Missions are the core activity of the game.
Maybe, but board flipping isn't a mission and was never an intended part of the system.
To assume only 2.8% of players refresh the board is a joke, or someone has seriously misunderstood the statistics he's been reading.
The irony of this sentence is almost palpable.
Nobody in their sane mind will wait 10 minuets for a mission. Many people have limited time available to play, perhaps an hour or two each week, and to have that time wasted in unproductive mission refresh will kill it for them, like myself.
Stop waiting around and go to a different station.
This is my suggestion: Have someone actually play ED, from the ground up in a sidewinder, and measure how long it takes him to 'progress' to a python using your new mission server. Then have him progress to Corvette/Cutter. Lets have these metrics posted on the forums.
I can promise you the estimated time will be somewhere close to astronomical. I know this because I've done it and put the time in, and that's with the ability to refresh the board as many times as I need.
I've done this as well, without refreshing any mission boards, when rewards were vastly less than they are currently, and I didn't find the rate of progression to be problematic.
That is no benefit, that is the problem.
Even if the only effect was preventing manual regeneration of the mission board (and it won't be), I'd still consider it a benefit.
This is a result of the lack of any other means of progression (other than rank).
Most of the progression in ED has nothing to do with assets or ranks, which is fortunate, because both of those aspects have been devalued so many times that they have essentially zero meaning.
I would have thought that, in a "space trading" game, trading would have been a lot higher priority.
Hard to have a trading game without a functional economy.
Alpha-level feature still missing four years after release.
Given that this is a primarily PvE environment, the use of "balance" in the above statement is a Red Herring.
Utter nonsense.
It's a persistent, shared, game world. ED is not a single player game and it has no offline mode (outside the tutorials) where you can complete avoid influencing others.
Even if direct PvP was impossible, balance would still be of critical importance.
you cannot balance them because a player in a Sidewinder and a player in a Python will not have the same mission needs.
Balance doesn't need to, and should not, be based around player 'needs', IMO. It should be used to best illustrate the setting Frontier wants to depict.
Hogwash i'm not a lab rat here to test a released game!
Elite: Dangerous may be a released game, but it's not even close to being done and like it or not you are a lab rat. If this isn't acceptable, ask for a refund, but don't expect them to freeze a game in an unfinished, often unworkable, state for your benefit.