Career mode is so frustrating atm

To explain how I was so enthusiastic about the career mode: I preordered the physical Collector's Edition. This is how sold I was about this addition. Well, the physical box is not yet with me because of the logistics issues mentioned by Aerosoft. While upsetting, this is not my biggest problem...

As soon as I was able to start the game and actually play it, I jumped into the career mode all hyped and happy about it finally being built-in. I'm a big OnAir player, so this is the context where I'm coming from (and was expecting). At first, I saw a few problems that I managed to ignore with the help of my biases but only 4 days in, this is no longer possible and here is why:

  • Aviator Performance is a shackle. Don't get me wrong: I love constraints when they are realistic. But I just can't stand losing reputation because I stopped in the indicated hold short and get an Aviator Performance popup that tells me I entered the taxi without authorization. I tried opening the ATC panel manually to preshot the taxi/parking authorizations, still got the popup randomly. This might seem like a detail, but it is just ruining the fun. My suggestion is to simply handle ATC calls the way they were in FS2020. Another time, the wind changed during my flight, so I modified my flight plan to land on the proper runway, I called ATC to indicate my new runway of choice but NOPE, got an aviator performance popup stating I landed in an unauthorized area. Reputation loss, BOOM.
  • So few different aircrafts. Thanks to the Aviator Edition, I do have a fat bunch of aircrafts to choose from... but only in free flight. Why would they limit them to free flight? I paid for them! How fundamentally bad/greedy do you have to be to actively restrict players from using approved aircrafts (all these aircrafts come from the Aviator Edition) in the main mode, which is the selling point of your new game? Well, to sell them again, ofc! Sorry Asobo/MS: not gonna work with me.
  • Missions plainly suck: no VIP in the whole wide world wants to be flown from his house to his ski resort in a DHC-2. Period. Well, most VIPs in FS2024 do! They could relax their ass in a comfy Citation, but nope!
  • Missions apparently don't respawn/change: I'm a cargo/PAX guy. So, while I do appreciate mission diversity, these are the ones I pick the most. I've done about 30 of them so far and once I complete them, I can fly them again, which indicates they're not dynamic? It basically means that we'll just fly the same missions again and again? I don't want to fly in the DHC-2 (which for some obscure reason is the aircraft in about 30% of them) and pretty much all missions take me from unlocked places to other already unlocked places. For example, I wanted to fly from southern England to anywhere north (northern England, Scotland, etc.), well, nope! Not a single one currently! And since missions are not dynamically generated, that might never happen. Here again, I could accept it for RP reasons like 'hey no customer wants to pay for it currently blah blah blah', but only if missions were dynamic.
  • Progression is messed up: After only 4 days (admittedly of pretty intense play), I already unlocked all certifications, most specs. Sure, I'm still quite broke, but the remaining progression does not really incentivize me to play further since I'm gonna be stuck with a 737 and a Citation down the line. Damn, I have all possible Airbuses in free flight, but 2 random aircrafts for passenger flights?

Not gonna spend the whole day ranting about how bad this mode currently is. But to sum it up, my immense problem with career mode is that it makes zero sense to prevent the community/players from improving it with mods. It is by essence a solo mode, so customizing our offline experience should by no mean be a problem. I'd love to love this mode but at the moment, it sucks by design. No dynamic missions, seriously? I didn't understand the season-based hotspot map. Now, I do: new missions will be generated every 3 months, but noone will play career mode in 2 weeks. I'm a long-time gamer, bugs can happen, and I can wait for them to be fixed. I can also handle frustration when it comes from a clever design or serves the narration/gameplay. Flawed design is much more problematic to me and in this case, this is what makes me stop playing in the career mode (and honestly FS2024 altogether) until it becomes better. I'll just go back to MS2020 with OnAir because currently this is infinitely better, and this says a lot.

/rant off