Very nOOb pilot here. Just learning to get about without soiling myself. Trying various missions to advance above the 1/1/1/1/1 level. Was doing moderately well with trade, mining, combat and courier tasks. However, I now can't seem to get a mission assignment. Select a simple courier mission: datapack to nearby system. Select "SHOW ROUTE" and the route is on the NavMap. However there is no "ACCEPT" box at the bottom nor, if I launch and follow the planned route, is there anything loaded as cargo and no way I can find out why.

I've failed a few missions and completed more. Could the failures be blocking my progress or what?
............................wisesam

Certain missions show up on the mission board but are available only in remote locations. The "Route" button plots a nav route to the station closest to you that is offering the mission. Once you dock at the destination station check the mission board again.

This should nearly be a sticky... Think a lot of new players getting confused by other stations' missions showing up in the mission list by default.

Is this new feature explained in the tutorials?

I got confused by this one as well. I thought the 'route' meant the route to the mission goal, not the route to the station with the mission. Some slight changing in the wording on that mission page would probably help a lot for us useless newbs.

:)

Hmm, well I feel partially responsible as I suggested the route button, although the devs had apparently planned it from the get go. Would there be a better wording that might make it clearer? "Locate" perhaps?

There have also been some suggestions to have the option to display local missions only:

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/26106
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/26156

While I don't think it's particularly hard to grasp the concept of missions being offered non-locally and the game lists the location of the mission next to the title, perhaps some things could be done to make the system more newbie friendly. I haven't started a new character and played through the training missions / basic flight status test since the introduction of the new mission system so I don't have a firsthand picture of what it's like from the perspective of a new player, although I imagine once he or she passes the basic flight status test there will be more options than before.

Thinking about it, I think the 'route' button is fine.

The clearest thing would be to add a line of text to the mission description if it is at a different station.

- "This mission is available at a different station. Click the 'route' button below to plot automatically plot a course."

Not sure if the scripting language easily allows for the changing of the mission text based on a variable or not.

Also, I think keeping missions that are offered non-locally in the list is a definite 'must have', as removing this would fix this short-term issue that the newbs have, but cripple useability for everyone else.

How about a simple (R) or (L) following the mission description indicating that it is a Remote or Local event? The definition of the letters could be in the mission introduction paragraph.
........................wisesam

I think the mission posting should be a different color for the remote missions, sort of greyed out, to make it more obvious that something is different about that mission. Most people should automatically interpret that to mean "unavailable for some reason" due to UI conventions. Then if they're smarter than the average newb, they'll notice the coordinates on the right and maybe even figure it out.

Additionally, as suggested above, adding an explanation at the top or bottom of the mission description would make it that much more obvious.

While you're at it, do something about the missions that are telling people "You cannot have this mission." At least have the mission tell them why they can't have it.

I think a good idea would be that if you are not in a station, and try to take a mission, it should say something like:

"Missions are only available in a station, please dock at your local quikymart"

I'm sure this suggestion would not take long to implement.

:)

[edit]

Oh wait, even better!

List all missions everywhere for everyone, even if you cannot take them, must be much more newb friendly!

[edit 2]

Who the fuck are you taking your recent "newb friendly" ideas from? This new seeing missions everywhere is more harder to explain, and to be frank, the mission system as is sucks balls. And you guys know this so why expand on it before improvement? Meh.

Or maybe, at the risk of getting my newcomer face too much involved in the matters of my betters... How about a simple asterisk * after a mission description with the notation in the intro that * marked missions require going to the distant location shown, eh? Even I could understand that.
...........................wisesam

The missions already list the location of each one, no?

That is exactly why I suggested we'd add another drop-down with:
-Local
-System
-Nation
-Universe

The drop-down is quite visible, placed right before "Mission Type". Foolproof. Elegant. non-disruptive.

Who the **** are you taking your recent "newb friendly" ideas from? This new seeing missions everywhere is more harder to explain, and to be frank, the mission system as is sucks balls. And you guys know this so why expand on it before improvement? Meh.

"Newbie friendly" has a lot of different meanings. The remote missions certainly make things more complex, and therefore a little more confusing (which, hey, we can improve via solutions like the many presented in this thread). However, the biggest problem we had with newbies was a perceived lack of content, which remote-missions help, since you're no longer limited to seeing only the mission content at the current station. So, in regards to the way we present the game and the quantity of content to new people, yes, this is "newbie friendly".

That said, we should definitely improve the remote/local aspect and help clarify things for people. On a general level, I don't hold up the mission system as any paragon of perfection, it is a version of something midway between "what we thought we wanted" and "what we now want" with various bits and pieces bolted on in the meantime.

I am still pretty happy that we have remote missions working now, and where we're headed with this and user-posted missions and the like. It would be dumb to completely redo the interface right now, when half the new features are missing and the usage patterns haven't yet stabilized. But there will be a big general-UI redux, we all know that it's needed.

Anyway, we will take a look at improving this remote/local problem, probably next week. And if Yoda (or whomever) have more feedback on the general mission architecture, this should probably be broached (or re-broached) on Suggestions.

wisesam, it already has this. Remote missions have coordinates on the right side. Local missions do not.

Yup... It does, indeed. Thing is/was that I didn't realize that at the time - that those coords represented the place I needed to go in order to begin the mission. So I made several useless trips before posting this question. Which now has been nicely answered, thank you all!
.....................wisesam

Ya,

I think the bigger question is "what small changes can be made so a newb doesn't even need to ask the question?".

We all know how it works now, but what can be done to prevent confusion in a first-time player.

I think incarnate 'gets' that and is working towards that ideal.

Cheers!

Having remote missions a different color from the local ones would be a big help for those not color blind.

Hard to come up with a better one word button description other then route. Making the button description longer would open up some possibilities but would also force the button to become larger.

Making local only the default selection would also help eliminate some of the confusion as long as it is obvious there are other sort choices.

I think the suggestion of simply adding a line to the mission description (maybe as the very first line) stating that you need to travel to a remote station to take this mission might make it clearer to the newbs. Can't be that hard to implement?!?

This is more of a suggestion thread other than a bug thread. And why don't newbs that the route button leads to a station? If the mission isn't available in the current station, it says a different station underneath the name that has the mission available.