Having Only Timed Missions is Stupid

[Jester362]

Let's see who can say "persistent universe" the fastest.

Yes, I get it, the people who have time to invest in this game want it to feel continuous. I'm fine with that. You can keep your crazy fancy ship that took you 800 hours of gameplay to afford. Have fun! But not having ANY options for people who don't want to spend 5 hours at a time flying the same missions over and over again? Really? Can't we get a couple, at least? And what is even the reward of this stuff? Once I get a maxed out Imperial Cutter what am I going to do with it? When I encounter other players in the game there is literally ZERO interaction. Doing anything with them is completely impossible and a huge pain. I don't know because I haven't found anyone interested in trying, but is it even possible to do missions with someone else? I mean, I'm flying through empty space all the time doing the same thing, over and over again, and I am continually questioning the point.

CAN I PLEASE JUST HAVE A OPTION FOR CASUAL PLAY?? WHAT EVEN IS THIS MESS OF A GAME WHAT ARE WE ALL DOING WITH OUR LIVES THAT WE NEED A GAME TO DEMAND THAT WE PLAY IT CONTINUOUSLY IN ORDER FOR US TO FEEL ACCOMPLISHED GOD.

Anywho. I would just appreciate if I could enjoy all the features of the game, without having to commit at least a five hour block of time to playing it. Even if that means I don't get the same rewards from those modified, no-time-limit features!

Thanks.

 

[the100thmonkey]

Let's see who can say "persistent universe" the fastest.

Yes, I get it, the people who have time to invest in this game want it to feel continuous. I'm fine with that. You can keep your crazy fancy ship that took you 800 hours of gameplay to afford. Have fun! But not having ANY options for people who don't want to spend 5 hours at a time flying the same missions over and over again? Really? Can't we get a couple, at least? And what is even the reward of this stuff? Once I get a maxed out Imperial Cutter what am I going to do with it? When I encounter other players in the game there is literally ZERO interaction. Doing anything with them is completely impossible and a huge pain. I don't know because I haven't found anyone interested in trying, but is it even possible to do missions with someone else? I mean, I'm flying through empty space all the time doing the same thing, over and over again, and I am continually questioning the point.

CAN I PLEASE JUST HAVE A OPTION FOR CASUAL PLAY?? WHAT EVEN IS THIS MESS OF A GAME WHAT ARE WE ALL DOING WITH OUR LIVES THAT WE NEED A GAME TO DEMAND THAT WE PLAY IT CONTINUOUSLY IN ORDER FOR US TO FEEL ACCOMPLISHED GOD.

Anywho. I would just appreciate if I could enjoy all the features of the game, without having to commit at least a five hour block of time to playing it. Even if that means I don't get the same rewards from those modified, no-time-limit features!

Thanks.

I haven't logged in for three days. The galaxy will still be there when I get back in tomorrow night.

Most of the missions are doable in fractions of hours.

 

[c00ky1970]

??

Some missions have a 24 hour timer, and some have a 5 day timer.

DElivery missions with 24 hour timers can be completed in 10-15 mins

The surface scan missions with 5 day timers can also be completed in 10-15 mins

Remember that these type of missions respawn, so you don't have to load up with 10-15 missions and play until you have completed them, take 1 or 2 if your game time is limited/casual and you will be lesssed stressed.

 

[Gunnet]

What missions are you taking that require you to play for five solid hours?

I mean, I have no objection to there being some missions without timelimits if it would help some players enjoy the game more. I'm just struggling to imagine how mission timers would be a hurdle unless you did something silly like stack twenty missions right before going away for a few days.

 

[Arthur Shappey]

To be fair, whilst the respondees have made good points, I also think the OP has a point.

ED is a very frustrating game for those who want to dive in for an hour or so and have a fulfilled hour. You are immediately pressured to often the following:

1) Only take one or two missions you know are actually going to be quick to deliver [and many interesting missions, particularly planetary missions, can vary massively from 10 minutes to several hours at my competence level]
2) Quit well ahead of the hour I had set aside
3) Or accidentally get ambitious, think you've got 20 minutes left, slot another mission in, and then get very frustrated that you are either going to lose reputation and money by abandoning the mission, or have to sacrifice more personal time for the game

ED is VERY unrewarding (exponentially so) to those who cannot commit the time. It _should_ be less rewarding - no argument there, but not to the degree it currently is.

 

[CMDR MERANGO]

Yawn

 

[babelfisch]

I think you should look for some friends in game and maybe you can find a group on this forum. You could wing up and do some stuff together. Or use multicrew to quickly join another player in his ship.

 

[TheNavvie]

Persistent universe.

What do I win?

 

[Arthur Shappey]

Yawn

Are you tired?

 

[Darkfyre99]

I average less than five hours a week, frequently in sessions of under an hour. Most missions take fewer than ten minutes to complete. Personally, I find the fact that missions are timed provided a badly needed failure state to this game. It is one of the few ways to fail in this game outside of combat: failure In research, in planning, or in ship design. I know real life comes first, rather than this game, so I treat RL as another in game obstacle to overcome. It makes the game much more interesting.

 

[Whiterose]

I am on for a couple of hours a night. Easily take delivery, scan, charity and assassination missions. Not sure whether your question was relating to not being able to complete missions, or doing missions jointly.

 

[Frank]

Okay I get the point of putting a use-by date on missions to stop people stockpiling them. But could you do something about the assassination missions? There was one time I had to quit playing for the day and I checked what missions I'd still active. Everything had plenty of time on it.

The day after I started to find my assassination mission had failed. Even though the mission had quite a bit of time slapped on it as its use-by, the mission involved being at a certain place within a certain time window.

Could you please set the use-by time on these sorts of missions to match the last window of opportunity?

 

[Soopyyy]

Eh, I kinda understand his point. Surely some data delivery missions could do without the arbitrary 24hr time limit. I mean, you'll either get it done in 20mins or something IRL happens and you have to duck away for a day or two. It's not as if the time limit actually makes it harder.

 

[DNA-Decay]

1000th Monkey is technically right, but OP has a point.

The thing that kills me is the time taken to swap roles.
Until you have a ship dedicated to each task, rekitting for each this is a pain.
Want to go mining?
Refineries, cargo space, limpets, lasers. You get somewhere and you've forgotten something. Go back to pick up a prospecting module or stay and go without?

When you're set up for a thing you can make useful progress.
But if you're not, it's a PITA to change.

I think that's why you get players who grind Haz Reses forever.

 

[Soopyyy]

1000th Monkey is technically right, but OP has a point.

The thing that kills me is the time taken to swap roles.
Until you have a ship dedicated to each task, rekitting for each this is a pain.
Want to go mining?
Refineries, cargo space, limpets, lasers. You get somewhere and you've forgotten something. Go back to pick up a prospecting module or stay and go without?

When you're set up for a thing you can make useful progress.
But if you're not, it's a PITA to change.

I think that's why you get players who grind Haz Reses forever.

Pretty much. For the longest time Haz-res was my domain simply because I lacked the funds to do much else. Everything was shoe string budget. Which is OK in essence, but in reality they need to flesh the career paths out a lot more before that is a realistically viable thing to push.

 

[CylonSurfer]

Are you tired?

More than likely tired of listening to people moan about something they should have read up about before purchasing the game. A players real life commitments have no impact on the rest of us, nor should they. If you don't have enough time to play, then don't play and next time you buy a game do a bit of research to ensure it's a game that you have enough time to play.

 

[Soopyyy]

More than likely tired of listening to people moan about something they should have read up about before purchasing the game. A players real life commitments have no impact on the rest of us, nor should they. If you don't have enough time to play, then don't play and next time you buy a game do a bit of research to ensure it's a game that you have enough time to play.

A player taking a mission and completing it (or not) has less than no effect on anyone else.

Your attitude is grotesque.

 

[Watcher]

I feel your pain.
No, seriously, it sometimes actually hurts.
I've written lots about this in the past and it is a perpetual annoyance.
I've offered various potential ideas for how FD could change things and provided plenty of arguments why they should...
Ultimately though FD seem to have decided that the real time aspect of missions is a thing they want to keep and I don't really think that is going to change - I think you'll have to make peace with that or just be unhappy and/or leave the game.

FD have extended mission timers - regular missions typically have a 24 hour window for completion. This is less for (short distance) passenger missions and a normal mission can still end up with a hurry up (now, I believe, optional), but you know, options are there. If you can't guarantee play time and may have to stop at short notice then this is still a problem but one you'll just have to learn to work around it. There are still a fair few other things you can do, general trading, exploring, combat, mining even some multi-crewing and be able to stop and start at pretty short notice. Not quite the same and rather depends if you can enjoy the game this way. Personally I find that, provided I'm careful, I can still do a bit of mission running and then spend time doing things where time limits aren't an issue.

 

[CylonSurfer]

A player taking a mission and completing it (or not) has less than no effect on anyone else.

Your attitude is grotesque.

Which is not what I said. I said a players real life time constraints should have no impact on the rest of us. If they have time to play - great. If they do not - why do I care. They should have researched the product they purchased to ensure they did have enough time to play before buying it. Not buy it, find out they do not have enough time to invest and then moan. That is stupidity at its best. Sorry, but I have no sympathy for the OP at all and do not want his or anyone elses time restraints impacting how the missions in this game are made or structured. Besides as others have stated - the vast majority of mission are doable in very little time.

If you want to actively encourage stupidity then go for it. I find that grotesque. The complaint is almost as bad as those people who purchase gym memberships and then complain that they have no time to go to the gym.

 

[babelfisch]

A player taking a mission and completing it (or not) has less than no effect on anyone else.

Your attitude is grotesque.

Since I am on your ignore list you are not going to read this, but maybe someone else could do me the favour and quote it anonymously...

Problem with missions without timer is that they affect the BGS. I could take a lot of missions with my friends, do everyone of them until close to success and then try to hand them in just before the tick. That way you had little to no chance to counter my actions.