News Implementation of a dedicated mission server

[Deleted member 38366]

'Game design by voting', what a horrible idea! This thread alone proves ones more that players, each one of us including myself, totally lack the holistic view necessary for a project like ED that reaches that far into the future. So many players happily sacrificing good game design for some pity and ephemeral advantage.

Hmm... Most of the Game design we see (and criticize) did not come by "voting".

As it turns out, we are the only ones with the needed experience, insights, knowledge and (more often than not) the required common sense necessary for a project like ELITE. Not much reaching is does, rather lingers and crawls into an uncertain future.
(FDev decisionmakers never play their own Game and have a proven track record of often missing the mark by a far shot. They're only good at simplistic quickfixes and "yeah that'll do... just toss that bone into the ant colony then let's move on" pseudo-solutions)

We wouldn't be here discussing this very topic had they listened and understood in the past.
They didn't.
We're here. Presented with "Amazon-class Servers" being claimed literally unable to generate a bunch of basic Mission templates off a set of simple rules. *lol*

Surprised? I hope not, unless you're new around here.

But you know what?
Let them. Let them drive yet another nail into the wood. It holds so many already, what's one more? They'll sure be super excited about it, maybe even present it as a new "feature".
They know best, right? [/sarc]

 

[racer1]

Adam/Will please bring back the long range smuggling missions where you got chased for 100s of light years.

They were good fun

 

[Wendake]

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.

Yeah but you got the vocal 2.8% that are board flipping actually whining on this topic

Everything sounds good to me, never board flipped missions so I don't really care about it...

Quicker refresh from 15 minutes to 10 minutes is good, +10% payout (could it be 20-25% ?) and that you are working on the WING vs SOLO ratio is also a good thing to hear since it means more missions available on the same board for players that don't wing a lot.

Unique server with better performance can just be good !

Thanks !

o7

 

[Fosdyke]

Thanks for the improvements, always nice to see things moving forward

 

[CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE]

Adam/Will please bring back the long range smuggling missions where you got chased for 100s of light years.

They were good fun

+1. My favourite mission type and for some reason they got pulled.

 

[CMDR _BigJay_]

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!

I strongly feel we need to see like double or triple the amount of missions currently available. This alone solves many of your issues. If there's only 10 missions for a given faction, finding a perfect balance between cargo/combat/wing/solo where everyone finds a mission that is close to what they want to do is challenging or maybe impossible. But if there are 30 missions for that given faction, that becomes much easier. I really feel like whatever resources are thrown at the mission board are worth it. Let us have 50 missions per faction!

 

[StefanOS]

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.

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.

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!

Hello Adam thanks for reading here....

as you write only a small group is board flipping. You say 2.8%.

The question is: How many players STOPPED using the mission board because it offers ONLY mission they DONT WANT? I am one of them!
The current implementation doesnt give me as player ANY WAY too find what I want to do right now!

Implementing a dedicated mission server is a good move for stability as you write - but it could also open a opportunity for you to give me a tool to SEARCH for specific Missions!
I mean you are generating Missions for 100k+ systems, right?? So PLEASE let me search what mission systems nearby have to offer.
This way you dont have to increase the missions for each system, but I could CHOOSE from a much bigger variety of missions!


I would like to see a MISSION BOARD that gives me the possibility to SEARCH ACTIVE for

1. specific types of missions I want to do right now
AND
2. specific types of materials I need right now

Example:
I am in Founders World and would like to find a BOUNTY HOUND mission for a WING that gives me PROTO HEAT RADIATERS (I need that badly for engineering).

Right now there is no way for me to find something like this ACTIVELY, instead I see f.e. the board generating BOUNTY HOUND SOLO missions with REFINED FOCUS CRYSTALS ...... or it has a ONLY MINING mission with PROTO HEAT RADIATERS but I dont want to do mining right now, I am with a friend and we want to do some BH!!!!!

Current solution ???? BOARD FLIPPING until the servers melt down - and my nerves also because RNG dont gives me what I need.. FRUSTRATING!!!!

Of cause I dont want do have a button to generate missions the minute I want them the way I want them....

What I would like to see is a MISSION BOARD that gives me the opportunity to SEARCH the MISSIONS BOARDS of all system in lets say 100 LY from my current location for WHAT I WANT TO DO RIGHT NOW -
1. BH MISSION in a WING 2. that gives me PROTO HEAT RADIATERS .....

It should then give me the opportunity to ACCEPT this mission even if its in a this other system 68 LY away .... then my friend and I do 2,3,4 jumps to this system and the FUN STARTS. Additional to that - after finishing the mission I get my PROTO HEAT RADIATERS and can jump to my favorite engineer to do my module upgrade!

Having a way to find exactly the WANTED mission TYPE with the wanted MATERIALS
1. would make BOARD FLIPPING UNNECESSARY,
2. GENERATE MORE FUN - I do what I want to do right now ( only a small delay if I have to jump 2-3 systems to get to the other system )
3. GENERATE MORE SATISFACTION - because I get the materials I need and no other stuff I already have plenty of...

 

[Ralph Vargr]

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!

Adam:

We need a pay raise. 10% isn't cutting it.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

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.

Thank you.

 

[operant]

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.

From my perspective, since the last patch I have not seen any carry 300 tonnes of cargo type solo missions.
Two of which fit nicely in my cutter and keep me addicted and playing.

If I may also ask, you say the number of missions will not be increasing, but wil be fewer than we currently get by board flipping?

 

[StuartGT]

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!

Cheers for the info Adam

Putting aside the many QoL requests in this thread, the major bugbear stated by board-flippers is filling up large trade/passenger vessels with respective mission cargo/clients, because of a low quantity of suitable missions.

You've stated that you won't be increasing the number of missions spawned (20 normal & 20 passenger IIRC, so 40 missions total), which I assume to be because of the time it takes for the data to be received by the client (a few seconds) when accessing the mission boards. Consequently, increasing the number of missions will proportionally increase the "board-listing" time - is this correct?

If so, would it then be prudent to separate the "board-listing" connections: Passenger missions downloaded only when accessing the Passenger Lounge, and vice versa for Normal missions via the Mission Board? This would then free you up to doubling the respective number of missions downloaded, with no penalty to "board-listing" time compared to the current implementation: downloading 40 normal missions would take the same amount of time as 20 normal + 20 passenger, if I understand this all correctly.

Without an increase to available missions, I can only predict much vocal disappointment and frustration from 2.8% of the playerbase when 3.3 arrives, spoiling what should be instead regarded as a welcome improvement to the game (dedicated mission server). E.g. "OMG, they've nerfed missions now by killing board-flipping, moar grind!"

 

[mant3z]

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.

Thank for the TIP but yes I know that also and Im there. Maybe not now but I set homebase there. Ive some credits for a month maybe two playing PvP on CG and not thinking about FDL rebuy cost. But what will happen when credits gone? I'll be forced to struggle with 10min waiting and hope for either nice transport mission or buss mission to specific system.
Ah damn it, I loost too much time on this, forum, grinding, credits etc... there are other games.

I better ask myself question, when satisfaction goes down what do I do then?

 

[stormyuk]

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.

Interesting, thanks. I guess if the survey was done during a "gold rush", the results might have been different. Considering the outcry and how quickly they were normally fixed I would be very surprised if only 2.8% of the mission runners were taking part. This change will of course kill those events for good (which is a good thing or a bad thing depending on your point of view).

 

[StuartGT]

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.

Excellent clarification Will, thanks!

 

[Daish]

Board mission design as we all know is the centre focus of the game, so it needs to be right aside from the current state of the mission board as far as cargo missions is not good at all, and needs to be addressed asap, before anything is changed, frontier does have this issue of moving on ahead and not fixing current in game issues and leaving them to fester for weeks, months years in some cases.

The current board state is that partial mission loading and general information is woefully bad, a lesson i felt should have been learnt from other updates.

Issues are:

Partial cargo missions confusion of what's loaded what's not
Partial cargo information i.e mission board markers not showing to off load you have to scout through the mission board :/
Longer grind now evident with partial cargo missions having to go back to collect all remaining items also what will happen if short by one item!!! just increases flight grind
Interdictions have increased as a direct result also an issue in previous updates yet again....
Why was beta not given any consideration before just going live!!

The only half decent thing currently is payouts seem to be holding their own
No change to passenger missions (MEANING ITS NOT BROKE SO DON'T FIX IT)

Frontier are showing very little effort across the board (excuse the pun) lately again as a direct result older issues are re appearing and attention to detail is...well there isn't any, finding these above flaws goes to prove that fact alone.

Again why is beta not being used here you have the community Frontier why not use them!???

I just hope (very little though these days) that you fix the above before switching the server board, because you'll have even more players screaming at you and your bug reports will be overflowing once more.

 

[bitstorm]

Excellent clarification Will, thanks!

Well it's not, because it doesn't really explain it does it? Or answer the confusion people had with this figure.

The above could still be taking a single day and looking how many users board flipped, which would not represent the number of board flippers.

Will can you please define "daily active players", is this literally a sample of a day and the active players during that day?

 

[wstephenson]

I feel like increasing the number and variety of missions available is the way to increase the hedonic value of the mission game loop; reaching your capacity (whether cargo, time performance or threat) allows you to calibrate challenge you face, but the current system rarely allows this (except with Wing missions, and only for filling your ship with mission cargo).

Looking at the board flipping statistics is one way to measure the number of players demanding more missions, but it doesn't cover players who don't board flip but find missions an unsatisfying use of their game time.

The difficulty the current mission system faces is that it generates a global list of missions that have to meet initial demand from a range of ship classes from 4T Eagles to 792T Cutters, and Harmless through to Elite pilots, to a range of locations at different distances, and it is circumscribed in the number of missions that fit down the lowest common denominator pipe to the game client. For any individual player the likelihood of this list reaching their capacity at any given station is low, so they can either fill up with commodity cargo (if trading) or launch 'half-empty' which is unsatisfying. One course of action is to visit another location and accept more missions there, but the list of 'peer systems' used by the mission generator at any location is usually short, so it's hard to create an A->B->C->A mission running loop (and you want a loop if you have taken any fetch/mining/tourism missions).

More missions in more variety at each location would satisfy player demand.

However, as the number of missions increases, the workload of scanning through the list of missions for all factions increases. HOTAS users know what I mean, but with mouse and keyboard it is still #factions*(click, scroll, #missions*(click, scroll read, accept|reject)) actions. The current mission type filter combo is only a small step in the right direction. I've made a few suggestions in earlier posts to this thread; my favourite one would be a quick 'Fill up with more missions like the selected one' function that treats missions as commoditized contracts, and have a graphical query interface to add/remove criteria*, /and/ have a separate generator for 'premium' missions, to serve as a change of pace.

* As commonly seen in price comparison websites, see the monitor listing at Skinflint for an example I like.

 

[nrage]

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.

I presume this doesn't imply that a player can take a mission, causing it to vanish from the boards for other players?

This shared mission board/server thing opens up some fairly interesting potential gameplay.
- Imagine I take a mission and decide it's too hard for me, I could "request help" whereupon my mission appears back on the mission boards as a new/special sort of "wing mission" which when another player accepts, they enter a wing with me.
- Imagine I take a mission, and as another player in my instance has the same mission it prompts us both with an offer to wing/co-operate on the mission.

 

[zimms]

Well it's not, because it doesn't really explain it does it? Or answer the confusion people had with this figure.

The above could still be taking a single day and looking how many users board flipped, which would not represent the number of board flippers.

Will can you please define "daily active players", is this literally a sample of a day and the active players during that day?

I have the feeling that no matter how clear of an explanation Frontier gives us, some people will still just say "I don't believe you" because it wouldn't fit their narrative.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Reclines into Armchair Design Studio

Why do we need an over reliance on RNG for missions anyway?

You could have it so the first mission you pick acts as a 'seed' and after completion the game then generates follow ons that are personal to you based on the previous mission. It could make them harder but pay more, or maybe generate two alternate choices. For example you might take a simple cargo recovery mission, and the next one might be in a CZ, or have pirates. The one after that might be in Thargoid territory. As you progress the money escalates sensibly- top end crazy hard being in the 30-50 million range.

This way you will always have what you want, as long as you have a seed mission to begin with (maybe have a basic choice of missions spread across mission types).

This would satisfy those who want credits and BGS influence / rep, as each follow on could give you much more than the last, and that as the chain goes on you get to a level that pays the way you want for as long as you want. If you want out, you stop or decline the next follow on- if you fail you reset.