[SERIOUS] The Problem With The Mission System

[Hessfire]

OK, here are just a few for you (quick bullets):

CMDRs be treated by Mission-giving entities as Independent Contractors (ie. This is what we want done, we leave the how up to you)
All Missions have a potential Wing Solution (need an escort - hire one etc.)
Contract Compensation (Payout, Bounties earned, Time Bonus, Redirect Bonus, funds for Cargo Acquisition, etc.) gets pooled until Contract Fulfillment
Failure Penalties billed against accepting CMDR (Primary Contractor or PC)
Wing Members are Subcontractors - as such they are paid by PC from Compensation Pool in set shares (PC has limited ability to +/- individual WMs as appropriate (within limits))
Rank affects Contract Value, Cargo Purchase Price, WM shares and range of +/- of shares
After Costs and WMs Paid, PC retains remaining Contract Pool as their own Compensation
Theft of Cargo by WM results in instant Removal and fine for lost value
Bring Back Multi-Part Missions (Bringing Home the Bacon and the like)
Bring back Rank Locking of Missions

This would put the onus on US to plan, prepare, strategize, hire, and execute our own method for completing any given contract. Need a few systems cleared of your competitors, I know just the guys...I'll make a few calls. Absolutely, positively need those 8000t Panite in MaIa overnight - we can do that!

Just bandying it about for now - but add this to what you are suggesting and I think there may be something that could create engaging, stimulating, FUN gameplay here.

Your thoughts?

 

[crushdepth]

This phenomenon occurs in other areas too - if you're familiar with the phrase "over-engineering", happen to be a particularly clever engineer or have ever watched or worked with one, you get it.

Normal Person: I need a more efficient way to turn on the light in my office.

Engineer: Spends 16 weeks studying, making diagrams, calculating, verifying, designing, analyzing, prototyping, and finally coming up with a solution - an infrared activated, motion-sensing, self-articulating device that can follow and track you as you approach your office, and send a signal to activate the lights when you are the optimal distance away from your office.

Any other normal person: Installs a second switch near the door.

Perfect example:

Players: Galnet has no useful content. And when there is, it's weeks out of date.

Engineering: We will add audio to Galnet! It will be AMAZING!

Players: Ah, ok...

------

Players: RNGineers is suck!

Engineering: GENTLEMEN, WE CAN REBUILD HIM!

Players: Well...the Now Sucks Less^TM technology is ah...an "improvement"...yeah it definitely is less suck now <golf clap>

 

[kofeyh]

Bounding values, consistency.

Why these are, fundimentally, simply absent from the mission system, I am unable to explain. There is clearly a reason the developer has elected to not base missions (regardless of what the specific task) on a relative comparable outcomes, nor define any practicable boundary. I just do not know what it is, and the developer seems unwilling, or simply unable to explain.

Frontier overly rely on procedural generation to solve complex problems; without defining boundaries, or a consistent approach. This shows no sign of changing. The resulting outcomes, become nonsensical as a consequence. Fiddling, has only exacerbated the aberrant relative returns.

I'm less convinced the problem is the missions system itself; it's the decision making driving it. This seems to escape the developer at times who spends 3 months working on the worlds most amazing and complicated replacement that's like a hammer, but is very edgy and amazing and actually quite cool and completely not a hammer.

But sometimes all we really needed, though, was a hammer.

 

[uliando]

We can't be having that, it would make game more interresting.

 

[zarking]

I suppose, the idea currently is that it adds a bit of ... Excitement, when you have the possibility of variance in payout, where you can suddenly find a mission which pays way more than average.
The downside being you then feel that everything falling into the "average and less" zone is worthless as you know that an hour ago you got twice as much for doing the exact same thing.
So maybe, make one part predictable and one part random (instead of both random). The cash layout is always the same (for a given set of values, rank, allied, distance, risk etc), but the alternative materials reward is random.
Or... Add in haggling, those assets from the old engineer casino can come back to good use accept or haggle, haggle means you might get more, less, or even upset the mission giver so you lose rep. Maximum from haggling is based on allied status, with the risk being rep loss or maybe even faction lockout for a period of time (say half an hour, as you annoyed them).

 

[the source 0179]

That is just asking for people to hop into a Sidey, accept a high paying missing, hop into their battle Conda and blast the target out of space before it can even hail you, because the mission you accepted was for a puny sidewinder.

Easy lock the mission to be completed in what ever ship you accepted it in.
Ive said for awhile now that mission boards should take into account your reputation, rank, pilot federation rank and what ship your in and what it is capable of doing. Eg you have 100t cargo space or have room for 100 passengers and supply for that. And this way it could also adapt rewards based on these things.

 

[sibullski]

you sir have been repped for your intelligent. feedback Nicely done and very well articulated. I hope frontier is seeing this.

 

[Threeofseven]

In my opinion one of the biggest problems is the developers have been trying to force people to do things that they want them to do. A perfect example of that was passenger missions. It was hyped up on release, even the new large ship was created for them, but few people including myself had any interest in them. I felt that they were a waste of developer time and nothing more than rebranded cargo missions. When they were a big flop, Frontier responded by nerfing everything but passenger missions. They wanted people to do passenger missions so they made it where you would feel like you're wasting your time if you did anything else.

This is not in the spirit of Blaze your own trail.

I think they're getting better now, 3.0 is the only update since Horizons that has not been a step in the wrong direction (my opinion).

 

[crushdepth]

Easy lock the mission to be completed in what ever ship you accepted it in.
Ive said for awhile now that mission boards should take into account your reputation, rank, pilot federation rank and what ship your in and what it is capable of doing. Eg you have 100t cargo space or have room for 100 passengers and supply for that. And this way it could also adapt rewards based on these things.

Targets do tend to adjust to whatever ship you are in, at least for some things.

 

[ubit]

Computing mission rewards is not easy *g* There are a number of factors that have to be respected in the calculation:

1st: Reputation player vs. mission giver
The better the reputation the more profit you should get from a mission

2nd: Faction state and mission type
There should be a relationship between both. E.g. food requests should see more profit in a famine state (if food requests are shown in none-famine factions).

3rd: Difficulty
Easy missions should pay less than harder ones. If i can expect enemies on my way this should lead to a higher profit.

4th: Legal status
Illegal missions should pay out more

5th: Time needed
A rough estimation about the time the player has to spend for completing the mission has to include e.g. the distance from star to target planet/station, the number of enemies in kill missions etc.

6th: Time mission is running
Missions that have to be completed in hours should have more profit than those that you have to complete in weeks.

7th: Mission detail
Transporting low value cargo should pay out less. Transporting high value cargo should pay more. Killing novice pirates should pay less than killing elite pirates. Killing skimmers in a low sec target should pay less than killing skimmers in a high security base. Assasinate ships in an anarchy should pay less than killing in a high sec system. etc.

And this list is not complete i think *g*

Target:

Find a simple "formula" that works with all the listed factors. Add some - but not too much - randomness to prevent players from fully understanding the formula. Ensure that there is a choice of more or less profitable missions in the boards.

Then add this formular to the system that generates missions. That system has to respect a couple of factors too:

* Faction state
* Station economy
* Security
* Station population
* Player reputation to faction
* Player reputation to Superpower
* Visitor frequency at the station
* Pilot Federation Ranking of Player
* Mission type: Wing or Solo
etc.

Now generate the missions and store them in the game database. Do NOT generate more than 30 missions - as the mission board is unable to present more. And generate the missions in a way that presents as many different mission types to the player as possible.

You see the problem? It is not that easy...

As we all can see FD fails to find a really good solution. As this is a main part of the game - at least for beginners - this really should be changed.

I think the main problem with the mission system is the limitation of the mission boards. Having up to 7 factions in a system and a total of no more than 30 missions gives you 4-5 missions per faction in average. This is way too low. I understand that increasing the number of missions will increase server traffic, data storage costs on the servers and loading time. And to do it right you should have good filtering on the user side.

But: If this limit is removed (or at least raised to e.g. 30 missions per faction) - it would make it a lot easier to generate satisfying missions.

Ciao, Udo

 

[zombieapocalypse]

I think there are some fairly sensible suggestions in here.

Clearly:

• people want missions to scale appropriately with ship progression — larger ships are far more expensive to buy, outfit, and maintain (rebuy & repair)
• people want to see missions that reward time spent and risk involved

But also the issues with missions goes beyond just the reward schemes (and personally, this is what I'm more interested in):

• people want to see more of the missions that suit their play style
• people want to see a wider variety of mission types
• people want to see more in-depth, challenging and interesting missions, possibly with some form of engaging mini-narrative or adventure
• people want to see missions that seem to make more difference to the BGS and system/starport/faction narratives

I think part of the reason why missions and other areas of the game can feel very grindy at times is the repetitive nature of many of the activities - simply put, variety is the spice of life. There needs to be more ways of making similar tasks feel a little different each time you do them. This needs to be combined with more depth and where appropriate, more challenge/risk. If you make activities more fun, they feel less grindy. And if stuff feels less grindy, players will be less obsessed with finding and milking the next gold rush.

But this is not a unique problem, it's something the plagues a lot of big, open world games. Personally, I find Fallout and Skyrim incredibly grindy, but fortunately the atmosphere and the sheer joy exploration was enough to keep going in those games. I also stopped playing the Batman, Assassin's Creed, and Far Cry games, because I found them very repetitive and grindy after a while (the expression "copy and paste content" comes to mind). Amazingly, somehow ED has kept me going for over 1000 hours - somehow its beauty, immersion, and the joy of its space ships is enough to compel me to keep playing. That said, I do take prolonged breaks from time to time to play and do other things.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Money hotspots weren't that common at the time, until when popular spots like "Robigo Smuggling" appeared. These destinations used to reward players from 30m per hour to 70m per hour, and this is still seen as a high amount of credits to make.

Interesting thing about that figure...
1) Robigo was a 1.3 introduction. 1.3 also introduced mining limpets and Painite - which allowed 30-60 M/h without the mission system being involved at all. It took the mining community some time to figure out how, and it requires a lot of skill and practice, but the recent Painite price rise has presumably pushed this to 50-100 M/h

2) Nowadays there are a lot of *stable* 50 M/h mission earning routes (by "stable" I mean that they've been making that sort of payout for over a year)

Some of the ones after Robigo were much higher earners, of course - with over 100 M/h being practical. But there has certainly been an across-the-board rise in earning levels as well. 30-70 is now *high*, certainly - you won't make it accidentally - but not excessive.

Make ALL mission rewards similar or the same as eachother. If you don't want to see another "100m/h Money Maker, go to System A then B", then I suggest you look into balancing mission rewards properly for all professions of the game.

The problem with this is that the professions quite literally cannot be balanced against each other without extremely major reworks of core game mechanics, ship designs, and so forth. Not only would the result, I think, not be "Elite: Dangerous" I'm not sure it would be "Elite: anything"

For example, compare trade missions with surface scan missions.

A T-9 will make more money per trip with trade missions than a Sidewinder. It can load up more missions, and bigger missions, and be at least somewhat more capable of defending its mission cargo from attack.

This is fine, of course, the T-9 is bigger and more expensive. It should have a better earning capability than the free starter ship.

Now consider surface scan missions. The two ships make basically the same income on these (the Sidewinder will actually be marginally ahead due to better supercruise agility and ease of finding landing sites to deploy the SRV)

So, when you're making all the mission rewards the same as each other, do you make them the same if a T-9 is doing them or if a Sidewinder is doing them?

Or, let's take the same sort of ship - a FDL. You can use this for space salvage missions or for assassination missions. For space salvage missions, an unengineered FDL is fine (you only need to pick up 4 at a time, so its lack of cargo is really not an issue). Engineering it won't make it more effective at them. For assassination missions, the 6:1 odds of soloing a wing assassination mission really get much easier if you G5 the entire ship.

So do you balance mission earnings assuming that the player has optimised the ship to an engineered max, or just to a stock C-rated model?

Or let's take two absolutely identical ships. One is at a system with only one nearby neighbouring system (the Sothis/Ceos case, or at least it was before the recent Galnet announcement) - the other is at a system in the middle of the bubble with tens of neighbours. "Close range" missions will go to a single system in one case, but a wide range of systems in the middle of the bubble. Picking up otherwise identical missions (of a range of types!) will make money considerably more efficiently in the isolated systems because the destinations will be closer together and return missions easier to find.

So do you balance mission earnings around the assumption that players can only take one mission at once, or twenty at once?

And finally, lets go back to that mining example. Mining gets a pretty bad rap - it's considered one of the lowest paying professions in the game, to the extent that Frontier *buffed* Painite and Platinum prices considerably in 3.0, and it got a "well, that's nice but it's still worse than everything else" reaction from the forums ... but with an optimal mining wing min-maxing for profit, it can be the highest-paid profession in the game barring some but not all nerf-this-now mission scenarios.

So do you balance mission (or non-mission) earnings around a player with average competence, or an optimal min-maxer who has been refining their technique for months? (And if the consequences of mission failure include fines, bounties and/or rebuys, how much extra payout do you include for that, or do you assume that for a top player the risk of failing any mission is zero and therefore no mission should have a risk/reward bonus?)


For prevention of gold rushes, Frontier would need to balance missions around the optimal ship, location and method. That would leave the prices for non-optimal solutions looking extremely different, because some mission types simply have more room for optimisation than others. And that would mean there was - e.g. - no point in maximising ability at the relatively difficult wing assassinations, when min-maxing data courier work paid exactly the same but had a much lower skill and equipment ceiling.

There would still also be the problem that earnings are basically linear or sub-linear (a twice as capable ship *might* earn twice as fast, but probably earns less than that) but prices are exponential (a twice as capable ship costs ten times as much to buy and maintain). So if you balance earnings so that "Big-3" pilots can buy and earn their ships at all, Sidewinder pilots can still use ship-independent missions such as data courier or surface scan to get into a Python by the end of the week.

Ultimately, without major - highly unpopular - changes to the game which would hurt people who don't care about their earnings as much or as more as people who do ... balance of this sort is impossible.

 

[StarfireIX]

I think there are some fairly sensible suggestions in here.

Clearly:

• people want missions to scale appropriately with ship progression — larger ships are far more expensive to buy, outfit, and maintain (rebuy & repair)
• people want to see missions that reward time spent and risk involved

But also the issues with missions goes beyond just the reward schemes (and personally, this is what I'm more interested in):

• people want to see more of the missions that suit their play style
• people want to see a wider variety of mission types
• people want to see more in-depth, challenging and interesting missions, possibly with some form of engaging mini-narrative or adventure
• people want to see missions that seem to make more difference to the BGS and system/starport/faction narratives

I think part of the reason why missions and other areas of the game can feel very grindy at times is the repetitive nature of many of the activities - simply put, variety is the spice of life. There needs to be more ways of making similar tasks feel a little different each time you do them. This needs to be combined with more depth and where appropriate, more challenge/risk. If you make activities more fun, they feel less grindy. And if stuff feels less grindy, players will be less obsessed with finding and milking the next gold rush

Exactly! Not only missions would be equal so that CMDRs can try other professions, but some missions need to be exciting too! I think I mentioned in a few replies about Thargoid encounters when smuggling, but if there's more voice acting for NPCs and maybe some interesting events like capital ship encounters or the like. This I would think can help give more life in these missions. Perhaps even the chain missions can lead on into discoveries or impacts to who you're working with.

 

[zombieapocalypse]

Exactly! Not only missions would be equal so that CMDRs can try other professions, but some missions need to be exciting too! I think I mentioned in a few replies about Thargoid encounters when smuggling, but if there's more voice acting for NPCs and maybe some interesting events like capital ship encounters or the like. This I would think can help give more life in these missions. Perhaps even the chain missions can lead on into discoveries or impacts to who you're working with.

I also think missions need to make better uses of the game's locations - using asteroid fields and planetary surfaces a bit more, and as you suggest, capital ships, megaships, and other structures/bases/ruins. Assassination and bounty hunting missions would be far more interesting if you were properly tracking and chasing a persistent NPC with unique behaviour traits and personality, instead of just waiting for a USS to spawn. And yes voice acting would be a big plus.

 

[ubit]

Main problem still is the limited number of missions possible in the boards.

E.G.: For trading missions there have to be missions that allow for a round-trip between stations. If you have many systems nearby this currently is simply not possible as you need at least one trade mission for each nearby system.

Mission boards with hundreds or thousands of missions would be great and would enable the game to present many different types of missions simultaneously. That would solve most problems with the mission system as pilots can pick the missions they like.

With more missions presented to the player it should be possible to generate missions for different ship sizes with more rewards for "big" missions. Ideally e.g. large transport missions should be always like the current wing missions: Player can decide to do them step by step with a small ship (investing more time) or in 2-3 runs with a big cargo ship (investing less time). This "auto-adopts" the missions for advanced players and still enables newbies to do "larger" missions.

And: With larger mission boards there is a chance to implement more mission types. There is a huge potential in the mission system that currently is not really used. In fact many mission types from the past are no longer present in the current game. Bring them back and make new ones. Make missions that lead players to interesting places (Persistant POIs - there is more then tourist beacons to discover) in the game. Make missions that fill the gap between the simple standard missions and the over-complicated guardian missions.

There are many players that would like to do missions if they just would make some fun and diversity. The only way to achieve this: Make mission boards huge. Present hundreds of missions to the user. The server load should not increase much with a good filter system (and with a good template system on the client side each mission only needs a couple of bytes transferred) - and it takes time for the players to read the mission description - leading to more in-game-time *g*

Ciao, Udo

 

[Ian Doncaster]

But also the issues with missions goes beyond just the reward schemes (and personally, this is what I'm more interested in):

• people want to see more in-depth, challenging and interesting missions, possibly with some form of engaging mini-narrative or adventure

You want that, I want that, a lot of other people will *say* they want that.

But what actually happens when there is even a little bit of depth or challenge?
- ships attacking on the missions: people complain that they're too dangerous
- redirections: complained about until they got made optional. All missions must now say upfront what's required, no hidden information or surprises that might cut into someone's Cr/Hr.
- illegal components: people complain that they have to deal with the consequences of surface scanning
- follow-up mission of a different type to the original: people complain that their trade ship isn't set up for assassination and shouldn't the follow up be more trade?

I'm pretty sure the player base has got Frontier well-trained to only offer the easiest and blandest missions by now. Let's take a little "engaging mini-narrative" example...

You take a space salvage mission. When you find the mission-specific signal source and drop in, there are no black boxes. There is a welcoming committee of a couple of Vultures. As they open fire, you get a mission-critical inbox message - someone else has beaten you to the goal - this time you've arrived 30 seconds too late rather than them arriving 30 seconds too late. The next step will be to do a surface scan to find out who picked them up and where they went ... and the step after that of course is a recovery mission to hatchbreak the black boxes back.

...for some people, this will be great. It's a little mini-story, with varied and interesting gameplay, which probably involves some ship refits to break it up and make it feel like a proper mission.

...for other people, this will be cutting into their BGS time and/or earnings and/or desire to only own a salvage ship and not a piracy one and/or intent to just do a quick space salvage mission in 20 minutes before bed. And it didn't even pay much more than the standard space salvage so it's just wasting their time. "Time sink!" "Grind!" "Play my own way!"


I can only think that Frontier's solution to this will have to be to mark certain missions with an "interesting" icon like the "wing" icon to indicate that interesting things may happen on that mission, so that people can avoid them. (Commence whining about how there are too many "interesting" missions on the board and not enough "boring" ones in 3... 2... 1...)

 

[zombieapocalypse]

You want that, I want that, a lot of other people will *say* they want that.

But what actually happens when there is even a little bit of depth or challenge?
- ships attacking on the missions: people complain that they're too dangerous
- redirections: complained about until they got made optional. All missions must now say upfront what's required, no hidden information or surprises that might cut into someone's Cr/Hr.
- illegal components: people complain that they have to deal with the consequences of surface scanning
- follow-up mission of a different type to the original: people complain that their trade ship isn't set up for assassination and shouldn't the follow up be more trade?

I'm pretty sure the player base has got Frontier well-trained to only offer the easiest and blandest missions by now. Let's take a little "engaging mini-narrative" example...

You take a space salvage mission. When you find the mission-specific signal source and drop in, there are no black boxes. There is a welcoming committee of a couple of Vultures. As they open fire, you get a mission-critical inbox message - someone else has beaten you to the goal - this time you've arrived 30 seconds too late rather than them arriving 30 seconds too late. The next step will be to do a surface scan to find out who picked them up and where they went ... and the step after that of course is a recovery mission to hatchbreak the black boxes back.

...for some people, this will be great. It's a little mini-story, with varied and interesting gameplay, which probably involves some ship refits to break it up and make it feel like a proper mission.

...for other people, this will be cutting into their BGS time and/or earnings and/or desire to only own a salvage ship and not a piracy one and/or intent to just do a quick space salvage mission in 20 minutes before bed. And it didn't even pay much more than the standard space salvage so it's just wasting their time. "Time sink!" "Grind!" "Play my own way!"


I can only think that Frontier's solution to this will have to be to mark certain missions with an "interesting" icon like the "wing" icon to indicate that interesting things may happen on that mission, so that people can avoid them. (Commence whining about how there are too many "interesting" missions on the board and not enough "boring" ones in 3... 2... 1...)

Yes of course, whatever FDev do, some section of the player base will always complain loudly. In some ways, this is why FDev need to stop caving into the mob. But then people will complain that they don't listen or care. The joys of game development

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I guess a wrinkle to this is "What ship is a mission balanced around". For Cargo this is easier, but there have been reports of low rank Assassination missions pitting people against Condas. Even the Wing Assassination missions are always one engineered large ship as the target, along with a variety of combat medium ships (and one AspX for variety).

I've never - never ever - seen anything else than Anacondas as assassination targets (when they were combat type - different ship types were introduced at some point so you could choose a freighter target as a mission). At some point when you're in your little Viper, you just don't bother taking these missions. They usually come with an escort, too. I did check them again eventually after 2.0 released and then you could have some variety in the mission targets, but up to then it was always Condas.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

Doesn't work quite as simply as that. When you're dealing with complex systems, making things simple is difficult. As Albert Einstein said, "The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple". From my experience working on maths problems in college, there is a multitude of solutions to almost any given problem - from long and complex to simple and elegant. It's the simple and elegant solutions that are the most elusive.

Time is a big consideration here. It could take a long time to work out the most effective and efficient solution; often you just have to settle for the best you could come up with given the time constraints (and smarter people actually find better and more elegant solution quicker). And I'm sure the devs have their deadlines, so they can't take all the time in the world to make everything the best it can be.

Even the things we think are very efficient and genius today will look stupid in a 100 years because people will find better ways of doing the same thing, there will always be room for improvement for just about anything.

This is not an argument for, or against FDev; this is simply to point out that complexity is not side effect of being too brilliant, it has more to do with the balance of workload against time.

I never suggested anything about this would be simple and elegant - in fact, I would fully expect this to be the single, most difficult piece of the puzzle - how to take what it and distill it down to what could be. And I've stated and restated that I haven't any idea what's going on "under the hood", none of us really do. I merely stated this seems to be the most likely cause of many of the issues, both in terms of bugs and in terms of implementation of new and more complex systems - such as expanded, complex missions and modifying existing missions.

I absolutely would not expect some "overnight fix" for this - it could very well take several years to refine and distill and simplify.

 

[Finn638]

I never suggested anything about this would be simple and elegant - in fact, I would fully expect this to be the single, most difficult piece of the puzzle - how to take what it and distill it down to what could be. And I've stated and restated that I haven't any idea what's going on "under the hood", none of us really do. I merely stated this seems to be the most likely cause of many of the issues, both in terms of bugs and in terms of implementation of new and more complex systems - such as expanded, complex missions and modifying existing missions.

I absolutely would not expect some "overnight fix" for this - it could very well take several years to refine and distill and simplify.

Nah I didn't think you were suggesting any overnight solutions, or that the solutions would be easy. And from reading other posters' opinions on the subject, as well as judging by the fact that many bugs pop up from seemingly unrelated game tweaks, a lot of things in this game do appear to be intertwined so that it probably looks more like a spiderweb under the hood than a neat stack of bricks. That's my assumption as well. I suppose I was indirectly suggesting that the quality of the devs' solutions and their implementation would probably depend on their workload.