What I really want to see are group recon missions. Coordinated attacks that take 5 or 6 people. Group combat missions are just boring and repetetive. I really loved the recon/spy missions because they each have a story and I can definitely see this being the direction the game's missions take.
The mission should say: "Get a team of X people together" and when you make a group and get enough people in it, it tells you your mission. I can't imagine how the devs are going to generate enough stories for an entire MMORPG audience though.

Defense oriented missions would be nice too. When I first saw the crazy strike force in Dau senate I thought to myself: "those look like Serco infiltrators!" It would be sweet to have a group mission where a small, out of the way, station enlists the aid of 7 elite pilots to protect them from a gang of bandits. (Toshiro can come!)

Which brings me to my next point. Factions. Currently, all the factions we have are huge. Giant corporations or nations. It would be nice to have factions here and there that are just single, small space colonies in far flung outposts on the galactic backwater. A poor mining village or a gypsy colony or something. When the universe gets bigger I'm sure this will happen, but it's just something I thought I'd throw out there.

Some missions should have a star next to them to represent being part of a momentous occasion in the game's continuing storyline. For example, being a soldier and having your missions be part of a great military campaign would indicate: "Fought in the Bractus campaign," or "medal awarded for meritorious service in the battle of Pyronis" under charinfo, or something like that. This is yet another thing I'm sure the devs already have planned, but imagining it keeps my excitement factor high. :)

In order to keep these battles based on fighting skill and strategy rather than the "fight constantly until the people on one side get bored an leave" system we had in the pre-beta days, death would constitute mission failure, but still confer some experience, depending the outcome of the battle for your side, how long you were in it, how many kills you got, etc.

People should be able to sell their services as mercenaries and still expect some experience/recognition in exchange for fighting as well. It would be something like a system of recognizing good relations with a guild. This way, a player would not be a member and would be unable to profit from most of the guild's benefits, but still gets recognized as being a "guild-friend." This would enable them to accept guild missions and earn recognition for helping the guild and being allowed to earn experience for guild missions.

Speaking of experience for guild missions. Large guilds (with a lot of members) should get the benefits of confering certain medals and status upgrades as well. Maybe each of the major guilds can have a quota of experience it can distribute among its members per period of time and it does so as a reward for completing guild missions or demonstrating loyalty. It would only make sense to give this ability to the largest guilds in the game though, to prevent abuse.

That's all the brain droppings for now.

yay ! cameo!

seriously:

i especially like your ideas about faction size and the group recon missions.

also, for long-time motivation, the "honours" would serve well.

all for it (and not just 'cause of the cameo ;)

Good ideas, Magus.

I would also just like to add that group trade missions would be sooooo cool.