Failure in career mode - and the accompanying loss of income and reputation - triggers sometimes strong emotional feelings in mission pilots.
The frustration with failing in MSFS 2024’s career mode is not just about losing virtual currency or reputation points - it’s a multifaceted psychological experience. Loss (e.g. reputation points) is valued higher than mission success and doubts about one’s own ability to lead a mission to success.
And above all one experience: Perceived injustice in the event of failure of a mission through no fault of one’s own. All contribute to making failures feel deeply personal and discouraging. Addressing these factors (perhaps by offering more balanced progression of mission criteria) could help to minimize negative sim emotions and encourage a more positive gaming experience.
What does that mean in detail? Failures in career missions are annoying. You are punished with a loss of income and reputation. This is especially annoying when the failure isn’t your own fault. You are punished for something that wasn’t under your own control. If you collide with a tree on the taxiway while taxiing, you’ll feel anger and frustration because the collision wasn’t your own fault but rather an annoying bug in the game. The player feels like the simulation is arbitrarily punishing, no matter how perfect the pilot is.
In all games that simulate challenges there is some kind of point deduction for failure. This is acceptable. But no player of a car racing simulation would accept being penalized for a tree on the racetrack that throws him off course.
Players have a strong sense of justice. They clearly distinguish between their own failure, which has negative consequences for their score, and a failure in a challenge caused by the game itself.
There’s a topic here in the forum, “FS 2024 Career Mode,” with 2,870 posts and 55.2 k views. Everyone is describing here their frustration over the unjustified loss of income and reputation during a mission, generated by the FS 24 simulation, entirely through no fault of their own. It doesn’t take a psychologist to understand that these frustrating experiences lead to no longer wanting to fly missions in career mode.
The request: The career mode needs to be fundamentally revised. First of all, the severe game bugs or inconsistent mission criteria need to be ironed out. An alternative solution is providing an option for all missions, whether a mission can be flown as a free flight mission or as a mission pilot in a company. Then the simmer can decide whether he wants to master a purely flying challenge as a pilot. Or as company manager, which can be rewarded with income and reputation, but at the same time it can be the cause of severe frustration.