How can you have such a negative and emotional opinion on a mission type you have never done? That makes absolutely no sense. [wacko] Now that FD has finally gotten all the bugs out of these, they are really nicely done. I think everyone should at least try a couple of the sightseeing missions just to see how FD might eventually update all the missions to offer a little more polish and feedback.
As for the regular mission board offerings, I totally agree with you.
The regular missions definitely need the same level of attention and review that the passenger missions have just received. I alternate between both boards since I own four ships with only my Anaconda being dialed in for passenger mission work. So I actually spend more time with regular missions for the other three ships and the sharp contrast between the two boards is pretty significant at the moment.
I observed a few things with all missions tonight...
Salvage missions on the regular board appear to be paying more than they were a few days ago, and I grabbed several assassination missions tonight that each paid well over 1 million credits. The problem I see even more than the payouts themselves is the lack of consistency with certain mission types. Those assassination missions I mentioned were the only ones I saw at my station HQ the entire night. (3 total) I use to be able to cherry pick the highest paying versions from a steady stream of them. Now they are really rare.
The major factions at my home base (Solo Orbiter / Altair) is in a BOOM state right now, as is most of the other factions, so there should be a good supply of all of these mission types, especially Boom Deliveries, which I was not seeing much of, and the few I did see were paying chump change.
Hopefully FD isn't done with all this. Perhaps after readjusting the Passenger Missions they will see the stark contrast between those rebuffed versions and the regular mission board offerings. We should know better next week.
But in the meantime, I would chuck the emotional baggage over passenger missions and give them a try. Until FD does something about the regular mission offerings, passenger missions is the only place you are going to make any decent $$.