Why don't FDev just limit the number of active missions to 5-6?

[Madrax573]

Iv said it before & I'll say it again....

Why are some players obsessed with what other players are doing?

I personnally don't give a furry crack of a rat's behind, what other players are doing on the mission boards.

Iv never done one single skimmer mission since starting playing Elite on day 1. If other players want to mode flick flip to stack certin mission types then so what!
I mission stacked well over a year ago on data delivery missions, to boost my ranks with the Empire & then the Federation. I did that because I wanted to & the game allowed it. It is no one else's business but mine what I do in this game - along as I'm not overriding ED's game mechanics, that is exploiting the game.

So what if other players have billions more than I have.....I DON'T SMEGGING CARE!
Get over it guys! It's not that with those credits players can start buying up planets, is it!

You obviously do have issues with what others are thinking/doing in game or you wouldn't come to the thread and have a rant like this about it. Especially when at no point was there any mention of other player or their intentions.

I agree with you. I couldn't care less what other are doing and I usually only find out about 'exploits' when the players who use them start crying because FDev take their toys away.

This is a legitimate suggestions as a method to limit the options for 'board flipping' or missions stacking etc. I picked 5-6 as an arbitrary figure just to stimulate the conversation.
Without a lower limit than current the mission system will always stimulate the kind of board hopping/stacking that results in these cash grabs. A lower mission limit with an improved reward/work done/risk structure will allow for a finer tuned mission system that can more easily be balanced to provide something fun and meaningful to the player.

To the guys suggesting that they 'need' 9 missions juts to fill up their cargo or cabins. This is limited viewpoint based on the current system. A more structured and in depth mission system could easily take up multiple cabins with various drops off etc or 'tag points' to complete the mission. No one loses out on this.

 

[Han Zulu]

Iv said it before & I'll say it again....

Why are some players obsessed with what other players are doing?

I personnally don't give a furry crack of a rat's behind, what other players are doing on the mission boards.

Iv never done one single skimmer mission since starting playing Elite on day 1. If other players want to mode flick flip to stack certin mission types then so what!
I mission stacked well over a year ago on data delivery missions, to boost my ranks with the Empire & then the Federation. I did that because I wanted to & the game allowed it. It is no one else's business but mine what I do in this game - along as I'm not overriding ED's game mechanics, that is exploiting the game.

So what if other players have billions more than I have.....I DON'T SMEGGING CARE!
Get over it guys! It's not that with those credits players can start buying up planets, is it!

Agree.

I've done skimmer missions though, and I like doing them because of the game play, not so much about the credits, however, when I do pick a skimmer mission I want it to pay reasonable.

It's just strange that so many players are concerned about other players game play and the amounts of fictitious money they're making. Is it jealousy behind it? Don't know why the big concern.

 

[MarkAusten]

The only part of the skimmer missions that could be classed as an exploit was moving back and forward 200 m from the target stations to make the skimmers re-spawn and that is debatable since it is a required game mechanic. There was no board flipping required. So board flipping is not the problem here.

The number of mission used to be 100. Imagine carrying out 100 skimmer missions at the rate we had last weekend! Five times the reward.Ye gods and little fishes, that would have been between 1 and 2 billion per hour.

No, the problem is that you could shoot the skimmers with dumb fire missiles from a ship. Remove that so that you have to use the SRV to take out the skimmers, which I think was the intention, and the whole problem, goes away. Now knocking down the required number of skimmers takes considerably longer than before and Robert is your Mother's brother.

Reducing the number of missions further to 6 is not treating the cause of the problem and thus is a bad idea.

 

[GunnerBill]

No OP does not go far enough.

5-6 missions gives the distinct possibility of earning more than 5 million in one hour. I appreciate OP's sentiment but that's too much. Players should only be allowed to enjoy one mission at a time.

 

[GunnerBill]

Agree.

I've done skimmer missions though, and I like doing them because of the game play, not so much about the credits, however, when I do pick a skimmer mission I want it to pay reasonable.

It's just strange that so many players are concerned about other players game play and the amounts of fictitious money they're making. Is it jealousy behind it? Don't know why the big concern.

zealot
noun

• a person who is fanatical and uncompromising in pursuit of their religious, political, or other ideals.

 

[rhiz]

Yes, those are the things that ED should be monitoring, not looking into it because players are jealous of what others are doing/earning.

I thought that ED had resolved this last year, by only allowing 3 mission of the same type to be taken. As my main game style is Exploration, I haven't really delved much into missions apart from ranking up data delivery the odd delivery & the Ram Tah mission, never taken one single pewpew mission.

Yes, I’m with you again. It’s grubby in the bubble where money is king – much better to fly off, have a sneaky... I mean grow a beard.

 

[gooddoc]

@Stealthie

I would define the term 'overriding ED's game mechanics' in this instance as using third party scripts eg. instant money, god-mode, etc. not something that the game itself allows you to do, right or wrong if the game lets you mode flip to regenerate the mission board, then some players will take advantage of it. Exploit? no not in my opinion.

 

[Demascus]

I offer a trade: I will see your 5-6 mission limit and I will raise you a: 5-6 system exploration data cap along with a 5-6 target bounty cap. I have no problem with seeing explorers burn and bounty hunting 3.0 has been nerfed to hell.

 

[gooddoc]

You obviously do have issues with what others are thinking/doing in game or you wouldn't come to the thread and have a rant like this about it.

It's a forum, I'm expressing my opinion. The only issue that I have with other players is I don't care what they do. I would call that having an opinion not having an issue.

 

[kilvenny]

My take is that people will always find the most efficient way to maximise what they deem to be important. Nerf one thing and something else will become significant and need nerfing. All the shortcut does is provide a ladder to quickly advance in the game. If that is what a proportion of players want, let them enjoy it.

The real underlying problem is all this is fueled by two things, one you cannot insure your cargo and secondly there is a rebuy cost. Those two core principles generate the need for better, engineered ships, particularly in open. You cannot be competitive without doing that. Solution is to put content in that doesn't mandate that. Powerplay needs a proper guild system and powerplay tasks are done in a ship provided by the power/guild. Make the powerplay tasks mission based so there is a mixture of combat and supply style tasks. Suddenly no one is bothered by rebuy and insurance and can enjoy the game. Allow the faction to research the ships, so they can add ships to their fleet.
,

 

[NecasekO]

I don't think a mission limit per commander would help.

I believe that part of the issue is caused by the mission generator providing an infinite number of missions, and in effect infinite money - even in the smallest possible outpost in the middle of nowhere.

If we had a more robust economy simulation the system would be self-regulating and prevent money exploits on such a massive scale. Say each station might only generate some number of missions per day (there simply isn't more work to be done) or have a limited budget for mission rewards. This could either be player specific, or global similar to how commodity markets work - if there were thousands of players trying to get missions at the same place the system would simply run out of missions, or only provide some minimum like 1 mission per faction every 10 minutes.

Of course it would be tricky to get the "supply of missions" right for different population sizes, economy types and system states. But as I said, once done the system would be self-regulating and even if there was an imbalance with a specific mission type it would limit how much players can exploit that.

 

[rhiz]

I don't think a mission limit per commander would help.
If we had a more robust economy simulation the system would be self-regulating and prevent money exploits on such a massive scale.

Yes, because that's exactly how real economies function.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007–2008

 

[GunnerBill]

You obviously do have issues with what others are thinking/doing in game or you wouldn't come to the thread and have a rant like this about it. Especially when at no point was there any mention of other player or their intentions.

I agree with you. I couldn't care less what other are doing and I usually only find out about 'exploits' when the players who use them start crying because FDev take their toys away.

This is a legitimate suggestions as a method to limit the options for 'board flipping' or missions stacking etc. I picked 5-6 as an arbitrary figure just to stimulate the conversation.
Without a lower limit than current the mission system will always stimulate the kind of board hopping/stacking that results in these cash grabs. A lower mission limit with an improved reward/work done/risk structure will allow for a finer tuned mission system that can more easily be balanced to provide something fun and meaningful to the player.

To the guys suggesting that they 'need' 9 missions juts to fill up their cargo or cabins. This is limited viewpoint based on the current system. A more structured and in depth mission system could easily take up multiple cabins with various drops off etc or 'tag points' to complete the mission. No one loses out on this.

Interestingly your rant about "not caring" is 221 words where as goddocs is only 165!

 

[Darkfyre99]

So with the last couple of cash cow 'grey area exploits' being all about stacking large numbers of missions through board hopping etc

Why don't they just put a trigger to limit the number of active missions to say 5-6. once you have 5-6 missions, of any type, the board simply closes and tells you to "free up your workload" or some such drivel. This is a simply variable trigger.

This would then allow the actual missions themselves to be balance in terms or reward/risk/time take structure rather than mode switching to be a thing.

The problem isn’t the number of missions. At the start my sessions, I easily hit the 20 mission limit, many of which are “return X stuff” missions. The problem is the board flipping, spending ten or fifteen minutes doing nothing but log in, search the boards for outrageously broken rewards, and then logging back in over and over again. The missions people get should be mediated by a single server, as opposed to (I believe) the multiple ones like it is at present.

 

[Jmanis]

No.

The 20-mission limit is bad enough. 5-6 would be a joke, and it wouldn't even fix the problem with skimmer missions.

There's a reason I picked a system with 8 stations; so I could fly around and pick up many missions without relogging. Now I hit the mission limit after visiting two or three stations.

Note: this is just picking up anything my group's faction is offering, that isn't going to hinder us. Not "stacking" or anything else like this modeswitching stuff is for, although if a few deliveries go to the same destination, so be it. That'll be =~ 30-300k reward, and not the hundreds of millions that is happening.

The fix is easy enough... drop the rewards to like 10% of the current credit reward (e.g drop it to 200-700k). There's no way a single skimmer mission can or should be worth 2-8m credits like we currently see, when ship massacre missions which are infinitely harder than skimmer missions pay out so much less. That'd drop the income from this stacking technique (which is entirely legit, imo) to around 30-50m/h, inline with most other activities.

 

[UFO Reality]

probably not that simple.

 

[Jmanis]

Sounds good and logical but may be a problem with new pilots trying to make credits. There is a high chance they will get frustrated by the grind and quit and complain that the game is crap.

Credits are so easy to come by these days by it's not funny. A handful of salvage missions and you've got a few million already.

 

[verminstar]

Heres a novel idea...at least try and treat the infection before reaching fer the bone saw and preparing the amputation bucket. How in hell anyone could rank grind on 5 or 6 missions at a time is bewyond me, and I actually like grinding when Im in the right frame of mind. A 5 or 6 mission limit would be fixing the wrong problem and would actually make the original problem worse, not better...all its doing is making the whole process even more time consuming and tedious and does nothing to alleviate the underlying causes...a lazymans fix ^

 

[Lucius-Darcia]

So with the last couple of cash cow 'grey area exploits' being all about stacking large numbers of missions through board hopping etc

Why don't they just put a trigger to limit the number of active missions to say 5-6. once you have 5-6 missions, of any type, the board simply closes and tells you to "free up your workload" or some such drivel. This is a simply variable trigger.

This would then allow the actual missions themselves to be balance in terms or reward/risk/time take structure rather than mode switching to be a thing.

In my opinion this would be a no-go and would destroy a lot of the BGS activities. Missions are the most important way to gain/loose influence and also reputation with factions. Limiting them to 20 did already hurt some of us.
Yesterday a faction offered 34(!) missions related to the boom state and i have taken 15 of them at once. It can be made in relatively short time with a good multi-role ship. Did i got money for that? not really because i did it for influence in the BGS.

Whenever someone swings the nerf-bat, a lot of people will get hurt and not only those who misuse the system
simply reducing mission capacity to 5-6 won't make it here!

So rather than having a system of balanced missions based on a proper risk/work required/reward structure you'd rather just be able to farm lots of little missions eh?

If the missions numbers were small then the variety of missions for the 'larger' cargo/passenger run could be incorporated into the mission generation algorithm. pretty simply system really...

In BGS play it DOES make a difference if i take one mission with 500t cargo, or 10 missions with 50t cargo. Quantity is important here.
In fact, if 2 factions are opposing in influence, both in state boom with pending elections but one faction spawns 30 missions on the board, the other spawns 4 mining missions, there is relogging NEEDED to get a fair chance for a equal chance to win.
It really does! So no, i still think that nerfing mission capacity would be a bad way to fix exploits.

If I recall, I have 9 cabins in my Beluga.

sadly this doesn't help anymore if one single mission need 35 first-class seats suddenly. but that's another topic.....