. So much so that I had to park my Annie and run the Python to get decent profits.

Something else I noticed then... You could always find a ton of haulage/data missions from Tun... But it was a very rare day to ever find one coming back to Tun from the surrounding systems, even though you'd see a commodity discerption stating that it was exported to Tun... Why is that? Why is it so hard to find reciprocal missions in this game? They are nearly impossible to find. I could make 10 million a run to LHS 535 from Tun, I'd find one or two haulage missions at LHS 535 that paid decent (system state didn't really matter in either location) and that'd be it. I would find a haulage mission or 2 here and there, picking up the odd data missions back to LHS 535 at the same time. But I never could fill my hold with missions unless I went back to Tun.

And this just isn't in that system, but very common in the game. I use Tun for the example because I'm allied with so many factions around that area that if your status with a faction should improve the payout and odds of getting more missions just doesn't pan out. You can't even fill you hold most of the time because the one mission you can take is to another systems is to a system that is the same economy that sells everything for the same price! Oh, maybe there is one item that you can buy and sell for 75 cr... Hardly worth the time it takes to alt-tab out of the game and call up a third party site to figure it out.

With as many commodities as the game has in it, you'd think that Industrial systems could be split between items so that some only have a few items and you could maybe find something to sell to another industrial system. Anyway, I think it's time to head off and play BF1 for a while. I just picked up premium for $15 and the game has finally settled down with decent balance and gameplay.

 

[Riverside]

Thats simply not true. I can think of several major features introduced to ED over the last 3 years that are not accessible to solo players.

Wings and Multi-Crew come to mind. Both could be made solo friendly if FDEV provided NPC versions of your crew instead of their current humans or nothing approach.

There are many other spects in the game that ignore the solo player in favor of a multi-player focused approach to new game features.

Then there is the whole performance gap between Open and Solo that adds to the disdain for Open mode by most who know the difference.

If the game's performance wasn't noticeable better/smoother in Solo than Open I am sure some solo only players might reconsider. But after you have spent 5 minutes stuck in a blue tunnel for the 5th time in an hour trying to drop out of SC, it doesn't take much effort to realize that crap like that NEVER happens in Solo Mode.

So... You switch back to solo mode for another 12-18 months before testing the Open performance waters again.

Hmm. Wing missions 'dominate' the board but can be done solo, solo missions cannot be done in a wing and are in a minority. Personally I would be in favour of dropping the distinction and simply making all mission templates multi-player compatible. It may be that FDev are testing the waters for this.

Regarding network quality in Open, I play in open the vast majority of the time but am almost always far from any other player, and have not experienced issues that I would put down to the mode I'm in for several years. When other players are around (and sharing your matchmaking server etc) I can see how it might become an issue that the solo player doesn't have, but I'd say that's more down to the other players connections and an inevitable consequence.


Mostly though, the OP states that there is no love for the lone wolf, my initial response was that the majority of the game is aimed at the lone wolf

 

[Polared]

Mostly though, the OP states that there is no love for the lone wolf, my initial response was that the majority of the game is aimed at the lone wolf

then with all due respect sir, you must clearly have different definition of lone wolf to the OP

seriously though, that’s missing the point, the issue for me, at least, is that the wing missions have been implemented to the clear detrement of missions for the lone player. i have nothing against wing missions or any of the other social gameplay implementations, i just dont see why they should be done in such a way that impinges upon other ways of playing in the game