News Implementation of a dedicated mission server

Care to provide evidence to back what you claim? Not having to share the servers with every other part of the game means *more* missions & more potential for mission diversity......plus you're getting an increase to payouts that quite frankly aren't required......yet still the whiners whine.

WOW, 10% Extra on 631,096! I'm not sure how I'll spend the extra 63K. But that 10% will total make the 5 trip in my cutter worth it!
 
2.8% is either a lie or ignorance.
10% is almost an insult.
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If we won't get refresh button then there should be initially more missions with better variety and proper categorization.
Also if a mission board would be designed that way from the start - there wouldn't be anyone who abused it. Even 2.8% lol

Btw play ur own game FDev's. PvP players spent billions on rebuy, not every player has so much even in assets. You are alredy dumped on us so much ̶g̶r̶i̶n̶d̶ personal narrative that it do not funny anymore.
 
Hi Will

In my experience, players don't refresh the mission board to get higher paying missions. They do it to get the mission type that they want (e.g. I want to deliver cargo, but all you've given me are wetwork and planetary scan missions).

You could replace the refresh function with sub categories in the mission board. 'Delivery', 'Mining', 'Massacre' etc. It would mean players can find the mission type they want, and the mission server wouldn't have to generate a load of missions of a type the player is not interested in. (subject to that mission type not being blocked by some game mechanic).


!!!this this this this this this THIS!!!! I’m sooooooooo tired of nothing but massacre missions spawning, I’ve gone from being able to find loads of ‘fetch me’ missions, wing and solo ship, to struggling to find any in my chosen system. (I’m sure some of you BGS goons are playing in my backyard as everyone is constantly at war).
 
You are very good at fixing what is not broken!

I do not want to stack massacre missions, I just want 10-12 ships mission, not 112, 96 or 80 because I have just under an hour playing time and the war is ending today, neither I want to scoop a sihtbox under 3 elite condas' noses when trading under 3A shield generator!

EMBRACE THE GRIND, BECAUSE IT IS NOT ENOUGH ALREADY!

Funfact: do you know you can flip the mission for military rank just by accessing again bulletin board and not by relogging?
 
This change was long overdue - it was always an exploit.
Hopefully, you'll revisit the mission generation and rewards once it's in place.

There is definitely an issue of board spamming by wing missions and particular states taking over the board almost entirely.
 
Great move FDev.

Any mechanics that rely on "changing server to get what I want" are beyond lame and lamer are those you use it or even worse that defend it.

Keep up the good work.
 
I think it's been said a few times in this thread.

Going on design performance to date from FD. The Mission Board changes proposed by Will, could be widely accepted as good news.



Until everyone realises they forgot to implement a "Refresh Boards" button.

I can hear the screaming already.
 
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Can you please look at, re-evaluate, re-distribute the grade 5 material rewards for missions. I personally mostly do missions for materials more-so than money. And it's being allied with most factions and still board flipping flopping wasting time trying to find a reasonable mission offering biotech conductors (or similar) that isn't some ridiculous massacre 120+ pirates. It was nice when you could get something/anything from allied boom data missions...
 
The 2.8% figure being offered in support of the claim that this change will have minimal impact is bovine ejecta.

A meaningful figure would be the percentage of players playing more than seven hours a week for at least five consecutive weeks - that is, regular committed players - who board hop on average at least once per week.

I'd be willing to bet that that figure would be getting on for an order of magnitude higher than 2.8%.
 
...
In 3304 it seems the local plebs in any given station can't seem to get their act together to offer missions RELEVANT to the ship you're in...
...

Board flipping essentially forces a refresh of generated missions, instead of waiting 15 minutes for the board to refresh itself. This is used to get

- missions matching your play style, instead of moving around to find a system offering what you want. I hope the codex will be used to explain this better, and that the galaxy map will get multiple attribute filtering to make it easier to find those systems.

- refilling the board when you do A-B-A runs. While I understand the need to simulate scarceness, I do not find a game loop of 6 minutes to do your run, and 9 minutes wait for a refill appealing.

- stacking missions to the same destination. This can be dealt with a reasonable reward rebalance. I would love to see some 300 to 700t delivery missions for large pads.
 
Will we see a realistic attempt to scale mission payouts at last?

Currently it's far too easy to accumulate money at low ranks but at high ranks, payouts are utterly feeble and hardly worth the effort.
 
Since we have a new dedicated server on the way (a great move!), it would also be great to get missions that...

1. are further than a 20ly bubble away from the mission sources, and...
2. less than Colonia.

Right now, I do not see many missions outside of sightseeing missions that require travel outside of a tiny bubble, unless they go to the other Bubble. Runs between Sol and Lave would be interesting, and maybe even exciting, since it would require multiple jumps and many more possibilities to be interdicted. Not so good for new players, perhaps, but for those of us who are a bit beyond that, cross-bubble trips would be interesting.
 
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.

Sounds great Zac but... could we get a mission refresh button? Please?

Or, could we get missions appropriate to the ship we dock with?

I mean, if I'm in my cargo hauling Anaconda (i.e. lots of cargo racks installed) I would like missions I can actually run with it, not missions for a ship I don't easy access to...

So if no appropriate missions are listed when we land, instead of waiting for the mission list to refresh can we please get a "mission refresh button" that we can press at least once if we don't find enough appropriate missions when we arrive at a station?

Being able to use a "mission refresh button" at least once to get a new list of missions 5 or 10 minutes earlier than the normal refresh won't break immersion but will increase customer satisfaction ;-)

Thanks either way,

o7

Grey
 
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Hands up if you've worked in the logistics industry?

1) Small, urgent, local, one off deliveries - Send it on a bicycle, it's quicker.
2) Medium, urgent, short range deliveries - Use a motorcycle or small car.
3) Larger, more awkward long range loads - Van, small truck or semi trailer.

Urgency, range and how awkward the item is to move, all add premiums to the price the driver, or the courier, common carrier or freight forwarding company they work for are going to charge you to do it. We're part way there with the mission wrinkles asking you to hurry up but finding the types of jobs that are suited to the ship you're in is more difficult than it should be. This is one reason why people board flip. Yes, some do it to spawn a full load of those sweet deal pax missions to remote stations, but not all.

If I'm sitting in any given station, and I know I'm going to the current CG system for example, why is it so difficult to quickly and efficiently fill my hold (if I have any space) and remaining mission stack (of 20) with a bunch of jobs going from here to there or some combination of jobs to be dropped off on the route I've already plotted in the galaxy map?

Lets say I'm at the CG station and I've just parked my bounty hunting ship and switched to my T9. I know exactly where I'm going because I checked eddb.io for quantity of supply, since the galmap trade enhancements still don't show that information. I want to fill my hold with something for the return trip and this station has nothing cheap.

So, do I fly back empty? That seems like a waste, even though that's the only place I'm intent on going. How great would it be to open the mission board and see NPC's that are slightly better at their "sales" job than the current disorganised rabble, falling over each other to utilise my cargo hold to make sure they don't get fired for missing KPI.

FDev have this mission system back to front. The Pilot's Federation are the service providers. We have the tonnage to move urgent goods around the galaxy, the firepower to get the wetworks done and the flexibility to do it now, if the price is right. You want 1000 tons moved, I can move 750. The other 250 really isn't my problem, find another pilot.

If I get back here in half an hour and you still haven't found another pilot to take that 250 tons, I'll take it, but you better find me something to fill the other 500 tons of space as well or it's not worth my time. Flipping the board to try and spawn enough missions to the right place to fill my ship isn't worth it, I may as well just do the return trip empty.

Returning empty is not a thing in logistics. Fill the truck please, in both directions.

In the opposite of this scenario, I'm taking my bounty hunting ship, with no cargo racks to the local hi-res to help the cops kill wanted ships. I don't want any cargo on board to get attacked for, but I don't mind taking a stack of data missions to drop off at the closest system with an IF. I have that system locked in in case I shoot one of the cops and need to run somewhere to pay the fine already and I'll need to go there eventually to collect all the kill warrant bounties.

These examples are win+win. I get to do what I was doing anyway, and I make a few bonus credits / rep / materials / etc at the same time while making the local factions happy getting some of the problems off their overflowing plates without spending hours board flipping to do it.

The mission system should complement gameplay, not hinder it.
 
As of right now, missions reward the player with 5 different currencies: credits, materials, commodities, influence and reputation. Giving a small bump to just 1 of those 5 rewards won't solve anything, as i'm sure you realize (i refuse to believe Frontier doesn't understand how its own game works).
Remember that the amount you get on the alternative rewards is based off the credit value of the mission, so increasing the payout by 10% will automatically make all the other options potentially better as well. Not necessarily by very much - 10% isn't very much for credits either - but an extra material here, an extra bit of rep there.

The original post says "As a result of this, some mission reward choices will see boosted influence, reputation and rank gains" so it looks like Frontier do know how their mission system works.

1) Increase the number of missions offered by each board (and not just by a ridiculous 10%!!! Make it a 100% bump if you want such measure to have any effect at all).
They tried higher amounts before and it slowed the servers down too much. Without the extra load from board-flipping and with a dedicated server, hopefully this will be able to increase again.

2) Rebalance the mission thelselves. As of right now there are several types of missions which do nothing but clog the boards: There's no reason why every system in a war state should have more than 2 or 3 massacre missions, so why congesting those boards with 7, 8 massacre missions? all they do is take space!!! And that's just 1 example.
And a particularly nasty example at that - but this one was caused by players repeatedly saying "we can't find enough massacre missions" over the course of several versions during which the percentage increased slowly. It does need pushing back down a bit, but too much and we'll just get those complaints back again...

But more variety in general on mission boards is good - the places I am every major release from 2.3 onwards has improved the variety (the massacre mission issue aside) so that's probably going to continue anyway.
 
Hands up if you've worked in the logistics industry?

1) Small, urgent, local, one off deliveries - Send it on a bicycle, it's quicker.
2) Medium, urgent, short range deliveries - Use a motorcycle or small car.
3) Larger, more awkward long range loads - Van, small truck or semi trailer.

Urgency, range and how awkward the item is to move, all add premiums to the price the driver, or the courier, common carrier or freight forwarding company they work for are going to charge you to do it. We're part way there with the mission wrinkles asking you to hurry up but finding the types of jobs that are suited to the ship you're in is more difficult than it should be. This is one reason why people board flip. Yes, some do it to spawn a full load of those sweet deal pax missions to remote stations, but not all.

If I'm sitting in any given station, and I know I'm going to the current CG system for example, why is it so difficult to quickly and efficiently fill my hold (if I have any space) and remaining mission stack (of 20) with a bunch of jobs going from here to there or some combination of jobs to be dropped off on the route I've already plotted in the galaxy map?

Lets say I'm at the CG station and I've just parked my bounty hunting ship and switched to my T9. I know exactly where I'm going because I checked eddb.io for quantity of supply, since the galmap trade enhancements still don't show that information. I want to fill my hold with something for the return trip and this station has nothing cheap.

So, do I fly back empty? That seems like a waste, even though that's the only place I'm intent on going. How great would it be to open the mission board and see NPC's that are slightly better at their "sales" job than the current disorganised rabble, falling over each other to utilise my cargo hold to make sure they don't get fired for missing KPI.

FDev have this mission system back to front. The Pilot's Federation are the service providers. We have the tonnage to move urgent goods around the galaxy, the firepower to get the wetworks done and the flexibility to do it now, if the price is right. You want 1000 tons moved, I can move 750. The other 250 really isn't my problem, find another pilot.

If I get back here in half an hour and you still haven't found another pilot to take that 250 tons, I'll take it, but you better find me something to fill the other 500 tons of space as well or it's not worth my time. Flipping the board to try and spawn enough missions to the right place to fill my ship isn't worth it, I may as well just do the return trip empty.

Returning empty is not a thing in logistics. Fill the truck please, in both directions.

In the opposite of this scenario, I'm taking my bounty hunting ship, with no cargo racks to the local hi-res to help the cops kill wanted ships. I don't want any cargo on board to get attacked for, but I don't mind taking a stack of data missions to drop off at the closest system with an IF. I have that system locked in in case I shoot one of the cops and need to run somewhere to pay the fine already and I'll need to go there eventually to collect all the kill warrant bounties.

These examples are win+win. I get to do what I was doing anyway, and I make a few bonus credits / rep / materials / etc at the same time while making the local factions happy getting some of the problems off their overflowing plates without spending hours board flipping to do it.

The mission system should complement gameplay, not hinder it.

so much this

and pax missions if i have ship the size of 737 i should be able to FILL IT or that one guy better be willing to pay as much as filling it

like the cargo thing if i have 500 seats and there are 1000 people waiting i can take 500 the other 500 are not my problem
 
They tried higher amounts before and it slowed the servers down too much. Without the extra load from board-flipping and with a dedicated server, hopefully this will be able to increase again.

It is even more likely now that the Missions don't have to share space with everything else on the main servers. Or at least that is how I read it. Still, some people just want any excuse to complain.
 
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