I've recently discovered that Frontier is looking at making changes to the server system in order to prevent board flipping. For those that may be unfamiliar, "board flipping" is a means to refresh the mission board of a station by logging out of the current play session, and logging back in to a different play type (open to solo or reverse) in order to get a new set of missions. Many players use this tactic to better optimize their play time by allowing them the opportunity to find and accept missions that better fit their play interests at that time... whether that is to stack many missions of the same type, or to find specific mission types that cater to their current setup (finding that hauling mission in a sea of combat ones), or to locate that elusive faction rank-up mission.
From what I understand, Frontier is looking at moving the mission board to a different server system, which would result in the significant reduction or outright elimination of the ability to board flip to refresh the missions available on the mission board. The devs, rightly so, see board flipping as an exploit used by players to circumvent the normal operation of the mission board system. What the devs fail to do, in both removing the option to board flip and in the back-handed increase of credit rewards by a paltry 10% to "compensate" players for the removal of this option, is address the reasons players will utilize the ability to refresh the mission board in the first place... namely the desire on the part of all players to quickly find the mission types and rewards they're looking for.
Of all of the core game systems in Elite Dangerous, the mission board system is perhaps one of the most important in terms of player progression and experience, and yet is also perhaps the most broken. To put it bluntly, the system simply does not work, and never has. Rather than address the reason players go out of their way to circumvent such an essential gameplay system, the devs are merely taking action to remove the method of circumvention.
Here below, I hope to outline some changes I think may help with fixing the core problems of the mission system - such that players will be able to find the types of missions and rewards they're looking for. I welcome other ideas to be added, and feedback on the ideas contained herein. Having not done much research on the general discussion of the community regarding the mission system, I do not know if any of these ideas has been previously discussed. So, if I'm expressing an idea that's already been forwarded by other community members, I apologize.
First, the mission system should be adaptable and allow for mission "refreshing" on the fly, as the player would be able to hone mission choices to their specific desires. If a player is looking to haul cargo, he should be able to find a larger variety of cargo missions. If a player is looking to hunt pirates, he should be able to find a large variety of those mission types. To effectively do this, first and foremost it may be necessary to break up the mission systems to place certain types of missions within access systems that make more sense. Certainly a large central board for all mission types is problematic for obvious reasons... most notably in that there's little control by the player as to what sorts of missions fill up that central board. By better breaking up the board... either by better partitioning mission types within that board, or relocating certain types of missions to new distributed boards, it allows for both increased player choice and significantly less clutter and overlap with non-desired missions.
For instance, I can see two basic methodologies here. First, breaking up the mission board to include combat, exploration, and trading mission sub-types - either as categories underneath each minor faction's mission list (Sol Workers' Party --> Combat Missions) or as a header under which minor factions present their missions (Combat Missions --> Sol Workers' Party). This allows us to retain one central board for missions, but then breaks up those missions into readily identifiable categories that ensure that a variety of missions in each type are available (rather than say, 20 combat missions and 1 trade mission, the board could display a handful of missions in each main archetype for each minor faction).
A better way, and more compelling and immersive for the player, is to place certain mission types within their various appropriate "contact" types. If a player wants to hunt bounties or find pirate assassination missions, perhaps he could find those under the Authorities contact. If a player wants to explore, perhaps he could find missions under the Universal Cartographics contact (the player could find missions to go to specific, largely uncharted star systems and do detailed surface scans of all planetary bodies for a large payout, just for instance). If a player wants to engage in some hauling, he could head to a Cargo (shipping, transport, etc) contact. If a player wishes to get into some smuggling or other illicit activities, he can go to the Black Market contact. If a player wants to transport passengers, he still goes to the Passenger depot.
To accomplish this, many of the existing contact types will be moved into main station menu categories much like Universal Cartographics and the Passenger Depot already are. From there, each main category will have its selection of missions as well as the station services normally associated with those sections... Players can sell exploration data at UC or pick up new explorations missions. Players can pay fines and clear bounties at an Authority contact, or turn in their own collected bounties and pick up new "wanted" missions. And so on. This allows us to have, rather than 20 total missions for a minor faction spread across all mission types at random, perhaps 10 or so missions of a given category for each minor faction in each of the more specific mission boards. This would allow for both more missions in total, as well as guarantee more mission variety. It also makes a bit more sense "narratively," as you'd expect a station's authority network to handle missions pertinent to system security, the exploration network to handle exploration missions, etc.
The next major change we have to look at for mission adaptability is to allow players to tailor the scale of missions to their needs as a way to eliminate the need to have repetitive mission goals listed as seperate missions on the mission board and to allow missions to conform to the level of the player and his equipment. It does the player little good to have 10 missions spawn for a minor faction asking a commander to kill a small number of an enemy faction's ships. Or to have several missions that want to deliver a small number of cargo items to the same port. Moreover, it does us no good to present the player with a dozen missions which require higher cargo capacity than they have, or those that would barely put a dent in their cargo hold. With the introduction of mission mechanics with the wing system, basically allowing players the ability to tackle a small part of a mission's greater whole, there is little reason that a degree of scaleability cannot be added to single-player missions that have open-ended goals.
As an example... Why set up a mission goal to deliver 17 appliances for a total of 230,000cr to a specific station? Are we saying that this faction only has produced 17 tons of appliances that it wants to ship? That it wouldn't ship more if that option was available? Instead, set the mission up to deliver appliances at a set amount per unit shipped (14,000cr per ton of appliance, for instance), and let the player determine how many he wishes to haul. This solves several problems. First, it reduces mission board clutter by establishing that a minor faction needs only a single mission to haul cargo to a given ending starport. This frees the game up to produce a wider variety of end destinations without repetitiveness. Next it solves the problem of having mission types that scale with the player. A new player could use his freshly purchased Hauler to drag 8 tons of appliances to their destination. An Anaconda pilot could do the same for 360 tons of appliances. The rewards each would receive would scale appropriately for each pilot... the newbie Hauler making the 112,000cr he'd expect to make, while the veteran Anaconda pilot would rake in 5,040,000cr... finally a worthy sum for a pilot that has grinded his way to the largest ships in the game.
This sense of scaleability and player agency can be extended to other mission types. Mining... why limit myself to 30 units of a mineral if I could easily handle more? Bounty/assassination missions... allow the player to choose the intensity of the mission engagement he wants to hunt for, giving him the option to choose to hunt down small time criminals or dangerous brigands. Exploration... allow the player to choose if he wants to fill in some less travelled corners of the bubble, or if he wants to cross vast distances of unexplored space to bring back data on a potential new Earth-like. The possibilities here to add scaleability while reducing board clutter and increasing variety are significant.
Moreover, this works to the heart of the board flipping problem... the chances of a player finding exactly the sort of mission he'd want to play would be much higher, as the variety of missions available to him would be greatly expanded... and it eliminates the need to mission stack, as scaling missions let the player bite off EXACTLY the amount they can chew with a single mission pick.
But if the player STILL can't find a mission there that's EXACTLY what he'd want, what's the harm in allowing him to refresh the board manually? Given the changes we'd be implementing here, there'd be no need to refresh the board to stack missions, since those would now scale. A board refresh would only need to occur for the sake of finding new destinations for mission end points, etc. Or perhaps even allow the player to set some of the mission parameters himself. A player could perhaps choose a shipping destination he'd like to haul to from a pre-determined group that a particular station would ship to, and could receive a payout commiserate with shipping to that location. Haul cargo to port X and receive 12,000cr per unit, but haul to port Y and receive 15,000cr per unit. Just for the sake of example.
Of course, I have a number of ideas regarding how to restructure or tune the many varieties of mission we can pick up as players to better suit individual player choice and streamline or optimize the experience. For instance, I've thought of maybe having 2 varieties of hauling missions... standard and express. "Standard" missions would point you to nearby logistics hub stations that serve as nodes for the larger distribution network. These missions would be quick and painless - not terribly dangerous and extremely predictable low-risk missions good for back and forth bulk hauling. They could be accomplished quickly and have relatively low payouts as a result. And then there's "Express" missions, where players would be tasked with more long-distance hauling to more remote locations off the beaten path - more dangerous and less predictable with longer durations for bigger payouts. Maybe even a "Hazardous" hauling mission type, where the risks are high and the rewards massive.
There are other changes to other mission types as well, (milestone bonuses for enemy threat removal combat missions that pay out increasingly higher rewards for larger accumulated kill counts that offset the ability to stack many missions targeting the same enemy faction, for instance) but before any of that can be honed in on, the mission system structure itself needs to be fixed. I believe that the relatively simple changes I've listed to the board structure above would largely eliminate all of the problems with the mission system that players have been board flipping to overcome. These changes also provide a more solid foundation for any future expansions of the mission system and make more sense from an immersion and "narrative" standpoint.
If you've gotten this far, I thank you for reading, and look forward to any discussion and feedback the community might offer.
From what I understand, Frontier is looking at moving the mission board to a different server system, which would result in the significant reduction or outright elimination of the ability to board flip to refresh the missions available on the mission board. The devs, rightly so, see board flipping as an exploit used by players to circumvent the normal operation of the mission board system. What the devs fail to do, in both removing the option to board flip and in the back-handed increase of credit rewards by a paltry 10% to "compensate" players for the removal of this option, is address the reasons players will utilize the ability to refresh the mission board in the first place... namely the desire on the part of all players to quickly find the mission types and rewards they're looking for.
Of all of the core game systems in Elite Dangerous, the mission board system is perhaps one of the most important in terms of player progression and experience, and yet is also perhaps the most broken. To put it bluntly, the system simply does not work, and never has. Rather than address the reason players go out of their way to circumvent such an essential gameplay system, the devs are merely taking action to remove the method of circumvention.
Here below, I hope to outline some changes I think may help with fixing the core problems of the mission system - such that players will be able to find the types of missions and rewards they're looking for. I welcome other ideas to be added, and feedback on the ideas contained herein. Having not done much research on the general discussion of the community regarding the mission system, I do not know if any of these ideas has been previously discussed. So, if I'm expressing an idea that's already been forwarded by other community members, I apologize.
First, the mission system should be adaptable and allow for mission "refreshing" on the fly, as the player would be able to hone mission choices to their specific desires. If a player is looking to haul cargo, he should be able to find a larger variety of cargo missions. If a player is looking to hunt pirates, he should be able to find a large variety of those mission types. To effectively do this, first and foremost it may be necessary to break up the mission systems to place certain types of missions within access systems that make more sense. Certainly a large central board for all mission types is problematic for obvious reasons... most notably in that there's little control by the player as to what sorts of missions fill up that central board. By better breaking up the board... either by better partitioning mission types within that board, or relocating certain types of missions to new distributed boards, it allows for both increased player choice and significantly less clutter and overlap with non-desired missions.
For instance, I can see two basic methodologies here. First, breaking up the mission board to include combat, exploration, and trading mission sub-types - either as categories underneath each minor faction's mission list (Sol Workers' Party --> Combat Missions) or as a header under which minor factions present their missions (Combat Missions --> Sol Workers' Party). This allows us to retain one central board for missions, but then breaks up those missions into readily identifiable categories that ensure that a variety of missions in each type are available (rather than say, 20 combat missions and 1 trade mission, the board could display a handful of missions in each main archetype for each minor faction).
A better way, and more compelling and immersive for the player, is to place certain mission types within their various appropriate "contact" types. If a player wants to hunt bounties or find pirate assassination missions, perhaps he could find those under the Authorities contact. If a player wants to explore, perhaps he could find missions under the Universal Cartographics contact (the player could find missions to go to specific, largely uncharted star systems and do detailed surface scans of all planetary bodies for a large payout, just for instance). If a player wants to engage in some hauling, he could head to a Cargo (shipping, transport, etc) contact. If a player wishes to get into some smuggling or other illicit activities, he can go to the Black Market contact. If a player wants to transport passengers, he still goes to the Passenger depot.
To accomplish this, many of the existing contact types will be moved into main station menu categories much like Universal Cartographics and the Passenger Depot already are. From there, each main category will have its selection of missions as well as the station services normally associated with those sections... Players can sell exploration data at UC or pick up new explorations missions. Players can pay fines and clear bounties at an Authority contact, or turn in their own collected bounties and pick up new "wanted" missions. And so on. This allows us to have, rather than 20 total missions for a minor faction spread across all mission types at random, perhaps 10 or so missions of a given category for each minor faction in each of the more specific mission boards. This would allow for both more missions in total, as well as guarantee more mission variety. It also makes a bit more sense "narratively," as you'd expect a station's authority network to handle missions pertinent to system security, the exploration network to handle exploration missions, etc.
The next major change we have to look at for mission adaptability is to allow players to tailor the scale of missions to their needs as a way to eliminate the need to have repetitive mission goals listed as seperate missions on the mission board and to allow missions to conform to the level of the player and his equipment. It does the player little good to have 10 missions spawn for a minor faction asking a commander to kill a small number of an enemy faction's ships. Or to have several missions that want to deliver a small number of cargo items to the same port. Moreover, it does us no good to present the player with a dozen missions which require higher cargo capacity than they have, or those that would barely put a dent in their cargo hold. With the introduction of mission mechanics with the wing system, basically allowing players the ability to tackle a small part of a mission's greater whole, there is little reason that a degree of scaleability cannot be added to single-player missions that have open-ended goals.
As an example... Why set up a mission goal to deliver 17 appliances for a total of 230,000cr to a specific station? Are we saying that this faction only has produced 17 tons of appliances that it wants to ship? That it wouldn't ship more if that option was available? Instead, set the mission up to deliver appliances at a set amount per unit shipped (14,000cr per ton of appliance, for instance), and let the player determine how many he wishes to haul. This solves several problems. First, it reduces mission board clutter by establishing that a minor faction needs only a single mission to haul cargo to a given ending starport. This frees the game up to produce a wider variety of end destinations without repetitiveness. Next it solves the problem of having mission types that scale with the player. A new player could use his freshly purchased Hauler to drag 8 tons of appliances to their destination. An Anaconda pilot could do the same for 360 tons of appliances. The rewards each would receive would scale appropriately for each pilot... the newbie Hauler making the 112,000cr he'd expect to make, while the veteran Anaconda pilot would rake in 5,040,000cr... finally a worthy sum for a pilot that has grinded his way to the largest ships in the game.
This sense of scaleability and player agency can be extended to other mission types. Mining... why limit myself to 30 units of a mineral if I could easily handle more? Bounty/assassination missions... allow the player to choose the intensity of the mission engagement he wants to hunt for, giving him the option to choose to hunt down small time criminals or dangerous brigands. Exploration... allow the player to choose if he wants to fill in some less travelled corners of the bubble, or if he wants to cross vast distances of unexplored space to bring back data on a potential new Earth-like. The possibilities here to add scaleability while reducing board clutter and increasing variety are significant.
Moreover, this works to the heart of the board flipping problem... the chances of a player finding exactly the sort of mission he'd want to play would be much higher, as the variety of missions available to him would be greatly expanded... and it eliminates the need to mission stack, as scaling missions let the player bite off EXACTLY the amount they can chew with a single mission pick.
But if the player STILL can't find a mission there that's EXACTLY what he'd want, what's the harm in allowing him to refresh the board manually? Given the changes we'd be implementing here, there'd be no need to refresh the board to stack missions, since those would now scale. A board refresh would only need to occur for the sake of finding new destinations for mission end points, etc. Or perhaps even allow the player to set some of the mission parameters himself. A player could perhaps choose a shipping destination he'd like to haul to from a pre-determined group that a particular station would ship to, and could receive a payout commiserate with shipping to that location. Haul cargo to port X and receive 12,000cr per unit, but haul to port Y and receive 15,000cr per unit. Just for the sake of example.
Of course, I have a number of ideas regarding how to restructure or tune the many varieties of mission we can pick up as players to better suit individual player choice and streamline or optimize the experience. For instance, I've thought of maybe having 2 varieties of hauling missions... standard and express. "Standard" missions would point you to nearby logistics hub stations that serve as nodes for the larger distribution network. These missions would be quick and painless - not terribly dangerous and extremely predictable low-risk missions good for back and forth bulk hauling. They could be accomplished quickly and have relatively low payouts as a result. And then there's "Express" missions, where players would be tasked with more long-distance hauling to more remote locations off the beaten path - more dangerous and less predictable with longer durations for bigger payouts. Maybe even a "Hazardous" hauling mission type, where the risks are high and the rewards massive.
There are other changes to other mission types as well, (milestone bonuses for enemy threat removal combat missions that pay out increasingly higher rewards for larger accumulated kill counts that offset the ability to stack many missions targeting the same enemy faction, for instance) but before any of that can be honed in on, the mission system structure itself needs to be fixed. I believe that the relatively simple changes I've listed to the board structure above would largely eliminate all of the problems with the mission system that players have been board flipping to overcome. These changes also provide a more solid foundation for any future expansions of the mission system and make more sense from an immersion and "narrative" standpoint.
If you've gotten this far, I thank you for reading, and look forward to any discussion and feedback the community might offer.
