Career Mode Issues (updated)

I’m finally enjoying FS 2024 as we now have a quite stable version.

Some issues are still annoying, though. I’ll list a few:

  1. My C-172 might start a mission on a heliport on top of a building

  2. Sometimes you’re taxiing some meters away from a tree and it’ll crash out of the blue

  3. Trucks and cars will randomly park and drive in your main pathway

  4. Groundspeed meter for taxiing sometimes shows random and erroneous values

  5. No night missions at all (this is really annoying and frustrating), even with IFR and Night Currency certifications

  6. No live weather if you fly as a Freelancer

  7. I can’t load missions into EFB on Xbox

  8. I can’t choose an aircraft to fly a mission, even those I bought in Deluxe edition

  9. I can’t filter missions at all

  10. I want to create my own flight plans

That’s it, I’m practicing and learning many aviation skills and this sim is just amazing, but some fixes are mandatory and urgent.

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Free Flight is a better training environment if you are trying to learn actual aviation skills and procedures. You can learn more from actual pilots from YouTube content creators from IRL. Their knowledge applies to Free Flight without the redicoulous penalties impossed within Career Mode.

I consider Career Mode and advanced random Flight Plan and aircraft addon selector so one doesn’t have to think too much about it.

The only thing Career Mode provides is a metric to compare your “success” or “devotion” to the game compared to other players. The metric is fictional, but it does provide a metric in which players can compare their acheivements. In game flight hours are meaningless. People may have 15000 hours, but it doesn’t necessarily reflect their skills, experience, or knowledge.

I enjoy the Career mode because it makes it simple to choose a location, a choice of reason to fly, and a choice of aircraft (albeit limited at the moment). Career Mode is definity not the medium to learn how to fly within any remotely credible aviation operation (simulated or real). It’s still a game. You might enjoy it more if you learn form IRL and credible sources. IRL information from actual pilots is definitely applicable in many cases in MSFS and makes the experience satisfying to be able to apply real techniques in game. IRL Information applies to the game, but not vise versa. If MSFS embeds their “training” seed into people who eventually persue a real career in aviation, the skys will become a deadlier profession and passengers will pay the ultimate cost with their lives for pilots who considered themselves heroes in MSFS.

Remember, an IRL instructor cannot train someone that thinks they already know everything.

IMO

Oh, I’m not a real pilot. I’m only a casual simmer.

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This sounds like a data error, like a wrong flag for the facility. It would probably help to include the ICAO identifier.

Which instrument are you talking about there? Are you talking about the info line in the EFB? The airspeed indicator can be affected by wind, so a gusty day with strong winds might lead to something like that.

I don’t think this is true. That 40 kt headwind I’m just flying in is exactly what I see on windy.com. I seem to remember reading somewhere that live weather only starts when you obtain a specific certification (Instrument Rating?). Also, the “golden” missions probably have a fixed custom weather so they’re not blocked by bad weather.

[edit: I was talking about employee missions, there. But I’m pretty sure I had live weather in the few flights I did as a freelancer before I crashed my company plane.]

This is working for me, most of the time. Maybe if you explain the issues you’re having, we can figure out what’s going on.

Here is my summary of the debacle called Career Mode.

THE CONCEPT:
It is a new and exciting part of the simulation world off game play that is an entire mystery because there is no manual or instructions. If it were intuitive and well designed I could forgive that oversight. But it is just plain old laziness and disrespect to the community. In reality it is far from intuitive, and far from well designed. It is, in fact, a mental torture of fail after fail, confusion and frustration piled on top of more confusion and frustration and more fails.

THE CONFUSION.
How do you work to create a company? Check youtube. Disrespect from the devs.
How does the insurance work? Check youtube. Disrespect from the devs.
How do repairs work? Check youtube. Disrespect from the devs.
How do you purchase a new aircraft? Check youtube. Disrespect from the devs.
Why can’t you fly missions when you passed your certification? Because you have to find a special golden icon somewhere on the planet first. It’s obvious right?
Why is your new aircraft and company not getting any missions when you have all the certifications, the pilot, and the plane all in one place? Because THOSE missions are on the other side of the planet you fool. Isn’t that obvious too?

God I could go on all night. Don’t even get me started about pressing ENTER and not getting any response because it is bugged to hell and just failed and dropped from a high S to a low B in reputation.

I am truly afraid to attemp to link up my pilot in NZ to my Vision Jet missions in Europe because I fear I will never see NZ again. The bugs SCARE me.

I am putting Career mode in the wardrobe to gather dust until 2026 when the all clear sounds. This is just unaceptable Microsoft/Asobo. What an absolute disgrace.

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Great points…

I have been working up in the Career mode and to add to your posts there should be some better mission development. It is of course randomly created but frustrating when the airports selected are bush airports (not a bush style mission) or no IFR procedures or charts…again really. I am continuously amazed how the missions that I get for a Caravan Cargo flight end in a tiny airport not even wide enough to do a 180 on the runway without a penalty and of course dont get me started on a 1 star flight that ends with a 40kt wind ripping through the mountains.

I fly for my actual career… and this should be fun and relaxing not the other…

To go in reputation from S to C in one flight is amazing… lols… and no I dont suck but what are they trying to build here, something that is fun or something that will just frustrate people. This is not the kind of “game” that should have impossible boss fights, IMHO

I hope they manage to fix this and add aspects that allow for more control…

Straight up there should be an “experience desired” slider or something that allows you to tone it down a bit. Once I am allowed to make my own topic I will get some more thoughts out.

“I Start Where I Land”

The MSFS career mode has great potential, but right now, it lacks immersion and continuity. The biggest issue? You don’t start where you land. Instead, the system randomly places you elsewhere for the next mission, breaking the sense of realism.

What Needs to Change?

Aircraft repositioning should be realistic. Planes should stay where they land, with no magical teleportation. If a player needs their aircraft elsewhere, they should be able to assign an AI pilot to ferry it to another airport. This should take a realistic amount of time. For example, if a PC-12 takes 1.5 hours to fly from Miami to Jacksonville, it should actually take 1.5 hours in real time before it is available at the new location.

Player repositioning should respect time progression. If a player decides to travel to another airport, they should not instantly teleport there without consequence. Instead, the sim should show a stylized time progression in the menu, like a clock fast-forwarding, so the player sees, for example, “I just flew 9 hours from Miami to Paris. It is now 7 AM in Paris, and my next mission happens in real-time at 7 AM.” If a player travels across time zones, the in-game time should adjust accordingly.

There should be no more random mission locations. Missions should be based on the aircraft’s real-world position, not on some random algorithm. Just like in ETS, players should be able to take jobs based on where they actually are. If there are no good missions at a small airport, the player can choose to reposition their aircraft or themselves realistically.

ATC and route freedom should be improved. AI-managed ATC like Beyond ATC should replace the limited stock ATC. There should be no more forced blue brackets for approaches, allowing pilots to plan their own flights.

Why This Matters?

A true career mode should feel like being a real pilot, not just jumping from one mission to another with no logical connection.

The solution is simple: Keep aircraft where they land, allow AI to reposition them in real-time, and let players reposition themselves with realistic time progression.