Massacre missions are almost always ridiculously long and not worth taking

Massacre missions have FAR too high kill requirements for what they're worth, necessitating a pretty extreme grind of combat zones over several hours which would be FAR better spent in a RES site.
This would have been fine if it was still possible to stack massacre missions, except you now have to get several hundred kills to complete a few average massacre missions.

At combat rank Dangerous, the majority of massacre missions offered to me are rank Elite, which have an enormous requirement of roughly 70-90 kills, for only about 1-3 million credits or a small amount of rank 4 materials.

The lowest kill requirement mission i've found is 20, which i would have found acceptable on the medium-low range, except it only rewarded me cargo worth about 30k credits.
This was also from an independent faction fighting the Federation, which i found was regularly dispatching their own corvettes and gunships, often stacking the combat zones in their favour.

Looking at the few Wing massacre missions also gives me a headache, as while some of them have an incredibly large requirement of 162, (even assuming a very ideal and unlikely 4-wing, that's 40 kills per player) some of them are virtually identical to existing solo missions, with the same kill counts and rewards, but being able to complete in a wing.


TL;DR Kill counts approaching 100 are acceptable for high end wing missions, but absolutely NOT okay solo, at any rank.
Kill counts required in massacre missions vary, but increase by an extreme amount above the Novice/Competent rank, with very poorly fitting rewards.
Major drop in massacre mission kill counts is required, as right now they are an incredibly long and poorly paying grind in the vast majority of cases.
 
+1.

Massacre missions went from a bit ridiculous when they could be stacked, to utterly worthless without stacking. It reeks of lazy patching, where someone realised the stacking had to go and swung the nerf bat, but didn't bother to buff their payouts to compensate. Anyone with any reasonable amount of play time can look at combat missions and see their payouts don't compare to cargo running, in terms of credits alone, let alone materials, despite being greatly higher in risk.

FDev have whittled combat down to a bad joke over the last few months. CZ missions are no longer worth the time, pirate hunting is broken and support seem disinterested in fixing it, and to cap it all off they just halved assassination payouts. Seriously, where's the justification for this move? Assassinations were the ONLY way left for making decent credits through combat; are the devs that out of touch that they honestly thought removing that nonsensical window was going to increase the rate we can complete assassinations? If they bothered to speak to the community about this they'd know assassinations were barely keeping pace with cargo running, and the limiting factor was not some arbitrary mission window we largely ignored anyway.

Bugs are bugs, they can take time to fix (though 4 months is excessive any way you look at it), but nerfing mechanics without the foresight to see, and the interest to mitigate, the impact on payout is nothing but utter laziness. I've gone from recommending the game to friends, to steering them away from it. I honestly can't recommend ED to people when FDev continue to make these kinds of bizarre decisions that indicate a lack of either foresight, or interest.
 
A good way to fix these missions would be to skew the counts on various ships. An eagle and a Corvette are two very different foes. A Corvette should count for 5 at least.
 
A good way to fix these missions would be to skew the counts on various ships. An eagle and a Corvette are two very different foes. A Corvette should count for 5 at least.

Instead of # of ships, it could be based on the combat bond amount.

Old: Blow up 107 ships for 10m credits

New: Turn in 1m credits worth of combat bonds from destroying our enemy and we'll give you a 10m credit bonus.
 
Instead of # of ships, it could be based on the combat bond amount.

Old: Blow up 107 ships for 10m credits

New: Turn in 1m credits worth of combat bonds from destroying our enemy and we'll give you a 10m credit bonus.

If they are simply going to provide a multiplier for bond income, why not simply cut out the middleman and simply increase combat bond value in the first place?

I'd say that rather than simply bond values, they should actually encourage the hunting of specific ships. For example, require the killing of master or above targets, or the killing of SLF capable ships, or killing of ships of a particular size. Make them so they aren't simply "fight in CZ, get more credits than normal", but actually give the player an objective to hunt down, potentially at the cost of regular combat bonds.
 
Massacre missions have FAR too high kill requirements for what they're worth, necessitating a pretty extreme grind of combat zones over several hours which would be FAR better spent in a RES site.
This would have been fine if it was still possible to stack massacre missions, except you now have to get several hundred kills to complete a few average massacre missions.

At combat rank Dangerous, the majority of massacre missions offered to me are rank Elite, which have an enormous requirement of roughly 70-90 kills, for only about 1-3 million credits or a small amount of rank 4 materials.

The lowest kill requirement mission i've found is 20, which i would have found acceptable on the medium-low range, except it only rewarded me cargo worth about 30k credits.
This was also from an independent faction fighting the Federation, which i found was regularly dispatching their own corvettes and gunships, often stacking the combat zones in their favour.

Looking at the few Wing massacre missions also gives me a headache, as while some of them have an incredibly large requirement of 162, (even assuming a very ideal and unlikely 4-wing, that's 40 kills per player) some of them are virtually identical to existing solo missions, with the same kill counts and rewards, but being able to complete in a wing.


TL;DR Kill counts approaching 100 are acceptable for high end wing missions, but absolutely NOT okay solo, at any rank.
Kill counts required in massacre missions vary, but increase by an extreme amount above the Novice/Competent rank, with very poorly fitting rewards.
Major drop in massacre mission kill counts is required, as right now they are an incredibly long and poorly paying grind in the vast majority of cases.

These missions used to have a different name, they asked for between 5 and 80 kills, I used to do them...
 
If they are simply going to provide a multiplier for bond income, why not simply cut out the middleman and simply increase combat bond value in the first place?

Yes. That works too.

In fact, I'd turn civil wars into mini community goals instead of missions. Pick a side and then go pew pew stuff. Earn influence and rep by turning in combat bonds. Give some way to keep track of progress. Maybe some way to earn MVP of a war...target on your back gets bigger as you take out more ships. Get a bonus at the end; win or lose. Just a much bigger bonus if your side wins. Gives a reason to stay in a system for a few days and get invested in the war. Maybe throw in a few assassination missions sent directly to a commander once their rep gets high enough.

Same concept with ending famine or outbreaks. Higher payout based on your impact to the goal.

A bit more than just bounty hunting; and, for those of you in open, could lead to some interesting interactions with other commanders.
 
Massacre missions have FAR too high kill requirements for what they're worth, necessitating a pretty extreme grind of combat zones over several hours which would be FAR better spent in a RES site.
This would have been fine if it was still possible to stack massacre missions, except you now have to get several hundred kills to complete a few average massacre missions.

At combat rank Dangerous, the majority of massacre missions offered to me are rank Elite, which have an enormous requirement of roughly 70-90 kills, for only about 1-3 million credits or a small amount of rank 4 materials.

The lowest kill requirement mission i've found is 20, which i would have found acceptable on the medium-low range, except it only rewarded me cargo worth about 30k credits.
This was also from an independent faction fighting the Federation, which i found was regularly dispatching their own corvettes and gunships, often stacking the combat zones in their favour.

Looking at the few Wing massacre missions also gives me a headache, as while some of them have an incredibly large requirement of 162, (even assuming a very ideal and unlikely 4-wing, that's 40 kills per player) some of them are virtually identical to existing solo missions, with the same kill counts and rewards, but being able to complete in a wing.


TL;DR Kill counts approaching 100 are acceptable for high end wing missions, but absolutely NOT okay solo, at any rank.
Kill counts required in massacre missions vary, but increase by an extreme amount above the Novice/Competent rank, with very poorly fitting rewards.
Major drop in massacre mission kill counts is required, as right now they are an incredibly long and poorly paying grind in the vast majority of cases.

Solo or not really makes no difference when the mission boards are full of one type (massacre) to the point where it is not even worth bothering to scan through, even in civil war areas there need only be three or four of this mission type per faction involved not the 80%/90% seen at present. Also who would even bother to take on a mission to kill 50 ships for 4mill credits when you can receive the same reward for a delivery of 180 silver over a jump distance of 5.52ly ? one mission takes at least 20 mins including flight time the other 5mins. If the need for combat is so strong then try the arena but revert the mission boards to a balanced variety of missions.
 
Absolutely! if your in the mood for a more repetitive grinding pew pew then this would be at least a more interesting approach.
 
Agreed, massacre missions are horribly broken at the moment. The huge number of kills required and the fact that you can find targets from the same faction, that are wanted, but aren't considered "Mission Targets" is absurd. Finding the pirates for pirate massacre missions can be hard enough, having that bug just puts the nail in the coffin for pirate massacre missions.
 
I agree, there is a real problem with these missions. The combat missions in the CZ and all the massacre missions are totally broken. The incredible number of targets to shoot down, the ridiculous time to do it, and the even more ridiculous reward once your ship repaired 50 times.


Just no!
 
Agreed, massacre missions are horribly broken at the moment. The huge number of kills required and the fact that you can find targets from the same faction, that are wanted, but aren't considered "Mission Targets" is absurd. Finding the pirates for pirate massacre missions can be hard enough, having that bug just puts the nail in the coffin for pirate massacre missions.

I only take massacre missions if there are active CZs for the faction targets, that seems to bypass the "mission flagged" bug, if you have to hunt your targets in SC or RES sites it's just too painful.

I agree, there is a real problem with these missions. The combat missions in the CZ and all the massacre missions are totally broken. The incredible number of targets to shoot down, the ridiculous time to do it, and the even more ridiculous reward once your ship repaired 50 times.


Just no!

The only combat missions I'd attempt in a non-shieldtank ship are the assassination missions, the instant you start taking hull/module damage it becomes not worth it, which is a sad commentary on the state of combat mission rewards.
 
I agree with OP but will add that all missions are broken in some way and update 3 needs to be all about getting them sorted out so we have something constructive to do...

No more quick fixes F-Dev :mad:
 
Yeah, a lot of those missions are . I feel like, unless it's a wing mission, it shouldn't go above 15-20 per mission. They should also give better rewards.

also, the whole mission system sucks in general... it could be so much better.
 
Totally agree with OP and most positive responses he got so far.

Fdev, if you want combat players to quit the game entirely: keep that track record up, you're doing great.

If you want to improve this game: Put the nerf hammer down forever when it comes to Cr per hours on missions. The days of the skimmer missions and other similar "exploits" (*cough* Oversights *cough*) is over, and ironically, most players I know miss those days to be honest.

Grinding is already daunting, but not even being able to complete those mission even tho they have a 1d + timer (because of the need of multiple sessions) that is just stupid and lazy patching.
 
It's been over two years now since my disillusionment with this game and no sign of any turn around. Every day I read more and more reports of this sort. Broken or illogical missions, pathetic repetition for advancement, lack of persistence. Thank god for other games!
 
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