I want to preface this by saying that career mode, in its conception, is a grand and wonderful idea that will add a tremendous amount of depth to the sim. When it works, it’s a semi-rewarding experience.
However, in its current state, it is one of the most flawed features in MSFS2024, and for me has been completely rendered unplayable by its own mechanics.
1.) Private Airstrips and Penalties.
One of the first things I would like to address is on most private airstrips, with all visual assistance on, nothing is clearly marked enough for me to determine where a “taxi way” is designated or even where the runway starts. This leads to an amazing amount of penalties that will rack up very quickly. The only hope at times is the wind is blowing such that the departing runway requires me to U-Turn. One of the most egregious acts is when you first begin your career mode, you’re forced to choose from an uncontrolled private airstrip. Once you begin your first company, the only jobs available seems to be from private, uncontrolled airstrips. This would would perfectly okay, however, when nothing is clearly marked, a simple flight seeing tour becomes a miserable nightmare when your screen is telling you “wheel off runway”, “landed on surface other than runway”. Like it’s a the same the farm land. There is no right or wrong answer. My solution? Stop restricting regional, controlled airports in the beginning. It’s more realistic anyway. You’re not going to farmer Fred’s 150acre farm to get your PPL, you’re going to Ricks CFI located at KYNG.
2). Aircraft/Airline Procedures and Penalties.
-Larger aircraft tend to Taxi around 20-25kts, GS, less than 10kts turning.
-Helicopters do not Hover taxi at busy, controlled airports, if at all. They’re wheeled out on dollied to the helipad and prepared from there. Maybe at a private uncontrolled airstrip, but not at KLGA in New York. IT IS A DANGEROUS MECHANIC TO INTRODUCE, YOU NEED TO GET RID OF IT! Have all career mode help missions start cold and dark on a prepped helipad.
-Flap over speed Penalty’s on quite a few planes when either at a stand still, parked, or just moving about on the taxiway. Every Beechcraft will give you penalties. Both the G36 and the G58.
-Following taxi instructions that direct us to cross our departing runway will cause a penalty for “entering runway without clearance”
3.) ATC and Penalties
ATC is again, highly broken and problematic. Looking at SDK, nothing really screams new either so I didn’t know what to expect, but if you’re going to make it a requirement of career mode, then you NEED TO FIX IT!!
-Infinite Looping requests and callbacks
-instructions not matching mission parameters, causing a drop in end mission Airline procedure rating or Reputation rating.
-LAST SECOND DECENTS!! AGAIN!! I thought this was fixed with MSFS2020 and the Air Nav/AIRAC updates so ATC respects established RNAV approaches? This is affecting passenger satisfaction due to having to drop out of the out like a lead brick, makes commercial airline passenger missions near unplayable.
-Any mission landing at a controlled airport will result in a reputation loss. ATC does not register and store the fact that I acknowledged landing clearance, and my reputation is penalized, HARSHLY!!
-Unheard radio calls - constantly penalized for missing a radio call that was not transmitted, displayed, or heard whatsoever. ATC log will not show a transmission.
-Lastly for ATC - you’re generally given clearance for a certain heading, then directed by the ATC through given headings to get on track with your departure while respecting sound minimus and altitude restrictions. Whatever you have going on is so wrong,
4.) insurance is a scam?
- doesn’t pay out on the event of a crash, I have purposely tested this 6 times. 2 times in each insurance level. Left with nothing and having to restart career completely.
- insurance billed on amount of “total pilot hours flown” as compared to “pilot hours flown in company aircraft”. I don’t know the exact SDK variables, I’m guessing. But 3.9 hours doing flight seeing tours around Cleveland/ Akron in my company Cessna does not equate to over $177k in insurance premiums. If you want an actual cost of what a C172R costs me hourly, I’ll send you copy of my PERSONAL declarations page.
- Helicopters and Penalties
I’ve covered this topic extensively in another post. Get rid of the taxiing and 100% the H125 has trim.
6)6 hour Medivac Missions, in a C208?
I won’t even go into detail about how unrealistic this is especially when all we’re doing is patient transfer between facilities. I thought we were actually going to do actual medical evacuations from like ski slopes. It there are numerous missions where the plane’s range won’t support the flight, and this isn’t only restricted to Medivac missions. Passenger missions in a C172 that are 19 hours long?
It is very very very clear that you had limited, if any real long term testing into this career mode. It is very clear that you have a very limited scope into actual airport procedures, let alone Airline SOPs and operations. This thing is bugged from front to back and penalizes players for doing the right thing. Something like this is supposed to inspire players to become pilots, not make it seem like some complicated, inconsistent mess that’s going to cost you money every time you turn around. You either need to revamp the entire rules side of things and make sure you have real policies and procedures in place that reward players and doesn’t leave them confused, or remove the reputation/ insurance side all together.
I woke up this morning, tried to log into career mode and my bank account (over 430k) was drained for insurance premiums on my singular Cessna on my newest career mode attempt, that I only have 6.6 hours on. My reputation was an A when I landed my last flight last night, it’s now a C, and the game didn’t tell me why?