I just got done with my first career mode flight, and I’m wondering if I missed setting the difficulty somewhere. I got marked down for a few things, that in my opinion, aren’t realistic to expect casual players who aren’t real-life pilots to know and keep track of.
Some examples are flying into restricted space, exceeding the speed limit in class something airspace (I forget exactly which class it said) and going too fast for my flap setting.
I understand that if you are a real pilot (or just super into hyper-realism in simulations) these things matter and probably become second-nature. However as a casual player am I really expected to know which kind of airspace I’m in, know the limits of that kind of airspace, and know the appropriate speeds for each flap setting of each flyable aircraft?
I was imagining that as long as I don’t crash, stay the route, land on a runway, and stay on the runway during takeoff/landing, etc. I would be good and not get marked down a lot.
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The problem is the lack of information included in the sim. It’s very easy to find this stuff elsewhere and once you do you will say “Oh, so that’s why I was penalized for entering restricted airspace”.
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I disagree. More information would only be helpful if you know what it means. I can look up maps as well as the next guy, but seeing a map that says “Class B Airspace around JFK” means nothing to me as a casual player.
Could I do research and try and figure out what Class B Airspace is? Sure, but I don’t think it’s realistic to expect casual players to do this and decode maps and aviation terms real pilots go to flight school to learn about. Not to mention keeping track of all the listed restrictions for each airspace you find yourself in.
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I’ve been saying this since 2020, but especially since career mode launched. Aviation with full rules and regs is extremely complex. And that’s before you get to the fact that the rules are different all over the world.
The sim tries to enforce rules, but it’s inconsistently applied, haphazard, inaccurate, and as you said, not taught well at all. Real aviation doesn’t allow for auto-didacticism in the modern world, and even though the risks are all but eliminated in the sim, the fact it’s still based on reality and all the rules (airspace, etc) exist, it becomes a mess without proper education. Heck, I run into nonsensical things all the time in the sim and I have real world ratings (not that I still can’t learn).
Anyway, if they’re going to go with the premise of letting people mostly learn on their own, they’d be much better off eliminating all but a few basic rules/penalties while they figure out how to improve education and/or all the assists.
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Career Mode isn’t just half baked — it hasn’t even made it to the oven.
It makes ZERO sense to enforce rules that the basic flight school lessons don’t even mention, let alone teach.
I could see these rules being introduced and enforced further into career mode (to make it easier on casuals), but it really ought to be teaching these enforced rules straight out of the box.
The mode so desperately needs to be revisited and massively revised.
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Career mode too realistic…i m still laughing on that….it s supposed be a simulation…could you expect iRacing being gt7 to make Easy your expérience ?
It s not a game for casual gamers..it must not to be…
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… that it will end up justifying a whole new FS iteration.
I highly doubt they are gonna touch career mode in FS24, besides some minor bug fixes, unfortunately.
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If this simulator has made its way to Xbox and PS5, where most players fly using regular game controllers, then I have to agree with the author of this discussion. It is a game for casual players. The days when MSFS was only for full‑on simmers are long gone. The majority of “players” today are casual users.
But I understand that it wouldn’t be fair for someone to earn the same number of points as someone who only plays occasionally.
The point is that aviation requires a lot of education and they’re really not teaching you anything. Heck, they’re not even really explaining what, why, or how the penalties are amassing.
If it was only about flying the plane and making it to your destination in a reasonably solid piece, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
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So why not have a difficulty setting and when starting the career mode you can choose which difficulty and change it later?
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I’m okay with the concept of a tiered reward system in trade with various nerfs, realism settings, time/weather manipulation, etc.
One thing they could do that would help immensely is give a summary of the flight. Like what we get in ForeFlight irl - our 3D track and data points (altitude, speed, time). Bonus if they can include other data like flaps, gear, g force, whatever. But if you at least just give a 3D track and overlay it with the airspace and airport data the sim thinks is most realistic, and show where and why the sim dinged us, then we can analyze how we did rather than accept it blindly judging us. Maybe that’d be enough of an “education” about how not to upset the sim.
Heck, look at the popularity of flight tracking websites. Look at the popularity of third-party trackers in the sim. It’d be a very worthwhile feedback system. If nothing else, we can use it to provide feedback to the devs when it’s nonsensical.
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I don’t mean to presume, but it’s not that the Career Mode is too realistic. It’s that the rules and instructions aren’t properly facilitated to the user. You basically have to stumble through it and figure out what it expects of you through trial and error. As a pilot, Career Mode is not realistic enough. It is a heavily gamified arcade like experience. But it’s an arcade game with a bizarre mix oversimplification, inexplicable complexity and nonsensical gotchas. It’s harder than it should be because the design is bad.
I think you should just write this one off as a loss.
I agree with others above, no significant improvement is going to be made on this front. Major features and game modes are still missing from the version we currently have, so hoping for a major rework on the design of Career Mode is a pipe dream I’m afraid. Maybe they’ll redo it in a future iteration.
All we can do is talk about what it should have or could have been. Ideally, the co-pilot would actually do something. In an “assistance mode” the co-pilot would tell you what your next step is, and help you avoid penalties. For example, once you hit 15 knots on the taxiway, they could chime in with a reminder that the taxi speed limit is 20 knots. 5-10 miles out from the Class Delta they could remind you to contact tower. Or, they should just do that for you.
An example: During a tornado chasing mission I was penalized for “overflying the airport without announcing”. As a pilot, that meant nothing to me. Was there an airstrip nearby that required a position call out? I don’t know, the sim wouldn’t explain. What they actually meant was that I had busted the delta airspace (which might not make sense to a casual player). But I really hadn’t as I remained on tower’s frequency in communication with them the entire time. It’s not just that you’re a casual player, but this stuff doesn’t even make sense to pilots sometimes.
I wish they had just done a more comprehensive training program for the launch of 2024, and then gradually released different job modes as the sim matured, while explicitly stating this is the plan rather than leaving players confused as to why there is no Heavy Cargo. We should just now be getting flight seeing and discovery flight. Maybe then we’d have a well functioning sim and users would have something to look forward to. Instead they released this thing in a pre-alpha state, not even having the honesty to inform users that they’d be buying a bug riddled, unfinished product with major features missing.
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I know.. if they had just called it a pre-release they would’ve gotten almost as many users, they’d be happier and more understanding and said more good things about it, ultimately attracting more players
It’s not to hard to master, All you airline pilots sit at the front of the class. The reason you selected career mode is to look to fly professionally like a real pilot so thats why its set in a so called hard or “realistic” way. If you make mistakes, your meant to, so you can study up and learn from your mistakes. Remember, you can repeat your flight and improve. The bar is set high for you to jump over it at a high level to become a professional career pilot, not some xbox wannabe gamer everyone is sick and tired of crashing into every building they taxi past.(you cant crash into planes, the developers knew this would happen.) So have a read, look in your aircraft and enjoy. Try the engine startup checklists (shift-c) it points you to where controls are. not all aircraft have it but the default ones do
:slight_smile:
- Speed below 10,000 feet, on or below 250 kts. ( so all those idiots in f35’s slow down)
- Ahem, use your throttle “down” or set your auto throttle manually with the CL detente on to or below 249kts and don’t put it on managed mode until your flight plan is out of controlled airspace or get clearance from say intentions ATC or (MS ATC if that has a brain.(in the past its quite inadequate.)
- If your in an airliner, make sure you have constraints button on. “Whats that?” Its the button on the MCP (master control Panel) above the PFD, labelled.”CSTR” next to the QNH reading. On a free simbrief flight plan it shows the speed and altitude of each waypoint listed on your flight plan in the airbus MCDU /Multi function Control and Display Unit and or the Boeing FMS flight management system so you can see what the speed is an anticipate it or slow down/speed up to the next waypoint. You can cycle through each waypoint on “plan” mode and pressing the up button and check them, which you should do anyway in the flight plan to check for discontinuities or ms “user” entries and remove them.
- If not in an airliner pay attention to your PFD (primary flight display) thats the one showing your speed and altitude and you can set your autopilot to keep you out of trouble.
- On all three versions of the Airbus you will find flap speeds listed below the MCP and next to the secal code. They are the “VFE speed” maximums take time to look at them.
I hope this helps and remember its hard for a reason, you have to make the grade, that’s the fun part 
Watch a lot of training vids, on youtube A330 driver is a good community contributor with an excellent series on the A320 v2 for beginners, and the fenix a320 for the hard core. Also to mention is an excellent contributor Jonathan Beckett,
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Career mode is incredibly simplified compared to “hard core” sim pilots usual gigs on other apps.
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Yes the very true for beginners disabling the assistance for true to life feels like the system is trying to get new comers to fail before they have even started, if you look at Onair company theres so many setting you can toggle on and off desired to your preference even with a multiplayer va mode. after almost 2 years why doesnt Asobo get a 3rd party to fix the career system, hopefully after SU5 carrermode will get the much needed attention, also keep in mind this was the start of trailer one Announce Trailer
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