Elite Dangerous: My vision on missions

What makes a mission good

Fun – it's interesting to participate and to complete it;

Engaging – involves something personal like direct rivalry between players;

Rewarding – we receive something valuable in return.

What do we have in Elite

Fun – very few missions are interesting and they become old and repetitive very fast;

Engaging – no engagement with major factions or Power Play, no personal rivalry;

Rewarding – from time to time devs screw balance and we have something really NICE for very short period of time until they fix it.

We all have different idea about what fun is, but we like to do something from this:

1) Fight (bounty hunt, pirate etc.);

2) Trade (deliver, smuggle etc.);

3) Explore; (not a single mission! NONE!)

4) Other activities, i.e., mining, gathering or stealing data, spying etc.

No co-op missions in the game even while wings were introduced on March 10! There is just no excuse.

How to improve missions in Elite

Existing ones (in no particular order):

1) Co-op Missions, there is no excuse to delay any longer;

2) Ship specific missions (make those useless pieces of crafting art useful);

3) Power Play specific missions that will pay you with credits as well as give merits etc.;

4) Make missions in open play slightly more profitable (somewhere around 30-50% at the beginning and see how it goes);

5) Increase rewards, give some materials, discounts on ships or modules or even give modules as a reward, open access to better missions and rewards etc.

6) 2 mission types – regular ones like now and introduce urgent missions with very limited time requirements and increased (2-3x) reward;

Like Smuggle 50 tonnes of Combat Stabilizers to a 50 LY system and there are 2 options: in 4 hours or fast delivery in 10 minutes and you can choose only one.

7) New missions, especially for Explorers, like "scan all astronomical bodies in system X and return with results", distance from 500 to 10 000 LY or even more and greater the distance greater the payment (just check that destination has at least 7-8 astronomical bodies and not just one star).

What missions I want in Elite

Introduce excitement of rivarly, race and competition between players into all kind of missions – community missions.

Step 1 – every hour is generated a random mission from predefined pool of activities, but it only can be accepted at specific port after 6 hours (specific time when it starts).

Step 2 – mission is automatically announced on Galnet News when it's generated with all details on type (assassination, hauling, mining, exploration etc.), time when it goes live, at which system and starport it will be available, so anyone can prepare their ship loadouts and wait at exact starport for it to go live, mission will have 30-60 minute time limit.

Step 3 – all who want to participate will have an option to pay entry fee (winner takes it all). 10 000 – 100 000 credits would be fine, but only in open play you can receive this reward. You can only pay entry fee in open play and can't switch back until mission is completed (or abandoned). Or have 2 separate fees for different game modes.

Step 4 – first player who paid entry fee in open play to complete mission apart from base mission reward also receives all money from entry fees. Time needed to complete this mission is saved and best time is shown on mission when it appears next time, if best time has been beaten then base mission reward is paid in double to the winner.

All others to complete mission in time receive only mission base reward stated in mission description. Mission fails when ship is destroyed.

There can be many different missions – from killing very strong enemies, smuggling illegal goods to scanning distant systems, mining specific mineral/metal in specific system...

Even racing can be introduced, i.e., every participant will have to dock at 5-10 specified stations in particular order. And because best time will be saved even doing that 100x will be fun and challenging – you are competing not only with other cmdrs but also yourself for a nice reward, so it always will be a challenge.

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