News Implementation of a dedicated mission server

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

It appears people don't see as looking for good deals and missions as part of gameplay, because it is 'busywork', and everything will be crowdsourced anyway. I personally do find it very engaging part of gameplay which makes me to avoid grind and break gameplay sessions in more bearable pieces. Also there's good observation that ED doesn't serve gameplay where you just stick to one kind of job well.

As always there's biggest shism at play here - "why I have to look for modules", "why I have to look for goods", "why I can't just search for it", etc. etc. Yes, FD wants you to move a lot. They consider it very essential. You might not. But that doesn't mean they don't have good arguments to do so as for you not wanting to move around.

 

[tafkabb]

Only 2.8% of users are engaging in this thread

 

[Six6VI]

We dream the same dream, we want the same things.

I gave up on missions ages ago, unless I need exquisites or the mats for the guardian unlocks that you can't get any other way. I make cash by grinding into the top 10% or more on one or both CG's. Makes around a hundred mil in trade profits and bounties, depending on the week.

I usually jump between hi-sec, hi-pop systems to get around and I'd really love to ferry a bit of cargo and data with me but it's just not worth the disappointment in a ship that jumps more than 20LY. Sometimes I'll check the boards before a shorter range hop, like going from a CG station to an IF to pick up KWS bounties (and back) but I rarely find any suitable one-way missions, even though I'm often allied with all the factions (bar one) fairly quickly.

Surely there's some benefit to being Trade Elite?

May I suggest you hook up with an online buddy and simulate this kind of mission yourself, with a 'runner' and a 'chaser' role and a goal of shipping X tonnes of some commodity over 5-8 jumps? Make sure they are friends with you so they can see where you are on the map, and make sure you have roughly equivalent jump range ships. It is mind-meltingly fun with someone who will have a bit of banter with you.

Now that, sounds like fun

 

[iFred]

Currently that is with the same 4 slots. But it's something we will continue to evaluate as we move forward and receive feedback.

dont you guys think we waited enough? Could you simply do it RIGHT this time? Right means: stable, bug free, nerfproof, and maybe with providing a little fun to your customers? And tested?

 

[who?]

I'm mulling over what rules might inform the distribution of available missions; but my hunch is that the baseline for a station with several large pads is that the economy behind it should be strong enough to generate several Cutters' worth of meat-and-2-veg fetch or transport or bulk passenger contracts. Exceptional states like Bust or Outbreak might distort that. More exotic mission types like smuggling would be present in less volume in the average system, perhaps if you go to Gotham Terminal, a 10bn metropolis with 99% Unfettered faction control, the distribution would be inverted towards smuggling and piracy.

But I hear a voice say "You're describing regular trading!". I suggested earlier that regular bulk commodity trading should take a back seat in 3304, contract running is just more exciting as it can have time limits, interesting rewards, chained followups and targetted opposition. Leave bulk freight to the invisible Lynx Bulk Carriers plodding through the system at single multiples of light speed, for fulfilling fetch contracts, and for when you have to fill every nook and cranny of your hold.

I think adding dynamic megaships into the game would add a lot. Not just a sense of a moving, changing galaxy instead of the very static one now, but could offer up interesting gameplay. If you had a megaship on a multi-system delivery run and you had to do in-system cargo shuttle runs between megaship and the stations before it jumps on, things would get a bit spicy.

There's definitely a lot of potential to add gameplay even in delivery missions, as you say.

 

[Six6VI]

That, I like a lot. Extraction economies should be very distinct from Tourist etc. and the mission boards should reflect that. If one doesn't like mining-related missions, it's probably not the best choice to hang around an Extraction system/station. (Though, I guess the ability to 'flip' an economy type with enough effort would be interesting).

Similarly, high population systems like Sol should have dramatically different mission boards to systems with a small outpost or two.

I don't think though, that if you pull into a station in a big Cutter you should always be guaranteed enough missions-of-your-preference to fill it. That, IMO, should be dependent on supply/demand, economy type and state, reputation, influence and a slice of luck.

This, and the post it was responding to...

 

[LeoBartlet]

It appears people don't see as looking for good deals and missions as part of gameplay, because it is 'busywork', and everything will be crowdsourced anyway.

I'm meant to be playing a game not browsing the local Tesco for my weekly shop.

I personally do find it very engaging part of gameplay which makes me to avoid grind and break gameplay sessions in more bearable pieces.

How many hours of Elite do you play a month?

Is this just the standard Eagleboy reply that shows you have little practical experience of the issue and an even more limited understanding of it.

Also there's good observation that ED doesn't serve gameplay where you just stick to one kind of job well.

As always there's biggest shism at play here - "why I have to look for modules", "why I have to look for goods", "why I can't just search for it", etc. etc. Yes, FD wants you to move a lot. They consider it very essential. You might not. But that doesn't mean they have good arguments to do so as you don't want to

This is true because if you spend enough time on one aspect of the game you'll eventually discover how vapid it is.

 

[Taimaru]

Thanks for the info Adam. I think this is a great change and I'm looking forward to 3.3.

P.S. I'm not one of the 2.8%.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

I'm meant to be playing a game not browsing the local Tesco for my weekly shop.

Looking and discovering deals, best prices, best places to mine IS part of Elite experience and playing the game.

You might not enjoy it, but it always have been there.

How many hours of Elite do you play a month?

Is this just the standard Eagleboy reply that shows you have little practical experience of the issue and an even more limited understanding of it.

So to understand your pain I have to grind endless hours as you do? And this has become a standard disclaimer now?

Look, it is my opinion. You can dismiss it all you want. I play game way I find it enjoyable. Sometimes I clock a day a week for ED. Sometimes it is less than that.

This is true because if you spend enough time on one aspect of the game you'll eventually discover how vapid it is.

Sure, why ohh why game is not detailed as....emmm...I will get back to you.

 

[ferus]

All I'll say about this is that the central issue with the mission board is the old gem of respecting my time.

By that I mean that this is an entertainment product and as such, I don't play it in order to replicate the myriad inconveniences that might blight my everyday life. In particular, waiting is not a gameplay mechanic and really 'oh you just need to wait for a while' isn't something that I can really countenance as having a place in a game.

When I log in to play Elite Dangerous after I get home from work, I usually have an idea about what I intend to do in that session,, both in terms of overall objectives and the activities which I want to perform in order to achieve them.

At the moment I'm dipping my toe into the BGS simply because it's one of the few things that can provide some structure to gameplay - I suspect that's the reason a lot of players seem to gravitate towards it the longer they've played the game for. I accept that by definition, involvment with the BGS brings with it some limitations on the things I can do if I want to continue to push a faction in that session because dependent on state, there are certain activities which are needed in order to have the desired effect.

However the often very limited number and selection of missions compounds that and frequently leads to situations whereby I spend significant amounts of 'gaming' time not actually playing the game at all.

Just one example of this from the other night - I log in and I'm in a general purpose Python at a station where suddenly the only thing my faction cares about is getting their hands on bromellite and antifreeze due to an economic boom. That's all they need - presumably they're drinking the anti-freeze.

(Edit - this is in a system whose main economy is agriculture by the way)

Even if we park the whole issue of ice mining being a twisted joke in terms of time in/reward out, what do I do? The options I was faced with were:

• Spend half an hour flying around systems to completely refit my Python for mining
• Wait 40 minutes whilst my already built and fully engineered mining Python is transferred from its current location to the system I'm in
• Spend 20 minutes flying to that system, swapping ships and jumping back to where I was
• Check the passenger mission board instead but then either wait 40 minutes whilst my passenger ship is transferred to the station I'm at, or spend 20 minutes flying to the system its parked in and flying it back, by which time any missions that were on the board are long gone anyway
• Wait 15 minutes to see if the mission board refresh provides anything more suitable, with no guarantee that it will
• Fly to another station (5 minutes) and see if the mission board there is any better, with no guarantee that it will be

In real life, I fully accept that I have to take the rough with the smooth. When I'm trying to fill the portion of my day which is set aside for recreation with fun stuff by playing a game though and what I'm actually presented with is six different flavours of doing nothing, or things that I don't want to do, for a chunk of that time then honestly? I'm less accepting of it.

There is not enough rep on the whole of Internetz...
Clear, comprehensive and a very well written post that says it all.

And it’s just a matter of time until someone says “you are playing the game wrong”.

 

[LeoBartlet]

Looking and discovering deals, best prices, best places to mine IS part of Elite experience and playing the game.

You might not enjoy it, but it always have been there.

Sorry, I must have missed the reduced to clear section of the mission board.

So to understand your pain I have to grind endless hours as you do? And this has become a standard disclaimer now?

I don't recall saying that I grind for endless hours or grind at all.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

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

Try being demoted into the lower class, after a job loss due to funding cutbacks. Or any number of economic events, that are not your fault.

We need the money.

 

[Six6VI]

As always there's biggest shism at play here - "why I have to look for modules", "why I have to look for goods", "why I can't just search for it", etc. etc. Yes, FD wants you to move a lot. They consider it very essential. You might not. But that doesn't mean they don't have good arguments to do so as for you not wanting to move around.

I move around lots to buy and engineer modules, but I'm not so dumb that I don't check eddb.io first to make sure what I want is going to be where I'm going, for 15% off.

Again, taking some missions too would be SPACE-AWESOME! I know where I'm going, I know the capabilities of my ship, I can use the little slidey thingo to set a route with a pretend full hold. ROCK, N' ROLL!

But can I find missions?

No.

Pfffft, fail!

 

[wstephenson]

I think adding dynamic megaships into the game would add a lot. Not just a sense of a moving, changing galaxy instead of the very static one now, but could offer up interesting gameplay. If you had a megaship on a multi-system delivery run and you had to do in-system cargo shuttle runs between megaship and the stations before it jumps on, things would get a bit spicy.

There's definitely a lot of potential to add gameplay even in delivery missions, as you say.

Megaships on periodic 'milk runs' with a tuned mission generator on board to create fetch missions to supply it with that system's major commodity (wasn't Lave supposed to be the breadbasket of the Old Worlds cluster?) that pay out more the further it is from its scheduled departure date, coupled with a 'feeding frenzy' increased level of local pirate activity, would be great fun.

 

[Six6VI]

I think adding dynamic megaships into the game would add a lot. Not just a sense of a moving, changing galaxy instead of the very static one now, but could offer up interesting gameplay. If you had a megaship on a multi-system delivery run and you had to do in-system cargo shuttle runs between megaship and the stations before it jumps on, things would get a bit spicy.

There's definitely a lot of potential to add gameplay even in delivery missions, as you say.

We already have that, except getting to unload and ferry the goods across to the station. Have a look at the megaships list on the Canonn website.

[Edit: And what they said ^^]

 

[Polaras]

I took some time out of my work morning so you might have a snowball’s chance in hell to read this during Fdev’s workday. Why your post isn’t a new thread is beyond me.

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.

Ok, so you can change these numbers but aren't going to initially because you want to see how it plays out for [an undisclosed but likely extensive period of time] before adjusting it further? We, the community, do nothing but tell you that Fdev is not agile enough for that and you should correct for it now while it has your attention.

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.

This comes as a surprise to me. Sounds a bit like an artificial constraint: USS aren't shared, markets aren't technically shared (just averaged), most every other part of the game only shares parameters of generation not the generated elements so mission board between Solo sessions shouldn't need to be shared. Is this a hold over optimization from when the board was on the main server so it didn't have to generate more often than once per station per system per mode per 15 minutes? If clients can only accept specific missions that a sudden board refresh would invalidate the ids of, wouldn't that be a problem anyway every interval as new clients check the board? Oh, you cache 4 generations back so those IDs still valid? That is basically more missions available, we just can't see them. So there are easy knobs to turn to increase missions available: the refresh button could just flip through each (excluding the oldest) generation. Simply keep more.
Sorry, but this answer seems like technical hole Fdev dug for themselves and now is the perfect time to fill it in. If performance is the driving factor, this dedicated server is the chance for optimization. Also only generating missions relevant to the currently displayed faction and player ship configuration could also make the generation jobs quicker.

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.

You can only filter the list by rewards, and only then by reward class. Not relevant to my/our concern. We would like an activity class filter. More available missions are also overdue. Every time a new mission type is added, it crowds out other missions. The same thing happens on normal passenger boards and is half the reason why the passenger board exists, with the other half being the old mission UI at the time passengers were introduced. Wing missions, surface missions; each should have seen a doubling in the minimum quantities of missions generated.

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.

It kinda humors me that this is a problem, although given the answer to the refresh button and my thoughts on it, Fdev could address these issues together. You can also just call accepting uncompletable missions part of the game. Hasn't stopped Fdev before.

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.

Add filters or continuous generation/refresh and these complaints disappear. Notice that reduction in wing mission requests are half coming from the sad reality that cr/effort of wing missions are underpowered and no one should take them, or even see them, unless they are in a wing, but the board is shared, for some reason….

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.

We have a hard time believing you so lets have a whole post on the player credit experience and the statistics behind that. CONVINCE US! We don’t trust you; its that simple. I get that this is not about board flipping. It's about fixing an infrastructure bottleneck in the backend but because boardflipping is a highly animating community concern, Fdev community managers should be forcing you to consider solutions to an over 4 year old problem that has been bandaid patched scenario by scenario! You are making a dedicated server for the system, now is the best time to add features to it.

Also, don’t announce this or do stats while thousands of players are on the Gnosis bus to nowhere. It makes me even less trusting.

 

[jonesskill]

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.


Thanks once again for the feedback and keep it coming!

Hello Adam, if i understand it right so people will share the same board, this means that the "good" missions dry out faster and leaving the board with just the unwanted ones.
It will be like a race? the first ones got the good missions and the last ones just the rest?

Also, if the mission boards come to somthing smiliar to this, propably they will not consider the player rank or even the minor faction rank on the generation, this means a board filled with harmless ranked missions when a elite ranked player.

(Since the board will be shared, she probably will be "system" board considering the system status)

 

[Vorxian]

I think mah immurshion just got an indian head massage!

Going to take time to process all this!

 

[wstephenson]

But can I find missions?

No.

Pfffft, fail!

I'd love to hear it from Dom Corner why the number of destination systems present on any given mission board is relatively low; it often feels like all say 30 missions on the board from 7 or 8 factions go to the same 5 or 6 locations, and all of them are within one jump for your average ship.

 

[EUS]

More importantly to me, are the broken missions being worked on to come back?
Variety is the spice of life.