Codebase Refresh - Can we get a Mission System Refresh?

[Chaparral]

Courier
Supply
Assassination
Massacre
Theft/Liberation
Recovery
Surface Operations

All organized by faction based on BGS driven system state.

As an old school role player - I would like my pilot to actually pursue a career in space rather than slave away on spreadsheet cells for faction 534AB$ .

I'm sure I'm not alone.

If there is anyway to have a galaxy map sort, or mission board sort by mission type PLEASE do it.

Let me be a bounty hunter, mercenary, trucker, etc. Make this very basic RP expectation a reality in this second go around of Elite Dangerous.

Don't give me some crap about how I just need to learn what missions go with what system state.

If I go to a job board ANYWHERE, it is organized by career type, NOT by GDP or consumer confidence numbers.

Anyone else want to play by missions out there?

 

[Lightspeed]

If Legs are next, the missions will surely (?) have to be revamped anyway. Missions are at the heart of the game, and they've felt a bit "thin" for a long time. They need meaningful depth, branching out from the simple "do this and complete." Branching missions have been attempted, but I feel ths is not with a deep sense of purpose from FDev designers.

Then, as you say OP, there's the influence of the BGS, which needs incorporation properly into the game.

A revamp of missions philosophy is therefore well overdue and should be a priority.

 

[Jmanis]

Overhaul of Mission Board UI and Mission Lists

DISCLAIMER: I can't photoshop to save myself. I apologise in advance for my rancid efforts :) Removing board flipping from the game is, fundamentally, a good thing. It's a good move by FD, and I stick by it. However, there's still some extant problems with the mission boards that board flipping...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Would address op, and many more issues related to the mission system.

Don't give me some crap about how I just need to learn what missions go with what system state

Thing is, state doesn't affect the fundamental types of missions available anyway.

Delivery, couriers, massacre, salvage, assassination, mining, donation, surface scan, all available in any state.

 

[Cosmo]

They're not gonna overhaul everything. Probably mostly what's necessary to integrate The Next Era (space legs, FPS etc).

 

[Tikanderoga]

Missions are at the heart of the game, and they've felt a bit "thin" for a long time. They need meaningful depth, branching out from the simple "do this and complete."

They need a serious overhaul.

I haven't done any missions in ages, I do check the board every so often and then I remember why I don't do them anymore.
Effort/Risk/reward balance is totally out of whack.
Mine 6000 water for 1m Cr
Right.... yes wing mission but seriously.

The wing mission payout needs an overhaul as well (it's wrong in its current state, the reward should be split in the wing rather than paid to every participant. A mission paying 10m completed by 4 Cmdrs is easy, easy 2.5m each worth. With 2 commander could be a good challenge, paying 5m each, soloing IS a challenge, and should reward the 10m).

 

[myothershipisacobraiv]

After space legs, and hopefully a refresh or at least sprucing up of the core game of jumping to a star and watching numbers count, if they further proceed to do anything substantive, I hope it is some kind of mission expansion.

I would like for there to be more depth and variance in all categories. It could use it. But this is the space trading game problem. The design document can quickly become "Be everything."

Still, I think the mission system could use it, and could use to incorporate personalities and npcs more.

Recently I went to a system with a Rare Goods commodity that is legal in all systems except Alliance Theocracies. I loaded up and proceeded to take it directly to an Alliance Theocracy far away expecting to smuggle it at a Black Market for a lotta monies. Couldn't sell it. That's a little unrelated to the mission board specifically but what I'm saying is there should be more exchange between BGS<->Mission Board/Factions/NPCs<->Gameplay. Basically the game could use a bump there as much as it could in many other places.

 

[Requiem Mortis]

A little more depth to the mission system certainly wouldn't go amiss, how about instead of being offered highly lucrative combat missions from a Minor Faction that you've allied yourself with via haulage missions, you should need to prove yourself to the MF i.e. re-ally yourself as a combat pilot to gain those, your Pilots Federation Rank should be taken into consideration more too.

 

[Krieger]

The interface of the mission board should be search-based. Then every player can select whatever they are looking for. The current interface is based on a bulletin-board. That's a nice reference to classic Elite but it doesn't fit the game anymore.

 

[Mohrgan]

You guys are aware of the two available Filters for the mission board, right? You can sort by 5 'tags' in one pull down, and 6 in another. Have a look.

 

[Krieger]

You guys are aware of the two available Filters for the mission board, right? You can sort by 5 'tags' in one pull down, and 6 in another. Have a look.

Yes of course. But I a typical situation I'm thinking of is when I take a mission to system XYZ and I want to know if there are more missions to system XYZ. The 5 pre-set search options aren't any help then. I still have to look through all missions for all factions manually to find additional missions.

 

[CMDR Big Mike]

Courier
Supply
Assassination
Massacre
Theft/Liberation
Recovery
Surface Operations

All organized by faction based on BGS driven system state.

As an old school role player - I would like my pilot to actually pursue a career in space rather than slave away on spreadsheet cells for faction 534AB$ .

I'm sure I'm not alone.

If there is anyway to have a galaxy map sort, or mission board sort by mission type PLEASE do it.

Let me be a bounty hunter, mercenary, trucker, etc. Make this very basic RP expectation a reality in this second go around of Elite Dangerous.

Don't give me some crap about how I just need to learn what missions go with what system state.

If I go to a job board ANYWHERE, is is organized by career type, NOT by GDP or consumer confidence numbers.

Anyone else want to play by missions out there?

I have been doing missions again recently, and I agree that they could be enhanced. I think they could start with adjusting the payout parameters, as the majority of missions are not viable to begin with.

I also hate when i have an assassination mission, then I have to jump to a system to meet a contact, then they tell me to go back to the system that i started in. Instead of being a cool twist, it is a waste of time

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Courier
Supply
Assassination
Massacre
Theft/Liberation
Recovery
Surface Operations

All organized by faction based on BGS driven system state.

As an old school role player - I would like my pilot to actually pursue a career in space rather than slave away on spreadsheet cells for faction 534AB$ .

I'm sure I'm not alone.

If there is anyway to have a galaxy map sort, or mission board sort by mission type PLEASE do it.

Let me be a bounty hunter, mercenary, trucker, etc. Make this very basic RP expectation a reality in this second go around of Elite Dangerous.

Don't give me some crap about how I just need to learn what missions go with what system state.

If I go to a job board ANYWHERE, is is organized by career type, NOT by GDP or consumer confidence numbers.

Anyone else want to play by missions out there?

There is a hell of a lot which could be done with the mission board. What is suggested above most I agree with. I would also like a filter for other missions to same destination

So I pick my main mission I like for instance take 100 tons of personal weapons to ray gateway diaguandri , then a filter for more mission to this station and it would highlight all other missions to that station (such as data delivery or even passengers wanting to go there).

Also I would like to remove all illegal missions from the mission board and then have a contact which we only discover by doing either certain actions OR by having a specific reputation. Sometimes this shady contact could even be off base for instance an asteroid base hidden in an asteroid belt..

 

[Rubbernuke]

I want FD to make a 'concept' mission that has multiple wrinkles and show what it can really do. So far you can get a single complication- could it do a mini campaign?

 

[Masta Squidge]

Whats a mission?

Is that those things that provide nothing of value that I can't far...gameplay my way through some other way, aside from Empire/Fed rank?

 

[Tikanderoga]

Is that those things that provide nothing of value that I can't far...gameplay my way through some other way, aside from Empire/Fed rank?

You forgot the lousy payout and generic cookie cutter design.

A proper/useful filter would be helpful too.
- Missions to same destination for starters

 

[Faded Glory]

I want FD to make a 'concept' mission that has multiple wrinkles and show what it can really do. So far you can get a single complication- could it do a mini campaign?

I hate to say it, but unless there's a significant (massive) overhaul of the mission system / mission templates, of which there have been two since the game released, the the idea of missions telling a story is very unlikely to transpire. Chained missions are the nearest you get to that now, and honestly they add nothing (and some are bugged so the wrong type of mission is offered anyway, completely defeating the idea of a story).

As to wrinkles, they are simply random, and in most cases add little to the actual mission. And the randomness is the issue I suspect. The mission board draws on a pool of missions and randomly selects some, so making missions not just random tasks, but a narrative for the player seems to be out of the scope of possibilities for the current system / templates.

There have been plenty of suggestions for how even the limited types of missions that currently exist might be used to tell a story

Spoiler

Really simple example -
A mission to recover occupied escape pods leads to a mission to assassinate the pirate that destroyed the ship the escape pods came from which leads to a mission to recover cargo / data stolen by the pirate which leads to a mission to deliver the cargo / data back to its rightful owners.

The last two missions could of course involve the late pirate's cohorts trying to thwart them.

but I would say it simply cannot be done with the current tech, otherwise I cannot imagine that the devs would not have done something by now.

 

[Jmanis]

You guys are aware of the two available Filters for the mission board, right? You can sort by 5 'tags' in one pull down, and 6 in another. Have a look.

Filters don't fix the limitations of the mission generation system though. It's blobby and doesn't have much predictability. A corporate faction in boom will have no delivery and all assassination missions one cycle, and all delivery, no assassinations the next.

That's a problem with the generation algorithm which filters don't fix.

 

[Marklar_]

I've been away for a while and just got back.

Did they really say they were re-writing the code base? If so, that's a good sign for the future, something I've been worried about with this game.

 

[Screemonster]

My main problem with missions is that nearly all offensive missions (assassinations, generator kills, and so on) seem to exclusively target other factions in nearby systems, which might not, indeed usually aren't, present in the mission giver's system.

Where are the missions to sabotage other factions in the same system? Outside of wartime massacre missions they don't seem to exist. Why aren't there pirate massacre/assassination missions given in-system by factions experiencing a pirate attack, for instance? Surely that state practically invites players to stay in the system and help with policing instead of going off to target people elsewhere?

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

What did you want op because it works exactly as you describe.. from non scientific but long observation it seems as dumb as that. Find a minor faction of your chosen mission type and almost certainly it will be there within some rng parameters. You can think about economies and active states if you want, but those are just modifiers not the core.

Did you log in again and not see the same missions? You’re very likely seeing rng there.

I hate the current mission boards. Frontier killed it for noobs. I’m sure it made bad things worse when some people barely made it to land at a station and possibly so no missions, or just lots of missions of only one type they didn’t like.

Damn those noobs. Because back in those days, there was also mission stacking and bgs gold rushes... that actually went away with the active state.... it was just better.