If its graded well enough (like missions are) then its good for the game, as those who want to risk more to get more can try to do so. I have fond memories of a mission stack while wanted that made me face two pirate corvettes, an anaconda, police, a scabby pirate while I had to scan a NAV, escape and evade. If missions could be made at the high end like that, I'd be a happy bunny. Just to think if suddenly a Goid popped in and tipped the tables some more and...well.. for me that would be what the BGS should be.
That’s more of a self-inflicted threat in my experience. In the 27 (IIRC) weeks, I spent fortifying for ALD, I think I might need both hands to count the number of times I was interdicted by an NPC, which was still greater than the two (very nice) players that interdicted me during that same period of time.
But then again, I don’t fly like I’m going 30 down the Autoban while complaining that “Frontier doesn’t respect my time!”
I had a C rated Cobra III myself, though with A rated thrusters, power distributor, and a military-grade hull. Can’t say I recall ever being fired on at stations, but then again I never obeyed local speed limits, even when my motto below was more costly.
And thats the problem: Powerplays setup needed to deliver that. Its why Sandro said what he did.That’s more of a self-inflicted threat in my experience. In the 27 (IIRC) weeks, I spent fortifying for ALD, I think I might need both hands to count the number of times I was interdicted by an NPC, which was still greater than the two (very nice) players that interdicted me during that same period of time.
But then again, I don’t fly like I’m going 30 down the Autoban while complaining that “Frontier doesn’t respect my time!”
I had a C rated Cobra III myself, though with A rated thrusters, power distributor, and a military-grade hull. Can’t say I recall ever being fired on at stations, but then again I never obeyed local speed limits, even when my motto below was more costly.
Powerplay to be truly pan modal (and interesting PvE) needs NPCs to really want to kill you for it to be Powerplay- a feature of eleven groups wanting to be top. Because when you have to mitigate problems, you then have to gamble speed / defence v the need for efficiency. Otherwise (as you found) it gets dull, very quickly.
Personally I am finding it increasingly difficult to find any motivation to play the game that, until recent events, I have enjoyed immensely.I can tell you now one of the reasons I don't give a crap about the thargoid war is because I feel no investment in the bubble due to it being overtaken by PMFs.
Trade, explore, fight, more than enough over 400 billion star systems, even on foot combat in Odyssey. Now all you hear about is 'The War'
FDev decide to expand on Thargoids, fair enough as they have been part of the background storyline since 1984 but the interstellar war scenario has left a galaxy in pieces with no logical way to expand further. If we win or lose this war makes no real difference as we will lose that background element of random interaction with an aliens species shown in the initial novel 'The Dark Wheel' with Thargoids, Tharglets and Oresrians (deadly enemies of the Thargoids that we have yet to see or hear about).
The game does need to evolve and improve but I cannot see how decimating half the known galaxy which can have only one outcome given the ferocity of the Thargoids leaving little to explore in the bubble can be an improvement.
A missed opportunity maybe considering the possible expansion of trading of illegal goods or interaction with an ally against the Thargoids but players want 'ship interiors' (really) and 'all out pve war' (isn't there enough PVP without that storyline).
It would help if the game still had an economy where credits were a concern. The other reason why I eventually switched to pure BGS work is because running fortifications the way I did was expensive if I fast tracked some of those merits. Every so often, I had to switch to BGS work just to rebuild my nest egg.
Of course, I would've had a much bigger nest egg if I hadn't previously made all those donations to brave freedom fighters resisting the Evil Galactic Federation...
Its why FD I firmly believe will base 'New Powerplay' on the BGS, because its easier and already been done via the extensive 2.X and 3.X changes which price in danger, POIs etc for variety rather than the largely vestigial basic hauling / basic shooting.
[Me offering up involuntary stimulation of my pregenual anterior cingulate (pACC), ventral temporal pole (TPv), frontal operculum (FO), presupplementary motor cortex, and ventral striatum/nucleus accumbens (VS/NAcc) in response to this submission]...
Is that medical for winkle?
Sounds like you need new game.
Sorry, but 99% of games which are know have only few first times. After it you just repeat stuff untill you have fun.
Unless doing "new" dungeon with slihgty more deadly enemies, with other names, skins, but with identical mechanics is something new.
Well, I know one game of this type.
To be fair, I wasn't impressed, but maybe because 90% of new content were new copy-paste toys to grind, instead repeatin 100 games I could repeat 100 battles, get new toy (without any meaningfull differencies), and repeat it next 100 times, in slighty different skin.
Wohoo. I guess.
Can we seriously get more updates out the gate than one or two a year, heck even the ludicrously small Hello Games team are pumping updates out quicker than that and quite a lot of those are huge updates and they have a team (depending on what site you look from 4-17 developers) which is much smaller than the hundred or so staff that FDEV are quoted as working on ED?
As for feature update it will have to be a major one that affects everyone, its no good reworking something that only one or two percent of the player base use otherwise the rest of the player base will think the games stagnated. What we want is updates coming in thick and fast and information flowing as quick so we know what is happening and when we can expect it. Yes we know its a stock market company but wrapping up the game in a wall of silence is just hurting the game in the end and helps your competition.
As for feature update it will have to be a major one that affects everyone, its no good reworking something that only one or two percent of the player base use otherwise the rest of the player base will think the games stagnated. What we want is updates coming in thick and fast and information flowing as quick so we know what is happening and when we can expect it. Yes we know its a stock market company but wrapping up the game in a wall of silence is just hurting the game in the end and helps your competition.
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Yeah HG dropped the Fractal update and the expedition with it in February and I thought "cool, new lil update to mess with and an expedition this should be fun for a few mon- oh? Interceptor update, it's only April!? Bruh! Slow down guys!"
I do agree, I would like to see more frequent and openly communicated info and updates.
But to be sympathetic with FDev though, Elite is getting up there in age and they didn't really have to do any new DLCs or updates so it's nice to see...something.
It IS a live-service game though and it's sort of expected by the playerbase, to see updates, new content, and changes frequently for a game that is live-service.
And when we don't see that or in FDev's case, we see it seldom and far between; it does get a little discouraging for the consistent players.
Pawerplay already exists, it's just not used. If they update something that the community does not ask for or care about, it would be a waste of time and opportunity.
calling it an "update" to use something that is there and is not used, is not an update.
People want real progress.
Also to run salt into the wounds already you have to pay for the "update" if its a new season. I do agree its a live service MMO bit tbf NMS now has multiplayer and i can see several players and ships at the hub and link up with them to play a game
I bought NMS years ago and have yet to pay for an update, its so good i even bought the xbox version and that got the same level of commitment for updates as well
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Powerplay is used, and would be used more again if it was actually brought closer into the game. Everything else has had dev time.
Looking at the direction of travel historically the BGS has (quite rightly) been upgraded more and more, we now have a programmatically driven Thargoid menace and given both of these eveolutionary improvements can be applied to Powerplay- so going forwards you have a highly dynamic BGS that with little dev input can produce a multitude of gameplay situations for a broad spectrum. FD want ED to be as self contained as possible now, and making features that achieve that is money better spent.
Powerplay (and my mechanism of choice, faction manipulation) are adversarial activities where players can act alone, work together or against others. It provides what I and many others are looking for - reasons to fly the ships. There is some potential for it to be more engaging to outsiders, but any changes to PP, PMFs or even squadrons will likely be QoL changes that help retain or bring back existing players.
The Thargoid war is largely co-op, encouraging strangers to gather together, work together and then optionall get more involved with a friendly group, or just continue to mix with other random players. The likelihood of meeting trolls or even concerted opposition is low, and that seems to be the kind of activity FDev want to encourage (rather than adversarial play).
If you want to take part in an activity that FDev are definitely going to be working on, and hold & share opinions on a part of the game that would benefit or at least still have significant interest in reading about, you should go take part in that activity.
The Thargoid war sim has introduced many PP like structures (such as war fronts, which can be roughly analogous to power territorial boundaries) which if you clear out the AI and cede to players to push outward is an ideal upper layer to the BGS- the side benefit being BGS like missions, rewards and all the other unlock mechanisms are already in place. It also has the advantage of being local enough so that (unlike now) efforts to expand in different places do not affect each other, or the power as a whole (i.e. decentralization, as opposed to PP now which is largely one or two moves based on abstract maths).
Or, and this is just my advice, you can stop going on about powerplay, forget all considerations over what you would do to your enemies if only you had more people, and go fight the big new AI machine. It has everything you want (including dev time) with the only downside being that if you win there is no certainty that some other player watching patterns of lights change on a screen in their house lost.
What's stopping you?
? Because although its a technical marvel it does not interest me like Powerplay has.
wut?
Is that chip heavy on your shoulder or have I somehow hurt your feels?
Ok. How is that anyone else's problem? FDev want to get player numbers up (new business ideally), if you are an existing player you are part of the product they are selling. But if you aren't doing the thing all the new players want to do you can't teach them, you can't help them, you aren't contributing. So why would anyone want to read what you have to say about Powerplay?