If you could design a career mode how would it go?

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I have tried several popular career modes but for some reason they lose my interest quickly because they are strong in one area but lacking in another. I have tried Onair and Neofly. Both are great products but I lost interest. Mainly because I am more of a Bizjet and sometimes GA prop aircraft pilot. None offer a true Bizjet career mode.

In the past for almost 20yrs I did the tubeliners and was part of several VAs in the FSX days. So I amburnt out on that. Hence why I haven’t tried AH or APL.

If you could design a Bizjet career mode how would it go? Anyone out there a pure Bizjet fan and would like to see a career mode geared for that class of flying?

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I’ve literally been working on my own career-mode (kind of) project for a few months now. It’s playable and connects to sim etc but I’m struggling with the “point” of it.

Having also tried Neofly and the like (which is actually pretty ■■■■ good!) I often get stuck on the fact there is no goal really, it’s either jumping up to bigger aircraft, which I’m not interested in as I’m a GA pilot or getting more money for no real reason.

Would really love your thoughts on the objective of a career mode that didn’t have you “progress” through plane types. So we can stick to the ones we each like flying.

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I agree as to the point of programs like Neofly. I’ve dabbled with it occasionally but eventually come to the same conclusion.
I guess if you could compete with other AI airlines for revenue it would make it somewhat less pointless? At the moment though there isn’t really a great incentive to keep playing.

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Obviously, it’s a little unfair on any game to say there’s no point but I find I need an objective. I loved the bush flights as they have little bitesize flights with a TO and landing and the chance to do more if you wish AND most importantly you’re working your way to the end.

I’ve toyed with the idea of dynamic cargo/PAX in airports but for GA it just doesn’t work that well… or maybe it does? Things like “get this package to X” are quite fun especially if there are multiply stops on the way.

Any ideas?

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I’d like to see missions that include some level of difficulty. For instance missions that pay more because the weather is awful and visibility low. that would be cool. And as I said, competing against another Airline for jobs would give me a little more incentive.

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I am stoked there others like me out there. I also have been using a self developed program that generates flights and connects to the sim and tracks my flights. I started in 2020 and learned some programming as i had some time during the pandemic. I don’t plan to make this into a business because I simply don’t have any such appetite. I know I might throw some IP out here but I would gladly fly someone else’s program if it had what I was looking for. I have gone through many iterations of different career modes. But I feel I keep getting closer to one that may stick. I too, am strictly GA so I don’t do tubeliners.

Here are a few of the features of my current game mode that is currently being updated:

  1. The general career mode is you are a pilot that makes a living flying. (Emphasis is make a living as I found that to be the lacking piece so far). The balance is making the career mode not too restrictive to where you feel handcuffed but not to open to where you get bored because you spoiled for choice and feel like you are not heading in any one direction, ergo “lack of purpose”. Of course you can always play things out in your head but why do that when it can be in the game.
  2. Making a living means you have expenses so I came up with the idea of a weekly living expense to simulate things like rent, food etc. I don’t itemize these but you have to bleed away points to drive the need to keep flying.
  3. You choose any airport as your base however if it is more than 500nm from your current contract (more on this below) then you start to incur weekly commute expenses as many pilots do.
  4. You also lose points for regulatory infringements. This is done by the flight tracking. Overspeed, bank, descent/ascent angle, stall are tracked and you have to pay a fine for such out of ordinary maneuvers. I plan on adding some more.
  5. Source of lfights come from several sources.
  • Contracts - You can work for a company and fly their routes. They pay weekly and also by the hour. This is where you have to start as you have just enough to pay your expenses for your first week.
  • Open Market - Auto generated jobs that you have to rent or purchase an aircraft to fly. Once you have a little more money this becomes a viable option to make more money.
  • Tours - This is more of a personal preferences. I like coming up with themed tours (All NBA cities or UEFA CL final venues, etc.) Each leg pays nothing. But completing the entire tour gives you a point bonus.
  • Charter Requests - Once you built up enough to purchase your own aircraft you start to get charter Requests. You can accept or decline these.
  1. Underpinning all of this is the need to earn your licenses to fly various aircraft types. For this the cost is significant as you have to rent a plane. And you cannot fly paying jobs on the type you are earning until you earn it. So at the start you are just flying to earn your first license, a defacto student pilot.

The Contract piece is currently being added and do I have refactor several parts of the code.

What do guys think? Do you have anything similar?

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Wow!

That sounds really full-featured. What have you written it in? Is it web-based? Is it playable? :wink:

At the moment I’d love to have some form of logistics and supply/demand written into the game too but I couldn’t make it fit the small aspect of the GA life.

Love your idea of having to make a living but the problem I had with that was that if you take time off flying would you still have the costs or would they somehow pause?

Airport base is a must and making a player travel to the locations and then their avatar is there unless they fly elsewhere. I’ve seen a few games that have a jump-seat relocation where there’s a small cost which I thought made sense.

I’d be interested to know how you track the infringements!

And tours sound AMAZING.

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I wrote it in pure JS. It is currently only designed for 1 player, sorry.

I never understood how logistics plays into things, although it reminds me of hubs where you generate a certain level of market to fly passengers on routes. I have that logic in game now but that got old as it was using the AI pilots and used tubeliners so it was just a past time when I was away from the sim that I could mess around with.

For the infringements I use the fsuipc offsets for those. To interface with MSFS I use FSUIPCWebsockets. I need to look up those offsets if you want the specific ones.

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About that I fly a lot and rarely have long periods away. But adding a pause can easily be done. If I need it I guess I can add that.

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FSUIPCWebsockets. I need to look up those offsets if you want the specific ones.

No, don’t worry! I’m using SIMCONNECT. Had to write a little C# app to handle the posting of the JSON data to the website. Works well and I think it’s the way a few different ones work like FSEconomy.

I’m the opposite. I fly a few times over the period of a weekend then might not come back to it for weeks! I’d like to make something that works for multiple players so suppose it would need to accommodate all types of gameplay; which raised another issue… if there’s a competitive aspect:

a) what is “doing well” in the game and what does it get you?
b) how do you balance people who play once a month with people who play 3 times a day?

As for logistics, I’ve pondered over it for ages but can’t yet get to a good idea. I suppose if there was a limit on the size of the airfield that the jobs get created at that might help with the GA aspect. In mine, I’m really trying to limit the airliner activity so short hops and small PAX loads. I’d like to allow up to something like Cessna Citation size for the players who want to do longer trips.

I actually like the idea of some sort of meta-game where you’re not flying but you can “play” with the game. Maybe buying and selling resources or something like that. Hard not to go down the AI pilot route. I keep having to reign in and remember the objective is GA hops over interesting and different terrain.

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To do weather based bonus/penalty sounds interesting. I haven’t looked into how to read the weather out of the sim. The only weather based thing I am chcking is the runway condition when landing. Is it wet or iced.

Thanks for the idea.

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That is one of the reasons why I prefer a solo environment. Trying to build a career mode or rather an environment that meets the need of all becomes such a wide open and feature saturated world that it makes it overwhelming and I think that is where the boredom starts setting in because you are left to set your own path, mostly in your head outside the career world, which defeats the purpose of why you joined.

But having said that Onair, Neofly and SkyPark are doing just that and many people love it. I think the draw there is the multiplayer world. For that I use VATSIM and it comes with ATC.

Regarding keeping it GA I have 7 tiers of aircraft type:

  1. Single Engine Piston Prop
  2. Multi Engine Piston Prop
  3. Single Engine Turbo Prop
  4. Multi Engine Turbo Prop
  5. Small Bizjet (pax 1-4)
  6. Medium Bizjet (pax 5-8)
  7. Large Bizjet (pax 9+)

So mostly you get ahor haul flights, but of course some of those GA can do 800nm flights and so you get some of those too.

With the jets you get longer flights but they don’t always go to large International airports except for the Large ones just due to runway length requirements.

So I never feel like I am going to the repetitive destinations tubeliners tend to end up in.

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Certainly sounds like you have a good thing going! You’re right, loads of people love those various offerings. I too have played all of them :blush:

I wonder if there’s something in having a set of challenges all lined up like a story mode. That was you’re not just arbitrarily going from A->B with some amount of cargo and earning money.

LOVE your list of aircraft. I’ve done similar. Nothing wrong with an 800nm flight but the fun for me is in the small hops of 50-100nm.

Is yours something you’re continuing to develop? Mine is very much a side project as I love coding but I’d love to get some form of game loop nailed down to make in entertaining for me then maybe open it up to a small group of testers.

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I’ve literally been working on my own career-mode (kind of) project for a few months now. It’s playable and connects to sim etc but I’m struggling with the “point” of it.

Yeah I’m the same. I initially had fun with OnAir but too quickly came to the “hey what’s the point of this?”-conclusion. Just to earn virtual money in OnAir that I couldn’t really use for anything.

American/Euro Truck Simulator does it better, unlocking upgrades as you earn XP and earn money to buy those upgrades. In MSFS, we have it all from day 1. But it’s a different take on simulation, which may be better for some but not for others.

What I’ve done in MSFS to stay interested (I fly only GA but I guess it could work for airliners too) is simply: Take it serious!

I joined VATSTAR (it’s free) to study P1 (the virtual version of PPL) when flying on Vatsim. Then the “point” becomes to “do it right”, study and pass the written exams and virtual checkride. After P1, there’s P2 (instrument rating) etc.

On top of that, usually 1 or 2 weekly group flights. One being bush trip inspired. There are other such free virtual training organizations out there, just check the Vatsim page for a list.

Flying with real ATC, proper use of checklists etc. is quite entertaining and can be a challenge.

And the cherry on top: I keep a pilots logbook :rofl: So I jot down my flights almost in the same manner as in an actual logbook (adapted for sim use though).

So to answer the question “If you could design a career mode how would it go?”, I guess my approach is not really a professional career as such, but more like how a hobby career would play out IRL, but in simulation.

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Yeah, it is constantly being developed as I find new ways to make the role play more challenging, engaging and long lasting.

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Your response got me thinking. In the days when you would play a game to turn it over, or beat it as some say, you would be engaged until that happened. Then many didn’t ever play that game again.

However, a simulation is different. It has no defined end. And considering the investment some have made into MSFS ( software, add-ons and hardware) you certainly don’t want it to end. Making a career mode that has an end would be resetting the clock. So I believe the goal is making it challenging, in some cases difficult, enough to keep you engaged no matter what level you have achieved. Easy to say difficult to do!

However, the reason my self-developed career mode has met that goal for me is because I can completely change the trajectory of my career mode at will. There are no other users to account for. That can’t be said for the MMO style career modes out there.

That is also why I like hearing other ideas because it is a new target I can set that keeps me engaged.

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I would definitely be interested in trying yours out sometime if it ever becomes available :grinning:

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I’ve also been poking at this question for a while, nice to see the thread!

I’ve used a few of the “career” addons, like Neofly, but never really taken to them.
They’re great addons, the “problem” is really me, not the app :rofl:

I have long experience of open world “make your own career” type sims/games/virtual Worlds, like ED, SecondLife, etc so I’m used to both structured loops and unstructured across a range of contexts.

The issue I have with the whole “Pilot Career” thing is this: why would I want a stressful job in a virtual world that I use to escape the real world?

I’m excluding the use cases for real world training here (mainly procedural/mental/educational, not so much flight realism) which are completely valid but a completely different topic (and set of activities).

So I’d turn this on it’s head and ask, what types of activities can we do that generate fun and excitement that can be sustained over the medium to long term?
How do you do that without making it an “office job”? (yes, anthing can turn into a boring “office job”!).

There’s a few examples of the more “exciting activities” floating around:
. Hype PG’s helicopter rescue/firefighting
. Neofly para/medical++ missions
. General emergency flights
. Skydiving pilot w/ Milviz Porter tablet app
. ??

What sort of skill development curves can be used to add a progression system in order to be able to take on more complex missions, without turning it into a real life slog?

What I’m getting at is how can we make something that strikes a good balance between casual and realistic, arcade vs sim, fun vs hardcore that encourages repeat use?

We also don’t have to make a “career” a full simulation of real life, especially when there’s already so many apps intent on doing that, some quite successfully.

Finding the flow in interesting FUN activity design, is the challenge.

We have an incredible virtual world playground here in MSFS, with a lot of untapped potential.

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19

I’ve used just about every career type addon:

OnAir
Neofly 3
Neofly 4
The SkyPark
Air Hauler 2
Aviatife

None of them have been what I want. They tend to make me start grinding to earn money, and then I start getting bored. Or, it turns into a dispatch game where I spend more time telling other pilots where to go instead of flying. It’s basically a mobile “idle game” then.

I want something that focuses on the flights and missions, not the business. Lots of unique situations and passengers, without gamifying it too much. A family of 4 going to Disney World, or two guys going to some current NASCAR race. Maybe a group of doctors traveling to a medical conference, or a sports team traveling to a game. (I don’t watch sports, but they’re good examples since there’s a lot of private jets and charter flights for sporting events. I’m also associated with the pilot for a college basketball team, and I live near-ish to an airport commonly filled with jets for Nascar teams.)

It’d be interesting to loosely tie flights to real scheduled events.

Personally, I have almost zero interest in cargo. I only want to fly passengers. I like the idea of charter flights.

While I don’t use Self Loading Cargo, I do own it. Something I really like about it is how it shows your passengers thoughts throughout the flight. I kinda like the idea of passenger thoughts and feedback instead of rewards and punishment.

I also don’t want a dispatcher talking to me. Ever. I don’t want any sounds that aren’t within the sim. (I’m looking at you, Neofly and SkyPark)

I found that flying for a VA has been better for me than anything else currently available. I fly for Elite, which is mostly business jets, but has smaller GA aircraft in the Air Taxi division. The only drawback is that there is limited aircraft I’m allowed to choose from. I typically use a program called Let’s Fly to choose a destination for me if I can’t decide on one.

I’ve been editing these paragraphs after typing them, so hopefully they kinda flow together. I need to go to bed, but perhaps I’ll add more thoughts on this topic later. There’s a lot I want, but no expectations that I’ll ever see it.

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It’s incredibly interesting to read such detailed responses to this question. It looks like there are at least a few of us out there who are looking towards a similar goal.

Sonicviz
Not making things a slog is HIGH on the priority list. It get dull really quick having to fly flights you don’t really want to or planes you don’t like just to earn money or xp or ratings etc. The balance between casual and realistic is a difficult one with any sim, especially if it includes some kind of economy. Maybe there’s a different way to measure progress than money. Is this a thought?

JollyGreen8206
Love the idea of putting a story to the passengers. I too have tried SO many of these just to end up with a “what’s the point” grind. VAs always seem to focus heavily on actually flying airliners on real schedules so I’ve always steered clear myself.

Finding the “why” is going to be the hardest part of this journey but with conversations like these there’s bound to some brilliant ideas that come up! :slight_smile:

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