My point, at least from my POV, is that the “grind” only exists if you are trying to rush to the “end game”, IE the most expensive airplanes.
Which frankly for me is pointless anyway because all those planes are so broken and/or not fun to fly anyway 
I’d maybe me more agreable to wanting to rush ahead of there was actual variety in the available planes, if all of the planes in the game could actually be used. But as it stans for me, honestly I could just keep flying the vision jet forever 
Guys, if I start a company (eg. Cargo Transport) my plane has to be located in certain airports where mission is available. If my plane is in a different city I can pay to move it immediatelly. Can I relocate it manually by starting a mission from a nearby airport and then flying to it to pick up goods? or is the pay to relocate the only option?
Nope, you have to pay. I wish you could just free fly it and pay for fuel but you can’t.
That said, you quickly realize that unless you are moving it a very long way, the cost to transport it is quite small compared to mission payouts, especially as you move past the very basic light cargo in a 172.
Most of my tier 1 Charter missions in my VisionJet end up paying around $300k, and even moving my plane all the way across the US costs like $20k
Regarding the really long missions. I can think of a few ways they could be handled better
Mid flight save - I am not super knowledgeable but can’t the game save the flight by recording the games longitude, latitude, heading, flight plan, mission status and other pertinent data and let the user resume later? That way they can maintain the full no-skip bonus.
Incremental No Skip Bonus - Stop making the no skip bonus during flight be all or nothing. If the user has a 300 mile flight and flies 150 miles of it before using the skip to descent option then give them 50% of the no skip bonus.
The endless no fun grinding was the reason why I stopped Playing Elite: Dangerous many years ago. Hearing that the career mode in FS2024 also has almost reverse progression makes not want to get into it. 
As in all games there should be different difficulty levels. Players should be able to choose how fast they want to progress. Hardcore gamers can take the super slow progression, more casual gamers can select a medium progression speed and newbies can choose the fast progression. Or any kind of player any kind of difficulty they wish. This shouldn’t be a contest where we compare how much patience we have.
By the way: in any game these days I happily choose the the lowest diffculty without remorse when I get the feeling that a game is wasting my time and stringing me along. I’d rather eliminate a boss in 1 or 2 minutes instead of 10 or 20 minutes. Progression is key! I ain’t got time to bleed … err … get bogged down in eternal battle. 
It’s really nowhere near as grindy as Elite Dangerous, I have my own aircraft and companies after only a few days of flying. It’s just making the right decisions on what company to create first (light cargo) and when to pass the IFR certification (not while you’re flying a Cessna 172).
Yes, you’re right again here.
A grind is only a grind if it’s a grind. If it’s not a grind, it’s core gameplay. 
There are games that focus on the grind and where it’s also a lot of fun, such as Diablo, Path of Exile, Destiny or something like that.
It’s nice if you’re happy with the Vision Jet at the moment. I also like flying cargo missions with the C 208 at the moment. Right now it’s fun, but effectively I’m doing exactly what I could do in free flight.
Yes, it’s nice to be rewarded for flying from A to B, but in the long run I personally might find it a little dull. But who knows how it will turn out when we have more aircraft available.
Exactly. Imagine completing the career mode in a couple of months, then what? Go back to free-flight with no progression?
I’m happy to take my time, as we’ll have minimum 4 years to play this mode through.
Still haven’t bought 2024 and have never messed with any of the ‘career mode’ add-ons. For me, that kind of grind sounds just like it is - a grind 
It’s like the planes that have persistence and wear-and-tear that force you to ‘repair’ them in the sim. I never turn those features on. It’s enough of a grind dealing with squawks on the real airplane. The last thing I want to do is virtually fix something in the sim… It’s supposed to be an escape from reality lol.
But seriously, I’m not knocking those who do career mode or anything… If it’s fun then it’s fun!! Just my perspective
But that’s exactly what career is intended to be. Like all the career addons for 2020, the underlying point is really just to give you a reason to fly. The underlying “reward” is supposed to be the flying. If you don’t like that, then it seems weird to be playing a flight simulator? I mean, the money is nice as a way to keep score, but it should ultimately be because you enjoy flying.
That’s true to a degree, but if you want to get to a certain type of missions (firefighting for example) and you have to slog through 20 hours of sightseeing flights first, it’s putting a dampener on the fun. That’s when “wanting to fly” turns into “having to fly”. 
Yes 100%. And this is why I hope they implement the feedback request to allow just flying career type missions in free fly if you want to do that. Win, win.
I wonder why so many people think that the game is penalizing them for skipping. That is a freaking NO SKIP BONUS. This is exactly what it is. You have a base pay, a rep bonus and a NO SKIP BONUS. If you skip, you are not penalized, quite the opposite - if you don’t skip, you are rewarded ffs.
That’s going to be the reality for a lot of players. It’s not too hard to get through the career mode. A few employee flights, a few freelance sightseeing flights, a few freelance light cargo flights, a few medium cargo flights, and you’re looking to do something with a heavy, and you’re getting pretty close to the end.
You can ration that out over a longer time, but folks are excited to do a lot of flying right now. You can make yourself only do employee flights so that you must do a lot more of them. But the problem with that is there isn’t much depth to the variety of these missions. That’s why it feels so grindy to people. Thousands of flights to pick from, but they’re all exactly the same. An endless ocean of possibilities, that’s about a foot deep.
First Flight, Flight Seeing, Tornado Research: Take off, fly 5.2 miles, fly in a circle, land.
SAR: Fly 6.8 miles over there, find that same orange truck again, off field landing
Ag: Fly to the field 5.9 miles away, back and forth spraying
Cargo: Go from one small airport to another small airport exactly 530 nm away.
It’s fun for a few times, but it gets repetitive real, real fast. I mean that’s the reality of being a bus driver. But are people going to want to keep doing that for four years? What are you going to do with the credits once you’ve gotten the company and plane you need?
Even the supposedly limitless number of flights is starting to feel really limited. I’ve unlocked a good chunk of the US, but I’m seeing the same missions pop-up all the time. That your plane just goes to the next place for you makes it feel even more repetitive. There’s no continuity to the series. It’s just the same episode over and over, but the backdrop changes.
Maybe more possibilities will be introduced over time to liven it up.
Really long multi-leg ferry flights would keep people busy and engaged for a long time. The mission is simple, get this cub from California to Maine, coast to coast. You could do 20 to 45 minute hops each day over weeks, up to you, just get the plane there. The plane is as it was when you last left it.
Maybe career tracks or paths that are designed to give you a little bit more excitement and adventure: you progress through being an Alaska bush pilot, short island hopping charters in the tropics, or running cargo in really remote and rugged places. I was very quickly looking to expand the locations and get some place more interesting once I realized how flat and repetitive the missions were, that if I wasn’t flying over someplace really scenic, that this was going to get old fast.
I wish it was a few Microsoft testers and Asobo devs having this conversation after playing a conceptual alpha build, instead of us.
Career missions that work are enjoyable.
Being punished for missions and aircraft that are borked is not…
The mode is currently focused too much on working around the broken elements.
I knew this was coming. Apart from all the bugs and boring missions, this whole career mode is so dumb with its stupid characters, passengers and cringe lines.
Like watching a B version of Sesame Street.
Okay, sorry, but I actually forgot something crucial in my post above.
This part should continue: That’s why the missions that I can’t do in free flight are interesting to me. For example, aerial advertising or firefighting.
I like flying in the sim itself (otherwise I probably wouldn’t have put so much money into it) but I enjoy it more when I have some variety or a goal.
In MSFS 2020, I just flew around aimlessly until I discovered Neofly, and I really enjoyed that. The challenge of the simulator and the reward spiral like in a game, oh I loved it.
As I said, I don’t mind flying cargo with my C 208, but that’s not what makes the career mode attractive for me. For me personally, the appeal comes from the missions that differ from the normal “fly from A to B” ones.
So it’s nice that I get a reward for flying from A to B, but that’s not what the career mode is about for me. It’s just a vehicle for unlocking the more interesting things.
I hope my point of view has become a little more clear now.
I played 2020 almost exclusively with the NeoFly career add-on. One of the things it did for me that I enjoyed was send me to places and airports that I would have never flown to otherwise. I used it at one point to fly more than halfway around the world since you start each session where you ended the previous one.
That is why I also liked bush flights. They took me to places I might not have flown otherwise and gave me the takeoff and destinations for each leg.
Without it I would look at the world map and my eyes would just glaze over with the possibilities.
I don’t think anyone is arguing that they don’t need to get all those bugs fixed or that the mode is currently perfect.
I don’t mind a grind in career mode as long as progress is being made. I think the biggest issues are all of the career breaking bugs and anomalies. Fix those and let’s see how well the progression happens when working as it should. Some rebalancing of the economy may be welcomed, but otherwise most of these grind complaints would go away.
I think this is the same for me…
I don’t mind a slower progress forward, but it feels like it can be very punishing w/ mistakes, that are often not your fault (esp. as someone returning to flight sims after a long break)
yes, there need to be consequences for crashing your plane.
BUT , often Ive no idea what the weather conditions are like at the destination airport (UNKN) and/or the runway windspeed directions are incorrect. no research/planning helps this.
I struggle to land a C172 with a 17-20 knt crosswind.
do I just stop flying my company plane that I earned, until I ‘get good’ ?
(perhaps this is more problematic early on , where you are always flying small airports/airfields?)
whats worst is this only started when I passed IFR cert, and I had no warning of how dramatic this ‘change’ this would be. - it was a massive difficult spike ( I was having zero issues landing b4 cert)
the we have the bugs… where you are spawned into dangerous places, or ATC not responding, hold points that already on the runway.. all costs you xp for no fault of your own.
its a single player ‘game mode’, let players tone down the difficulty if they want - just as with other games. esp. whilst the issues are ironed out.
lets have easy/normal/hardcore modes - which give different economics, turbulence/weather etc.
this solves - but people can then speed run ‘easy’ mode…
sure… let them,
and just like in other games, once they familiar they can replay in hardcore mode.
unlike many other games, msfs24 has inherent re-playability by messing with parameters like weather/time of day … so replaying career at different difficulty levels could be a lot of fun.