Elite Dangerous | Powerplay 2.0 exploration and trade balance changes

[Samoria]

I don't get how trade merits work now. The more you sell, the less it is worth. It is way more profitable to sell your goods one ton by one ton, which takes a tremendous amount of time of course.

With my 788 cargo, if I sell every ton one by one it pays off 1576, but if I sell the same amount of the same good at the same place from the same price differential but just in one click, it pays something like 80 merits. That's around 5% if I am not too bad at math

 

[Connor11223]

I don't get how trade merits work now. The more you sell, the less it is worth. It is way more profitable to sell your goods one ton by one ton, which takes a tremendous amount of time of course.

With my 788 cargo, if I sell every ton one by one it pays off 1576, but if I sell the same amount of the same good at the same place from the same price differential but just in one click, it pays something like 80 merits. That's around 5% if I am not too bad at math

you get merits for trading? i dont for some reason only get merits from rare goods and nothing else. Done mining try to sell sold 300tons of void opals at my powerplay system and got no merits.

 

[mark simmons]

Greetings Commanders,

Following a review of the use of exploration data and trading on Powerplay 2.0 we will be making the following changes:

• We will be temporarily disabling the merit and system score gains for Exploration and Genetic Samples data for Powerplay 2.0
• You can continue to explore, gather and sell data but it will not count towards Powerplay 2.0
• We have a deployed a fix to balance Powerplay 2.0 trading - Trades will no longer result in excessive merit generation. We will continue to monitor and adjust as needed.
• We will be adjusting the Powerplay 2.0 ranks of Commanders who have excessively benefited from trading and exploration data
• Once our review is complete we will announce when exploration data will be eligible to count towards Powerplay 2.0

We thank you for your patience.

Greetings Commanders,

Following a review of the use of exploration data and trading on Powerplay 2.0 we will be making the following changes:

• We will be temporarily disabling the merit and system score gains for Exploration and Genetic Samples data for Powerplay 2.0
• You can continue to explore, gather and sell data but it will not count towards Powerplay 2.0
• We have a deployed a fix to balance Powerplay 2.0 trading - Trades will no longer result in excessive merit generation. We will continue to monitor and adjust as needed.
• We will be adjusting the Powerplay 2.0 ranks of Commanders who have excessively benefited from trading and exploration data
• Once our review is complete we will announce when exploration data will be eligible to count towards Powerplay 2.0

We thank you for your patience.

So me blowing up baddies and scanning ships gets no merits now. since a change, I assume you have stopped all merits even if i provide files under undermining to undermine
your programmers should of thought of this. You say you were suspending:

• Exploration and Genetic Samples data

you have done more than that as I cannot get merits for anything else after spending all day figuring out the new system

 

[Samoria]

you get merits for trading? i dont for some reason only get merits from rare goods and nothing else. Done mining try to sell sold 300tons of void opals at my powerplay system and got no merits.

You can trade common goods but it brings you merit only if you make 40%+ profit.

What system did you sell at ? If it is the headquarters of your power I believe it doesn't give merits

 

[Connor11223]

You can trade common goods but it brings you merit only if you make 40%+ profit.

What system did you sell at ? If it is the headquarters of your power I believe it doesn't give merits

was a forified system for torval i do get the mining bouns she gives tho but no merits

 

[nemolomen]

...

It doesn't take an invite-only beta server (though that'd be great). Just some occasional surveys, focus groups, and public discussions with key community figures would be amazing. And plenty of other great developers do exactly those things, and more. Let us help you, like their players help them.

I doubt it'll make much of a difference...

If you ask 1000 different commanders, they'll get 25 to 50 different answers about what they want. And the players who's "wants" don't get addressed will become disenfranchised anyway...much like it was years ago, months ago, weeks ago, is today and, I predict, will be into the future...Its impossible to please everyone, it can't be done...

Also, from what I understand, they used to involve the community more but they stopped at some point. There's a reason for that change in behavior on their part...

I understand that your intentions are good, I'm just not hopeful that there's a solution for everyone...

 

[Samoria]

So me blowing up baddies and scanning ships gets no merits now. since a change, I assume you have stopped all merits even if i provide files under undermining to undermine
your programmers should of thought of this. You say you were suspending:

• Exploration and Genetic Samples data

you have done more than that as I cannot get merits for anything else after spending all day figuring out the new system

the merit system looks very inconsistent for now (I calculated I still need to play 14 hours just to reach the next rank... 6), I think it might be better to let it rest for the week-end and come back when fair tweaks have been made to all that

 

[Rat Catcher]

Also, from what I understand, they used to involve the community more but they stopped at some point.

It is just that so many may think they are "Key Community Figures", because they have a youtube / twitch / whatever channel that promotes their own agenda above everytthing else...

 

[nemolomen]

It is just that so many may think they are "Key Community Figures", because they have a youtube / twitch / whatever channel that promotes their own agenda above everytthing else...

Exactly! The streamers don't speak for me...

 

[nemolomen]

the merit system looks very inconsistent for now (I calculated I still need to play 14 hours just to reach the next rank... 6), I think it might be better to let it rest for the week-end and come back when fair tweaks have been made to all that

I agree...

This is a brand new thing. We all knew it was going to need some adjustments...

 

[marx]

I did a little non-representative experiment, and checked how many of the exploration-focused Discords I'm on actually discussed this. (I ignored servers that focus on a mixture of activities, because they all have Powerplay sections.) Turns out I'm on a dozen, and 8-9 of those appear to have all discussions public. Now, out of these, just one discussed this news at length, one had a shorter discussion, one had one person reporting the news and just another acknowledging it - the rest had none. (If automated news trackers were present, they'd report the announcement, but there was no comment by anyone on them then.)

Also, on the exploration squadron leaderboards, there was one squadron that appears to have dumped billions of data, that streamer's, and the others in the top ten didn't move by more since the update than they usually do.

Meanwhile, the Mandalay was discussed at length everywhere. Folks are more focused on either upcoming expeditions or current efforts. Curiously enough, there hasn't been much talked about the colonization news yet - the consensus across servers seemed to be that we simply don't know enough yet to go beyond dreams.txt.

I'm not surprised by any of this: as it turns out, the rewards from Powerplay aren't worth it for explorers. There's LYR for a data bonus, sure, but Vista Genomics will give you far more money than Universal Cartographics will. There'd be the Antal bonus there, but that's not large enough to be worth the bother. As for the power-specific modules, they are still not worth bothering with - few exploration builds can get that much usage out of Prismatics, and the all-powerful Mandalay has no need for them.
Meanwhile, there is one big downside with selling UC data and VG samples for Powerplay merits: you have to do it back at the bubble, carriers, Colonia or the other remote bases are not an option. So, no having some dangerous fun for you if you're saving up for merits.

Lastly, let's not forget that there were no bonuses for exploration in Powerplay 1.0, so it's not like some long-standing bonuses were taken away (temporarily) now. Sure, it sucks for the people who might have had their merits rolled back even though they did nothing wrong, and Frontier should have seen this coming. There was even video of one guy doing it on the streamer ad server, after all. Overall though, to me it looks like it has affected a handful of people at best, and the vast majority of explorers don't seem to care about Powerplay anyway.

Now, this is just my opinion, but I would have left exploration and exobiology out of Powerplay entirely. Merits should be awarded for doing activities in the bubble, and not stuff that can be banked and then cashed in with practically zero possible opposition. (I'm not talking about Solo here, even in Open it's trivial to get back to your power's territory without anyone noticing it.) Not like Frontier are going to do that now though, because it'd be terrible publicity - but they might nerf UC/VG merit gain into the ground by so much that it'd be pointless to do it. I'll be curious to see how they handle this issue.

 

[vanFace]

I think it might be better to let it rest for the week-end and come back when fair tweaks have been made to all that

I doubt that PP will be balanced next week. Better make that a rest until next year and enjoy the last titan in the meantime. BTW: anybody checked if the enemy PP wing is following straight into goid territory as well?

 

[alexzk]

Time for an alt account. Just as well the game is on sale on Steam right now

I don't play alts even on the same account unless I'm enforced by game rules (like additional bonuses unlocks).
I had hard "childhood" playing la2 in 10 copies at once and managing them via alt-tab in the fights

 

[Mrc_NorthEast]

People in elite going out into the black is a normal thing. Some do it for months at a time. My trip in my Phantom out to colonia took only a few weeks of lite exploring. I made hundreds of millions. Toad spent 2.5 years out in the black exploring, and had billions as far as I know.

Fdev just being silly not thinking this would happen. Not sure what they can or will do about it. Say there is a limit of 500 million explo data or so per week. If someone has 10 billion in exploration for years of hard work, and is pledged, is it fair to make them only turn in x amount per week?

 

[Factabulous]

Just make it so only exploration in the current week counts. Same with anything you can store. PP should be for people doing PP.

Jebus - you can't even hand in Escape Pods you found in a different system, never mind ones from a week ago.

 

[tolm]

This is the issue … you have folks who play the game like it’s a second job / religion and then you have others who are casual players who do maybe 5 -10 hours a week or less.

Balancing for both is impossible … at the moment, I would say PP2.0 is a ridiculous grind for someone like me who falls into the second camp as it will take literally months and months to get even the first module reward.

Conversely, you have people who play 5 - 10 hours a day who can “break the game” by fully ranking up within days or weeks of go-live.

For me … I think the ranks need to come sooner in terms of merits but perhaps should be limited to maybe 5 - 10 ranks per weekly cycle?

That way you’d hit 100 in a few months rather than just the first module rank but it would stop anyone from racing through it quicker than FDev would prefer. Merits / activities beyond you’re weekly rank limit could still count towards the PP progress but wouldn’t advance your rank.

 

[DemiserofD]

Just make it so only exploration in the current week counts. Same with anything you can store. PP should be for people doing PP.

Jebus - you can't even hand in Escape Pods you found in a different system, never mind ones from a week ago.

That basically completely excludes exploration. It is extremely unpleasant trying to explore within a small window like that.

 

[M_Biscotti]

That's quite out of context about Hatch.

The discussion was "What if they awarded merits at the time of scanning so you couldn't stockpile data for a Firey Toad style megadump?"

Hatch raised the point that merits should only be awarded when you hand it in at one of your Power's systems, or why else would they reward you, as a counterpoint.

There wasn't any idea of simply negating exploration merits along lines you seem to be suggesting.

It's not about negating or anything else. When he said that, I thought he pinpointed the whole design flaw of PP 2.0. Everybody's talking about capping, adding factors, computations etc etc.

To me, the sentence "why does power reward you when it doesn't benefits to itself ?" is the true point. PP 2.0 is about giving more power to the political party, the faction, a player chose. Trading rare issue ? Money. Exploration issue ? 10000cr a planet, 1000000cr for a bacterium. Money. When I watched streamers doing PP. It seemed that money income and merits in combats weren't fully correlated. That is, to me, the right thing to do. Like in real World, all volunteers who work for free are the true heart of political parties. It's not about money, it's about ideas, beliefs, dogmas, ideologies. Someone said "choose the faction which fits the best to your gameplay style". I'm totally ok with that, as long as it benefit to the power the player works for. PP 2.0 should have largely benefited to players who strike enemy forces whatever the way far more than anything else.
eg : what benefits any faction to get informations about bacterium bullaris on LHS 3447 B 3 A ?

In short, to me Toad pointed out the true issue : it should not be only about money and Hatch gave the very root of the algorithm. "benefits to the power"

note : I'm not preaching for my church. Exobio is my main, by far, activity. Calibrating PP on combat and intel would really not benefit me.

 

[Nowski]

When he said that, I thought he pinpointed the whole design flaw of PP 2.0.

You can make what point you want, using Hatch's words as a starting point, I'm just clarifying what was actually meant by those words, by putting them in context - something quite different from the point you're making.

As we sometimes hear on that channel: context is everything!

 

[Mrc_NorthEast]

what benefits any faction to get informations about bacterium bullaris on LHS 3447 B 3 A ?

Scientific discoveries. Maybe that bacterium cures cancer or the outbreak in the next system over. Who are we to say what scientific discoveries are worth to a culture, or the ruling political party. The space race, and weapons races in real life have yielded dozens of new tech that slowly made their way into the public and money did change hands the whole way.