News Implementation of a dedicated mission server

[nrage]

Will this address the issue whereby you can be inundated with Wing missions whilst in Solo connectivity mode?

Quite, please consider this!

Will you change the mission generation to one where I can choose the faction I want to support and the type of missions I want to run, for the BGS? Or massively increase the number of missions so I can filter by type (that filter now is a cruel joke)

Board flipping happens/ed so that you could actually find missions for your chosen faction. If this means there is essentially only one mission board, and the mission generation doesn't change otherwise, I fear you're significantly nerfing missions as an option for targeted BGS play.

Choose the faction, choose the mission 'type' more generally .. like I'm in a combat ship, stop showing me ANY cargo missions at all (perhaps with a toggle - in case we're thinking of swapping ships).

.. are you finally going to do something about the OP murder? Or is BGS really just going to get reduced to who can shoot the other side's system authority the quickest?

Yeah, this issue is killing us.. literally.

Great stuff! Is there news of Wing Missions being placed in their own section, like Passenger Missions are, so as to avoid flooding the missions board and displacing non-Wing Missions?

Good idea!

Are you going to increase the amounts of missions per faction by a factor of 10?
Because if you do this, and you don't increase the amount of useful missions, you are going to make murder impossible to counter in the BGS and you will loose most if not all major BGS groups

This issue is real and affecting a large number of players. Please prioritise it.

I think that the board flipping is the main reason for doing this change, and the points above it are just a welcome side effect.

Actually, I suspect that this change makes development on missions and the mission boards easier, as it's going to be a separate piece of code/server which can be indepdently updated and changed without necessarily affecting the other servers.

I wish this will make the mission boards abundant with new and high-paying missions, but I doubt it. We'll get unwanted wing missions without being able to find different ones (bye bye board flipping) and money progression for players will be more stagnant.

Initially, perhaps. But, I think it likely paves the way for future improvements.

Will there be any tweaks to the distribution of mission destinations? Getting it to generate clusters headed to roughly the same destination would help make larger ships actually worth taking.
If I can't find three or four passengers that are at least headed in roughly the same direction then running a beluga is overkill.

Or, at the very least have an indication on available missions to tell you how many ly the target is from a mission you've already selected, to make it easier to cluster them ourselves (without having to go to the galmap to check) .. of course, we'd need more missions to spawn for this to work, or for the mission generation system to take our existing missions into account and spawn a personal set of missions.

Yes, the amount of missions generated limits your ability to influence the BGS through missions. This is working as intended, Frontier put hard caps in place for every lever you can pull to affect the BGS, including missions.

Perhaps, but if so it's currently well out of balance with at least one other effect, murder. Bring that one in line, and there will be fewer complaints of this sort.

I'm all for putting mission generation on it's own server, however to remove board flipping without addressing the reason why people flip in the first place will be a disaster.

There is currently a finite number of missions generated.
These missions are distributed between factions in the station and are spread across different mission types - something which became more problematic when wing missions were introduced.
So there are mining, combat, trade, scan etc.. all spread out over the limited number of missions.
The more mission types are added, the worse this gets.
The filter at the top of the board merely filters the current received list of missions.

Unless this is changed from a limited set for all types and factions to a "What would you like to do?" request for missions based on the type of activity, then you will upset a lot of people.

As has been said, people don't want to board flip, but it's the only way sometimes to get missions which we want to do within the limited about of time we have to do them.

Please rework the mission board completely.

Stations contain millions of people, even outposts provide work for thousands- the small list of missions makes no sense in anything apart from a server stability standpoint.

Make it offer missions based on the activity dropdown at the top, for the faction you have selected.
Generate 40 or 50 missions for that selection and let the players choose. Add more activity types at the top if need be.

Our ship loadouts are different depending on the task

For instance, If I want to go bounty hunting for a faction, Let me choose that I want to go Bounty Hunting, make it my default if it's what I do a lot, Let me choose who I'm working for and give me targets to hunt and kill.

If I want to rescue people, let me choose rescue and give me a list of mission persons, I'll go bring them all back.

Whatever you do, don't make the mistake of thinking people are happy with a small offering of varied tasks for a bit more money - money that can be nerfed later - They're not, that's why we board flip, to increase our chances of finding something we want to do within the time we have. This is Player Agency at work.

By moving the mission generation to a new set of servers, you can implement this and it won't affect the game at large and you'll make a lot of people very happy.

+++ to all of this. I am hoping the move to new servers will make things like this easier to develop.

 

[Riverside]

I believe this is the first steps towards fixing all our problems. Not just missions.

It is a step in the right direction.

Don't count your chickens before they're hatched though, and bear in mind FDev may not have the same destination in mind as you

 

[Zalacious]

Sorry if this has been asked but would a dedicated mission server allow for more mission offerings per board and/or separate offerings for solo and wing missions?

 

[WorldsGreatestForumDad]

It is a step in the right direction.

Don't count your chickens before they're hatched though, and bear in mind FDev may not have the same destination in mind as you

Pretty sure were getting a complete rebuild mate. The only thing thats going to stay the same is the StellarForge. Graphics, missions,framework everything all of it is gonna be different if I am looking into Zacs post. Guess we will find out for sure when they talk about it after Q4.

Went from Pre production to full Production and they know about the gnosis and cone sector for 6 months and never did anything. They are working on a rework breh.

They arent going to add anymore than whats needed for now. Since its all changing anyways.

Been saying it for a long time.

The game we know now. Im pretty certain is going to change from what we see today.

I am totally okay with that.

 

[GJ51]

As long as they don't improve the filters and granularity so that it still takes 20 mins. to figure out which missions you actually want to do...

 

[Kadrra]

Leave the damm mission boards flipping alone!! OR reduce the prices of ships and items. You all have been dropping the ball big time for over a year. Most do not want to grind for crap money and grind for weeks to just get a ship or gear and then maybe have fun . Fix other things and leave the money making ways the hell alone

Greetings Commanders,

In the next chapter of Beyond (3.3), we will be implementing and migrating mission data to a new separate server. While this mainly affects the back-end of the game, you will see some changes to missions in-game.

As it currently stands, missions are on a shared server with other elements of the game. This has the risk of problems with missions causing outages and stability issues for the rest of the game if there are technical hiccups.

So, what benefits will we see by moving missions to their own separate server?

• Any issue (generated by missions) which can cause a server outage or stability problems will no longer result in players disconnecting. Instead the missions will be unavailable for a period of time.
• If such issues do occur, the previous servers will be able to act as a back-up, offering better opportunities to recover game content as quickly as possible.
• We may see a slight decrease in mission board loading times.
• Missions will now be consistent across game modes (Solo/Open/Private Group).

It's also worth noting that, as a result of a dedicated 'mission server', there will be a removal/significant reduction of the method of refreshing mission boards by logging in and out of the game ("board flipping"). While we understand that this is a practice utilised by some* players, this was never the intended use of the mission system.

Even though there is a small number of players doing this, we will increase the credit payout of missions (by 10%) across the board so all players using the mission boards as intended will see a net profit. As a result of this, some mission reward choices will see boosted influence, reputation and rank gains. As always when it comes to missions, we will continually review and balance them where needed.

Ultimately, this is a healthy step for our overall servers and game experience.

If you have any questions or would like to share your feedback with us, please post below!

*we found that only 2.8% of daily online players were using the mission system in this way.

 

[Mysteron]

Sounds good, and as it should be.
QUESTION.. Will this also include an increased number and variety of missions per faction?

Flimley

Agreed, mission logging is mostly a symptom of the, at times, frustratingly dire shortage of available or suitable missions especially if you are supporting particular factions. This is even more apparent for veteran players who are capable of taking on multiple and various missions simultaneously. A larger and more consistently reliable selection of missions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[GJ51]

As long as we can't pick a destination and see all the available missions to that location...

 

[shadowwar]

Will, I do hope there will be a better variety of missions. I have played since Beta and being honest the misssions have like Exploration always taken a back seat at getting something done about it. You nerf everything that pays out decent amounts for the grind needed to get things done and calmly say we will add 10% to the payments. Oh well like someone has said, I will believe it when I see it happen. So many dissapointments in the past like bugs being unattended to and unasked for new content (CQC and Power Play & nerfing mission stacking to name but 3!) so sorry if this is too salt worthy. But the poor missions available on Jameson Memorial is finally getting to me. Jameson is supposed to be for Elite and Founders. Yet we keep seeing misssions for less ranks. NPC Dont need to see the mission board so why!? Utter rubbish!

 

[DMC831]

I haven't read the thread, but I just gotta put it out there that this makes me worry about whether we can find the missions we want to take or if it'll be even harder than it can currently be. I'm not opposed to removing board flipping, but I'd rather remove the reliance upon refreshing instances for Guardians and other stuff before it gets removed from missions-- but in theory, it's fine, cuz while I board flipped plenty of times I've never enjoyed doing it.

But there HAS to be a nice selection of missions to replace this ability. 10% pay bump definitely doesn't cover it, and often it's not just about the money and materials, but about what thingy ya wanna DO and where ya wanna head to. We need as many possible missions as can be managed.

As a side note, please bring back good fail-on-scan smuggling missions, dangit.

I want the needed changes to the mission system, but anything that cuts down in the missions on offer doesn't sound good to me. I flip the board so I can actually find the mission(s) I want, after all, since one mission board almost never offers me what I want. If we end up with the same amounts and types of missions that we currently have but lose the ability to refresh the board, that'd be very disappointing.

I hope it goes well!

 

[vagabond07]

Will

Please also consider tripling increasing the number of missions that appear in the board.

At times board flipping can be a must just get doable mission for my CMDR when I first started out.

 

[Hydrino]

Quite, please consider this!


Choose the faction, choose the mission 'type' more generally .. like I'm in a combat ship, stop showing me ANY cargo missions at all (perhaps with a toggle - in case we're thinking of swapping ships).


Yeah, this issue is killing us.. literally.


Good idea!


This issue is real and affecting a large number of players. Please prioritise it.


Actually, I suspect that this change makes development on missions and the mission boards easier, as it's going to be a separate piece of code/server which can be indepdently updated and changed without necessarily affecting the other servers.


Initially, perhaps. But, I think it likely paves the way for future improvements.


Or, at the very least have an indication on available missions to tell you how many ly the target is from a mission you've already selected, to make it easier to cluster them ourselves (without having to go to the galmap to check) .. of course, we'd need more missions to spawn for this to work, or for the mission generation system to take our existing missions into account and spawn a personal set of missions.


Perhaps, but if so it's currently well out of balance with at least one other effect, murder. Bring that one in line, and there will be fewer complaints of this sort.


+++ to all of this. I am hoping the move to new servers will make things like this easier to develop.

All this above. And making missions more narrative using player log and Tier 2 NPC.

But I won't hold my breath.

Main message here seems to me that FD is just giving warning that a board flippling nerf is coming, and try to positive spin it by adding it might eliminate some difficult bugs. Is that it? Seems like something they might just spring on the community in the patch notes.

I can imagine many things separating out/isolating this code might help enable, but it would all be pure speculation and very unlikely.

 

[GJ51]

Has anyone ever had a mission TO Jameson?

 

[DMC831]

Has anyone ever had a mission TO Jameson?

I don't think there are any missions TO a permit-locked area. I'd love it if they could manage to add them though, since I like my home system that happens to be a permit-locked Anarchy. Missions to Jameson or Sol and whatnot would be welcome to lots of players, I imagine.

 

[Red Anders]

I think that the board flipping is the main reason for doing this change, and the points above it are just a welcome side effect.
I wish this will make the mission boards abundant with new and high-paying missions, but I doubt it. We'll get unwanted wing missions without being able to find different ones (bye bye board flipping) and money progression for players will be more stagnant.

To be fair here, they did hugely increase the number of missions available on the boards with one of the earlier updates but had to roll it back and if I recall correctly the problem was basically lots of missions on the board + commanders constantly relogging to refresh the board = total server fail.

Between the move to a dedicated mission server (separating any excessive load from the actual game servers) and the fact that it will make relogging pointless, that should remove the reason for the actual number and variety of missions needing to be as low as it is, so I'd hope that a significant improvement to the current availability of missions would go hand in hand with this change.

If not and it just ends up being a nerf by any other name, I'll probably be done. Not even specifically because of reduced earning potential but because of what it will tell me about the underpinning mindset involved.

Edit: Incidentally, just checked the board in a system I'm working a minor faction in at the moment. Population 1 billion. Faction is in boom. Mission board has six missions for them; three ice mining, one data delivery paying about 200k, one single hop cargo delivery and I didn't even check what the sixth one was because my ship is too large to take it.

So if I want to do anything to push the faction, or to make some money and I'm not going to do exploity things, what are my options? Oh yeah, sit here doing nothing for about 15 minutes to wait and see if anything better appears. This is about as far away from compelling gameplay as it is possible to go and is one of the reasons that people flip the board.

 

[Maachau]

Without board flipping, how can I fill up my Beluga with passengers? Sounds like a pointless ship to have if you never use all of it. If this were any other development team I would assume this issue wouldn’t be overlooked, but..... anyways. Food for thought.

Signed,
A totally real Beluga pilot.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

Greetings Commanders,

In the next chapter of Beyond (3.3), we will be implementing and migrating mission data to a new separate server. While this mainly affects the back-end of the game, you will see some changes to missions in-game.

As it currently stands, missions are on a shared server with other elements of the game. This has the risk of problems with missions causing outages and stability issues for the rest of the game if there are technical hiccups.

So, what benefits will we see by moving missions to their own separate server?

• Any issue (generated by missions) which can cause a server outage or stability problems will no longer result in players disconnecting. Instead the missions will be unavailable for a period of time.
• If such issues do occur, the previous servers will be able to act as a back-up, offering better opportunities to recover game content as quickly as possible.
• We may see a slight decrease in mission board loading times.
• Missions will now be consistent across game modes (Solo/Open/Private Group).

It's also worth noting that, as a result of a dedicated 'mission server', there will be a removal/significant reduction of the method of refreshing mission boards by logging in and out of the game ("board flipping"). While we understand that this is a practice utilised by some* players, this was never the intended use of the mission system.

Even though there is a small number of players doing this, we will increase the credit payout of missions (by 10%) across the board so all players using the mission boards as intended will see a net profit. As a result of this, some mission reward choices will see boosted influence, reputation and rank gains. As always when it comes to missions, we will continually review and balance them where needed.

Ultimately, this is a healthy step for our overall servers and game experience.

If you have any questions or would like to share your feedback with us, please post below!

*we found that only 2.8% of daily online players were using the mission system in this way.

Yeah, just about time for some good news.

 

[kofeyh]

This is a great improvement. The missions system is important and well worth it's own dedicated resource.

This obviously means the work around players used to solve mission selection issues is obviously not required as the additional capacity this system will have, will mean an increase in choice along with that moderate increase in payout, of course, yes?

Because the framework should now ensure a good range of options, with a consistent delivery and absolutely will take on board the reasons why flipping happened.

That is what I would expect from a robust, reliable system that now has it's own resourcing. Not just the same thing on new instances with the usual overflow of wing missions or 0/0 factions with mode sync ensuring absolutely no escape from hotel california.

Here's hoping power play gets the same single experience single mode treatment. Since there's so much love for a unified approach. Go get 'em Frontier.

Excellent. Great work team!

 

[0rionsbane]

I wish you would let us see a few more missions, the main reason for board flipping is to get missions that go to the same location for efficiency, filters by location etc could help as well especially in passenger missions.

 

[Alwayslate]

The last credit making hotspots will no longer be standing.