3.2 Patch Feedback - Transport Missions

[ytene]

The 3.2 patch has introduced a change to the way that basic transportation missions operate. Instead of selecting a mission and having the station computer automatically load cargo to your ship, it is now necessary, once you have accepted the delivery contract, to manually select and load the cargo.

I understand, having read threads on this, that this might be to bring the "regular" transportation missions to the same gameplay model as the multi-player, share-the-cargo type delivery missions. Whether or not this is true, it's important that someone at Frontier gets the feedback that this change is a major step backwards in game interface design. This has made the operation of the game more complex for the most basic use case, for no appreciable benefit.

I would like to ask/suggest that players who wish to play in single-player mode have a user-configurable option along the lines of "automatically load all cargo if hold space is available" and allow the player to choose whether they want to go through this extra step or not.

Earlier today I was working along a trade route, picking up and dropping off cargo as I threaded my way between stations. I was doing really well, until I realised that somewhere along the line I had accepted a mission, forgotten to collect the cargo, and now I no idea where to go back and collect it from. On the "Transaction" detail, all I had was a cryptic reference to "in a Different Kind", which meant absolutely nothing to me. In the end I had to quit the game, hit google, figure out what to do, go to eddb.io, figure out that I needed to return to Saktsak, etc, etc. A complete waste of time. OK, I have to concede that this waste of time was my fault.

But here's the thing that I believe/hope that Frontier need to think about: do they want their player to be swearing in frustration at Elite Dangerous because of a very poorly designed interface? An interface which actually allows you to make stupid errors - and then makes it so hard to correct the error that you actually have to quit the game to figure out where you need to go to undo the damage? Really?

I can't believe that anyone in their right mind would think that this is a cool piece of game design.

I completely understand that there are reasons for folding in some of the "take a cargo in bite-sized chunks" option that the multi-player team cargo missions now allows. But the issue here is not that adding the feature was a bad idea [the bite-sized chunks of a cargo mission are actually a *good* idea. The issue here is that the game has chosen to adopt a stupid default.

An extremely highly respected (Linux) developer, Eric Raymond, wrote a book called, "The Art of Unix Programming", in which he distills some amazing wisdom as a series of "rules". One of these is "the rule of least surprise" [Hint: always do the least surprising thing]. (see here: http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html#id2878339)

What this latest patch to ED has done is move away from that model; for single-player gamers the game no longer operates in the model of "least surprise" and now the interface has become more complex and more prone to error.

Please consider a tweak to this, preferably before I forget to pick up cargo once too often and delete the game from my PC in a fit of pique.

Thank you.

 

[krautbernd]

I'd also be in favor of this mechanic being overhauled to make it not suck in comparison to the old one. The idea works for people who want to take on deliveries that don't fit their current cargohold, but it's just not very useful for people flying a T9 or anything with a large enough cargohold (at least that's my experience). It's actually more complicated if all you want is to max out your hold for one trip (since you get no information in the mission panel anymore regarding your free capacity) and turning it in takes a lot of time compared to the old system, since a) there's no marker on the mission board of where you're supposed to turn the stuff in and b) you can't just click "complete" but have to wait for the counter to max (which doesn't even roll over in the other direction).

In addition you can currently bug out delivery missions to outposts by changing to a large ship and loading in more cargo than your original ship can carry.

All in all these new mechanic leaves a lot to be desired.

 

[ZeroAi]

The 3.2 patch has introduced a change to the way that basic transportation missions operate. Instead of selecting a mission and having the station computer automatically load cargo to your ship, it is now necessary, once you have accepted the delivery contract, to manually select and load the cargo.

I understand, having read threads on this, that this might be to bring the "regular" transportation missions to the same gameplay model as the multi-player, share-the-cargo type delivery missions. Whether or not this is true, it's important that someone at Frontier gets the feedback that this change is a major step backwards in game interface design. This has made the operation of the game more complex for the most basic use case, for no appreciable benefit.

I would like to ask/suggest that players who wish to play in single-player mode have a user-configurable option along the lines of "automatically load all cargo if hold space is available" and allow the player to choose whether they want to go through this extra step or not.

Earlier today I was working along a trade route, picking up and dropping off cargo as I threaded my way between stations. I was doing really well, until I realised that somewhere along the line I had accepted a mission, forgotten to collect the cargo, and now I no idea where to go back and collect it from. On the "Transaction" detail, all I had was a cryptic reference to "in a Different Kind", which meant absolutely nothing to me. In the end I had to quit the game, hit google, figure out what to do, go to eddb.io, figure out that I needed to return to Saktsak, etc, etc. A complete waste of time. OK, I have to concede that this waste of time was my fault.

But here's the thing that I believe/hope that Frontier need to think about: do they want their player to be swearing in frustration at Elite Dangerous because of a very poorly designed interface? An interface which actually allows you to make stupid errors - and then makes it so hard to correct the error that you actually have to quit the game to figure out where you need to go to undo the damage? Really?

I can't believe that anyone in their right mind would think that this is a cool piece of game design.

I completely understand that there are reasons for folding in some of the "take a cargo in bite-sized chunks" option that the multi-player team cargo missions now allows. But the issue here is not that adding the feature was a bad idea [the bite-sized chunks of a cargo mission are actually a *good* idea. The issue here is that the game has chosen to adopt a stupid default.

An extremely highly respected (Linux) developer, Eric Raymond, wrote a book called, "The Art of Unix Programming", in which he distills some amazing wisdom as a series of "rules". One of these is "the rule of least surprise" [Hint: always do the least surprising thing]. (see here: http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html#id2878339)

What this latest patch to ED has done is move away from that model; for single-player gamers the game no longer operates in the model of "least surprise" and now the interface has become more complex and more prone to error.

Please consider a tweak to this, preferably before I forget to pick up cargo once too often and delete the game from my PC in a fit of pique.

Thank you.

+Rep

Why are there not two buttons?

1 - Accept Mission and Autoload Cargo
2 - Accept Mission, Load Cargo Later

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

+Rep

Why are there not two buttons?

1 - Accept Mission and Autoload Cargo
2 - Accept Mission, Load Cargo Later

would be similar bad to the current system, because every miss-click will send you back to this horrible cargo transfer widget

instead - i would prefer to have two things:
1. next to the + button one that fills my ships cargo as much as possible, and one next to - one that unloads all of my related mission cargo to finish the mission
2. get rid of the requirement to confirm the transfer.

 

[Auronio]

I agree and I please ask to read my powerplay merit load thread in the suggested features channel.

The general issue is that some (of the repetitive standard) tasks in the game are designed very efficient and allow the player to complete them quickly whereas others are made unnecessarily and artificially (non value-adding) complicated eating up player time and hence leading to frustration.

I simply can't believe (at least I hope) it is in the best interest of FDev to frustrate their players.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

I agree and I please ask to read my powerplay merit load thread in the suggested features channel.

The general issue is that some (of the repetitive standard) tasks in the game are designed very efficient and allow the player to complete them quickly whereas others are made unnecessarily and artificially (non value-adding) complicated eating up player time and hence leading to frustration.

I simply can't believe (at least I hope) it is in the best interest of FDev to frustrate their players.

IMHO the DEV that made the quick and efficient UI elements is not with FDEV, or at least not in the Elite team anymore.

 

[Winterwalker]

I like the new change I'm afraid. I think we're only talking about a couple of extra secondsto load cargo and it never sat well with me that we were letting a complete stranger load the ship, having accepted a mission for them. I thought I was responsible for what happens aboard, my ship. I don't think the rule of least surprise applies because the goal is not to promote hyper-efficiency in gameplay. The goal is to successfully emulate the role of cargo pilot, and even though the goods still instantly transfer into the ship, this is a cargo/manifest checking step that only says to me, OK I've accepted missions A and B, do I have the right cargo aboard.

Yes it means a few seconds in the station and yes you can make mistakes, and load wrong. But that's down to the skill and care taken by the pilot, which imo forms a part of the game that's just as valid as don't get interdicted, don't get scanned with illegal goods etc. I think people are concerned that it shaves (a little bit!) off the speed at which they earn credits but for me it addresses an imbalance in the time to supercruise between stations and the relatively few seconds for physical act of loading/unloading your ship, which (rightly) still isn't shown in real time.

 

[Mohenjo]

I don't mind the new change. I like being able to load a bit at a time. It lets me use a ship with a relatively small cargo hold to run a lot of cargo in several trips.

 

[ytene]

I like the new change I'm afraid. I think we're only talking about a couple of extra secondsto load cargo and it never sat well with me that we were letting a complete stranger load the ship, having accepted a mission for them. I thought I was responsible for what happens aboard, my ship. I don't think the rule of least surprise applies because the goal is not to promote hyper-efficiency in gameplay. The goal is to successfully emulate the role of cargo pilot, and even though the goods still instantly transfer into the ship, this is a cargo/manifest checking step that only says to me, OK I've accepted missions A and B, do I have the right cargo aboard.

Yes it means a few seconds in the station and yes you can make mistakes, and load wrong. But that's down to the skill and care taken by the pilot, which imo forms a part of the game that's just as valid as don't get interdicted, don't get scanned with illegal goods etc. I think people are concerned that it shaves (a little bit!) off the speed at which they earn credits but for me it addresses an imbalance in the time to supercruise between stations and the relatively few seconds for physical act of loading/unloading your ship, which (rightly) still isn't shown in real time.

And I'm not for one moment suggesting that you should not be able to have your copy of the game configured in this way if that is what you choose. My issue is that Frontier have made a change that forces this different model on players and forced them to go through these extra steps, even if they don't want to.

But my biggest concern, as I tried to explain in my original post, is that the change makes it trivially easy for a player to make an error from which recovery is both complex and requires the player to quit the game. That's insane.

So yes, let's by all means allow you to play the game in this mode, but preserve the "original" model for those of us who prefer the simpler life...

 

[krautbernd]

Yes it means a few seconds in the station and yes you can make mistakes, and load wrong. But that's down to the skill and care taken by the pilot, which imo forms a part of the game that's just as valid as don't get interdicted, don't get scanned with illegal goods etc.

As long as "load cargo" is the only option the mechanic itself serve no purpose. You can't even unload the cargo. Your only choice is to keep clicking the "+" button until your hold is full. I'm all in for letting people complete transport missions with smaller ships, but the current system is plain out broken. It doesn't add any meaningful gameplay for people who can actually transport the cargo in one go - only makes things more clunky as far as mission completion is concerned.

To repeat what i've already stated: You don't even get any indication if your cargohold volume is maxed by the delivery missions you have accepted so far. Neither do you get any indication of whom to turn in the mission once you arrive at your destination - the exclamation mark indicating completable missions has (for whatever reason) been disabled. In addition you have to wait for a counter to max before you can complete the mission (which doesn't even roll over). This might not bother people who only have one delivery mission to complete, but for people turning in 5+ missions this is simply a chore. Again, it doesn't add anything meaningful to the game. The interaction is not immersive. It just wastes time.

The system itself is flawed and should never have been adapted 1:1 to existing delivery missions. Right now you can flat out break outpost delivery missions by loading cargo into a large ship with no option to transfer it back.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

What this latest patch to ED has done is move away from that model; for single-player gamers the game no longer operates in the model of "least surprise" and now the interface has become more complex and more prone to error.

To an extent every change to how it previously worked breaks "least surprise" at least for a week or two ... I think the flaws here are more around the "most common action as default" usability - which is not quite the same as "least surprise" - because the easiest action to do is the one you virtually never want, and the slowest action to do is the one you virtually always want.

In this case, I think:
1) Accepting the mission should move you straight to the "load cargo" screen
2) "Load as much as possible" should be pre-filled and the default (I'd rather do it that way and you just press confirm than have it move up-and-down live without confirmation)
3) And yes, definitely a way to unload cargo back to the depot later if necessary.

It's a great change for being able to take these missions at all without needing to fly a Python ... but definitely needs more work on the UI side.

 

[ZeroAi]

would be similar bad to the current system, because every miss-click will send you back to this horrible cargo transfer widget.

Nope. An auto-load button WOULD be awesome.

And I don't think we should not have features because someone might click on the wrong thing... every menu in the game has multiple options, and obviously if you "miss-click" you're not getting what you want.

Miss-click on Buy instead of Sell, miss-click on Launch instead of Enter Hanger, etc, etc,

I've miss-clicked on all of them at least once! But that doesn't mean those options should be removed ;-)

 

[FlySwat]

Neither do you get any indication of whom to turn in the mission once you arrive at your destination - the exclamation mark indicating completable missions has (for whatever reason) been disabled.

YEP, and if you happened to get interdicted during transit, and hatch breaker limpets stole some of the Mission Cargo, well ...
NO, you cannot replace stolen Mission Widgets by purchasing more widgets elsewhere. (WHY NOT I ASK ?) So therefore ...
NO, you cannot Complete the mission, only Partially Complete the mission with Fine levied for value of lost widgets.

Re-think this please.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

YEP, and if you happened to get interdicted during transit, and hatch breaker limpets stole some of the Mission Cargo, well ...
NO, you cannot replace stolen Mission Widgets by purchasing more widgets elsewhere. (WHY NOT I ASK ?) So therefore ...
NO, you cannot Complete the mission, only Partially Complete the mission with Fine levied for value of lost widgets.

Re-think this please.

i think you are miss-using the word "Widget"
a "widget" is a grafical UI element, like a set of buttons or a the clock display on the UI.

 

[krautbernd]

YEP, and if you happened to get interdicted during transit, and hatch breaker limpets stole some of the Mission Cargo, well ...
NO, you cannot replace stolen Mission Widgets by purchasing more widgets elsewhere. (WHY NOT I ASK ?) So therefore ...
NO, you cannot Complete the mission, only Partially Complete the mission with Fine levied for value of lost widgets.

Re-think this please.

This no different to how it was with the old system, except that you auto-failed the mission. I'm actually ok with that as long the mission cargo is "unique". Down the line i'd like to see an overhaul of how delivery missions work, including the removal of the afromentioned "unique" attribute for generic cargo items. Losing part of the shipment should incur a major fine, but replacing generic cargo items with ones you've bought from the market should be a possibility.