Too few missions, no predictability = bad gameplay

[Bambi]

You missed the point of the article, which is that self motivation can be destroyed by arbitrary goals, even when it's perfectly possible in the game. Which it currently is, as I said there isn't anything that a mission can tell you to do that you can't do on your own.

 

[SentineI]

Nope, I understood the point of the article fine. As some others have commented here, if you ignore the mission system, then ED has very simplistic game play mechanics (in Solo anyway), which lead to very repetitive/grindy feeling for some people. ED's lack of complexity means that missions provide a more interesting & varied feeling.

Of course if ED had more complex & interacting systems (not impossible - I've read good suggestions in the last year), then the articles point would be more relevant to ED.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

I get your point, but will respectfully disagree. A lot of it comes down to how much time people have to play the game. I wish I had more, but unfortunately don't. I used to be able to pick up a mission and have a blast zapping (all) pirates in a RES/Nav beacon for a couple of hours. Now, sure I can kill all pirates and get the bounties, but if my target pirates spawn only 1 in 4, 5 or 6 pirates, the time to comlete a mission goes from a reasonable two hour play session, to eight, ten or twelve hours.

I'd also question how it fits in with the Background Sim. Surely if there is a system state which means piracy is a problem, wouldn't that mean all pirates? Maybe they'd be inclined to ignore pirates allied to their faction, but wouldn't *all* others be fair game?

I guess my main thought is that it needs another pass by the devs to get the balance between fun game/time-sink/realistic BGS more even.

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Agreed. It looks odd if there is such a dire piracy problem that missions are generated, yet when you get there, there are few pirates to be found.

I don't have much time to play the game, yet I'm able to complete these "kill pirate" missions within the time period given. So I don't think your argument carries much weight. Tweaks and balances will almost certainly be made in future updates, but don't expect a return to the pre-2.1 scenario. Under the old system, btw, you had the rather dumb outcome of killing pirates belonging to the same faction as you were working for.......now they usually belong to an antagonistic faction (though future updates need to play up these antagonisms even more IMHO).

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True. Just a shame that I can no longer take most pirate missions I'm offered, as they take longer to complete than I have.

Again, not true. I've been able to take on 3 separate Pirate Kill Missions-at the same time-and complete them.......whilst having barely 1 hour a day to play. You just have to look beyond the "usual" places you'd expect to find them. I've found my mission targets in all kinds of ships, and at all kinds of skill levels too.

 

[veryinky]

absolutely. or being able to bargain rewards. which would make asking for more missions redundant for ship upgrades.

I want to craft my own missions, 25 arsenic for 1million, aimless explorer rank or above, within the next 2days. 50 chemical manipulators for 5 million, peddler rank or above, within the next 24hours.

Then send them a message that I'll give them 100k more if they get it within 0h0m as soon as they jump into the system.

Make npcs do the grind for once.

 

[Bambi]

Nope, I understood the point of the article fine. As some others have commented here, if you ignore the mission system, then ED has very simplistic game play mechanics (in Solo anyway), which lead to very repetitive/grindy feeling for some people. ED's lack of complexity means that missions provide a more interesting & varied feeling.

Of course if ED had more complex & interacting systems (not impossible - I've read good suggestions in the last year), then the articles point would be more relevant to ED.

The game feels less grindy, more dynamic, and more varied if you do the things you want to do.

 

[smartroad]

The one mission i really enjoy doing is the surface salvage missions. I wish that there was a way to say to the mission givers that you prefer certain missions and have the game maybe present a few more along those lines - or the game records that you are good at certain missions, completing them on time etc and target you a bit more with those missions. I agree that the number of mission seems low considering the number of people in a given system.