mission server - the death of ED

Maybe the idea should be to shorten the refresh time, or couple the refresh time with traffic rates? So a busy system can sustain it's self, and a slower system doesn't have too many missions for the interest expected.
 
How long will players tolerate empty mission boards in high traffic stations?

It doesn't affect me, I play in a rather remote part of the bubble. I honestly hope I'm wrong, but I fear that introducing the proposed changes the way FDev apparently plans to introduce them might cause extreme troubles.

Where did yo uget the idea the mission boards would be empty? There shouldn't be any difference from how it works currently, and the boards are demonstrably not empty.
 
How long will players tolerate empty mission boards in high traffic stations?

It doesn't affect me, I play in a rather remote part of the bubble. I honestly hope I'm wrong, but I fear that introducing the proposed changes the way FDev apparently plans to introduce them might cause extreme troubles.

How about putting the onus back on players and not expecting FD to hand feed everyone. If someone decides to make a high traffic station home, then they and they alone are responsible for the action. Common sense (yeah I know, not a lot of that here in the player base at times) should indicate that there would be more competition for missions if there are more Commanders using that station. The player then has a choice, either accept that fact and hope the RND gods are nice to them and they get the missions before another player or they move to a less busy station.
 
Where did yo uget the idea the mission boards would be empty? There shouldn't be any difference from how it works currently, and the boards are demonstrably not empty.

Missions are shared between players. If on player takes a mission all other players won't see that mission anymore. The mission board gets refreshed every 10 minutes.
The result in high traffic stations is, that the good missions will be taken instantly, the not so good will last a bit longer and only the rubbish missions might stay until the refresh.

All missions are shared between players and FDev has no intention to increase the amount of missions to address this.


New opportunity for salt farmers: simply take all available missions in popular systems. Yay.
 
Mission server fix is the best thing what could happen to Elite since four years.

Finally it will be done as it should and pay-out balance for missions/trading/exploration/combat and ALL of the game activities will be possible to balance.

Board hopping was the worst cheat in that game which was detroying a reason to do anything else than meta board hopping missions like robigo/quince/massacres/passengers. Every of these meta's was based on exploit. I am glad it will be the end of that.
And i am sure one more thing - you do not need to cry about pay offs. FDev will increase them.

Well done FDev!
 

Deleted member 38366

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Missing the big picture there.
The primary reason for the change is server stability - that's a no brainer.

The secondary benefit is that once mission spamming doesn't really work, FD can finally get to grips with mission balancing, both in terms of how many of various types of mission get generated under various circumstances, but also balance the rewards relative to each other and to other game activities.

Indeed.... if only *

* FDev didn't have an unbroken and stellar record of *cough* "Balancing", combined with many unsolved bugs when it comes to the Mission System.

They couldn't fix this in 4 years. Four... years. Spanning over multiple reiterations of the Mission System (!)
What makes anyone think they could do it now?

The +10% payout and -33% Refresh timers are just the usual "2 Minute quickfix attempts by flipping one or two Server variables" for a whole batch of deep problems and nested dependencies for various key Playstyles tied to Mission Generation they don't even understand nor realize would be a problem in the 1st place.

Hence the concerns are fully valid.
Without a complete rebalancing (Risk. vs. Time invested vs. Rewards), bug-fixing and understanding the myriad of Faction State-related, Economy-related or Local Area-related Mission System Problems.... things will get very interesting depending solely on location.

PS.
If you've ever seen Mission Boards that - over multiple days - yielded nothing but
- wicked Wing Missions
- Passenger Boards full with 44000-60000LY round-robin trips
- entirely empty Mission boards for one or multiple Factions
- nearly empty Mission boards for select Faction(s)
- zero (0) Influence-relevant Missions per given Faction State

...you know that "+10% Payout" or "will refresh in 10 Minutes" do not even remotely belong into the "this will fix anything" list. At all.

Be sure to prepare popcorn & chips and have a close eye on the Forums when they implement their "fix", this ought to be good ;)
 
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How about putting the onus back on players and not expecting FD to hand feed everyone. If someone decides to make a high traffic station home, then they and they alone are responsible for the action. Common sense (yeah I know, not a lot of that here in the player base at times) should indicate that there would be more competition for missions if there are more Commanders using that station. The player then has a choice, either accept that fact and hope the RND gods are nice to them and they get the missions before another player or they move to a less busy station.

All that would be reasonable if the amount of missions offered would reflect the population size of a station. It doesn't.
 
All that would be reasonable if the amount of missions offered would reflect the population size of a station. It doesn't.

But you aren't talking about the population of the station, you are talking about the number of Commanders (i.e. players) using the station and accessing the mission board there. As far as I am aware, players aren't competing with NPCs in regard to accepting or declining missions.
 
Missions are shared between players. If on player takes a mission all other players won't see that mission anymore. The mission board gets refreshed every 10 minutes.
The result in high traffic stations is, that the good missions will be taken instantly, the not so good will last a bit longer and only the rubbish missions might stay until the refresh.

All missions are shared between players and FDev has no intention to increase the amount of missions to address this.


New opportunity for salt farmers: simply take all available missions in popular systems. Yay.

Yes everyone sees the same mission templates if they are on the same server (and everyone after the update), but the mission board does not get depopulated for other players when you take a mission. I haven't read anything that would indicate this is going to change.
 
It really isn't a bad thing that FDEV are solving the board flipping phenomenon.

I may get chewed up for saying this, but, I still feel that board flipping is a symptom of, not an issue in itself. It's a cheesy work around for an inadequate balance of relevant missions and payout.

1 million credit missions * 10 board flips for an efficient use of time.
10 million credits for a single mission with no board flips.

Now that sounds like a good trade off to me... but, ofc it's not really going to work like that is it? :)

/salute nn all.
 
Bug fix is not the same as fixing the system. The fact of the matter remains that the mission system does not provide a level of game play that offers decent value for the player's investment of time. That is what caused the board flip to become a work around in the first place.

Is game play a euphemism for credits/hr now?
 
Yes everyone sees the same mission templates if they are on the same server (and everyone after the update), but the mission board does not get depopulated for other players when you take a mission. I haven't read anything that would indicate this is going to change.

I got the impression that all players see the same board and therefore only one of the players can take a certain mission from the answer of Adam Waite about the refresh button.
If that's not the case and players can take the same mission, then thats not a problem.

I hope you are right :)
 
It really isn't a bad thing that FDEV are solving the board flipping phenomenon.

I may get chewed up for saying this, but, I still feel that board flipping is a symptom of, not an issue in itself. It's a cheesy work around for an inadequate balance of relevant missions and payout.

1 million credit missions * 10 board flips for an efficient use of time.
10 million credits for a single mission with no board flips.

Now that sounds like a good trade off to me... but, ofc it's not really going to work like that is it? :)

/salute nn all.

I'd bet it's just the 'cheesy' get around. Once board flipping was common knowledge 2.8% of the players used board flipping. It becomes learned behavior and is used to avoid playing within the parameters of the game.

I always thought that anyone willing to sit and flip, deserves their experience. But, if it changes because of a fix to a bigger problem, it'll be ok.
 
The looming removal or board flipping/mission stacking finally motivated me to get my Elite trade rank. I didn't want to risk that the new board system would take 10x longer to do what we can right now, so I learned how to find super high profit per ton missions and had a blast doing it! I became a criminal in game for the first time, smuggling illegal goods (but didn't get caught, so...) and it was a lot of fun.

I'm amazed that after 4 years, frontier is doing anything at all with this game, so bring on the changes! It will be refreshing to find different methods to make money and fund my galactic fleet.
 
Watching the the anti board flipping rhetoric has been quite entertaining! But you all are just living a lie if you think board flipping is a/the problem, it isn't. The mission system design and implementation is the problem, and reminds me of some of the things new hires and junior developers would do at the Sony studio I spent 1.5 decades at.

Here is a perfect example of the attention to detail that FDev is putting into the real issue...

bdnWfHK.jpg


Really?

Getting rid of board flipping for any reason isn't going to fix the real problems, it will only exacerbate them. ED may lose a lot of players with this change, but I don't think they really care at this point, ED is not supporting itself anyway, and I have my suspicions it's being used as a write-off for tax purposes. Win-win for FDev, lose-lose for it's player community.
 
Watching the the anti board flipping rhetoric has been quite entertaining! But you all are just living a lie if you think board flipping is a/the problem, it isn't. The mission system design and implementation is the problem, and reminds me of some of the things new hires and junior developers would do at the Sony studio I spent 1.5 decades at.

Here is a perfect example of the attention to detail that FDev is putting into the real issue...



Really?

Getting rid of board flipping for any reason isn't going to fix the real problems, it will only exacerbate them. ED may lose a lot of players with this change, but I don't think they really care at this point, ED is not supporting itself anyway, and I have my suspicions it's being used as a write-off for tax purposes. Win-win for FDev, lose-lose for it's player community.

The thing you are pointing out in your picture is just a case of poor reward balance between two missions, with one being a notoriously problematic wing mission. It has nothing to do with the design or the implementation of the underlying system.

Now as to the attention to detail FD put into balancing missions: why would they do they care much when they know their system has a gaping hole allowing players to cheat, making any proper balancing pointless?
 
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The thing you are pointing out in your picture is just a case of poor reward balance between two missions, with one being a notoriously problematic wing mission. It has nothing to do with the design or the implementation of the underlying system.

You are of course entitled to have your own opinion, even if it's a misguided. Poor reward balance is just one bullet point in the real issues with the mission system, but it is indeed one of them.
 
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