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!
The change is effectively a refresh rate of 10 mins instead of 15 and a move to a dedicated server.
So currently with 15 min refresh rates and by board flipping I make it that you would see a change every 5 mins if averaged out over the 3 game modes (Open, Private and Solo) which means spending twice as long waiting for the right missions to come along compared to the current situation (board hopping 5 min refresh compared with 10 mins with the suggested change).
There will also be a 10% boon on credit rewards for those after money.
As I see it people do missions for the following reasons:
1. Cash reward - whilst the 10% increase might make them happier, they might be missing out on larger payouts or less earnings / hour as they will have to spend twice as long as currently to find the missions type they want.
2. BGS - Influence farming - again this will take longer due to the refresh time.
3. Material grinding - those mission only rewards for engineering and guardian tech, etc - again this will take longer
4. Faction Reputation - looking for the highest payouts will take longer
5. Mission exploits - e.g. skimmer missions, etc - will take longer to stack up missions (not within the rules of the game, so perhaps a good thing).
As there are no game mechanic changes being considered for this improvement some suggestions below....
1. Make the refresh 5 mins (same as board flipping so shouldn't affect anyone who currently does it - It would also remove all board hopping advocate complaints as nobody actually likes wasting time board hopping?)
2. Display a refresh timer so people know when the next set of missions is due and can do something else rather than exit and enter the mission board continuously (board spamming might put extra strain on the dedicated servers?)
3. Consult with the community on making missions work (There a loads of "not at this time" suggestions today and going back over time that would make a huge difference - e.g. filtering missions by rewards, destinations, categories (more of them), wing missions, etc, etc).
P.S. I think you'll find the 2.8% of players is likely to show you how much time virtually all players spend grinding the mission boards at anyone time and not the total number of board flippers. I think 2.8% of all time in the game is wasted waiting for the right text to appear on the screen to grind something, whereas other grinding actually involves flying your ship or driving the SRV..... above all 2.8% of game time is actually spent not grinding and enjoying yourself.....Think you need to create the 2.8% Decals in the store so we can buy them and show them off
