( it's not like there isn't a new way to get huge amount of money appearing every 6 month until it's patched into oblivion anyway )
Funny thing is: If they implemented a form of scaling during mission generation, they'd even have an opportunity to get rid of one of the root causes for these ridiculously over-effective mode-hopping schemes to emerge in the first place while being able to give "high end" players payouts that respected their time. The root cause being that these schemes emerge due to primitive RNG being at the heart of mission generation and un-scaling RNG based piecemeal "delivery boy" missions being such an unattractive, shitty mechanic for higher end players, that any effective scheme makes every other, less effective type of mission obsolete at earning credits, because the scheme's better for everybody's sanity and free time than the
actually intended game design.
Why is it that you were able to earn giant amounts of credits for comparatively easily stacked tasks? Because the game relies almost exclusively on a primitive form of RNG for mission generation, that doesn't take player related input into account, other than a player's rank and their relation to a faction. Who would give out dozens of piecemeal missions of the same type to a high ranking pilot in a billion credit ship, entirely forgetting
that they already gave the same pilot a dozen of the same missions (edit: that still only filled less than half of what their cargo hold can carry and are therefore a waste of their time and high end ship)?
If they instead limited the missions given by a faction to a player to a
single mission per type across
all modes, made the mission difficulty and payout scalable (selectable
by the player, e.g. selecting whether they want to transport 12 tons of tea to beat famine
p) or 120 tons) and scaled the payout accordingly, half the mission scheme shenanigans would never occur. Of course, once a scheme is found, everybody and their dog abuses the scheme like there's no tomorrow. After all, pilots in billion credit ships don't appreciate running some 200 "haul 12 tons of something" missions, just so they can earn enough credits for a single rebuy.
That would make a bunch of mission types useless or unfeasible in their current implementation. E.g. how are you supposed to scale a mission where you fly to a planetary base, scan a thing and return to the orbital station to hand it in? Generate a base with 200 things to scan? On the other hand, having multiple of these missions to the same location and having a player scan the same thing over and over and over again has never been anything else but asinine, primitive RNG that made zero sense. No more than hauling twelve tons of tea to combat famine in a system. 20 times in a row. It would work really well for other mission types however. Chose how many ships of a faction you feel up to shooting down. Chose how many tons of cargo you can transport. Chose how many tons of a resource you can mine and deliver for a payout.
But it'd get rid of many an opportunity for Frontier to be completely taken by surprise by an ultra effective mission scheme emerging thanks to their RNG, which they have no hope of thoroughly predicting, testing and polishing before a release. They could far more tightly control mission payouts for players across all ranks, ships and skills and would in all likelihood have to resort less often to delivering harebrained "fixes", one scheme at a time. But it'd make implementing missions more complex and Frontier seems to have often failed to go past the most basic possible implementation of a bullet point feature. Edit: Or to go as far as actually thoroughly and extensively playing a feature they've put into the game themselves under realistic conditions, to see whether it makes sense, is fun or needs more spit and polish.
Heck at some point I was trying to hype some of my friend for multicrew, then they came in with the rank nerf for it's release and it was over before it even began.
Preach it. Was in the same position, especially as they initially announced full symmetric payouts and because of the prospect of not making friends sit through half an hour of shitty loading screens just so we could play together (because space in Elite is big, pretentious and needs linearily scaling real time travel time to cross, otherwise immersion victims could lose their immershun...). But then they decided to screw over multicrew players in terms of payouts, because of their pretentious risk vs. reward spleen. None of us even bothered once 2.3 was released. Pity for the devs who've had to invest much time into creating the feature, but if Frontier fucks up the game design so thoroughly, they don't deserve it. :-/
EDIT: And btw.. Bonus points if Frontier didn't make basic missions appear entirely randomely, but made certain basic mission types available according to the factions and systems economy and state permanently, for as long as the system/faction/etc state lasts. E.g.: A system requiring mined resources. It's entirely plausible that such a system has a constant need for resource X. Instead of making any mission related to mining said resource appear randomely however, only resulting in frustration for anybody who'd like to take such missions, always make the mission available at the stations. If players could only take one at a time per a faction across all mode, but scale the quantities to their own likings and capabilities (as described above), where would the harm be? If they need to simulate fluctuating need for a certain resource at all, they could make the payouts variable according to system state etc. after all. It'd "
only" completely eliminate the need to bloody mode switch to get missions that are worth a shit to the player and it'd be more "immersive" to boot - nobody considers taking entirely randomly spawned "Gimme 12 painite", "kill 5 pirates" missions immersive or realistic I hope?
Example of status quo: You and your three friends really want to participate in a bit of mindless, unstructured pretend space ship pub brawling (aka "War" in Elite) in a wing. Currently you filter the map for a system in "war" state, you go there (watch 10 loading screens) and for maximizing payouts, land at a station and check the mission board whether there are any "massacre" missions worth a shit. There may not be, so you leave and check the next system. After an hour of having no PvE fun whatsoever, you resolve to not waste anymore time on Elite and play something competent instead.
Example of fictional "guaranteed state bound, player scalable missions with wings support and encounter scaling acording to wing strength": You meet up in a system in "war" state, wing up, land at a station, where you already know that there'll be "massacre" missions available, due to the system's state. You take one of the warring factions, chose the number of ships you think you can kill in that evening play session and the mission is given to the whole Wing. As the game knows you're a wing of four "Deadly" and "Dangerous" combat players, the enemy ships spawning in the CZ are heavily engineered big ships or wings of several ships and "Dangerous" or "Elite" pilots, resulting in both, increased risk to take them on, but also increased payouts per kill. You hand in the mission and get comparable rewards as if you'd played the mission alone due to the scaling, but have had fun with friends instead. Everybody gets the minor faction reputation and the superpower reputation as well as any materials that may have been rewarded for the mission. If they wanted to increase the odds, they might even let the mission fail if your whole wing is killed.
The latter sounds like a game I'd actually log into again with friends.
