Assassination missions are worthless for casuals

[Tiny_Rick]

FD, why in the world do assassination mission have an arbitrary target window hours from when the mission originally posts? Every assassin mission I have come across notes that the target NPC will be in the area within no less than 5 hours from when the missions post to the board.
Do some critical thinking, FD - in this scenario, can you give me one example of how this is ever convenient for any player, let alone casual players, to accept a mission, and then return to play it hours later? Casual players would literally have to:

• Accept the mission in the morning, work only half a day, return home, and complete the mission; or
• Accept the mission in the afternoon/evening and then interrupt family time/supper/sleep in order to complete the mission.

The specific choice to make the targets appear hours after we're settled into our game session is intrusive and a bit capricious. It forces players to reschedule their lives around the game, which I why I avoid these missions. I'd love to hear FD's reasoning for this.

 

[MBaldelli]

These are broken. I've learned that you can go to the system before the window, honk the system, get the message where the assassination target is going to be (if he's in the system. There's times the target's not, but at this point, I'm tired of doing follow up and abandon the mission right there), go there and within no more than 10 minutes of getting to the target suddenly show up.

I then assassinate, return for the reward and repeat when necessary. I've performed the assassination before the time the window's supposed to be starting.

If anyone knows the answer for the follow-up information missions, feel free to post.

 

[JosiahD]

Because that's how an assassination would work - we want to you to take this person out and we know he'll be in this location at approximately this time? Do you want the window closer to the time the mission is offered? Much later? I don't look at those missions often but most that I've seen and taken notice of have only been half an hour later or so. Of course, there may be others much later than that that I simply haven't noticed so not dismissing your concern but how else would you see an assassination mission working? That the target just happen to be there when it's convenient for you to be there too? I'm a casual too and sometimes some content just doesn't suit my play times but that's not a problem unique to E: D, so I accept it and do other things instead. Maybe we might see some further refinement of such missions next year, but other than making the target unrealistically 'on demand' when it's convenient for the player, I'm not sure what would assist when it comes to assassination missions. The good thing is there's nothing forcing us to do them - they're not essential to progressing - so only take the ones convenient to your available gaming time.

Edit: not aware of the bug mentioned above but, of course, fixing that would be a good first step for Frontier to take.

 

[UmbraRex]

FD, why in the world do assassination mission have an arbitrary target window hours from when the mission originally posts? Every assassin mission I have come across notes that the target NPC will be in the area within no less than 5 hours from when the missions post to the board.
Do some critical thinking, FD - in this scenario, can you give me one example of how this is ever convenient for any player, let alone casual players, to accept a mission, and then return to play it hours later? Casual players would literally have to:

• Accept the mission in the morning, work only half a day, return home, and complete the mission; or
• Accept the mission in the afternoon/evening and then interrupt family time/supper/sleep in order to complete the mission.

The specific choice to make the targets appear hours after we're settled into our game session is intrusive and a bit capricious. It forces players to reschedule their lives around the game, which I why I avoid these missions. I'd love to hear FD's reasoning for this.

Ummmm, for the record I've completed a few of these recently. I completely ignore the 'time', honk the system, go to the designated mission location and, within a few minutes, a MSS threat1 spawns, drop in, target pirate is there with two or three other (non-combatant) ships. Kill pirate, profit.

Edit: exactly as mbaldelli said. And this works for chain pirate assassinations too. (mental note, read the dang thread first)

 

[FrogsFriend]

I've never seen the target time much longer than 30 minutes or so, but like the others say just go straight to the system and Honk/scan the beacon, fly to the target planet, fly around and the Mission Target USS will appear in less than a minute.

 

[MBaldelli]

I've never seen the target time much longer than 30 minutes or so, but like the others say just go straight to the system and Honk/scan the beacon, fly to the target planet, fly around and the Mission Target USS will appear in less than a minute.

Usually it's within 45 minutes of the time it generates on the instance although there are some coding artifacts (artefacts) from prior to 2.2 that are longer than 3 hours from instance time.

 

[Starwolfe]

I always arrive early, and usually get a mission USS in good time.

 

[space voyager]

I always arrive early, and usually get a mission USS in good time.

Same here. The target will always appear early without any problem. What bothers me is that the window closes much before the mission timer expires. So with assassinations it is best to go do them ASAP.