As a boardflipper

[Han Zulu]

I enjoy a good "you're playing the game wrong!" retort as much as the next guy, but OP's complaint is valid and correct and good. I am glad to see board flipping gone because now people will have no workarounds for dealing with the sorry state of the mission system, and thus no choice but to petition Frontier for improvements.

Exactly!

I think the mission server they've done now is the right way to go. Next step is to improve on it, and it can only be done by players petition for changes. Also, with the new BGS system, we have to play it for a while to see where it's going. They might have done improvements already but they're not visible yet. I can only refer to my experiences before the update.

The thing is, I suspect some of the fixes I'd like to see weren't even possible to do in the old system. Single server for missions might be what's needed to actually get it all done right.

 

[Chris Simon]

I like Kayweg's and Mengy's ideas. Expand on the mechanics to allow the player more control over what he/she wants to do.

I know the real-life examples and metaphores are generally sniffed at, around here, but let's imagine you have a van and a small hauling business and you turn up at a big company, asking for a job. They give you a list of all available jobs and you tell them: "I don't like any of these jobs, but I want you to give me a full cargo of things and I will deliver them to a city of my choice. Because I believe I should be allowed to run my hauling business as I want."

They would probably squint at you pretty hard.

 

[Stealthie]

Still feels like too many wing missions. Really should be separate boards.

Noooooo!!!!!!

If you ask for that, and FDev implement it, it'll be something else crossed off the "to-do" list forever and we'll be stuck with another band-aid solution. Forever.

What really needs to happen is that the wing-mission mechanic needs to be integrated into every mission, so that every mission can be completed by a single player or by 2, 3 or 4 players in a wing.
And, with that done, the term "wing-mission" should be consigned to history.

The only obstacle would be finding a sensible way to divide payments between all the people involved.
If a current single-player mission is worth, say, Cr4m, it should be possible for 1 person to claim the entire Cr4m, for 2 players to take Cr2m each, for 3 players to take Cr1,333,333 each or 4 players to take Cr1m each.
Equally, if a current wing-mission is worth Cr8m, it should be possible for one person to claim Cr32m, 2 players; Cr16m each, 3 players; Cr10,666,666 or 4 players get Cr8m each.

Figure that out and we end up with a much more dynamic mission system and a much more diverse range of missions, spanning from what's currently available to single players to what's available for wings - and all can be accepted by 1-4 players.

 

[Stealthie]

I know the real-life examples and metaphores are generally sniffed at, around here, but let's imagine you have a van and a small hauling business and you turn up at a big company, asking for a job. They give you a list of all available jobs and you tell them: "I don't like any of these jobs, but I want you to give me a full cargo of things and I will deliver them to a city of my choice. Because I believe I should be allowed to run my hauling business as I want."

Or, you buy a shiny new 40ft articulated lorry and turn up at a little Cotswolds village and demand work that will fill it for maximum profit.

Sorry but, it's like some people think the world owes them a living (metaphorically speaking).

 

[Han Zulu]

I know the real-life examples and metaphores are generally sniffed at, around here, but let's imagine you have a van and a small hauling business and you turn up at a big company, asking for a job. They give you a list of all available jobs and you tell them: "I don't like any of these jobs, but I want you to give me a full cargo of things and I will deliver them to a city of my choice. Because I believe I should be allowed to run my hauling business as I want."

They would probably squint at you pretty hard.

Their ideas remind me of the classified section and craig's list. You can go and find the things you want to do and want to get. There's nothing strange about it. The mission part of the station isn't just a single person or business you talk to, but several. The station with millions of inhabitants can't provide more than a handful of missions? There are more transport/deliver requests in our little city of some hundred thousand inhabitants than there's in an Elite space port. Actually, there are more Amazon deliveries on our street per day then there are missions in a single star port.

Think of a star port as a city, not as a small corner business with 2 employees. Think of the ports as a city teeming with life and activity. Millions of people doing things and needing things. Think of the number of trucks going out of Los Angeles each day, and in, and tasks, work, jobs, things to do there.

 

[Han Zulu]

Noooooo!!!!!!

If you ask for that, and FDev implement it, it'll be something else crossed off the "to-do" list forever and we'll be stuck with another band-aid solution. Forever.

What really needs to happen is that the wing-mission mechanic needs to be integrated into every mission, so that every mission can be completed by a single player or by 2, 3 or 4 players in a wing.
And, with that done, the term "wing-mission" should be consigned to history.

The only obstacle would be finding a sensible way to divide payments between all the people involved.
If a current single-player mission is worth, say, Cr4m, it should be possible for 1 person to claim the entire Cr4m, for 2 players to take Cr2m each, for 3 players to take Cr1,333,333 each or 4 players to take Cr1m each.
Equally, if a current wing-mission is worth Cr8m, it should be possible for one person to claim Cr32m, 2 players; Cr16m each, 3 players; Cr10,666,666 or 4 players get Cr8m each.

Figure that out and we end up with a much more dynamic mission system and a much more diverse range of missions, spanning from what's currently available to single players to what's available for wings - and all can be accepted by 1-4 players.

Yes, that works too.

I hate finding 10 delivery missions for 4000 unites and it pays 1 mil cred, and then I find 2-3 solo delivery missions for the same product, deliver 90 units for 1 mil cred. Why bother spend 2 days for the same money for a single trade? The mission system is so messed up.

 

[Chris Simon]

They're ideas remind me of the classified section and craig's list. You can go and find the things you want to do and want to get. There's nothing strange about it. The mission part of the station isn't just a single person or business you talk to, but several. The station with millions of inhabitants can't provide more than a handful of missions? There are more transport/deliver requests in our little city of some hundred thousand inhabitants than there's in an Elite space port. Actually, there are more Amazon deliveries on our street per day then there are missions in a single star port.

What I would consider being in realms of possibility when comes to things you and others talk about in this thread would be mission requests.

Let's say you'd arrive at a station and put up a notice on a request board. "I have this and this much cargo space and I'm heading to these systems".
And somebody would reply "Yes, I have this haul ready for a system you're going to". Or they wouldn't and some time later, while roaming around, you would get a notification that an opportunity opened up at a port you're left your notice at.

That, I think, could work.

But not straight "Give me missions I WANT because I WAAAAANT" That's just childish.

 

[Daniel264]

I'm surprised the mission board doesn't have subcategories for each role. Passenger missions already have their own contact. Doesn't make sense for the contact organising the massacre of a rival also arranging supply deliveries. Plus elite is all about roles and building towards them

 

[Pville_Piper]

Clearly, if this doesn't happen the game must be faulty.

No, it's dooooooooooooooomed!

 

[Kaocraft]

Noooooo!!!!!!

If you ask for that, and FDev implement it, it'll be something else crossed off the "to-do" list forever and we'll be stuck with another band-aid solution. Forever.

What really needs to happen is that the wing-mission mechanic needs to be integrated into every mission, so that every mission can be completed by a single player or by 2, 3 or 4 players in a wing.
And, with that done, the term "wing-mission" should be consigned to history.

The only obstacle would be finding a sensible way to divide payments between all the people involved.
If a current single-player mission is worth, say, Cr4m, it should be possible for 1 person to claim the entire Cr4m, for 2 players to take Cr2m each, for 3 players to take Cr1,333,333 each or 4 players to take Cr1m each.
Equally, if a current wing-mission is worth Cr8m, it should be possible for one person to claim Cr32m, 2 players; Cr16m each, 3 players; Cr10,666,666 or 4 players get Cr8m each.

Figure that out and we end up with a much more dynamic mission system and a much more diverse range of missions, spanning from what's currently available to single players to what's available for wings - and all can be accepted by 1-4 players.

Yes this is how every sane person thought it would work when Wing missions were just a long-awaited feature request, and it's absolutely how it should always have worked and should work now.

Frontier responds to long-desired feature requests the way a malicious genie grants wishes. I would love it so much if they stopped building out their game with "ticking off a box" as the end-all be-all of game design goals. HOW you get there is much more important than anyone seems to be willing to admit.

 

[Han Zulu]

What I would consider being in realms of possibility when comes to things you and others talk about in this thread would be mission requests.

Let's say you'd arrive at a station and put up a notice on a request board. "I have this and this much cargo space and I'm heading to these systems".
And somebody would reply "Yes, I have this haul ready for a system you're going to". Or they wouldn't and some time later, while roaming around, you would get a notification that an opportunity opened up at a port you're left your notice at.

That, I think, could work.

Sure. I like that idea too.

But not straight "Give me missions I WANT because I WAAAAANT" That's just childish.

[/quote]
I don't think that's what's being asked for here. In the past, there's been a lack of certain missions in general (mining, solo player trading). We'll see how things go on in the new one though. I'm not too concerned. I believe the new mission server will provide the platform for improvements.

 

[Chaparral]

Here's the basic issue:

The game is a slave to the BGS.

The actions required to manipulate the BGS (cop killing, biowaste shipping, forcing elections etc.) are NOT stated anywhere in the game codex, tutorials, or game tools. It is a hidden mechanic that impacts every single player's experience. There is no codex, tutorial, or game tool that specifically states the mission types available at systems outside of your current system.

In my opinion, this is horrible design.

A player joining the game for the first time has the mission board as the primary access point for game play. For this player, or a casual player, the shifting states and mission availability is random on its face.

The total population in a system (whether hundreds of thousands or BILLIONS) appears to have zero impact on mission diversity or the total quantity of missions.

The BGS may be fun for easter egg diggers, but for the rest of us - its a PITA.

 

[Typhon]

People board-hop because they want everything now. Not to work for it, not to build up to it. Now.
It's not the game that needs fixing, it's people with grind mentality.

I board flipped cause the board was literally 90% wing missions.

 

[sollisb]

As a heavy boardflipper, im not really happy with the change ofcourse. But i understand why it has changed.. but in my eyes its a one sided fix.

For me personally why i board flip is when im going to do missions ive set a goal in mind, so when im focused on trading i dont accept combat missions.

The main reason why i flipped boards was so i could get enough missions for that task that im aiming for. This is not fixed.. the amount of missions offered is too low for me to do what i want.

Can we please get more missions?! Having 5 to 15 missions per faction is way too low.

You do have an option.. Don't buy anything in their store. Enough players do it and they'll soon fix it. But players won't..

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

There have been numerous threads and comments on the mission board, some suggestions I have made were:

• making higher population systems generate more missions, which if you think about it makes a lot of sense, the more people there are in one place the more stuff they are going to need doing.
• to make the number of missions from each faction linked to the factions influence, so in a system with 100 missions on the board, a faction with 15% influence would have, you guessed it, 15 missions.
• continually changing mission boards, so missions pop on and off the board. Do this by giving missions a "shelf life" - how long they will be on the board, random number between two and 15 minutes. Then have the mission board spawn a new missions every so often, at a random interval of between 2 and 15 minutes. The result would be a board that constantly changed with missions popping on and off the board looking like the npc's and other cmdrs were taking them, and the factions were issuing new missions as the requirements came in.*

*I might program a mock up of that last suggestion as it makes sense when I visualise it, but it really doesnt lend itself to verbal(or textual if you are pedantic) description.

 

[Rat Catcher]

I pick up missions from wherever, can generally fill up and keep it filled just by picking up from delivery destinations. No job at a particular station that I'd like, move on somewhere else... It works for me (but I don't care if I have space left spare, it'll fill up sooner or later)

 

[Ethaidan]

They're ideas remind me of the classified section and craig's list. You can go and find the things you want to do and want to get. There's nothing strange about it. The mission part of the station isn't just a single person or business you talk to, but several. The station with millions of inhabitants can't provide more than a handful of missions? There are more transport/deliver requests in our little city of some hundred thousand inhabitants than there's in an Elite space port. Actually, there are more Amazon deliveries on our street per day then there are missions in a single star port.

Think of a star port as a city, not as a small corner business with 2 employees. Think of the ports as a city teeming with life and activity. Millions of people doing things and needing things. Think of the number of trucks going out of Los Angeles each day, and in, and tasks, work, jobs, things to do there.

Sure, but you're misunderstanding what the boards represent and your place within the overall system of deliveries, scanning, etc. There is far more going on at each star port than just what is on the misdion boards - there has to be, given the scale. Of course, the vast majority of deliveries, etc. are done by large logistical companies, with fleets and massive ships. The mission board... well that's what's left over, the overflow, last minute rushes that didn't fit into the existing schedules. So those are offered up to any random pilot with a ship that can do the job. So sure, Amazon does loads of deliveries - using established companies or networks - we aren't those companies, so the local notice board or Craig's list is a decent analogy.

 

[Daniel Cloudsifter]

Having 70-150 mission on mission board on every station is too low? LOL

When you have each faction offering you a bunch (e.g. 5-10) of the same mission type - especially massacre missions in system, same target - when the average player couldn't do more than one or two, yeah it's "too low."

The number of missions is fine. The amount of wasted mission slots on duplicate missions is the problem now.

 

[Han Zulu]

Sure, but you're misunderstanding what the boards represent and your place within the overall system of deliveries, scanning, etc. There is far more going on at each star port than just what is on the misdion boards - there has to be, given the scale. Of course, the vast majority of deliveries, etc. are done by large logistical companies, with fleets and massive ships. The mission board... well that's what's left over, the overflow, last minute rushes that didn't fit into the existing schedules. So those are offered up to any random pilot with a ship that can do the job. So sure, Amazon does loads of deliveries - using established companies or networks - we aren't those companies, so the local notice board or Craig's list is a decent analogy.

In other words, it's more like the message board at the local store where you can pick up "missions" to baby sit, walk the dogs, do yard work etc. Unfortunately, that's the only career you can have in Elite. A guy/gal who just do random jobs and never really get involved in the larger business or run your own UPS company. Perhaps that's what's missing. Hiring NPCs and such. Like X4?

Anyway, I still like the idea of being able to see the missions remotely so you don't have to park at a port to decide. Has nothing to do with the amount of missions but giving the player a better chance of planning his/her time. Find the place with the mission(s) you want to do first, and then go there.

 

[Han Zulu]

When you have each faction offering you a bunch (e.g. 5-10) of the same mission type - especially massacre missions in system, same target - when the average player couldn't do more than one or two, yeah it's "too low."

The number of missions is fine. The amount of wasted mission slots on duplicate missions is the problem now.

And last time I did some of these missions, the majority of the ships I attacked and took out didn't have the "mission target" flag, so they didn't count. Having to kill 80 pirates in 5 days and 50 of them were no good... I dropped the mission. Then seeing that most of the missions on the board were these... Nah. I go and explore instead.

I think they fixed this bug though since, but haven't even bothered.