Artificial time-sinks in missions needs to go.

[Red Fox Four]

This artificial time-sink is so annoying.

What do I mean by artificial time sink?

It's the hard-coded time delay they put in which makes it take X minutes to find your mission target or objectives.

Example 1:
Kill 12 pirates from the Manian Coop faction.

You go to Manian system and look for pirates at the nav beacon. You find one, kill it... then no more Mission Targets appear for at least 5-10 minutes.
You switch to supercruise and find a Mission Target, attack it and return to supercruise... and no more Mission Targets appear for at least 5-10 minutes.

Example 2:
Salvage 4 black boxes.

You go to system, scan nav beacon, go to appropriate planet in supercruise.
Find the Signal Source, enter it to salvage. Pick up one black box and 4 ships spawn so you have to run.
Once back in supercruise, the signal source won't spawn again for like 5-10 minutes.

Now... when you get missions to kill 30 ships... or salvage multiple things... these artificial and obviously coded in time-sinks become a) REALLY boring and b) frustrating.

I do understand that Frontier might want the missions to take a certain amount of time to do, however adding artificial time sinks is not the way to go. They are BORING. Flying AFK at 30km/s in supercruise while not even looking at the game becaues of this obvious built-in timesink is extremely poor game design.

Time delays need to go.

I honestly get so bored and frustrated knowing how predictable these time delays are that I end up just quitting the game to play something else. If I'm going to fly around for 10 minutes before another Mission Target / Objective spawns between each time I kill one, thus making me watch Netflix or play another game while I am waiting... well... then I end up just turning Elite OFF and playing that other game with my full attention instead... or watching Netflix.

Problem with Elite (which is obvious through poor design like these hardcoded time delays and hours of flying in a straight line in supercruise to remote locations) is the fact that their game design is encouraging us to NOT play the game for long durations at a time (waiting on mission targets to appear or flying in supercruise).

Give us methods to actively look for these mission targets. Optionally.. spawn MORE mission targets so there is plenty of them for us to find, but make the missions require more kills to be successful. That way we are at least DOING something rather than just flying around AFK waiting on a silly timer to pass.

I'm pretty annoyed at this rubbish... and doesn't help that I'm coming down with a throat infection and it's late at night right now... but still.

Make your game require USER INPUT to play the game rather than ARTIFICIAL TIME-SINKS.

Want pirate hunting missions to last longer, then add more pirates and increase the amount of kills required... then we are constantly interdicting, scanning, looking, finding, dogfighting and DOING THINGS.

Pretty sure there are a dozen other aspects of the game that are filled with these artificial time sinks where you roam around in supercruise, in an SRV or whatever else and can't find what you need because... oh wait... the 10 minute timer didn't elapse... and only AFTER that timer has elapsed are you permitted to find mission targets again.

Ridiculous, poor design and needs to be removed.

 

[Kingston@#]

dont run! = 2 issue

 

[Flavourless]

Familiar problem.
User thinks anything that is not frantic activity is not playing the game.
If mission is to kill 12 pirates, user wants, nay expects, nay demands, all 12 be lined up in a row for him - like the ridiculous infinitely spawning targets in CZ and RES.

Its not the game's fault that you have the attention span of a goldfish.

I wish people would make up their minds.
If Elite is a cool, dark, dangerous and gritty experience, then stop trying to make it into a gratuitous, fast paced shoot-em-up.
Or if all the "QoL" shortcuts are needed because the the slower parts are not fun, then stop moaning about combat logging and the mode system that exist because mindless PK'ing is not fun either.

For "goodness" sake get a grip!

(Sorry, just had to vent)

 

[CMDR Crumpeteer]

Sorry OP but what you describe has not been my experience at all. I've had to jump out of black box signal sources on a few occasions, and had another one spawn within a minute. I've also done more than a few "kill x number of y" missions, and had mission targets spawn in SC one after the other, with nowhere near 5-10 minute delays.

Sounds like confirmation bias to me. Just because you sometimes get longer delays, doesn't mean they are put there on purpose to slow you down.

 

[z33r0x]

I feel you OP, everything that ends up with a lot of waiting and time wasting, I avoid.

 

[Loskene]

I can't say I've experienced this myself. Even on missions with intentional time delays built into them (kill this person who will be in x system at y time) I've arrived well before the stated time only to find the target there anyway. There is a lot of time wasting to complain about in this game, but the specific issue you mention is not one I can attest to personally.

 

[thirstyfish]

This artificial time-sink is so annoying.

What do I mean by artificial time sink?

It's the hard-coded time delay they put in which makes it take X minutes to find your mission target or objectives.

Example 1:
Kill 12 pirates from the Manian Coop faction.

You go to Manian system and look for pirates at the nav beacon. You find one, kill it... then no more Mission Targets appear for at least 5-10 minutes.
You switch to supercruise and find a Mission Target, attack it and return to supercruise... and no more Mission Targets appear for at least 5-10 minutes.

Example 2:
Salvage 4 black boxes.

You go to system, scan nav beacon, go to appropriate planet in supercruise.
Find the Signal Source, enter it to salvage. Pick up one black box and 4 ships spawn so you have to run.
Once back in supercruise, the signal source won't spawn again for like 5-10 minutes.

Now... when you get missions to kill 30 ships... or salvage multiple things... these artificial and obviously coded in time-sinks become a) REALLY boring and b) frustrating.

I do understand that Frontier might want the missions to take a certain amount of time to do, however adding artificial time sinks is not the way to go. They are BORING. Flying AFK at 30km/s in supercruise while not even looking at the game becaues of this obvious built-in timesink is extremely poor game design.

Time delays need to go.

I honestly get so bored and frustrated knowing how predictable these time delays are that I end up just quitting the game to play something else. If I'm going to fly around for 10 minutes before another Mission Target / Objective spawns between each time I kill one, thus making me watch Netflix or play another game while I am waiting... well... then I end up just turning Elite OFF and playing that other game with my full attention instead... or watching Netflix.

Problem with Elite (which is obvious through poor design like these hardcoded time delays and hours of flying in a straight line in supercruise to remote locations) is the fact that their game design is encouraging us to NOT play the game for long durations at a time (waiting on mission targets to appear or flying in supercruise).

Give us methods to actively look for these mission targets. Optionally.. spawn MORE mission targets so there is plenty of them for us to find, but make the missions require more kills to be successful. That way we are at least DOING something rather than just flying around AFK waiting on a silly timer to pass.

I'm pretty annoyed at this rubbish... and doesn't help that I'm coming down with a throat infection and it's late at night right now... but still.

Make your game require USER INPUT to play the game rather than ARTIFICIAL TIME-SINKS.

Want pirate hunting missions to last longer, then add more pirates and increase the amount of kills required... then we are constantly interdicting, scanning, looking, finding, dogfighting and DOING THINGS.

Pretty sure there are a dozen other aspects of the game that are filled with these artificial time sinks where you roam around in supercruise, in an SRV or whatever else and can't find what you need because... oh wait... the 10 minute timer didn't elapse... and only AFTER that timer has elapsed are you permitted to find mission targets again.

Ridiculous, poor design and needs to be removed.

Then find some different missions to run. Not rocket science.

 

[Cablefast]

I really wish we could down vote stuff on this forum.