In other words, sounds like a timer
Ah, that's an idea right? Leave the timer there, but just don't tell players there's a timer and missions just fail randomly for no apparent reason, brilliant!
Please Remove Mission Timers
- Thread starter apophis13
- Start date
Ah, that's an idea right? Leave the timer there, but just don't tell players there's a timer and missions just fail randomly for no apparent reason, brilliant!
Agreed, but one potentially much more lenient because it's gated by the BGS updates instead of an arbitrary 24 hours for an assassination mission or 4 days for a massacre mission from the same station. You as a player then have more options for fun.In other words, sounds like a timer
That would only happen if it's coded to give the player a reputation hit for BGS-related failures. It's only code, so it can be coded for that to not happen.
Look, I see plenty of arguments for why it would not work due to BGS reasons, rather than arguments saying people like the timers.
Personally, I do think there is thematic scope to have some missions be time-gated. Say, an urgent courier mission, or an assassination mission that is time-gated because the target is only going to be in the system that day.
On the other hand, I don't see why run-of-the-mill missions have to be time-gated.
Why would they do that? I mean seriously, you are stacking more and more conditions on the silly idea that mission timers should be removed when the simplest solution, and easiest since it requires no code adjustment, is to leave them exactly as they are and not worry about a couple of players who aren't happy?
It's really not that simple, and there's no such thing as a "run of the mill" mission as you define.
every mission type has the potential to be impacted by the BGS in some way. Just a basic courier can have the source or destination faction disappear. You're going from a simple "Missions have timers" applied to all mission types, you're now needing to check:
This is just a few, though I can think of more as things go on.
You need to configure these decisions individually for each mission template, because each template is affected by different factors. Just because someone wants to take a mission and leave it a week. Instead of just having a mission timer. That's pretty crazy.
every mission type has the potential to be impacted by the BGS in some way. Just a basic courier can have the source or destination faction disappear. You're going from a simple "Missions have timers" applied to all mission types, you're now needing to check:
- Does the issuing faction still exist in the source system
- Does the destination faction still exist in the destination system
- Does the target faction still exist in the system... different to a destination faction
- If this has a target target facility still owned by the relevant faction
- If this has a target target facility, does it still exist target system
- Are the jurisdictions still the same in the target area
- Are the rewards I'm offering still legal in the source system
- Can any NPCs of the given type still spawn given state
This is just a few, though I can think of more as things go on.
You need to configure these decisions individually for each mission template, because each template is affected by different factors. Just because someone wants to take a mission and leave it a week. Instead of just having a mission timer. That's pretty crazy.
there are consequences for your actions, as well as your inaction. is it that hard to grasp?
the realtime interconnectness of everything is what makes this universe alive. dont kill it.
the realtime interconnectness of everything is what makes this universe alive. dont kill it.
Timers are good for several reasons.
- They add a sense of urgency that is otherwise lacking.
- They increase the sense of immersion because in the real world the number of tasks you are hired to do for someone else that don't have a time limit are limited in numbers.
- They let a player know ahead of time if the mission is worth attempting given their playing constraints.
This is the thing - yes, the BGS can in theory invalidate most mission types, but the time you get to do the missions doesn't really depend on how likely that is:
- massacre mission: 4 days for pirates (chance of either the target or the offerer retreating in that time is generally very small)
- massacre mission: also 4 days for a war (chance of the war ending in that time is very high; these really should be 1 day at most and maybe shorter)
Or
- famous explorer passenger mission: 28 days (chance of issuer retreat or Thargoid attack in that time isn't high in most cases, but it could happen in some)
- source and return cargo: 1 day (broken by exactly the same conditions as the tourist one)
- source mined cargo: 3-5 days (exactly the same breaking conditions as the source and return one)
Or
- Odyssey base missions: a few hours (all sorts of state changes can affect them)
- Odyssey surface POI missions: the same few hours (rare retreat of issuing faction is about the only possible failure, at least until the Thargoids start destroying entire planets)
I certainly don't think "likelihood of being affected by the BGS" has been Frontier's primary consideration when setting the mission timers - and other than the Odyssey base missions and wartime massacres, the odds are essentially zero for native factions and fairly low in practice for most non-native factions. Conversely the one non-Odyssey type with a really strong BGS dependency - wartime massacres - has a long enough timer to generally outlast the war anyway at least half the time.
So ... if 28 days is considered a "safe enough" time for a famous explorer passenger mission, should any other mission type also only invalidated by the issuer disappearing have a similar 28 day limit? Conversely, if the 24 hour limit of most missions is as much as they can be given to avoid risking too much [1], should famous explorer missions be reduced to that "for safety"? The BGS is clearly mostly a red herring here: the primary purpose of the timers is to be a time limit for their own sake [2].
[1] Factions with a locked-in Retreat still issue missions, and if they stopped doing that, which would also be thematic, it would clear up a lot of the actual occurrences of "the issuing faction retreated" complaints!
[2] At which, they're far too long to generate any tension within a play session, but just short enough for most mission types to make doing them over two sessions mostly impossible if you play at the same time each day, which is definitely a "keeps no-one happy" sort of compromise. (I vaguely recall that mission timers used to be a lot shorter, and most of them got rounded up to at least a day later on, but I really can't remember for certain)
Thank you (and Ian, and others) for taking the time to set out a considered response.
As I said, I'm happy to have timers for thematic reasons. By extension, I'm happy to have consequences for mission failures, because again that is also thematic.
I was unwilling to accept the BGS and coding as being the reasons to have timers, because to accommodate player enjoyment, I could see ways around that. But if it's for immersion reasons, then so be it.
If anything, some variety in the timers for the same mission type would be nice (again, for immersion reasons).
tbh, I consider it a bit lazy that some of these missions don't redirect or "wrinkle" by their parlance according to BGS change.
"Commander, our faction has been forced to retreat from blah, blah. Please deliver to blerg instead"
"Sorry, but you're too late. We needed those Meds before the outbreak. We'll compensate you for your time, please drop those meds off at your closest Faction Rep"
etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.
Stuff like this is why the galaxy feels bland and dead. It's all so shallow.
"Commander, our faction has been forced to retreat from blah, blah. Please deliver to blerg instead"
"Sorry, but you're too late. We needed those Meds before the outbreak. We'll compensate you for your time, please drop those meds off at your closest Faction Rep"
etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.
Stuff like this is why the galaxy feels bland and dead. It's all so shallow.
Yeah it might work, but there are such a lot of factions and missions and different scenarios it could get quite....complicated. On the other hand, an easier solution would be to have an agent like the interstellar factor who would sort of "buy" expired missions off you with the understanding you wouldn't get any reward apart from say 10% of the monetary reward but it would clear the expired mission of any penalties as he is taking that on himself to negotiate with the original mission giver for the rewards.
I think whoever said that the mission timer is related to the BGS doesn't really understand what the BGS is.
Even now, when we clear the system of Thargoids, it hangs empty without changing icons until the end of the weekly cycle.
So here too, if the mission timer was linked to the BGS then all missions would have a timer until next Thursday. Status changes don't happen every day.
BGS Status changes with the DAILY tick. The weekly status Update is only for the Thargoid war and Powerplay. The Thargpid war and BGS are to be seen as two different things here.
And iirc, a principle of the BGS was "simple rules to create complex situations".... FDs never really been in the game of (successfully) dealing with micro conditions which result from these rules.
Suffice to say, making the mission rules more complex and case by case probably isn't in on the map of viable options.
Strange, I've been playing for so many years and only now learned that the hunger in the system can change during the day.
Thank you.