News Implementation of a dedicated mission server

[Uri]

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

Could you detail if this percentage is based on actual players that use the mission board or is it counting the whole playerbase that haven't even started the game in months/years? Because the silent majority here is too large to be a reasonable number.

 

[mant3z]

Efficiency isn't always fun. So what if the income is smaller.

Not everybody is nolife with huge amount of spare time to repeat boring things again and again.
I want play PVP but for some reason FD force me to do more and more boring things.

 

[Knightshark]

You can go to a different station in the system and take the missions from there. I'm perfectly fine for that and the 10 minute timer will ensure that even if there are only 2 stations in the system you can circle between them and there will be new missions every time you dock.

I'm actually a fan of realism in games, so I do like that there is no artificial "generate new set of missions" refresh button or "generate only missions that are I want". This does not trump the fun for me personally, because I never board flipped. It was a little annoying that the timer was 15 minutes, as it mean that I had to find a system with 3 stations, not 2 to look for contracts efficiently. So from my POV this change is enough to keep things varied.

Saying that, the number of generated mission could be higher to provide even more variety - that I wouldn't mind at all. But from I understood they are not looking at this aspect yet, which means it will be looked at in the future.

Look, I'm all up for criticising FDEV, but I am not going to jump on a bandwagon of "Let's now criticise them for every single thing! Boo!". I am - as always - just expressing my opinion. As shocking as it may be - it will be different to yours sometimes

It really isn't about bashing FDev. Not at all. Like you I like realism. I only flipped the board a few times, and it always felt cheap. But going to another station is also not an option since this simply takes too long and there is a very small chance to find missions with the same destination you already have. It just isn't really fun to fly a passenger ship with only 60% places occupied. And let's not forget about the difficulties ranking up. The requirements are simply so immense that by natural gameplay I will never reach ranks to unlock vette and cutter. But then, since board flipping was not an option so far, it doesnt change anything anyway. But I was hoping that these things get addressed.

 

[racer1]

Hi everyone, thank you so much for the feedback you have provided thus far. I wanted to jump in and answer a few questions and discussion points raised:


Will we be increasing the amount of mission options so that players have more choice?

We won’t be increasing the amount of missions spawned initially. We will however be reducing the time it takes for a mission board to spawn new missions from 15 to 10 minutes. This means that players should overall see more variety and it won’t take as long for new missions to appear on the board.


Is there a possibility of adding a ‘refresh’ button if all available missions aren’t suitable?

We won’t be adding a refresh button at this time. It’s important to note that missions are shared between players so it could be frustrating if another player refreshed the mission board just as another player spotted one they wanted.


Will this see the return of the large cargo transport missions with high payouts?

Could you clarify which missions you mean? But this change does not impact the functionality of the missions themselves.


Can we get filters to find the type of missions we want to do?

You can filter the list currently. If you mean will it be possible to have a mission board spawn a specific type of mission based on player input (for example, choosing to spawn only cargo delivery missions), this is not currently planned.


How will this effect missions based around state changes (i.e. massacre missions) where the state may have changed in one instance (War) but not another?

This is an avenue we’re exploring but have no confirmed changes at this current time. It’s our goal to make the missions that spawn in each state make sense, but not overwhelm the entire board. As with a lot of mission development, it’s an ongoing iterative process.


Is it possible to separate wing and solo missions into different categories?

We are not separating Wing Missions into a different category at this time, but in the next update (3.3), you should see fewer Wing Missions spawning per board. We are trying to balance the right amount for all player types, and as said before, it’s an ongoing process.


Worried we’re focusing on the symptom of board flipping, not the cause (Not a great enough of interesting mission options rather than payouts)

We are trying to address all of the reasons players felt they need to use “board flipping”. As we said in the original post however, this is a small percentage of the player-base. We are listening to your feedback and trying our best to provide players with missions that suit their playstyle wherever possible.


Thanks once again for the feedback and keep it coming!

Thanks for the update Adam.

One thing that always puzzles me is that sometimes one faction has no missions in a system while others have many. Is this working as intended?

Regarding the update time, I'd personally feel happier with 5 minutes or less, rather than 10 for the refresh.

I like many question your statement that only 2.8% of player board flip. A daily snap shot does not seem as informative as a what percentage of players board flipped during a longer duration. Like others have said I do board flip but I may only do it once or twice a month even though I play most days.

 

[Knightshark]

Efficiency isn't always fun. So what if the income is smaller.

Min-Max efficiency isn't always fun, I agree. But there are shades of grey. Clear inefficient isn't fun either, and the current system becomes more inefficient the larger your ship.

 

[Six6VI]

We will however be reducing the time it takes for a mission board to spawn new missions from 15 to 10 minutes.

Awesome news, good start!

missions are shared between players so it could be frustrating if another player refreshed the mission board just as another player spotted one they wanted.

That happens? How does anyone else board flipping affect my client like that? Ive seen it choke when I try to accept a mission and complain I've been procrastinating too long ('cos I was) but I haven't seen any missions just vanish because someone else accepted it?

Can we get filters to find the type of missions we want to do?

You can filter the list currently. If you mean will it be possible to have a mission board spawn a specific type of mission based on player input (for example, choosing to spawn only cargo delivery missions), this is not currently planned.

Agreed, we can, by reward type and thank you. What we still can't do however, is hide the ones it filters out, creating space to load more results that do qualify as what we've filtered for.

Doesn't that somewhat defeat the point of using the filter?

Worried we’re focusing on the symptom of board flipping, not the cause (Not a great enough of interesting mission options rather than payouts)

Euw, that's terrible grammar! C-

We are trying to address all of the reasons players felt they need to use “board flipping”. As we said in the original post however, this is a small percentage of the player-base. We are listening to your feedback and trying our best to provide players with missions that suit their playstyle wherever possible.

And you're doing an awesome job, keep going!

Thanks once again for the feedback and keep it coming!

You're welcome, and ok...

There are a lot of replies in this thread from players confessing that they have, and do board flip, and why they do it. Is it not conceivable that others are experiencing the same frustration but staunchly refusing the urge to do it, or admit it, or play at all?

I enjoyed providing the feedback so far. Some of it was a little ranty, fair enough. Hopefully you'll take some of the suggestions on board and we can all spend more time flying our awesome ships and less time sat in a station, trawling the mission boards.

Any filtering system applied doesn't necessarily have to eliminate every other mission type. There's bound to be overlap, but a leaning towards more of what the ship you're in can do, and less of what it really can't would be a very welcome enhancement.

I only speak for myself, but others might like that too? Six...

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Min-Max efficiency isn't always fun, I agree. But there are shades of grey. Clear inefficient isn't fun either, and the current system becomes more inefficient the larger your ship.

Agreed. Thankfully I don't go for the larger ships, not my cup of tea so it doesn't really effect me much if at all. My biggest ship is my Krait.

 

[babelfisch]

You can filter the list currently. If you mean will it be possible to have a mission board spawn a specific type of mission based on player input (for example, choosing to spawn only cargo delivery missions), this is not currently planned.

Hi Adam,

adding different categories for the various mission types on the board sounds like a very good improvement to me. I know that the amount of players flipping the boards is pretty low according to your numbers. But how many people don't bother with the missions at all because they can't find the stuff that is fun to them? How many people woud prefer to take a different mission? Your stats can't show this.

Is it because of game design? Do you believe it's bad when players can choose the mission types they like?

Or is the problem of technical nature? To make sense, adding categories would also increase the overall amount of missions avaialable. Does it increase server load too much?

Or is it something you would like to add in the future but currently don't find the time to do it?

I am just trying to figure out your reasons against it.
I'd really like to get an answer...

 

[rootsrat]

Like you I like realism (...) But going to another station is also not an option since this simply takes too long

Kind of contradicting yourself there

Well, Elite is a game about flying a space ship. I remember you saying those words to other people many times before What's happened?

there is a very small chance to find missions with the same destination you already have.

"Very small chance" - I cannot agree with that. And even if you don't find a mission to the same destination, so what? Take couple more to a different one. Problem solved. THAT'S realism - you make up with what's out there.

Would you rather prefer a system where you simply say "OK, generate me 5 passenger missions to system X, 3 for business class and 2 for Economy"?

They may as well introduce "Credit my account with gazillion Cr" and be done with it.

It just isn't really fun to fly a passenger ship with only 60% places occupied.

Flying a ship in Elite is always fun for me

Sorry, I just don't do min-maxxing, as Elite is about having adventures in space, not about making most Cr per hour.

Again though, MORE missions on a board would be a good improvement.

Clear inefficient isn't fun either, and the current system becomes more inefficient the larger your ship.

With that I can agree.

 

[Martind Forlon]

OMG it's simple, you chose system with station away 150 000 LY from main start, load full buss with economy class and fly there to get some nice credits.
If I load full buss with system nearby I'll spend 10x more time flying from one station to another and earn less becaus usualy stations are quite close to main start so income is way smaller.

Looks like you need to learn some things.

putting aside that this idea of doing missions looks boring like a hell you can find some nice place on buble border where you will have opportunity for this kind of mission from more factions, and therefore announcent change will give you even more smoothly chance load your ship without the need to relog. For case when you are aiming just only on profit/time, it should work well.

 

[Evoflash]

Would be good to be able to "advertise" my ship/plans on the mission board to generate more missions that I want.

i.e. I'm going to fly over to Hutton Orbital, so I'll advertise empty cargo space available. Wait 10 minutes (zzzz) and hopefully get a few bites. That'd be better than the lottery of hope. I for one won't be waiting around for a board refresh.

 

[Knightshark]

Kind of contradicting yourself there

Well, Elite is a game about flying a space ship. I remember you saying those words to other people many times before What's happened?



"Very small chance" - I cannot agree with that. And even if you don't find a mission to the same destination, so what? Take couple more to a different one. Problem solved. THAT'S realism - you make up with what's out there.

Would you rather prefer a system where you simply say "OK, generate me 5 passenger missions to system X, 3 for business class and 2 for Economy"?

They may as well introduce "Credit my account with gazillion Cr" and be done with it.



Flying a ship in Elite is always fun for me

Sorry, I just don't do min-maxxing, as Elite is about having adventures in space, not about making most Cr per hour.

Again though, MORE missions on a board would be a good improvement.



With that I can agree.

I don't disagree with you. I guess that my problem was or is that I only use a big ship if I want to make money. So that's why I don't enjoy the "go to another station" approach. I also agree that for the sake of realism the shouldn't be a full board everywhere. But in large pop system clusters it should be easy to fill a conda with passengers from one high-up system to another. This would be realistic. I don't want any I win buttons or refresh buttons or please generate mission x buttons.

 

[Factabulous]

Interesting point made on the 'other' thread about this:

It also found it very frustrating when finding nice missions that they all disappear after going to outfitting. Hope this is going to be better.

Seems to me that a 10 minute refresh will make this worse, please consider in the future maybe adding a depot-like interface for passengers - so we can take the pax missions but delay 'boarding' until we are ready.

 

[Lucifera Danzig]

Not everybody is nolife with huge amount of spare time to repeat boring things again and again.
I want play PVP but for some **** reason FD force me to do more and more boring things.

Calling people a "nolife" is a sure-fire way to not convince them of anything. Just sayin'.

 

[rootsrat]

But in large pop system clusters it should be easy to fill a conda with passengers from one high-up system to another. This would be realistic.

Fully agree here. There should be A LOT more missions available in a system with a population of a few billion or tens of millions of people.

Sigh... another one for my immersion breakers list.

 

[Will Flanagan]

Hello everyone,

I wanted to clarify the mention of 2.8% percent of daily online players "board flipping" in the OP. The vast majority of our daily active players are using the mission board, and of those, it is only a small number who are actually "board flipping" (2.8%). This figure is based on daily active users using the mission board specifically.

To reiterate, the implementation of a dedicated mission server is not to remedy "board flipping", but to bring about much greater server stability and reduce crashes, and the removal "board flipping" is a side effect of these improvements.

As always, we welcome your feedback on the mission system in general and how it can be improved in future.

 

[BDelacroix]

I wonder how this will go down. As an example, last night I was out defending the thargoid siege systems. Landing at the Acropilis I find that all but 1 mission is to source some bizarre goods. Not stuff for a war, just go source stuff. There was 1 to go kill thargoids. So the only choice is to board flip which turned not to help as the majority of the next wave of missions was source stuff with a few go kill scouts.

 

[StarfireIX]

Hello everyone,

I wanted to clarify the mention of 2.8% percent of daily online players "board flipping" in the OP. The vast majority of our daily active players are using the mission board, and of those, it is only a small number who are actually "board flipping" (2.8%). This figure is based on daily active users using the mission board specifically.

To reiterate, the implementation of a dedicated mission server is not to remedy "board flipping", but to bring about much greater server stability and reduce crashes, and the removal "board flipping" is a side effect of these improvements.

As always, we welcome your feedback on the mission system in general and how it can be improved in future.

Thanks for the update, Will. Looking forward to the network improvements when these changes take effect.

 

[rootsrat]

Hello everyone,

I wanted to clarify the mention of 2.8% percent of daily online players "board flipping" in the OP. The vast majority of our daily active players are using the mission board, and of those, it is only a small number who are actually "board flipping" (2.8%). This figure is based on daily active users using the mission board specifically.

To reiterate, the implementation of a dedicated mission server is not to remedy "board flipping", but to bring about much greater server stability and reduce crashes, and the removal "board flipping" is a side effect of these improvements.

As always, we welcome your feedback on the mission system in general and how it can be improved in future.

Thanks for clarifying Will.

Must say it's really great to see much improved communication from you guys on the forums lately. I hope it's not a one-off temporary feature, but a one to stay and we'll see this level of comms maintained. Nice one!

 

[Six6VI]

"Very small chance" - I cannot agree with that. And even if you don't find a mission to the same destination, so what? Take couple more to a different one. Problem solved. THAT'S realism - you make up with what's out there.

Would you rather prefer a system where you simply say "OK, generate me 5 passenger missions to system X, 3 for business class and 2 for Economy"?

They may as well introduce "Credit my account with gazillion Cr" and be done with it.

What is it with some people making these wild leaps from one extreme to the other?

If I'm focused on gaining rep in a given system, with the option to take any mission, to anywhere in the 20LY radius it's still quite rare to find more than a few mixed mission types to the same place, or even the same system. Sometimes you get a little luckier.

So what? So, what happens if I'm focused on progress with a single faction? Gameplay that's encouraged, some might say required by the player faction system? What happens if I'm traveling from A to B already and really don't care about the cash but I'd enjoy being able to find a mission or two to add some flavour to my own, personal enjoyment of my gaming session, and pay for the fuel and a beer when I get there?

We're docking at stations that are supposed to have massive populations, yet we see more (Orca?) traffic at a pirate outpost on the far edge of nowhere and they have just as many missions available. You want to talk about realism? Bring back the traffic, and the hideous docking jams we should be space-raging about with millions of cars and trucks and buses commuting in and out of the shopping centre.

High population systems should be significantly busier.

That's not necessarily a complaint, but it is an opportunity that's disappointingly, missed.