Why are so many mission now wing missions? What about Solo players?

[rp198419]

As in the title.

MEF, for example, is largely only available now in either massacre missions or huge delivery missions, all of which are designated 'wing missions'.

I wonder if FDev are simply trying to force everyone into group play. I never wanted to believe that this was the case but now...well, I'm not so sure.

Thoughts please.

 

[Vardaugas]

MEF are also available from supply missions, both solo and wing. And you can do wing missions solo, too, if you want. And then there is always sightseeing.

But it all comes down to the fact that the mission boards become increasingly more cluttered and you have little control or choice on what jobs you're looking for.

 

[z993126]

Wacky ideal mission system setup: have missions tend to generate based on your ship loadout and status. In a wing? More wing missions. Have cargo racks? Transport missions. Mining lasers? Mining missions. Obscenely wealthy? Donation missions. There'd still be a variety of missions, but they could maybe have a preference for your particular setup.

 

[2plex]

Wacky ideal mission system setup: have missions tend to generate based on your ship loadout and status. In a wing? More wing missions. Have cargo racks? Transport missions. Mining lasers? Mining missions. Obscenely wealthy? Donation missions. There'd still be a variety of missions, but they could maybe have a preference for your particular setup.

Has already been tried in the past by FDev and they failed miserably.
Persistence in not a strongpoint of this procedural universe and your point of view is just one among thousands.

 

[Vardaugas]

My personal favorite mission delivery idea:

No missions are generated when you go to the mission board. Instead, you pick a faction contact, select the kind of missions you want and are then given a set of missions of that type to choose from. This set does not change, so no rerolling of boards. Instead, you can manually ask for more missions and it replaces the selection with missions of a lower reward tier. Only finishing missions will raise the reward tier again. This allows you to fill up on missions, but the more often you roll before you go and do them, the lower the rewards for each will be.

Advantages are: No more waiting for mission generation every time you enter the mission board. No more board flipping and the huge amount of server calls involved. No more rummaging around mission boards for the jobs you can and want to do. No need to invest all the work into synchronizing seeds between the game modes.

 

[2plex]

More missions to choose from mean more missions being generated, which in turn means more time spend on the mission generator i.e. higher server load.
Now imagine thousands of players doing this in the game and you'll easily see that this can only be achived by FDev ramping up the network ressources.
Not going to happen anytime soon.

 

[Speedcuffs]

Passenger missions.

 

[Patrick_68000]

Fundamentally David always said that he favors the creation of the game to play in community.

But here this is perhaps not the reason

 

[Edelgard von Rhein]

The reason why MEF and other high-end materials are more often found as wing mission rewards is purely because of value: each unit of material has an equivalent credit value in the system (I think it might be 500,000 Cr for grade 5 materials) so a mission must generate a reward of that value in order for the system to provide an optional reward that gives out those materials. Wing missions are all high-reward missions so they often provide those. If you want to take single player missions that give those, you typically need to be allied with the faction as high-reward solo missions tend to be locked behind faction reputation.
.
As to why there are so many wing missions, I think there is a tendency for some systems and stations to generate them more than others. Faction state is also a factor - civil wars give out many massacre missions and a certain proportion of those are wing missions. Maybe that proportion is higher in some places than others. Economy type is also a factor I think - I see mining missions often in extraction economies. Hope this helps.

 

[MickyG1982]

Given the right ship wing missions are easily completable by a single player.

Cargo missions can be done in more than one trip by a single ship

Combat missions can be done by a single combat vessel and a semi skilled pilot.

 

[askavir]

Given the right ship wing missions are easily completable by a single player.

Cargo missions can be done in more than one trip by a single ship

Combat missions can be done by a single combat vessel and a semi skilled pilot.

The thing is I absolutely don't want to do >10 back-and-forth trips between the very same 2 places in order to complete missions, regardless of whatever they might pay, so being able to do wing missions by myself really isn't helpful at all. The fact wing missions are now occupying around 40% of the board, effectively means that the board was nerfed by 40%, for players not in wings, which I am convinced are a very large majority of players (as I very rarely see winged players in open, even on popular locations).

The fact even more wing missions are incoming in the next update worries me. I don't want a board where most missions require extensive back-and-forthing, for this I'd rather get my pre-beyond board back. Wing missions should add to the board, not replace other missions.

 

[rp198419]

The thing is I absolutely don't want to do 10 back-and-forth trips between the very same 2 places in order to complete missions, regardless of whatever they might pay, so being able to do wing missions by myself really isn't helpful at all. The fact wing missions are now occupying around 40% of the board, effectively means that the board was nerfed by 40%, for players not in wings, which I am convinced are a very large majority of players (as I very rarely see winged players in open, even on popular locations).

The fact even more wing missions are incoming in the next update worries me. I don't want a board where most missions require extensive back-and-forthing, for this I'd rather get my pre-beyond board back. Wing missions should add to the board, not replace other missions.

Exactly the point I was trying to make...but you made it better than I did. Pretty soon, there will be few if any missions suitable for those who do not wish to 'wing up with our friends'.

+ Rep

 

[Jmanis]

Given the right ship wing missions are easily completable by a single player.

Cargo missions can be done in more than one trip by a single ship

Combat missions can be done by a single combat vessel and a semi skilled pilot.

Definitely, let me just... oh.

Of the eight misisons offered by this faction at that time, five were wing mining missions at a "Colony" economy... not even refinery, extraction or industrial.

So the faction is in a Boom state. Courier, Source, Donation, Mining and Delivery missions should usually be common. Throw in Wing Variants for Source/Delivery/Mining, that's eight different mission types.

But instead we have five wing mining missions out of the eight offered. Assuming equal distribution for these missions (considering it's a colony economy, which shouldn't really have a bias in any particular direction[1]).

In case the significance of that is lost... that's got a 1 in 32768 chance of that happening[2].

Of course, there's a 1 in 32768 chance of any combination of five missions... but the fact that we see multiple, identical wing mission types in this quantity *so often* the RNG around this has gotta be broken. And this isn't even accounting for the other mission types which can occur during Boom, such as Assasination, Massacre, Salvage, Hijack, etc.

[1] given it's a "Colony" presumably with no industrial/refining facities to speak of, and where the only "product" is really scrap and biowaste, I would have expected a natural lean towards Source/Donation missions, as they essentially just consumers of anything, and a scarcity of missions like delivery.

[2] Of course, the way missions are generated are more likely to be based on something other than outright RNG. In which case, it should be fixed to *not* create this kind of situation.

 

[M00ka]

Definitely, let me just... oh.




Of the eight misisons offered by this faction at that time, five were wing mining missions at a "Colony" economy... not even refinery, extraction or industrial.

So the faction is in a Boom state. Courier, Source, Donation, Mining and Delivery missions should usually be common. Throw in Wing Variants for Source/Delivery/Mining, that's eight different mission types.

But instead we have five wing mining missions out of the eight offered. Assuming equal distribution for these missions (considering it's a colony economy, which shouldn't really have a bias in any particular direction[1]).

In case the significance of that is lost... that's got a 1 in 32768 chance of that happening.

Of course, there's a 1 in 32768 chance of any combination of five missions... but the fact that we see multiple, identical wing mission types in this quantity *so often* the RNG around this has gotta be broken. And this isn't even accounting for the other mission types which can occur during Boom, such as Assasination, Massacre, Salvage, Hijack, etc.

[1] given it's a "Colony" presumably with no industrial/refining facities to speak of, and where the only "product" is really scrap and biowaste, I would have expected a natural lean towards Source/Donation missions, as they essentially just consumers of anything, and a scarcity of missions like delivery.

Just a question, if four of those five mining missions were listed WITHOUT the Wing icon, would you be complaining? Simply asking because those four could easily be done by a single big ship couldn't they, the quantity isn't that high.

 

[TheMegaTurnip]

Err... Wing missions pay more and can be done solo?

What exactly is the issue here?

 

[askavir]

Err... Wing missions pay more and can be done solo?

What exactly is the issue here?

The issue is that the "pay more" is an illusion. Except for a few cases of wing source missions which can be completed by a solo player in a 2 or 3 trips, all others pay atrociously when solo if you factor the time involved during all the back-and-forthing, and compare them with non-wing missions of the same type. And I'm not even going to include the bore factor when looping between the same 2 stations ad-infinitum, as that's not a quantifiable factor.

What do you think it pays best? Running 3 solo delivery missions each paying around 2 to 5 million each, requiring 120 or 180 tonnes per mission, or 6 million for a wing delivery mission requiring 5000 or 6000 tonnes (requiring at least 15 loops - if you do them in a Cutter or T-9)? The guy taking the solo missions will have made triple the money than they guy doing the "higher pay" wing mission in less than half the time.

 

[Jmanis]

Just a question, if four of those five mining missions were listed WITHOUT the Wing icon, would you be complaining? Simply asking because those four could easily be done by a single big ship couldn't they, the quantity isn't that high.

Im not sure i understand your question. If four weren't wing missions, but still the same quantity? Or if they were just four standard mining missions with standard quantities?

Either way, your question is a bit of a red herring... my answer would be different, but still not favourable. I don't get your point about a larger ship making it easier.. your extraction rate is marginally higher, the speed of doing mining missions is dictated not by the size of your ship, but how quickly you can find the relevant materials to mine. Frankly, i've tried to do six mining missions at once for 40-odd tonnes each, and i quit after 3 hours and only recovering a couple tonnes of each requirement.

The silver mission in that shot is misleading as well, as it can be finished outright without doing any mining.. personally purchasable items shouldn't be target cargo (or shouldn't be accepted if purchased) for mining missions.

And broadly, i have a general problem with the blobbiness of mission generation. I can have nothing but massacre missions on a board in solo, switch modes to open, and find nothing but cargo delivery missions.

This blobbiness is the biggest problem, and is what needs to be addressed. It plagues states, it plagued long range misdions, and now it plagues wing missions.

So.... i don't understand your question.

EDIT: I think I understand your question a bit more having sat on it for about 30 minutes... it sounds like you're asking "Is my problem the fact that there's a wing icon? Would I be complaining if these exact missions were implemented as solo missions?" Then the answer is yes. Such missions are totally unservicable as a solo mission, when you compare them to other missions and the effort required. 7 million for 200t of Praesodymium? I get the same reward for delivering 3t of Palladium from a chain mission. If you can extract 200t of Praesodymium in the same amount of time it takes me to ship 3t of Palladium one jump away, well, I guess I'm doing something wrong. But I think it's a major understatement to claim mining 200t of a particular item is "easy" compared to that.

 

[Jmanis]

Err... Wing missions pay more and can be done solo?

What exactly is the issue here?

They don't pay proportionally to the effort. They pay a quarter of what a solo equivalent mission would pay (that's why the rewards aren't split between wingmates; they've already been split)

 

[lenna]

They don't pay proportionally to the effort. They pay a quarter of what a solo equivalent mission would pay (that's why the rewards aren't split between wingmates; they've already been split)

I think they used to but it was being exploited by some players to earn massive amounts of cash for other players that joined the mission at/towards the end when they did little or nothing towards the mission.

It would be better if FD reworked the Wing missions so the rewards were proportional to the level of contribution (rather than being fixed) - if you complete all the objectives then you get all the rewards, but if you choose to play with others then you each receive a portion of the reward proportional to your level of contribution.

 

[Sylveria]

I can't help but wonder whether or not it could resolved simply by adding a filter to the missions menu, similar to the mission types.

The mission system itself is in dire need of overhaul, however.

IMO it needs to be a bit more robust in terms of player choice, by means of distance, mission types, and participants.