Hi all! I'm still fairly new to the game but am absolutely loving it so far and am excited to become a part of the community in some capacity.
There are currently countless ideas and suggestions as to how the bulletin boards and missions system can be improved upon or reworked, and so I hope I'm not rehashing an old idea here. My thought process was to give more of a meaning to missions and at the same time give a bit of depth to player choice. As it stands now, you pick a mission that seems the easiest and has the most payout. With that system, there will always end up being cases of "X is the best right now" until there is a change or future implementation that causes something else to be the most efficient. And while there will probably always exist "a most efficient" way to make money, my hope is to give people a reason to do other missions.
Lets take, for an example, you're a CMDR who is a smuggler and you enjoy that part of the game. You're just starting out and so you don't have much influence or reputation with any minor factions. You visit your first black market station or location that offers smuggling missions. You will see very basic missions show up that offer low rewards (such as take 1-3 tons of goods to this station 1-2 jumps away). Something very manageable in a sidewinder or for a newer player to comprehend and complete. As you complete that mission, you gain a bit of renown as a smuggler (maybe just invisible points, if you will). However, the NPC who gave you the mission takes notice and offers you a couple extra mission options next time. Then as you complete more and more smuggling missions, your NPC contact may change to someone who is "higher up" in the smuggling chain. They then will offer you more complicated missions, such as go and salvage this cargo from a wreck and smuggle it back into the station, or a longer range/multi part smuggling mission. These will offer better rewards because you now have renown with those NPCs, they respect you, offer you better rewards and more important missions.
With the most recent dev update (https://community.elitedangerous.com/node/368) shedding light on the details of FD's goals for NPCs and bringing some life to them, I think this fits in very well with my ideas, as you'll have a face and personality to the character a bit. This allows for some more roleplaying on the part of the player and allows CMDRs to better make a choice with what they want to do and get recognition for being a great smuggler, aside from just having pocket loads of credits and the route to and from Robigo etched into their mind. It can even go to the point where when you "top out" at a minor faction, you may receive a recommendation or issuance to another NPC with a possible related faction (similar government or ethos, perhaps). That way, it encourages helping out a certain minor faction, but when/if you choose to go somewhere else, you don't necessarily have to start with the simple missions anymore, because they've been told about you. You might even get locked out from doing too many quests at a station because (in the case of smuggling) you are drawing too much attention to yourself. This could perhaps be a way to help diminish bulletin board refreshing (which hopefully wouldn't be needed with this system, as long as quests are available you should have various options given what the faction needs).
I've been talking a lot about just smuggling because that's what I used as an example, and if the forums and Internet are any indicator, that's sort of the "hot topic" right now. However, this could work for any sort of mission type. Hostage rescues could start out simple and low key, such as save this kidnapped civilian. Offering praise and little reward, but as both your reputation and renown for hostage rescues grows, you could be approached by someone who asks you to save a government official that has been taken hostage by a rogue group of pirates, needing you to employ both combat and finesse in order to deal with the wing ships, but safely rescue the hostage all the same. Even for mining or trading missions, they start out simple, one way runs, or gather simple minerals and ores for a station that's low on them that then ramp up the more you do them.
Another aspect could include doing missions that conflict with each other. If you accept a mission to save a hostage and increase your renown, then suddenly take assassination missions and become renowned for that, you may see less missions requiring you to save high ranking officials. This could go hand in hand with major or minor factions that are involved with the quests given out, too. It would allow the player to still make decisions and change their play style, but also encourage them to stick with something a bit longer to see what other fun and in depth missions there are.
Maybe this seems like a lot of ideas or is no more than a pipe dream, but I just really have found a love for this game and think that with some sort of progression to the missions, it could allow players to feel like they are choosing a path outside of just combat, trader, or explorer. There's so many possibilities too that can be discussed and added to this framework. If you're still with me after reading all of that, please let me know what you think and share some of your ideas too! What kinds of missions should be the starting ones? What sort of missions could be the more in depth ones? Thanks for reading!
There are currently countless ideas and suggestions as to how the bulletin boards and missions system can be improved upon or reworked, and so I hope I'm not rehashing an old idea here. My thought process was to give more of a meaning to missions and at the same time give a bit of depth to player choice. As it stands now, you pick a mission that seems the easiest and has the most payout. With that system, there will always end up being cases of "X is the best right now" until there is a change or future implementation that causes something else to be the most efficient. And while there will probably always exist "a most efficient" way to make money, my hope is to give people a reason to do other missions.
Lets take, for an example, you're a CMDR who is a smuggler and you enjoy that part of the game. You're just starting out and so you don't have much influence or reputation with any minor factions. You visit your first black market station or location that offers smuggling missions. You will see very basic missions show up that offer low rewards (such as take 1-3 tons of goods to this station 1-2 jumps away). Something very manageable in a sidewinder or for a newer player to comprehend and complete. As you complete that mission, you gain a bit of renown as a smuggler (maybe just invisible points, if you will). However, the NPC who gave you the mission takes notice and offers you a couple extra mission options next time. Then as you complete more and more smuggling missions, your NPC contact may change to someone who is "higher up" in the smuggling chain. They then will offer you more complicated missions, such as go and salvage this cargo from a wreck and smuggle it back into the station, or a longer range/multi part smuggling mission. These will offer better rewards because you now have renown with those NPCs, they respect you, offer you better rewards and more important missions.
With the most recent dev update (https://community.elitedangerous.com/node/368) shedding light on the details of FD's goals for NPCs and bringing some life to them, I think this fits in very well with my ideas, as you'll have a face and personality to the character a bit. This allows for some more roleplaying on the part of the player and allows CMDRs to better make a choice with what they want to do and get recognition for being a great smuggler, aside from just having pocket loads of credits and the route to and from Robigo etched into their mind. It can even go to the point where when you "top out" at a minor faction, you may receive a recommendation or issuance to another NPC with a possible related faction (similar government or ethos, perhaps). That way, it encourages helping out a certain minor faction, but when/if you choose to go somewhere else, you don't necessarily have to start with the simple missions anymore, because they've been told about you. You might even get locked out from doing too many quests at a station because (in the case of smuggling) you are drawing too much attention to yourself. This could perhaps be a way to help diminish bulletin board refreshing (which hopefully wouldn't be needed with this system, as long as quests are available you should have various options given what the faction needs).
I've been talking a lot about just smuggling because that's what I used as an example, and if the forums and Internet are any indicator, that's sort of the "hot topic" right now. However, this could work for any sort of mission type. Hostage rescues could start out simple and low key, such as save this kidnapped civilian. Offering praise and little reward, but as both your reputation and renown for hostage rescues grows, you could be approached by someone who asks you to save a government official that has been taken hostage by a rogue group of pirates, needing you to employ both combat and finesse in order to deal with the wing ships, but safely rescue the hostage all the same. Even for mining or trading missions, they start out simple, one way runs, or gather simple minerals and ores for a station that's low on them that then ramp up the more you do them.
Another aspect could include doing missions that conflict with each other. If you accept a mission to save a hostage and increase your renown, then suddenly take assassination missions and become renowned for that, you may see less missions requiring you to save high ranking officials. This could go hand in hand with major or minor factions that are involved with the quests given out, too. It would allow the player to still make decisions and change their play style, but also encourage them to stick with something a bit longer to see what other fun and in depth missions there are.
Maybe this seems like a lot of ideas or is no more than a pipe dream, but I just really have found a love for this game and think that with some sort of progression to the missions, it could allow players to feel like they are choosing a path outside of just combat, trader, or explorer. There's so many possibilities too that can be discussed and added to this framework. If you're still with me after reading all of that, please let me know what you think and share some of your ideas too! What kinds of missions should be the starting ones? What sort of missions could be the more in depth ones? Thanks for reading!
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