Just wondering about career mode--feel like I'm hearing from people saying it's fun and interesting but also that there are so many bugs that it makes it not worth trying or able to advance. Interested to hear some takes from those who have tried it and the extent to which it has improved / stabilized since initial release.

 

Thanks

Tried career twice. 

First time the pilot head was sticking out of the top of the plane like he was 11 feet tall. 2nd time I got an overspeed flaps penalty when releasing the brake from being parked.

Looking at today's pathetically short bugs that were fixed this week, we have a LONG way before this $200 game is worth it.

That's not sounding too promising.

My helicopter was afraid of me like a small deer as soon as I entered the scene and jumped away into the woods.

In the end, MSFS told me it was my fault and decreased my reputation 

It can be a fun experience. I'm going to wait for improvements before any more flights though.

My biggest gripe is the not great mission generation. You end up with ridiculous flights and no way to regenerate them. So, you're stuck with the same lame missions. At least when flying your own company. Also, the missions tend to be way too long for light freight, for example.

It needs more aircraft and mission variability. it's a good start.

8 hours ago, Purr said:

Just wondering about career mode--feel like I'm hearing from people saying it's fun and interesting but also that there are so many bugs that it makes it not worth trying or able to advance. Interested to hear some takes from those who have tried it and the extent to which it has improved / stabilized since initial release.

 

Thanks

I have a cargo company and I bought 2 cargo Cessna 172s. Career Mode has bugs, but they aren't game ending bugs. You can generally get around the bugs.  The most frequent bug I see is that the blue squares that you are supposed to follow for your flight path, sometimes goes through a mountain. But it's easy enough to fly around or fly over the mountain, and I don't think you get deducted points if you don't exactly fly inside the blue squares.  For ATC, if you are on IFR, you can just cancel the IFR flight plan with ATC and then you don't have to deal with ATC again.  Also, I have seen photos of taxi paths that go through trees in Career Mode (because the trees are on the taxiway path), but honestly, that hasn't happened to me yet and my understanding is, you can "skip" the taxiing to the runway if that ever happens to you.

There are people out there who have flown hundreds of career missions and they have bought over 100 planes for their companies.  So obviously, those people are getting Career to work just fine.

I would say Career Mode isn't polished at the moment, and that's why there are still some bugs. But it's definitely playable, based on my own experience, and also others who have a much larger aircraft fleet and larger company than I do.

Edited February 21, 20251 yr by abrams_tank

I only display the blue squares in Flightseeing or First Flight missions. In Charter or Freight Missions they are not necessary since we can use the wonderful flight planning Garmins in the 172 or the Vision Jet, for example. I really love the charter flights. The distances are between 90 and 200 nautical miles so it doesn't get boring when using the Vision Jet. The VJ is very good for landing on small airfields so the randomness of mission creation actually ads to the fun. The last few days I mostly flew to small Appalachian airfields where I had to maneuver around hills to reach the runway and safely bring those business people to their destination. Lots of interesting charter missions in the Alps, too. I only once had one of my passengers hanging out of the bottom of my plane. So this bug doesn't happen to often, at least with the 172 or VJ.

The rescue missions are fun too, because you have to be very careful when landing in rough terrain.

Anyone else experiencing progressively increasing stutters in long missions? Tried the Career mode yesterday (been off it for quite a long time) and jumped on a 2000NM flight (737MAX / VIP mission). Had to exit the sim a couple of hours in, as, even though I was flying over nowhere, the stutters became insane. 

15 minutes ago, Swe_Richard said:

Anyone else experiencing progressively increasing stutters in long missions? Tried the Career mode yesterday (been off it for quite a long time) and jumped on a 2000NM flight (737MAX / VIP mission). Had to exit the sim a couple of hours in, as, even though I was flying over nowhere, the stutters became insane. 

Did you check your VRAM usage? It could be related to the VRAM bug, but the fix for that is coming in SU2.

On 2/20/2025 at 8:00 PM, VeryBumpy said:

we have a LONG way before this $200 game is worth it.

Just a quick pedantic clarification. The game is a $70 game. That is entry price for the base game and gets you everything you need.

I paid $70 for the Standard Edition. You might have gotten the model with all of the upgrades and bells and whistles, but those are all optional. So, the $200 figure is exclusive to just you and all who chose to pay that amount.

3 minutes ago, salasnet said:

Just a quick pedantic clarification. The game is a $70 game. That is entry price for the base game and gets you everything you need.

I paid $70 for the Standard Edition. You might have gotten the model with all of the upgrades and bells and whistles, but those are all optional. So, the $200 figure is exclusive to just you and all who chose to pay that amount.

Depends where you bought the game, some of us paid much less for the bigger editions 😉

Tried loading up 2024 (very choppy during intro videos) and then loaded free flight. Made the mistake of clicking the menus while in the Caravan and CTD. Back to 2020!  

I posted a list of career mode "quirks" and some tips in this thread: I've started my Career :-) AT LAST !!!! - Page 2 - Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020/2024) - The AVSIM Community

If you can deal with the bugs and don't consider time spent on a broken mission as time wasted, it's fun. It will send you to airports you didn't even know existed in areas you probably wouldn't have flown to otherwise. It may inspire you to look up how some of these things are done in real life, and I've discovered some really cool agricultural aviation and banner towing YouTube vids as a result. I've taken a break from career mode until SU1 is officially released (I'm not on the beta), but the fun I've had so far has overshadowed the annoyances.

 

How could it be improved since release? There was only 1 update since november adressing some crashes, nothing else.

Im not a beta user.

On 2/25/2025 at 2:18 PM, MarcG said:

some of us paid much less for the bigger editions 😉

Because of regional pricing or a different outlet for Steam sales? i.e. Buy a key somewhere to use on Steam at a discount?