I almost didn't reply because even though we differ in some regards I think you will appreciate the game more after a break. That being said here we go.
Zadkiel wrote:I'm confused here, you say missions are OK, but then you say you only do smuggling and charity missions (the 2 mission types that are broken the opposite way), don't do any other missions and think they are worthless past the first few days. All sounds pretty broken to me!
Sorry to be unclear, what I was trying to say was that I have not actively run missions since I reached Post Commander in late Feb to early April last year. I don't think missions being "useless" past the first say week or month is really a bad thing. Like me you may remember the steep learning cure this game had and in some way still has. Missions were like a gateway to show people what they could do and I still feel that is still their primary role. I remember mostly running combat, delivery, and assassination missions with my favorites being to kill pirates or the odd "celebrity" in an Elite Anaconda and to fetch goods.
They taught me were to look and how to react to almost anything in the game universe. IE you don't take on a quarter million credit mission to assassinate someone when piloting a sidewinder; you look for pirates at Nav beacons and Res sites; you can find trade ships in SC and they drop stolen goods; bounty hunters equip KWS; the galaxy map can show you a systems size and economy so you can find items for a fetch quest; and USS are or were your go to.
I will admit that you are not the first person I have seen complaining about the new missions added so I will go back the the bulletin board and give them a try myself to see if I become equally irritated. PS Why do you think long range smuggling and charity missions are broken?
Zadkiel wrote:I promise you this, since CGs were added to the game, not a single one has ever finished in tier 5, not through lack of effort, but through the goalposts being moved.
I will admit I usually don't stick with CG's for long anymore, but in the past I did. You should review the active community goal thread
1 and
2 that were once run by Brokenstorm. Back when he was running the threads he not only kept a record of what CGs were active, but also noted the reward tier reached through almost daily updates. Of the ones I took part in that can remember by name "CITIZENS ARE MEANT TO FLY", "THE SPEAR OF LUGH", and "SAFE PASSAGE" all reached their respective final tiers of 11, 9, and 5.
Zadkiel wrote:The best proof I can give you is to look at the most recent UA thread on the official forums (they close them at 10,000 posts, they are on thread 4 or 5 I think), it used to be full of people chasing the mystery, now it's just full of people messing around and posting stupid memes... Worst. ARG. Ever. of the original 100 or so commanders who really worked on the mystery to start with, only about 2 or 3 are left, the rest have given it up as fruitless.
Well with my limited time, it takes me hours sometimes to respond because I walk away from my computer often, I won't be able to get through one let alone 4-5 of those forum threads. What I can say with definitive conviction is that the UA's and the story behind them goes back to 2013 and the days of the DDF or Design Decision Forum. If, I say if because I don't know, Brooks ever said that the UA mystery was solvable back when they were first found then yes, that was a lie.
Zadkiel wrote:Yes, there will always be bugs, but in any other game, once a mission was reported as broken that mission would be pulled from the game (doesn't even need a client patch, as missions are generated server-side) until it would be fixed. In E:D they just leave them there for months. This is a terrible experience for the players and yet they just don't care. The fact they are pimping a new set of missions in 2.1 while there are still about 10 broken mission types in the game right now is frankly ridiculous.
Like I said I will be looking into this first hand. I don't have any reason to doubt you, but I also don't read the bug forums because for some reason, no matter the game, I don't experience the problems others do. We will see.
Zadkiel wrote:I'm talking about jumping 34LY in an Asp and an NPC in a Viper following you. And that's just one example, chaff blocks another player from scanning you but doesn't block an NPC. Speaking of scans some NPCs can scan you instantly and with no alert. The interdiction game between players and NPCs is completely broken, your attempts to affect the result are completely meaningless, the game just arbitrarily decides whether you win or lose... I could go on.
I am the first person I know of to call the AI a cheating piece of garbage. Back then it was because npc ships didn't need to manage heat and were using equipment that they didn't have equipped. I feel your pain, but some things can be explained away while others balance the board so I live with them. I just don't see fixes to most of the "broken" components as being really that beneficial because the fixes would usually have an adverse consequence.
Like I said they could change a table to make all pursuit ships combat or pirate versions of the Anaconda, ASP Ex, or DBX, but FSD injections and synthesis does allow a Viper to jump over 30 Ly. I think the mechanics behind chaff could be tweaked to effect NPC's, but it would only be fair to first change NPC behavior so that they use Chaff to actively block scans. IE every or most pirates you start to scan in a RES would pop chaff the second the can started and possibly redeploy chaff on cool down if it was hiding a really sizable bounty. Currently there is not a type of NPC within the game that I know of that uses chaff to block a scan off any type instead they are just programmed to run.
In regards to the Interdiction mini game I think it is working as intended, but I can spend some time reading up on it with my ipad while cooking. Finally, Please if you do have other grievances against the game AI feel free to vent here, I am actually interested.
Zadkiel wrote:Wings is still hit and miss with all the networking and instancing problems the game has, I am STILL unable to wing up with 3 out of my 4 RL friends who play this game, and Wings came out a year ago! 1.3 was Powerplay which was and still is a complete joke. 1.4 was CQC which I have no idea about, I have no interest in PvP which is why I'm here in Mobius. 1.5/2.0 added planets which was fun for about 3 hours before you realised it was pointless at this point, until they add in the rest of the stuff to go with it. Maybe 2.1 will be amazing and add something fun, but I've been telling myself that about every update for the last year and I've given up.
Wings... way to go for the weak spot LOL. P2P has issues and I am sorry to say that they will not be as simple to fix. One of the main problems is that FDev can be blamed for choosing a flawed format, but they are not the only ones in the wrong on this one. P2P can misbehave or fail at one of many stages and that can result in, worst case, people living next to each other not being able to play together. Not pointing fingers, but the sad truth is that problems with P2P are often a result of the end user having a cheep router or an ISP being crap.
Finally, I like Powerplay and actually encourage people to participate; think CQC is nice and has helped to take a good number of griefers out of Open; and I like Horizons both for its introduction to crafting and the SRV.