Sim 6 I'm done with Career mode 2026

User Support Hub User Interface & Activities
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1

I recently bought MSFS24, Lots of positives about this game and how it works bearing in mind how complex it is. As a gamer I primarily bought it due to the introduction of Career mode as I wasn’t flying for just the enjoyment of flying, I could actually have progression. Challenge mode is also fun.

Been steadily building my bank and fleet, I maintain the planes every morning and wash them and its been sort of ok, sometimes a little expensive to maintain the PC12’s and citations, yesterday 10/09/26. while doing other things and refusing to use sim rate, I flew for a total of 15 hours. (I was up early) and gained 48mil for my fleet.

I had the usual 884k and 2.2mil bills for pc12’s etc. but one of my neo’s had a 41 million maintenance cost, so along with the other fees I lost money after flying for a whole day.

In essence I am done with career mode for now as that is just not 1-realistic, 2-Fun, 3- A Fair and reasonable return for my time.

Other than that and a few buggy planes this game is very good.

2

I have filled out the pre Dev stream on Twitch to ask for a fairer passive aircraft economy - ie they should not have the same wear and tear or should earn the same if being flown for a similar amount of time.

the form is on the weekly briefing

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3

Oh, also, this is normal for career mode and not a bug - it is by design so I suspect this will be moved.
For future reference also for bug reports
Vote for your own report and second fill out the entire form as set out or else it will not be looked at by the bug fixing team :wink: :smiley:

4

You would be surprised how realistic that is. You really believe an airline does not have very bad days where you don’t make any money?

Mathijs

5

So it is normal to spend time flying and the cost to outweigh the gain? So the time spent supplying a service has an overall Net-Negative effect? If this was the case then there would not be an Airline running anywhere in the world. This makes no sense to me.

6

Hi @Davie7219 ,

Thank you for this report. We’ve moved your topic into the User Support Hub.

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7

Well in reality airlines have very small margins but this Career mode is in essence a game and therefore could give a much better positive feel to the game.
Since 2024 started there has always been a net loss because the passive aircraft costs more to keep in the end than it earns you particularly when you have a lot of them.
I had 130 at one time and the time it cost to maintain them and the maintenance fees to maintain them became so burdensome I have stopped playing it altogether now.
Until they let the passive aircraft earn the same as the 1 you fly it will be impossible to keep up with costs. It forces you to start flying airliners to pay for the others you place around the worldmap (which I did for the joy of finding a route I wanted on the day or for the purpose of finding a mission that would pay more) just to pay for the very high wear and tear costs on passive aircraft.

I strongly feel that if a passive aircraft is flown for the same amount of time as the freelance one you fly and experiences the same wear and tear as the 1 you fly then it should earn the same as the one you fly.

8

I do understand that no business is a ‘Pipe Dream’ and the things that shut down airlines are -

  1. Fluctuating A1 jet fuel costs.
  2. Aircraft leasing costs.
  3. Staff payroll
  4. Gate fees and maintenance schedule.
  5. IROPS i.e. extreme weather etc.
  6. Fierce competition from other operators.

Be that as it may, no business owner would enjoy or have fun seeing their investment go down the ‘swany’ but this is a game and although it has to be semi-realistic, having prohibitive maintenance costs or going out of business is no Fun for anyone.

9

That would be the only thing realistic about the whole career mode in that case…

10

Oh, that is cynical but again, it’s a game. :slightly_smiling_face:

11

Career is a game, very enjoyable until you realise they punish you at every moment possible and never recompense you when you lose your aircraft through no fault of your own or put in (not always on purpose) a an element that costs you a penalty of some nature, or you start a mission and it damages your aircraft through a bug - yeah, this is very much a GAME and not an accurate representaion of a real world economy.

I want to enjoy it as a game and as such it needs to be fair and not a punishment. Folk just lose interest then! There is no reward. If one understands the chemistry of the brain and how to keep people seeking the dopamine reward, then you understand how to keep someone coming back to your game and improving the finances in your pocket! MS needs to get a grasp of that element of “addiction”!

12

There has to be some ‘pain’ as most humans also enjoy the challenge, but I agree it has to feel fun. A delicate balance for sure.

13

I prefer a carrot rather than a stick. Failing to get a carrot, so to speak, is pain when you fail to achieve an outcome. This mode sets you up to fail on purpose though through lack of fair rewards. I certainly dont expect to have it all on a plate but I also want fair financial rewards when I get it right.
We buy aircraft at the same price, they are set to wear at the same rate, they cost the same to maintain so they should all earn the same - bar the weather bonus and no skip etc.

14

The progression is not realistic, the check-rides are not. It is all AI generated without much difference from one mission to the other (even the dialogue is the same), in other words, if you have flown one mission of a certain type, you have flown all of them.

This career stuff is miles behind the fun and excitement of the FSX missions, a game released in 2006. Most importantly, there is no way to skip all the nonsensical grind and just skip to the interesting stuff that it was advertised to do.

Then there are of course the bugs and the very few aircraft that have been introduced into career mode.

15

Oh yes, I agree, the same nonensical comments from passengers, the same missions on repeat, very little new aircraft in the game, tons of bugs and penalties, unfair reward system - yeah, I have stopped playing and wont play until they fix all this but I don’t think they care about retaining players because there is always the next new buyer that thinks this is fun until it isn’t.

16

This just can’t compete with the custom missions that were there in FSX, original dialogues by real voice actors, great scenario’s, very diverse and (mostly) realistic. Why can’t they just go and do that? The reward system was also very cool with “bus ticket home” after landing with an engine failure in the Swiss Alps for example. It just is infinitely more fun. And of course FSX (as well as FS9) had actual flight lessons from zero to hero instead of these poorly put together tutorials, there is little to no educational value, it is just AI slop (my opinion)…

17

Sadly I never got to experience those because this is my first simming experience and yes, it does soundlike a LOT more fun.

I hope someone of influence in MS/Asobo read this and have the B..ls to take some of your advice!

18

I mean, just as an example:

Lessons

Rod Machado (real world flight instructor) lessons:

So much more guidance, talking you through every step. These lessons were written by a real flight instructor and there were a lot of them, close to 50, from Student Pilot taking you first solo, then Private Pilot, Instrument Pilot, Commercial and eventually Airline Transport Pilot (real world progression).

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Complete with comprehensive briefing material for each lesson:

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FSX (and FS9) had a “learning center” where you could spend hours reading:

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Missions

Example of a short mission:

You even see the oil temperature increase while oil pressure drops, well before the OIL PRESS annunciator comes on and the engine cuts, just wow. If you were checking the instruments you could have seen it coming. Would never expect such level of realism or attention to detail from Asobo.

And the reward is a bus ticket home :joy:

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There were over 50 of such missions with varying levels of difficulty, very diverse scenarios, extremely fun and most of them quite realistic. Voice actors used for the dialogues etc.

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Free Flight

FS9/X could be used as a training tool, it had flight analysis to check the path you’ve flown, altitude and speeds etc. For example, I used this extensively to practice flying holdings patterns until they stopped looking like potatoes:

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That’s why I’m saying, what MSFS has to offer is very limited with the career mode and the very few, very poorly put together tutorials. It all has little educational value, it’s great for just droning around and it looks great of course. But in all other areas it severely lacks behind a program released in 2006.

19

Great video, thanks A220 I wouldn’t have seen that otherwise. :slightly_smiling_face:

20

Yes, actually these are great training videos and should be in the Career mode training sections, they are waaay better than what is there.