I'm kinda liking pp2, but there seems to be a loss in translation between the instructions and the gameplay
2100 hours? Noob
Elite Dangerous | Powerplay 2.0 exploration and trade balance changes
- Thread starter Paul_Crowther
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It's also the case that there is some juggling to do with the timing of the police turning up to help, if you are wanting to get the power wreckage and an anaconda with a viper wing has turned up, your shields take a big pounding whilst you are scooping up the goods. If you decide to fight first, you loose them if the fight takes them off radar, and I'm not yet a good enough pilot to take down the opponents whilst staying in the vicinity of the goods. Which is not to say that it isn't possible, only that I've yet to learn how to do it.
I think that there is a lot of fun to be had, merits too, once we get the hang of it; As always, it's clearly easier in a wing. I'm a solo pilot at the moment, and either way want to be able to run in solo as well as with others, as in numbers not in game mode.
Addendum: On the ships that do not fight back, pondering this and how I explain it to myself in my in game narrative and lore, is that folks will often and many of them, just freeze up in fear, both combat and civilians. Of course, how one chooses to react in this situation confronting someone in this state, it is entirely up to the individual and I am sure very different for different people.
So I'm not so convinced that it is a bug at all.
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I know the C+P backwards, and FD have glued the worst aspects of it with the worst of PP, frankly.
Knowing is a curious thing, how one person knows something in comparison with how someone else knows the very same thing, often and somewhat paradoxically, leads to bifurcations and branches of supposed different knowledge; I always try to avoid hearsay and look to the roots and origins myself. Sorry to hear that you're not happy with the game though.
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Are they close to going Stationary and rolling spinning on the spot levels again?
Almost
I just want to note that I think the CMDR Herbie is eine Deutche Pilot if you get my meaning and his translate wasn't trying to be rude.
Oh dear. At least when they used to do that, we didn't have engineering so sustained fire kills still took a bit of timeAlmost
No doubt, mining doesn’t earn merits with Nakato Kaine (mining is a Power activity). That’s unfortunate.
I really find this PP 2.0 to be fantastic. A huge step forward. Well done, Frontier!
Looking forward to everything being patched, as there are still quite a few things that don’t work well or feel odd. I’d also like to see the progression curve adjusted, with more subtle progressions between ranks (having 8000 points consistently between each rank isn’t what I would call a fun progression curve). Fewer merits in the first half and more in the second would, in my opinion, make sense and would likely allow for increased rewards across all activities without players reaching rank 100 too quickly.
I like it being a constant amount - I can probably get about 1 rank a week, which gives a constant pace of rewards, whereas if it was shorter in the start and longer in the end, sure, I'd get some initial rewards faster but then it'd be months between the next ones.
It also has the nice property that "sticking with one power" is about four times quicker to get access to all the modules than "switching between all twelve" is - almost any top-heavy ranking system would do the opposite.
While there's certainly a lot of balancing work to be done, increasing rewards in general has the problem that one personal merit = one system progress point - so if everything gets to the "you can get rank 100 in a week" rate, that implies a much faster rate of system turnover than the current one too. "A single wing of fairly average players can personally knock over a system in a week" certainly doesn't seem to be the balance point Frontier wants right now - though it's possible they'll go for something closer to that once the relative effects are stabilised.
With all but a few things looking like ~1000-2000 merits/player/hour is the design goal, it seems more likely that the other things will get levelled down to that, and then if necessary the rank spacing can be reduced.
Part of the issue is that "you can now get all the powerplay modules from one power" was basically incorrect at 1000 merits per hour, unless you consider 850 hours playing one aspect of the game to be "possible" (which it technically is, but not really for most people). In powerplay 1, it took 4 weeks of time to get a powerplay module, but not 4 weeks of effort, you could play however you wanted for the most part, so if you really wanted something to try something fun, you could make it happen. Now, with swapping powers highly discouraged and the grind to even get the first module already ridiculous, "try something fun" has become a lot harder in this game for certain values of "something fun," and I consider fiddling with silly module combinations to do absurd ship stunts part of the important exploration aspect of the game.
For my part, I'm blazing through the ranks with rares not because I want to game the system or help my power or top the leaderboard or anything, but because I want access to the modules and then never think about the powerplay grind again (the same way I approached engineering unlocks and Federal/Imperial reputation), and I'm trying to do as much as I can before it gets balanced, forcing me to spend even more time on poorly-designed powerplay activities. After I do that (or when the nerf comes), I may look at engaging the more fun activities. The hard disconnect between the grind and doing the fun parts of the game, or the mechanical nerfs that somehow make the fun parts of the game more tedious when you want to use them to grind (e.g. Notoriety) is a common issue with Elite Dangerous development (see also: win the Thargoid war with braindead sampling, not with combat).
For my part, I'm blazing through the ranks with rares not because I want to game the system or help my power or top the leaderboard or anything, but because I want access to the modules and then never think about the powerplay grind again (the same way I approached engineering unlocks and Federal/Imperial reputation), and I'm trying to do as much as I can before it gets balanced, forcing me to spend even more time on poorly-designed powerplay activities. After I do that (or when the nerf comes), I may look at engaging the more fun activities. The hard disconnect between the grind and doing the fun parts of the game, or the mechanical nerfs that somehow make the fun parts of the game more tedious when you want to use them to grind (e.g. Notoriety) is a common issue with Elite Dangerous development (see also: win the Thargoid war with braindead sampling, not with combat).
See what you're describing here is the basic problem of players like you (and that's not meant in an offensive way, just referring to your... let's call it play style), players who are in it for the reward and not the gameplay. We have that in pretty much every aspect of the game, people want the reward but hate the activity, so they force themselves to grind through it to get the prize, and then (or even while doing it) complain how grindy the game is. Maybe powerplay modules are a mistake, peroid. It attracts the kind of mindset you just described.
I know I am probably not the median player, but I didn't join PP 2.0 for module shopping, but because I wanted to do the activities, and because the new PP offers some.... guidance? Incentive? Don't know what's the right word - to just do stuff. In a sense, gvie me motivation to do activities. Of course it's always a carrot dangling in front of my nose, be it modules, credits, merits, whatever. But the new PP pulled me in, sort of, and said: Come, play with me. You don't get that when you're just module shopping.
This is, again, on the player - it's the players' choice if they want to grind it out because they are greedy. But that's not really the game's fault. Yeah yeah, PP will need some balancing, but the principle will remain: If you just want the rewards as fast as possible, the grind is on you, not the game.
The issue is that what you're calling "rewards," I'm calling "the game." Flying spaceships and doing spaceship stuff is "the game," to me. To lock parts of that behind huge grind is hiding the game behind the grind. I would be happy to not involve myself at all in powerplay, but parts of the spaceships are behind powerplay, so I'm stuck with it if I want to access them. I don't think that's "greedy."
The problem is that the grindy part of the game that is the game (the fight over powerplay control) is intermixed with access to the ability to do things (modules), so yeah, one group of players or the other is going to be forced into a context they don't want.
The problem is that the grindy part of the game that is the game (the fight over powerplay control) is intermixed with access to the ability to do things (modules), so yeah, one group of players or the other is going to be forced into a context they don't want.
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Flying your spaceship is not hidden behind a huge grind, that's just not true. Minmaxing the heck out of it can be, if you are insisting on getting it all as fast as possible.
And yes, PP modules are a reward. They are hardly "the game". I've played for five years and 3000 hours now, I am rich and loaded (in game), and I spent maybe a handful of hours "grinding". And I own one single PP module, and am doing absolutely fine without them.
And yes, PP modules are a reward. They are hardly "the game". I've played for five years and 3000 hours now, I am rich and loaded (in game), and I spent maybe a handful of hours "grinding". And I own one single PP module, and am doing absolutely fine without them.
And I should also point out, the only reason I'm doing it "as fast as possible" is not because I want it as fast as possible, but because there's a window here, before they balance it down (though they already did) to avoid having to do much of it at all. I'd be happy to take my time if I thought there was a path to unlocking the game that way. But there really isn't. 850 hours is not a thing that's going to happen.
Already nerfed like an hour ago
And of course this was done without any prior statement?
Instead of making other activities worth more?
Nice try, but this makes PP2.0 a worthless time sink.
Trading have ZERO merits now? (1st post is saying something little different) ... asking, bcs purchased goods for 280 and sold 5500. Merits zero. System is unoccupied, power activities saying Sell for Large Profits
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