Fixing board flipping(and improving the game with a simple idea)

CaptainCaboose

CaptainCaboose
Afternoon Developers and Commanders!

I was spending some time this morning staring at the mission boards, and I got to thinking about how many "exploits" have been created utilizing mode-switching to stack missions.

We've recently seen its effects with the passenger missions, but between the skimmer mission stacking, massacre mission stacking, and (almost) complete lack of mining missions to be found anywhere, I got to thinking, "what if there were more missions per board?".

Imagine it, each contact on the mission board generally offers what, between 8-12 missions, usually grouped into 2 or 3 varieties?

What if each contact offered 20 missions, with a variety of mission types that would each benefit their cause? If I went to one faction contact and saw 3 mining missions, 3 assassinations, 3 cargo runs, 3 data recoveries, etc, there wouldn't be a need for board flipping(at least as bad as it's needed right now).

If each contact offered a similar spread of missions, than I could theoretically obtain 15 mining missions from one stop at the station(3 for each contact, 5 contacts-ish). Then, when I decided I was done mining and wanted some blood on my hands, I could go back to the station, refit, and pick up 15-ish assassination missions or the various "go here, kill x-amount of dudes" missions for the same contacts.

Obviously, many of these missions would still be locked behind reputation barriers, but if we had 1 mission of each type available at minimum rep(entry level), we wouldn't be as pigeonholed into the same 2 or 3 mission types offered as we currently are.

I think it would incentivise guiding player gameplay toward actually doing missions instead of logging in for a CG and logging back out for a week, but I've been wrong before...

**TLDR: Contacts at stations should offer more missions and greater mission variety for more fun/options and with less running missions you don't like doing.

Thoughts?
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
The fundamental problem is that mode-flipping allows people to cherry-pick missions.

It doesn't matter if you provide a thousand missions for people to choose from.
They'll pick the best ones, then they'll mode-flip and then they'll abandon the worst of what they have and take any new missions which are better.
Rinse & repeat.
Until something breaks.

People might be deterred from doing that if abandoned missions go straight back onto the mission board.
There'd be nothing to be gained if you knew the mission you'd just abandoned was going to reappear on the board immediately.

It wouldn't solve the core-issue, though, of people being able to cherry-pick missions until they stacked 20 of whatever they want.
 

Matt Hawkins

Matt Hawkins
Easiest solution is to count how many times a user logs in per hour. Then divide all rewards by an appropriate scaling factor.
 

Mano d'Oro

Mano d'Oro
Matt Hawkins said:
Easiest solution is to count how many times a user logs in per hour. Then divide all rewards by an appropriate scaling factor.
Click to expand...

And if players are hauling at a CG but unable to land because of the f%^$!*g 'Occupied by a Beluga' bug? Only way I know of to resolve that is to relog. Or if they're called away from the game 2-3 times in an hour for a perfectly innocent (though very annoying) reason?

The whole reason mode-switching still exists is because, effectively, there is absolutely no way to police it. And to be frank there are far, far more annoying things for FDev to be sorting out, IMHO.
 

Imgran

I
Even easier solution would be to allow us to filter the missions before generating them.

How hard would it be IRL to submit a CV to the mission board servers detailing in a general sort of way what missions you were prepared to attempt, and have the factions submit missions that fit those criteria? It passes the IRL immersion test better than the current board and would be a pragmatic solution to several problems inside and outside the game.

I think that might actually REDUCE the load on the mission servers, because they were only calculating to generate missions with a higher chance of acceptance.

Divide standard missions into 5 categories, Haulage, Salvage, Combat, Donate, General, and put taglines in each mission that allows it to be generated only if the filter permits it to be generated.

Some missions might have multiple taglines (a Planetary Scan mission where pirates might be sent could be Salvage, Combat and General), that's fine as long as you're not cluttering up the missions players want to see with a bunch of meaningless detritus. That's the ergonomic flaw in the current mission board that is leading to board hopping and that's the single thing that needs to go the most.

Same for the Passenger board, divide it into the obvious 4 passenger missions, Exploration, Sightseeing, VIP transport, Bulk transport, and allow the player to filter them so that only what they're prepared to accept will appear on the board before them. I guarantee that if you do that, you'll slash the amount of board hopping radically, because there won't be a need for it anymore..

Again, allowing players to prefilter the mission board serves a dual purpose. it's a quality of life improvement, and I think it would REDUCE demand on the mission servers as long as you applied the filter before the missions were generated, Who knows, the load savings maybe even to the point where they could try to expand the mission board again.

A mission filter would save everyone time and aggrivation, including the admins, and there is no downside here. If people are going to stack missions anyway, and unless specifically prevented from doing so they definitely ARE, improve the QOL of mission stacking by letting them stack them in a way that inconveniences everone else less, rather than trying to be stupidly stubborn about it.
 
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Stealthie

Stealthie
Imgran said:
Even easier solution would be to allow us to filter the missions before generating them.

How hard would it be IRL to submit a CV to the mission board servers detailing in a general sort of way what missions you were prepared to attempt, and have the factions submit missions that fit those criteria? It passes the IRL immersion test better than the current board and would be a pragmatic solution to several problems inside and outside the game.

I think that might actually REDUCE the load on the mission servers, because they were only calculating to generate missions with a higher chance of acceptance.

Divide standard missions into 5 categories, Haulage, Salvage, Combat, Donate, General, and put taglines in each mission that allows it to be generated only if the filter permits it to be generated.

Same for the Passenger board, divide it into the obvious 4 passenger missions, Exploration, Sightseeing, VIP transport, Bulk transport, and allow the player to filter them so that only what they're prepared to accept will appear on the board before them..

Again, allowing players to prefilter the mission board serves a dual purpose. it's a quality of life improvement, and I think it would REDUCE demand on the mission servers as long as you applied the filter before the missions were generated, Who knows, the load savings maybe even to the point where they could try to expand the mission board again.

A mission filter would save everyone time and aggrivation, including the admins, and there is no downside here. If people are going to stack missions anyway, and unless specifically prevented from doing so they definitely ARE, improve the QOL of mission stacking by letting them stack them in a way that inconveniences everone else less, rather than trying to be stupidly stubborn about it.
Click to expand...

What would that solve?

If you could still mode-flip you could still get new missions of a specific type every time you re-logged.

It'd certainly be a nice QoL feature (as would a variety of filters/sorts) but I can't see how it'd prevent people using mode-flipping to stack missions.
 
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Imgran

I
Oh and yes, we DO still need a way to pick up passengers that isn't 100% dependent on the mission board. A combination of mission filters and that utterly, glaringly, almost CRIMINALLY missing REAL passenger mechanic mysteriously appearing at last, would solve the lion's share of the issue and slow board hopping to a trickle. The power gamers would do it, but the workaday players who just want to fly their ships around would be forced to do it far less often.
 

Imgran

I
Stealthie said:
What would that solve?

If you could still mode-flip you could still get new missions of a specific type every time you re-logged.

It'd certainly be a nice QoL feature (as would a variety of filters/sorts) but I can't see how it'd prevent people using mode-flipping to stack missions.
Click to expand...
It would create a situation where players were forced to relog much less often in order to fill out their mission boards.

It wouldn't be a cure all, but improving QoL for mission stacking is actually the only real solution to the phenomenon of bored hopping. People board hop becaise they missions they feel they need aren't spawning fast enough using the existing mission board mechanic. You can either blame the players for this, or fix the mission board mechanic so that it meets the needs of those players (and incidentally meets everyone else's needs a little better too).

the only alternative is restricting mission stacking, and people will still stack just as m,uch as they can and be more frustrated about it -- not a good idea when you're trying to sell a product to a customer base and need to retain your players.

Sometimes a dev team needs to know when to take a stand and when to get the **** out of the way. This is a good time to get out of the way.
 
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CaptainCaboose

CaptainCaboose
Another possible solution may be to change the random nature of the mission board completely.

For example: Let's say the server resets tonight at midnight. Starting at midnight when the refresh happens, the mission board for a particular station is spawned in, 1 time, and identically across all servers(and game modes). Every player, regardless of game mode or login time, will see the exact same missions offered at that station for the next hour. Any mission accepted will be removed from the board for that player only, any attempt to server hop will show the same board with the same missions available.

So let's throw an arbitrary time-slot on it, say one hour. You go to a station, stock up on the juiciest missions available, and leave. 1 hour later, the mission board refreshes across all game modes and servers, with a new set of missions(again, identical, but different than the previous hour). You can then restock on missions, you've eliminated mode-flipping, and with increased variety to available mission types/payouts, everybody wins? No more board flipping, instead you'll promote station hopping(increasing traffic across systems which increases visible player count and makes the game feel more alive in the process) and reduces server load for random mission generation.

If you cut the refresh time down to, say, 30 minutes, even better. The original point of the post was to encourage mission variety and availability, which is a major issue currently, but it definitely goes hand-in-hand with needing a fix for mode-flipping.
 

Clifra Jones

Clifra Jones
Problem looking for solution or solution looking for problem?

What harm does mode flipping do? Yes, I know it takes the "immersion" out of the game but so does a whole lot of other things.

From what I gather now:
  1. If you stack Skimmer/massacre missions from the same faction the kill counts are now linear. You must complete the 1st mission before the 2nd starts counting.
  2. You can stack mission from different factions but I don't really see that many that fit this bill. Sometimes skimmer missions.
  3. What's the "harm". Really I don't know. I am open to being educated!

I mean, is this any different than mode flipping so that skimmers re-spawn? mode flipping so that mats re-spawn?
 

Genus

Genus
CaptainCaboose said:
Afternoon Developers and Commanders!

I was spending some time this morning staring at the mission boards, and I got to thinking about how many "exploits" have been created utilizing mode-switching to stack missions.

We've recently seen its effects with the passenger missions, but between the skimmer mission stacking, massacre mission stacking, and (almost) complete lack of mining missions to be found anywhere, I got to thinking, "what if there were more missions per board?". Thoughts?
Click to expand...


This:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...-on-passenger-missions-post-quot-balance-quot
 

Genus

Genus
CaptainCaboose said:
Wasn't talking about Passenger missions specifically, as they work somewhat differently than others, but definitely an interesting idea.
Click to expand...

If you read through it, the OP has suggestions on how the idea can be expanded to include all existing mission types.

And some of the ones we're missing.
 
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