I don’t get this. No one wants to remove the progression, those who want to play career mode for the progression, still could do it, and just ignore the sandbox mode.
Don’t get this either. If they are not really interested in the missions, then why are you concerned about long term interest in the missions?
Opening Career Mode is fine by me. I just don’t think Microsobo is going to do it. The Career Mode progression seems purposefully designed to keep engagement in the sim up, and removing the mission restrictions takes that hook away to keep playing it. This is a grinding game, like a fetch quest in an open world role playing game. If there’s no reward for the grind, folks are going to get bored. More than they already are.
And they also seem to be rather tightly controlling how the whole thing works because they probably want to monetize it through Marketplace sales, and possibly add competitive elements.
Maybe they will open up it for free play when everyone has left, the last thing they can do to try to get some players back.
I do forsee most players getting bored with this. It’s because the missions themselves don’t have any depth and all the details are the same, so you feel like you’re doing the same thing over and over and over. And folks are already running out of things to do. They’ve only got enough content for a couple months of play for the dedicated gamer type. Maybe that’s the norm for a video game, but I think many of us were under the impression that this is how you were going to be doing your long term simming.
I don’t know what they tried to achieve with this.
These FSX missions were amazing, I could play those over and over. Of course they weren’t automatically generated and require time to develop. But in comparison those missions were far more interesting, flying a NDB approach into Dutch harbor with bad weather and instrument failure. Dual engine failure over the ocean, rescue missions etc. with proper voice dialogues, some kind of decision making involved. It was a lot of fun, educational, challenging, none of those were boring or repetetive.
The reward system was awesome as well, medals, post cards, bus tickets home 
. Proper flight lessons by Rod Machado, reading material, flight analysis tool. The educational part is lacking ever since FSX.
Ah I had forgotten about that. Must be nice to have the time to develop a game so that it’s not released half baked.
I do believe missions without career mode have a wide audience, just look at the Hype Performance Group H145 action pack, they have almost everything (and had already in 2020) what 2024 missions have for helicopters, the only thing missing is aerial application.
They have a very active community, users adding new missions, there is a very sophisticated and realistic HEMS mission mod, firefighting, logging, whatever you want. The only problem I have is that only works with the H145, which is a great helicopter and I love it but also would love to use other aircraft.
I had very high hopes that 2024 will have a similarly sophisticated mission system available with any rotorcraft, since it has all the infrastructure (sling load, spraying, etc.). Having all that locked behind the primitive, idiotic, buggy career mode was a bitter disappointment.
I don’t know, this would make it like a simulator instead of a game. A simulator would have the ability to set various scenarios in a sandbox format…so this thread is really just asking for the simulator to be a simulator.
For me, Career Mode is one thing, flying Missions is another.
There’s another 120 Votes here that could be merged to this Wishlist item. They look the same to me:
Except, we end up ignoring career mode altogether in favor of Neofly or SayIntentions’ SkyOps because the native career is too rigid and yet not rigid enough. It certainly never feels like a pilot’s journey into the higher dimensions of aviation. It feels like one day you’re totally new and won’t even be given full flight controls, then you fly around a couple of schoolyards and now you’re working for 17 different airlines, whose dispatchers are all functioning alcoholics.
They should just open up the entire sim. Let the community make Improvement mods for everything, including career mode and unfck this mess.
I agree. They should outsource everything they can to third parties, and should have made somebody like Neofly an official partner. Then incorporate that directly into the sim, not unlike they did with the Working Title EFB. Then Asobo would be free to focus on the gaming and graphics engine or streaming functionality. Some things they seem to consider core features and are unwilling to open up, however. This most likely and the weather engine.
What fires?
Works for me?
What’s needed is a different class of Missions that are more like Challenges. More complicated. Bad IFR conditions. No penalties for failure, but they may be extremely difficult to complete, have many stages and take days or several sessions to finish. Multiple aircraft in a single mission including helicopters. Imagine the old rhino transport mission upgraded to FS2024 scenery and aircraft! Score can be kept, just as already done in Challenges. No penalties for failure, you only try to get as high a score as possible so you are competing with everyone else in the world if you want to, otherwise just try to improve for your own satisfaction.
My favorite old mission was the one where you land a Cessna in a tiny clearing in the forest in a huge snowstorm. I think I enjoyed flying that one at least 20 or 30 times. Now that was a challenge, and I never got a nasty message saying I didn’t reply to ATC or taxi too fast. Just concentrate on what matters for flying.
If you want to be graded on how often you push the button to respond to ATC and all other arcane procedures then stay in Career Mode.
Ah, that’s because I liked it previously and forgot!
I nominate this for the best Carer Mode post I’ve seen… on any site.
Username is great too😁
can you expirement to see what gives you the best grades in free flight?
Good question, I’m not sure, but also haven’t been using 2024 since before Xmas since I only fly in VR, and VR is less than useful right now…. 