Just in relation to 3.0.
All of a sudden the mission board has a bunch of huge time-sink trade and combat missions that for a single/solo player are nothing but huge timesinks.
I'm sorry: But a 48-64 kill mission for 8-11 millions is fine; but a 172 kill mission for 3 million? Come on! They can't be serious.
I do understand that there is variation on that theme; but after jumping around and scanning mission boards for 2 hours and finding one kill mission that wasn't 90 plus (And also having a payout worthy of my time to complete) it seems a little messed up.
I do remain hopeful the Frontier will get it sorted; but we'll see.
I didn't have problem PRE 3.0. At least as far as how the basic structure was being assembled.
And I will say that the rep grind seems to be a bit better than pre-3.0 (Imperial grind is easy so far. A bit costly; but I figure all those crdits sdpent will be worth the trouble).
You make some good points, but it really depends on your style of play. If you focus on a particular aspect of the game (ie missions in this case) and that feature is changed, you might win, you might lose out. Missions are not the only thing you can do, they are a thing I do when I don't have anything else to do.
Since launch, we have only had 'lone wolf' missions. With 3.0 for the first time we have missions that can be completed co-op, which is a positive step. The new feature is being promoted by FDev, so there are currently a lot available. Sure, that sucks a bit for the 'lone wolf' right now, but nothing like as much as it has sucked for co-op players for the past few years.
So be magnanimous & let them play while the sun shines. It'll get rebalanced based on usage stats in the next update (probably, hopefully) and new templates will be added (maybe, hopefully) to help everyone find something they can do. Just go do something else while you are waiting for the mission board to come good for you. Gather some mats, do some engineering, go exploring, anything you like really.