Once that illusion is shattered, it’s difficult to come back from it.
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I read every one of your posts here.
I’m both amazed that you’re still at it and by the silliness it generates.
There must be some compelling reason you are continuing to devote your time to it.
I wanted to push through the entirety of Career Mode because I thought it might get me into different types of flying I either didn’t know how to do, or had no previous interest in doing. Airliners for example. Button pushing, and no view out the window at flight level is the antithesis of why I fly. But hey, maybe if I have to sit down and actually do it in a structured way (rather than just randomly attempting to fly an airliner), I might actually really like it. Though of course the airliner missions are just as cartoon/arcade as the rest, and because the aircraft are more complex, now the bugs are even deeper and more devious. Reading about folks who are crashing while in the parking stand makes me not want to even try it beyond the one Korea gold stamp mission, and that mission didn’t have me jonesing to hurry up and buy a 737 either. During that mission I wasn’t thinking, “I’ve finally made it. This is where it’s at, and where I want to spend the rest of my time in the sim.” More like the opposite. And to a lot of people playing this game, the 737 missions seem like merely ways to get the play money even faster, not like they’re actually enjoying it.
And along the way I found something I actually did like: bush flying in a slightly larger aircraft, and getting it and out of tighter strips. But now this is where the game is impeding me because I can’t fly into the areas I want to. I’m perpetually running into dead-ends. Maybe a couple years from now I’ll be able to use Career Mode to fly the PMDG DC-6 around Alaska and the Amazon.
The other main reason is the tornado missions. As a storm chaser, I had to see what this was all about, and really, it should be the pinnacle of the Career Mode for somebody like me. After three of those, I’m not too excited for the next, to be honest. I hate to say it, but they’re boring. Seeing an ongoing cartoon tornado from 50 miles away as you slowly fly to it in a straight line, listening to the NPCs tell me literally dozens of times how they’ve seen Sharknado on an endless loop like they’re pull-string dolls. Yeah, that gets old. Tornadoes are a rare, awesome, and dangerous spectacle of nature. These missions fail to capture any sense of that.
Sooo… the holidays are over and real life is calling. Maybe it’s time to write this one off as a (sometimes) fun distraction and get back to it.
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Now that is precisely what I want out of it.
I’m still belly laughing here as I type this!
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I’ll really only do airliner missions if they’re short-haul, 1-2 hour hops. I have no interest in doing multi-hour cross-country or intercontinental stuff. 1-2 hours keeps you pretty busy, even with all the automation.
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Ive been enjoying flying the vision jet, apart from the ‘normal’ ATC issues (not responding etc), career mode has been behaving itself.
until this evening…
a nice flight across from UK to Belgium, marked as VFR/VFR - a few clouds started to form as I get across the channel, no worries, drop down seems to improve. until 10nm out from airport, clouds start getting really heavy…
Im starting to worry, doesn’t matter how much I drop still clouds…
final, and I still can’t see anything, not even ground, let alone runway - just snow and clouds.
no ILS, so im 100% screwed. (not even RNAV, so no precision landing)
I pause, open up photo mode : still can’t see the runway even zooming around…
this was supposed to be VFR? 
also kind of amusing tower had given me permission to land… knowing it had no ILS, and visibility was basically zero.
Im now wondering , what I should have done differently, doesn’t seem sim gave me the info I needed - I can see now, some websites were showing bad weather - but not sure, if Id have noticed this without hindsight.
kind of tedious, an hour and a bit wasted.
I wonder if/how they might improve this?
I guess a solution, would be giving us proper weather info even for smaller airfields.
and/or giving us a redirect option when we get there.
annoyingly in this case Maastricht was only 8nm away, that has full metar info, so they could have inferred weather from there - also EBSL could have closed, and redirected me to Maastricht ( has ILS)
how do you cope with this?
would Neofly be better?
If this happened to me, I would use G3000 flight planner and add a visual approach and then allow autopilot to take you in. Unfortunately the autopilot will cut off at 400ft, but hopefully you could at least use the PFD if you still can’t see IRL.
After a month of trying to avoid bugs and make my way through career mode one, has to wonder what on earth Asobo are thinking.
There are so many invisible hoops to jump through to progress in career mode, so many in game mechanics that go unexplained.
I’ve dug through the forums to gather some information on all the performance metrics for different mission types, the reputation mechanism seems to be black magic, the missions aren’t well thought out and then the scripted radios always break.
I’m muddling through with the help of other forum members but what about those who don’t use forums? Most users must be finding career mode utterly baffling.
Surely the calculations need to be more visible and simplified. Why did you only score 81% passenger satisfaction? Or 87% airline procedures despite following every atc prompt and hitting every displayed target.
You’ve got some mission targets that are nice & clear. Firefighting and Search and Rescue missions have simple time and goal based metrics but VIP flights and cargo mission requirements are so vague.
How are you supposed to know to keep your speed below a certain number to stop your VIPs call dropping?
I love the idea of the career mode but the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. I hope this area will be opened up to third party developers who can use the mechanisms in a much more intuitive and instructive way
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this would absolutely be the solution. for instance, see this page, which provides a METAR from the nearest station when an airfield doesn’t have a forecast: METAR EDAV - Flugplatz Eberswalde-Finow, Eberswalde, Germany
“The METAR station used is 53 km away from the airport”
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wait, what now? is THAT what you’re supposed to do? on top of getting them to their location STAT?
That’s all beyond silly:
Starting a mission to see 4 guys coming out of a two seater corvette.
Three of them entering my plane while literally just walking through it.
Then I have to welcome them with the same phrases two times before even lifting off.
Cancel IFR via ATC to avoid dumb flight level changes (for example reaching FL250 after descent - 2 minutes before approach).
Landing on a to small and closed airfield in middle of nowhere. Asked for taxiing to get a warning message caused by entering taxiway without permission (while still on runway).
Hold short spontaneously decided to switch to the other end of runway, so mission won’t continue without illegal U-turn.
All that to see some freaky passengers in sandals to get out of my plane. Hope they have fun at -23C in the woods !
Ah, not to mention that loosing S rank down to C for my efforts.
Conclusion: even when you have mission in your own mind like a kids play it’s more engaging than this mission setup.
Far away from simming and way too boring for gamers. So I don’t know what audience this is for.
6 Likes
Nowadays, the answer to every question that starts with “why” is: greed for making money. Even if the money is play money.
yeah, thats what I was doing… but visibility was so low, I couldn’t see the ground to descend, let alone the runway. also, the runway didn’t have any lights…
I could have ‘risked’ it, and gone in totally blind…
but with GPS without RNAV doesn’t guarantee hieght, and often brings you in too low.
so, I didn’t want to risk crashing into the ground… given even with full insurance, you dont get 100% back on the vision jet 
so… abort was the safest option…
with hindsight, I wished Id looked at the map, and just diverted myself to closest airport with ILS. the mission would still fail, but it would have been a nice ‘roleplay’, rather than just feeling cheated by having to abort.
yeah, thats looks cool… does it give history weather, given we are flying in the past? (to to 24h)
I probably do need to setup some tools on my PC to help bridge the gap with flight planning.
though not sure how this works with the 24h weather window we have in career.
–
all that said, there weren’t really any other vip flights I could have realistically flown.
why is it that the career mode has 80% of VIP flights in Europe going to the Alps…
most of which have pretty harsh approaches, short landing …bad weather and ice at this time of year.
do they want you crash? … is this all just to extend the grind time/length of career?
surely, there should/could be more vip flight between big cities?
pretty tedious, I really enjoy the progression side of career… but sometimes I want relaxed, not high risk, flights… and they are so hard to find.
another example, ever since I did my tailwheel cert… 80% of flightseeing etc, are tailwheel - why? because they are harder? … again, just give me choice 
For a relaxed flight, you can turn off live weather.
Then you fly only good conditions during mid-day so far.
That’s what I read in a post in these forums a few weeks back and seems to be working.
That site is also my source for weather, and yes, they also have a history. But you still have to be careful with the data, I also had to cancel my flight to Courchevel yesterday because the promised VFR landing from the mission screen could not happen with zero visibility 1000ft AGL. I did check the weather history as preflight planning and it looked very promising, but I did not take into account that my destination was at 6600ft MSL and the reference airport for METAR at only 800, so that overcast clouds at 5600ft (AGL) where directly around my destination 
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Keep in mind that the sim does not use METAR data for most of its weather, and thus can vary substantially from what the nearest airport is reporting in real life, especially where the weather is volatile and localized, like in the mountains.
This is a fundamental flaw of the Career Mode. The player is rewarded for taking risks, and penalized through withheld rewards and reputation loss by making the safe decision. The emphasis is on the mission and the money. While this is classic video game design, this is also supposed to be a flight simulator. Such a design promotes bad aeronautical decision making and dangerous attitudes toward flying. You are the pilot in command, and the system should be crafted to facilitate you making the best choices in that role.
Imagine if in real life, a small business owner/operator knew they could destroy a plane, pay a little money and fly one more job and their reputation is back to exemplary. It’s like it’s not a flight simulator anymore, but an unrestrained capitalism simulator.
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I doubt much thought was put in to that. As you say, emphasis is on making money, and experience. I’m very much looking forward to the return of the Marketplace, and what little nuggets they may have in store for us, no pun intended.
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Even this isn’t well implemented. I can get 1.2 million xp if I put the plane on autopilot and bump the simulation rate up to 64x or just leave and come back several hours later. In the same span of real time, I can hand fly actual maneuvers with passengers, and get 10,000 xp only because it’s a different mission type.
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100% this. Could not agree more. Been saying this since day 1.
It’s not “teaching” any of the aeronautical decision-making process, which is what all that “fun” technical info is designed to inform in real world flying. Not only does it not teach it, it barely addresses it, doesn’t give you a tenth of the necessary tools and information (and/or it’s flawed/bugged), then as you said, doesn’t give you the option to do the right thing (or it often punishes you for it).
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