At present, mission objectives are marked with an exclamation point which makes it easier to see what items or ships are critical to mission success. But this often isn’t enough to avoid confusion.
Take for example the mission ‘Lucifer’. I was supposed to escort a transport ship safely through Ice Pits to the Cobalt Mines gate. The transport, however, refused to spawn with its escorts until I approached its starting gate which was not indicated with a waypoint or any other special indicator.
Another example would be the beginning ‘tutorial’ missions where the player has to find the lone ‘pirate scout’ hanging out in the station system and eliminate them. The mission description usually has a hazy reference to a structure or asteroid field, but doesn’t provide a waypoint. As the station security ships usually kill these low-level scouts within seconds of them spawning, it can be very confusing to intercept the ship if you don’t already know where it will spawn.
So, I would like to suggest three things to help the common masses.
- Place waypoints on the HUD (similar to the waypoints that mark beacons) for mission objective areas so there is less guess work on where the player needs to fly on the map.
- Make mission critical markers (the gold exclamation points) visible on the HUD at any range, similar to how the Captain marker shows up on the HUD during Combat Recon.
- Lastly, to avoid annoying players with a cluttered HUD, make optional mission markers only show up on the HUD if the player accepts said mission in the TAB menu.