[SERIOUS] The Problem With The Mission System

[StarfireIX]

Main problem still is the limited number of missions possible in the boards.

E.G.: For trading missions there have to be missions that allow for a round-trip between stations. If you have many systems nearby this currently is simply not possible as you need at least one trade mission for each nearby system.

Mission boards with hundreds or thousands of missions would be great and would enable the game to present many different types of missions simultaneously. That would solve most problems with the mission system as pilots can pick the missions they like.

With more missions presented to the player it should be possible to generate missions for different ship sizes with more rewards for "big" missions. Ideally e.g. large transport missions should be always like the current wing missions: Player can decide to do them step by step with a small ship (investing more time) or in 2-3 runs with a big cargo ship (investing less time). This "auto-adopts" the missions for advanced players and still enables newbies to do "larger" missions.

And: With larger mission boards there is a chance to implement more mission types. There is a huge potential in the mission system that currently is not really used. In fact many mission types from the past are no longer present in the current game. Bring them back and make new ones. Make missions that lead players to interesting places (Persistant POIs - there is more then tourist beacons to discover) in the game. Make missions that fill the gap between the simple standard missions and the over-complicated guardian missions.

There are many players that would like to do missions if they just would make some fun and diversity. The only way to achieve this: Make mission boards huge. Present hundreds of missions to the user. The server load should not increase much with a good filter system (and with a good template system on the client side each mission only needs a couple of bytes transferred) - and it takes time for the players to read the mission description - leading to more in-game-time *g*

Ciao, Udo

Agreed. Having more missions can help the player choose the missions he would like, thus also reducing the need of switching game-modes. There could also be a Mission Preference setting on the mission board where you select what profession you want to do and the mission board will show more missions suitable for your role. Other missions that aren't part of that profession will still appear, but in something like "Other Recommendations".

 

[Jmanis]

Agreed. Having more missions can help the player choose the missions he would like, thus also reducing the need of switching game-modes. There could also be a Mission Preference setting on the mission board where you select what profession you want to do and the mission board will show more missions suitable for your role. Other missions that aren't part of that profession will still appear, but in something like "Other Recommendations".

I've said this many, many times, we need to be able to set categories of missions we want displayed. 90% of generated missions are wasted effort by the server, and we know they're hitting capacity in terms of load times and timeouts.

Ideally, you just go to the boards and say:
- The general flavour (trade, kill, specialist, criminal, long-range, wing) of missions you want; and
- The faction(s) you want to do them for

That way I get a board of maybe 20-30 missions I will generally want to do with my current ship, for the right faction, which generates pretty quickly, rather than a board of 120 missions which takes much of which i might take two or three, which takes much longer to load, if it does.

That's the short version.

 

[NecasekO]

I agree that the mission board either needs to show way more missions, or allow some pre-filtering so that it only generates missions that a player is interested in.

I also believe that what is sorely missing is some sort of economy simulation, similar to what the game does with commodity markets:
- More missions and higher rewards available in high population systems
- If players take many missions from one station the factions will run out of money and either stop offering missions or reduce rewards for some time
This would pretty much fix all the issues with fringe systems generating endless amounts of high paying missions.

Also, I would add one important rule:
- Mission reward should never be more than the cost of a ship required to complete it.

 

[StarfireIX]

Yeah the mission reward shouldn't go beyond the cost of the ship you're flying, especially if you are in a cobra and then in a few hours get into an Anaconda. There needs to be a steady progression, but not with one that will be too long or too short. However if you choose to do something risky like smuggling, then that is up to the player since he may be facing Thargoids or Pirate Lords along the way.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Also, I would add one important rule:
- Mission reward should never be more than the cost of a ship required to complete it.

That would substantially cut the rewards for almost all mission types.

- Non-wing cargo missions and passenger missions have a minimum size: Python at the highest (though most can be done in the much cheaper T-6) ... but all VIP passenger missions can be done in a Dolphin (or a Cobra III if they're not luxury-class). Wing cargo missions can of course be done in four Sidewinders, so would pay much less.
- Surface scan, piracy, salvage, surface attack, and data delivery can definitely be done in a Sidewinder. (And some of them, if you got the Horizons version, in a Freewinder)
- Mining missions generally don't need anything bigger than a Cobra III to carry the amount of cargo required
- "Legal" piracy missions only tend to ask for a few tonnes of cargo. Again, Sidewinder in theory, certainly Cobra III in practice.
- Assassination and massacre missions can be done in an (engineered, perhaps) Sidewinder.

So most missions have payouts capped to around 50k credits, with a few types at around half a million (the cap for a passenger tour to Beagle Point and a trip to the next system would be the same, of course, since the same small ship could do both), and a couple of bulk cargo types are allowed to pay more than that.

 

[ZeroAi]

Greetings, Commanders.



First off to introduce myself. I am CMDR StarfireIX, a fan of the Elite franchise and currently studying at University for Games Development & Interactivity, so please forgive my lack of activity on the forums . I've come here to voice my concerns in regards to the recent controversy with the new payouts for wing missions. This thread has been marked as serious on the title, so if you're going to drop by and leave a comment that has no meaning or relation to this thread, then look somewhere else. These will be my honest thoughts and opinions of the issue in discussion, so feel free to voice your honest thoughts as well on the matter.



Let's start off from the beginning...


https://i.imgur.com/rXIjulm.png
The Money Problem - Poster by StarfireIX. Assets used from ED Assets


Elite: Dangerous launched as a massive galaxy for players to explore, fight and trade across the stars. CMDRs chose different professions, from Bounty Hunting, Mining, Piracy or fighting other CMDRs. Money hotspots weren't that common at the time, until when popular spots like "Robigo Smuggling" appeared. These destinations used to reward players from 30m per hour to 70m per hour, and this is still seen as a high amount of credits to make. Subsequently, the gold mine was nerfed and smuggling distances were reduced because of high payouts. Since then, More systems to make CR appeared followed by a nerf at the end. From Robigo, Sothis & Ceos, 17 Draconis, Aditi, Quince, Rhea to Upsilon Aquarii.


A few weeks ago, two new popular systems for making money were reported as bugs for various reasons, including one that allowed players to sit in a station for hours while making millions of CR. In response to this, Frontier had shut down the missions in prep for an update they were working on to fix the issue. When the update was made live, several CMDRs complained about unexpected tweaks to wing missions, due to a highly unstable RNG system for cargo requirements and the reward itself. I spoke to Adam Waite, one of the designers for Elite: Dangerous during a discussion of the wing mission issue. Below is a screenshot I referenced which shows a clear issue with the numbers on this mission.


https://i.imgur.com/R0MAhfk.png













So.... What is the Problem?


The Problem is to do with the Random Number Generation (RNG) system designed for both the reward and cargo requirements of a mission. There is no proper minimum or maximum limit for cargo, so you can end up seeing a 3m CR mission for 400t, or 1m CR for 3,000t... worse... 4m CR for 8,000t. Of course, all these numbers depend on factors such as distance, rank and reputation. Even if you do make it to Allied with a high Elite rank, the payouts and requirements are extremely random, causing players to be nauseated over what they want to do.



The Solution

Make ALL mission rewards similar or the same as eachother. If you don't want to see another "100m/h Money Maker, go to System A then B", then I suggest you look into balancing mission rewards properly for all professions of the game. You may not like what I'm about to say, but EvE Online's ways to make money are all the same and it's a 14 year old game. The only thing that may be slightly more profitable in EvE is exploration, but the risk is dangerously high. You can't have a mission worth higher than the other without some sort of risk. Asking an EvE veteran about ways to make money will result in him saying "any profession can make you money". So you can see where I'm getting at. If not, here is an example of how it could work for smuggling and trade:


https://imgur.com/3gnL7Lk.png

So the above demonstrates that when hitting certain ranks or reputation with a faction, it sets limits on what RNG can randomize for reward and cargo requirements. I'm not sure if this may be stable to use on servers, but it can be possible for sure. For smuggling, the risk levels and reward increase the further out you go in terms of LY. If your destination in supercruise is really far to get to, then the system only gives you a bonus rather than adding the bonus when you accept the mission in the first place. This should help in response to the insane payouts that were seen for passengers at Rhea or Upsilon Aquarii. (while also better utilizing the bonus mechanic that was introduced around Update 2.1)

In regards to risk levels, the higher it is, the more you are in danger of being pulled or chased by hostile NPCs. They can vary from Pirates, Warlords or even Thargoids! Some parts of missions, including smuggling, need this type of feature to give the player a feeling of meaning and danger when he commits to doing these missions. If we see changes in all professions, especially mining, combat, trade, exploration and passengers; then I assure you that money hotspots will barely be a thing unless bugs occur or tweaks need to be made. We want players to enjoy doing other professions with equal rewards, not do one specific role because it's the most profitable out there!


https://imgur.com/QlxUQyM.png

If you're reading this Thread, Frontier, then I hope you take this as my honest feedback on what needs to be reviewed for the better future of the game. For one, I certainly hope this game continues to improve for the better, especially for other CMDRs. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to let me know. As for the community, what are your thoughts on this? Do you think professions like combat, mining and trade need to be equal in reward but a few with some risk and adventure?



Stay Dangerous, CMDRs!


- CMDR StarfireIX

+Rep

You make a lot of good points, but if I could add some centered around cargo hauling:

Most important to me is that the payout for cargo hauling be based on sound economical footing.

A lot of this work is already in the game but, you do point out how it falls short at times.

Here's my simple ideas to fix it:

First: Build a sensible table of how much is paid per ton to deliver x y number of light years and z light seconds from the star.
- Example (not based on current prices Biowaste may pay 10 credits per ton, while Gold may pay 100 credits per ton
- Note: Transporting a commodity should almost never pay as much as the value of the commodity

Second: Add variables which include how much the commodity is needed
- Example: Systems in a famine state need food badly and will pay more

Third: DO NOT pay a whole lot more to commanders with higher rep or rank. This totally breaks the economy. You might pay a small premium to use a company with a better rep, but you're typically not going to pay them twice as much.

Forth: Give commanders with low rep missions to deliver inexpensive products that pay less, and commanders with high rep missions to deliver expensive products that pay more. To me, this makes more sense than the current system
- Example: Say a system or station specializes in making Wine. Give low rep commanders inexpensive low grade wine to haul with low payouts, and allied commanders higher grade wine to haul with higher payouts. Currently, while the prices varry by rank/rep, it always appears to me to be the same stuff getting hauled for different prices.

Fifth: Spawn large missions for commanders with lots of cargo space and vice versa. This kind of works, but it never seems to be able to fill my large ships, well unless we look at Wing Missions. But there the payouts are too low. Wing missions also should have posted time bonuses so the more and bigger ships you have, the more money you can make.

Again, a lot of this is already in the game but needs the values tweaked.

I say this because currently my allied Broker commander can make as much as my allied Elite commander, which is sad imo.

One reason for that is that some of the BEST paying transport missions are to Outposts. Why put large ships in the game if we can't use them for the best paying missions in the game?

Until someone can show me how they can make more credits in less time than my broker can make in a Python (5-10mill in 15-20 minutes) trading or doing transport missions, I'm going to consider Trade and Transport unbalanced.

Well, as always that's all just my opinion.

Fly Safe Commanders!

o7

 

[RamirezKurita]

The problem with this is that the professions quite literally cannot be balanced against each other without extremely major reworks of core game mechanics, ship designs, and so forth. Not only would the result, I think, not be "Elite: Dangerous" I'm not sure it would be "Elite: anything"

For example, compare trade missions with surface scan missions.

A T-9 will make more money per trip with trade missions than a Sidewinder. It can load up more missions, and bigger missions, and be at least somewhat more capable of defending its mission cargo from attack.

This is fine, of course, the T-9 is bigger and more expensive. It should have a better earning capability than the free starter ship.

Now consider surface scan missions. The two ships make basically the same income on these (the Sidewinder will actually be marginally ahead due to better supercruise agility and ease of finding landing sites to deploy the SRV)

So, when you're making all the mission rewards the same as each other, do you make them the same if a T-9 is doing them or if a Sidewinder is doing them?

Or, let's take the same sort of ship - a FDL. You can use this for space salvage missions or for assassination missions. For space salvage missions, an unengineered FDL is fine (you only need to pick up 4 at a time, so its lack of cargo is really not an issue). Engineering it won't make it more effective at them. For assassination missions, the 6:1 odds of soloing a wing assassination mission really get much easier if you G5 the entire ship.

So do you balance mission earnings assuming that the player has optimised the ship to an engineered max, or just to a stock C-rated model?

Or let's take two absolutely identical ships. One is at a system with only one nearby neighbouring system (the Sothis/Ceos case, or at least it was before the recent Galnet announcement) - the other is at a system in the middle of the bubble with tens of neighbours. "Close range" missions will go to a single system in one case, but a wide range of systems in the middle of the bubble. Picking up otherwise identical missions (of a range of types!) will make money considerably more efficiently in the isolated systems because the destinations will be closer together and return missions easier to find.

So do you balance mission earnings around the assumption that players can only take one mission at once, or twenty at once?

And finally, lets go back to that mining example. Mining gets a pretty bad rap - it's considered one of the lowest paying professions in the game, to the extent that Frontier *buffed* Painite and Platinum prices considerably in 3.0, and it got a "well, that's nice but it's still worse than everything else" reaction from the forums ... but with an optimal mining wing min-maxing for profit, it can be the highest-paid profession in the game barring some but not all nerf-this-now mission scenarios.

So do you balance mission (or non-mission) earnings around a player with average competence, or an optimal min-maxer who has been refining their technique for months? (And if the consequences of mission failure include fines, bounties and/or rebuys, how much extra payout do you include for that, or do you assume that for a top player the risk of failing any mission is zero and therefore no mission should have a risk/reward bonus?)


For prevention of gold rushes, Frontier would need to balance missions around the optimal ship, location and method. That would leave the prices for non-optimal solutions looking extremely different, because some mission types simply have more room for optimisation than others. And that would mean there was - e.g. - no point in maximising ability at the relatively difficult wing assassinations, when min-maxing data courier work paid exactly the same but had a much lower skill and equipment ceiling.

There would still also be the problem that earnings are basically linear or sub-linear (a twice as capable ship *might* earn twice as fast, but probably earns less than that) but prices are exponential (a twice as capable ship costs ten times as much to buy and maintain). So if you balance earnings so that "Big-3" pilots can buy and earn their ships at all, Sidewinder pilots can still use ship-independent missions such as data courier or surface scan to get into a Python by the end of the week.

Ultimately, without major - highly unpopular - changes to the game which would hurt people who don't care about their earnings as much or as more as people who do ... balance of this sort is impossible.

While I think you have in general hit the nail on the head here, there's a couple of points I disagree with.

While yes, it's easy enough to balance earnings for activities such as trading as there's a hard and fast number (tonnes of cargo capacity) that can be monitored and used as the primary balance metric.

However, other missions such as data delivery or skimmer kill missions do not have a significant tie-in with ship stats, so obviously balancing those would be trickier as you have pointed out, but they should never be balanced to make a sidewinder (the "optimal" ship for the mission) somehow equal in performance to a top-end ship. Instead, they should be balanced so that a similar investment (whether a more expensive ship, or an engineered ship) produces similar results. Unfortunately for skimmer missions, that would involve nerfing income down to sidewinder levels as they do not scale beyond this point and so they are to be balanced against hauling 10 tonnes of cargo at a time. On the flip side, this would strongly encourage FD to actually improve SRV and base raiding mechanics, such as by letting your NPC crew occupy a second SRV, fly air support in an SLF or even piloting your own mothership for fire support; this would once again put more power into the hands of the more expensive ships and so the range for potential difficulty would increase as base raiding power wouldn't cap out at a Sidewinder, so these harder missions would cap out at a much higher level of investment.

Data delivery missions don't scale, so once again they should be balanced around Sidewinder level. However, data delivery missions can be done in addition to any other kind of trading/couriering/taxiing, so it's not really an issue if they pay peanuts as every credit they give is effectively a freebie - the real money would be in whatever other stuff you are bringing into the station.

Mining does scale with ship, but it doesn't scale anywhere nearly as strongly as it should. Considering how worthless the majority of the stuff you can mine is, mining is all about finding the best asteroids rather than about capacity or actual mining power. To make matters worse, the scaling on limpet controllers is terrible, which means that even top-end miners like the Corvette only have 2-3x the limpets as even the small ships while they usually have only a 2-3 times the mining laser power - a very poor scaling compared to their 10x cargo capacity for trading. Mining overall needs a bit of a rework to make it scale better, as well as to make things other than the 3 Ps actually worth picking up.

 

[Screemonster]

That is just asking for people to hop into a Sidey, accept a high paying missing, hop into their battle Conda and blast the target out of space before it can even hail you, because the mission you accepted was for a puny sidewinder.

That's easily solved by making the missions that appear if you're in a sidewinder only pay sidewinder money. If the "danger money" is calculated according to the ship you're in versus the ship you're facing, just make it scale with rebuy. Suddenly hopping into a sidewinder to grab sealclubbing missions to do in your corvette doesn't seem so lucrative.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

How about a crazy idea ?

Instead of using only a Push-System (Server generates a Random series of Missions, with RNG tweaks apparently mostly derived from local Economy, Faction State and Player Reputation)...
...how about we'd also use a Pull-System
Player docks and actually requests specific Mission types.

Pros/Cons of the Push-System :
+ broad Range of Missions
- Economy Type and Faction States have a very profound effect and can drastically limit the Mission Selection
- different Playstyles and Ship Capabilities are difficult to be served adequately by a single Faction or even the whole System
- by virtue of Mission Generation seed and Mission Design restrictions, can lead to undesired Gold Rushes in some locations due to local area constellations
- gross differences in perception of Players due to assets and personal preferences (ranging from "no suitable Mission found" to "Awesome, that'll do!" at the very same location)

------------------------------------

Pros/Cons of a Pull-System :
+ Players can specifically generate and poll Missions tailored exactly to their Ship type/Capabilities and most importantly, desired Playstyle, Preferences and Goals of Player
==> Need specific Cargo Rewards? Ask for them
==> Need specific Material Rewards? Ask for them
==> Want to maximize your Credit income? Ask what you can do for max. Credits at the location and be given choices that scale in Difficulty accordingly
==> Want to maximize Reputation gains? Ask what you can do for max. Rep at the location and be given choices that scale in Difficulty accordingly
==> Want to maximize Influence gains for a specific Faction? Ask what you can do for max. Inf at the location and be given choices that scale in Difficulty accordingly
==> You're a dedicated Miner? Then you shall get Mining Missions. Trader? You'll get Fetch/Haulage Missions. Combateer? Combat Missions it'll be.

- essentially a 2nd Mission System will have to be designed to operate in parallel to the existing one; it'll just work the other way around based on Player polling for specific Opportunities
- Player Ranking (Superpower if applicable, Pilots Federation Rank, Reputation and Criminal Status [for Anarchy places]) will have to be utilized to balance what such a Mission System offers
- Difficulty for stacking those 'cherry Missions' likely must scale linear and be higher than average, in order not to make the original Mission System obsolete and to avoid easy milking of such a System
(i.e. stack 5 of your favorite Missions with optimal Rewards - expect at least 5x the difficulty that only scales back down as individual Missions are completed; acts as auto-limiter for huge stacks that shall be virtually unfeasible)

In a nutshell, a 2nd System that allows the Player to ask for specific Mission types or Rewards.
All at the price of reduced "stackability" and higher difficulty. Invest a larger effort but then get pretty much the optimum of whatever precisely you seek.
No pure reliance on RNG or draw of luck anymore, more controllable results with a price tag attached to them.

Ideally, both approaches supplementing each other, resulting in synergy effects and a much smoother experience for Players when dealing with the Mission System.

 

[Hessfire]

I like what you have written here, but would add (in reference to Wing/Large Missions) that the offered and posted payment/time bonus should be the total paid for successful completion.

It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever that an accepted mission pay out based solely on the number of individuals involved. None at all.

If I accept a mission for a set price and complete it by myself, and another completes the exact same mission (with the same offered price) How does it make sense that I get 25% of the compensation that others are being given for the same work?

This is why I suggested changing the paradigm to a Contract Based system:

All Missions can be solved with a Wing Component - ie. Moving High-Value Cargo in unfriendly space, hire a Merc to cover your back.
Compensation pre-deposited with Bank of Zaonce, managed by CMDR accepting mission and used to purchase cargo, hire help, and pay others at completion
Return of Rank lock - No faction should be expected to hire a Penniless CMDR to hire 8000t of Palladium as they haven't proven that they can
System becomes auto-leveling as CMDRs are going to be unwilling to work with/for CMDRs that have mismanaged projects before
Return of true multi-part missions - ie "Kokojina Conservatives is looking to expand, we need you to clear out these factions in these other systems, we don't care how you do it..."

 

[Hexcaliber]

Many of these suggestions sound great in theory but they all ignore, or are unaware of the Elephant in the room, and that is the system resources available to Frontier.

A quick explanation of the current mission system for those that do not know how it works.

The game is split into a number of different servers, when you join your chosen game mode you are assigned to one. And each server being separate, generates a fixed number of mission templates based on the current system state, and those templates remain for 15 minutes. When a player checks the mission terminal, the mission system fills out the blanks in the template using various weighting, with details such as payout, destinations, factions, rank req’s and so. In order to cater to as many players as possible, many of the values used to fill in those blanks fall within pre set ranges. Sometimes folks do not want the hardest mission available, perhaps they are showing a new player the ropes, trying a new ship or build, the reasons are immaterial.

As a good game designer you offer a range, a choice. The above system works on the premise that there will be at least one or two missions suitable for the players rank, standings, and wants at that particular moment. However, you cannot please everyone, so a new set of templates is chosen every 15 minutes. We have this system because given the resources at Frontiers disposal it works, not always the way some pedant may want, but on the whole it does.

Most developers would love nothing more than infinite resources to design the ultimate version of their game. However, the fact is, while many suggestions sound great when you allow your imagination to run rampant. Real world practicalities such as resources and running costs get in the way. The kind of additional load that would be required to deliver more complex missions systems such as those suggested here are not insignificant.

I saw Eve online used as an example of a mission system that “works”. What was not mentioned is that for years Eve O required a monthly subscription. But more than that, CCP ended up having to design and build a server farm that set world records in order to deliver the game they have now.

It is one thing to study design, quite another putting it into practice.

 

[Hessfire]

Many of these suggestions sound great in theory but they all ignore, or are unaware of the Elephant in the room, and that is the system resources available to Frontier.

A quick explanation of the current mission system for those that do not know how it works.

The game is split into a number of different servers, when you join your chosen game mode you are assigned to one. And each server being separate, generates a fixed number of mission templates based on the current system state, and those templates remain for 15 minutes. When a player checks the mission terminal, the mission system fills out the blanks in the template using various weighting, with details such as payout, destinations, factions, rank req’s and so. In order to cater to as many players as possible, many of the values used to fill in those blanks fall within pre set ranges. Sometimes folks do not want the hardest mission available, perhaps they are showing a new player the ropes, trying a new ship or build, the reasons are immaterial.

As a good game designer you offer a range, a choice. The above system works on the premise that there will be at least one or two missions suitable for the players rank, standings, and wants at that particular moment. However, you cannot please everyone, so a new set of templates is chosen every 15 minutes. We have this system because given the resources at Frontiers disposal it works, not always the way some pedant may want, but on the whole it does.

Most developers would love nothing more than infinite resources to design the ultimate version of their game. However, the fact is, while many suggestions sound great when you allow your imagination to run rampant. Real world practicalities such as resources and running costs get in the way. The kind of additional load that would be required to deliver more complex missions systems such as those suggested here are not insignificant.

I saw Eve online used as an example of a mission system that “works”. What was not mentioned is that for years Eve O required a monthly subscription. But more than that, CCP ended up having to design and build a server farm that set world records in order to deliver the game they have now.

It is one thing to study design, quite another putting it into practice.

While I give credence to what you are saying here, I have to disagree. As my grandfather once said to me "If you don't have the time/resources/ability to do something right, how can you have the time to do it over?" and this holds true today. I say this as a player that is looking at (what is currently) the Third implementation of the Mission board to date - and I am quite sure that I may have missed one along the way. What we have right now lacks depth, consistency, and vision. What is being proposed here is a way to handle and monitor the situation in a clear, concise, logical fashion. Should an edge case arise, instead of removing an entire mission set, tweaks could be implemented at the local level to address the situation - in a lore-friendly and consistent fashion.

Further, how is FDev going to know what we (the players) want if that information is not discussed, fleshed-out, and presented to them using their forums. Anything at this point would be better than the money-grind wall that is our current Mission system - and it costs us nothing to make the effort.

Instead of moaning about the problem, posters here are trying to present a solution, what is the harm in that?