Elite Dangerous | Powerplay 2.0 Update

[Ian Doncaster]

It's a systemic problem intertwined with the BGS and they are not going to let it break the existing factions and systems that are established

They buried entire PMFs (abandoned ones long crushed by another PMF, yes) for over a year under an unassailable Thargoid invasion which completely depopulated their systems. Several larger PMFs lost a substantial number of their systems to the same.

They closed down PMF addition 18 months ago with a news post which - read in hindsight - clearly says "we are going to bring in Powerplay as a replacement for this sort of territory control game" (Maybe colonisation, too, was planned back then? It also fits their description of their plans.)

They haven't announced any balancing changes to the BGS itself for almost two years.

Are you sure that they care in the slightest if the influence of the Swedish Bobcats in HIP 1234 is 15% higher or lower than the supporting player group prefers? Because I don't think Frontier have shown any sign of caring about that for a long time.

The BGS still "works" in the sense of influence moving up and down, states changing, wars starting, trade goods changing price, etc. Beyond that, I think PMF supporters are on their own if they want particular outcomes.

 

[kofeyh]

I don't expect a Beta test of Powerplay 2 would have been any more productive for figuring things out, though it would have provided a convenient set of extra scapegoats for those so inclined.

Bingo. Nothing can compare to the live game for exposing issues. Suggesting a beta or alpha period would have seen most of these issues solved is an unfortunate assumption. Winding back the update would also be detrimental as new issues may surface once it's wound forward again, that were not previously discovered.

Frontier may well have good intentions, but their messaging around this update has been reactionary, confused, and not very constructive.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

Ignore PP. Kill Cocijo. PP will still be there after Cocijo is long gone.

I plan to do my part. Although I'll only have a 7 star decal forever, since I've missed Taranis.

 

[Gabriel H]

They publish bounties per system through the traffic reports in stations, so those they definitely have a way to track.

Total monetary value, but does that equate to number of kills and averages?

They had an extensive Beta test period for the 3.3 BGS rewrite, which completely failed to pick up on that rewrite's most major bug for two reasons, despite the very active participation of some of the best player BGS researchers of the day.
1) People don't play the same way in Beta as in live (specifically relevant here, people don't tend to grind for days for things they know they're losing in two weeks anyway)
2) Nowhere near enough players participate in Betas to pick up on anything that's a consequence of patterns of mass player action

I did say reasonable cross-section.

 

[Markov Chaney - Dormant]

The "nerfs" that are in place are not permanent. They are there until FDev have time to actually do something with the huge pile of PP 2.0 suboptimalities.

WAY too many people in this thread talking like the balance as it was set this morning is now going to be the balance forever. Yes, the current balance is rubbish. Yes, this always happens.

Of course, releasing PP 2.0 when there was zero in the tank to deal with balancing anything was suboptimal in the first place. I note a certain other game has a hotfix release on the 21st at which point maybe just maybe something other than indefinite-duration nerfs will happen.

 

[Gabriel H]

Bingo. Nothing can compare to the live game for exposing issues. Suggesting a beta or alpha period would have seen most of these issues solved is an unfortunate assumption.

A properly constructed alpha and beta would have, with FDev acting upon feedback in a full and timely manner. That was never going to happen with FDev though, as can be seen by essentially throwing something that barely seems to have gone through alpha into full blown live release.

 

[Markov Chaney - Dormant]

Dang it, they gave you a mug? I had to buy them by the ton.

No-one told you how big the mug was then?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Total monetary value, but does that equate to number of kills and averages?

The Bounty report - as opposed to the Crime report - also includes the number of distinct vouchers handed in. Also note that these reports cover a rolling 24-hour window, so there must be greater disaggregation than we actually see to take out the oldest ones and add the newest ones on each hourly update.

(Frontier actually publish a surprisingly large amount of activity data, through various in-game outlets, and there's some quite interesting stuff in there. I imagine their private data sets are quite a bit more extensive.)

 

[UberDuper]

I plan to do my part. Although I'll only have a 7 star decal forever, since I've missed Taranis.

Spend hours and days and weeks retaking thargoid controlled systems, repelling alerts and invasions.. killing hundreds and hundreds of thargoids. Miss the 48 hour window when the titan is vulnerable. No rewards for you!

 

[Factabulous]

That is only 1.5bn if all those Donations are 100,000 cr ... now there's a way to turn exobio into rank.

Hmm, no : 27 merits for 1M Credit donation. Which is around 15B if I go that way.

Luckily Commodity Donations seem a lot better - some commodities are more than 2k for a donation of 108. Which might be nerf-worthy, especially if people are willing to mine those commodities ...

 

[iPeer]

The "nerfs" that are in place are not permanent. They are there until FDev have time to actually do something with the huge pile of PP 2.0 suboptimalities.

WAY too many people in this thread talking like the balance as it was set this morning is now going to be the balance forever. Yes, the current balance is rubbish. Yes, this always happens.

I've been playing Elite long enough to know that these nerfs will almost certainly end up being permanent. I will happily be proven wrong, but I know Frontier's track record. I will be more surprised if these nerfs are reverted at some point than if they're not.

 

[Gabriel H]

So where do you see the split between the two ? It's still Elite Dangerous. Also reviews on ED:O for the last 30 days have been mostly positive, the all time reviews carry the weight of the initial reviews with them from when it was indeed terrible, yet still are balanced, same as the PlanCo2 reviews.

A couple of years ago, someone analysed the journal data on EDDN for jumps, which includes flags for which game instance (legacy, horizons, odyssey), and found that the split came out at around 3% legacy, 23% Horizon, 74% Odyssey.

As for reviews. Again the steam reviews are a mixed bag between game instances. Outside reviews like metacritc - 80% PC2, 55% ED:O

 

[Chronosbane]

Interesting. Due to one confirmed exploit, you've decided to nerf every viable loop. Search and rescue? Really?

If balance is your concern, why don't you increase the weight of underpowered actions like ship kills, low value trading, and power material deliveries? What is your metric that you're referencing when you make these decisions? Because from my point of view, as a major powerplayer, undermining is BROKEN, nigh impossible, even without something like rares to oppose it.

Limpets won't work in wreckage sites, the wrong ships spawn at power instances, power materials give peanuts, you don't get merits the way your codex says you can - rather than focus on any of these things, you want to take the most rewarding loops you have?

Not exactly sure what vision you're trying to protect here, because all you're doing is convincing me to abandon powerplay. Keep your meaningless grind.

Edit: I've just heard you've also nerfed taipan merits

Thanks, we had 27 commanders in an instance doing this last week while Federal powerplayers PVPed us to oppose it. With Archer running rare goods the battle was neck and neck for days. You can't convince me that any mechanics that spawned that kind of coordinated engagement from both sides was a mistake. 35k merits an hour AFK? Get real. I can tell you those numbers are made up.

 

[Gabriel H]

The Bounty report - as opposed to the Crime report - also includes the number of distinct vouchers handed in. Also note that these reports cover a rolling 24-hour window, so there must be greater disaggregation than we actually see to take out the oldest ones and add the newest ones on each hourly update.

(Frontier actually publish a surprisingly large amount of activity data, through various in-game outlets, and there's some quite interesting stuff in there. I imagine their private data sets are quite a bit more extensive.)

The question is though, is that data retained? If it's simply part of the coding over a 24 hour cycle and there is no underlying system to store and analyse the data, well the data simply isn't there to track, as there is no underlying system to track it. Publishing rolling data and retaining data do not always go hand in hand.

 

[CERB_TheDravend_PS4]

Greetings Commanders,

We have identified an issue where certain actions are being excessively used for Powerplay gains.

In order to investigate and resolve this issue we are temporarily suspending Powerplay gains via the following methods:

• Rare Goods Trading
• Settlement Data Delivery
• Escape Pods

Once we have resolved this issue these options will be enabled again.

Thank you for your continued reports and feedback on Powerplay 2.0.

So we are just going to turn everything off now??

How about play your game and run tests before launching an update?

How about FIX what's wrong with it instead of just "turning off merit gains"
on activities.
Cut the tea breaks & get some work done.
You work for the player base. With out us you don't have jobs.
So hop to it.

 

[photomankc]

Thank you for acting on this!

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

I don't expect a Beta test of Powerplay 2 would have been any more productive for figuring things out, though it would have provided a convenient set of extra scapegoats for those so inclined.

The rares thing was obvious as soon as someone tested how much merits the activities gave in the content creator early access though.

I still got to give credit to powerplay for not obfuscating the numbers like the thargoid war and normal BGS - if they'd done that there would be less complaining (even about rank progress being slow) and the problems would be less obvious and less exploited with people being biased towards activities they actually like doing .

Having the numbers out there results a better game though after things get broken and hopefully eventually fixed.

The (still slow) turnaround on this is also faster than the thargoid war stuff with sampling being imbalanced compared to other activities - if we eventually get a similar fix where other activities were brought more in line with it then it might turn out ok.

 

[UberDuper]

The question is though, is that data retained? If it's simply part of the coding over a 24 hour cycle and there is no underlying system to store and analyse the data, well the data simply isn't there to track, as there is no underlying system to track it. Publishing rolling data and retaining data do not always go hand in hand.

Based on very old videos about the backend systems for the game, I'd wager that they do indeed retain this data for quite a bit longer than 24 hours. They certainly had the capability, and in some cases the need, to do it back then. I doubt they've changed so much since then that they would have lost that capability.

 

[Dragsham]

Ohh! Just had a thought!
What's colonisation gonner be like @ rollout???

 

[Zeruel1223]

The "nerfs" that are in place are not permanent. They are there until FDev have time to actually do something with the huge pile of PP 2.0 suboptimalities.

WAY too many people in this thread talking like the balance as it was set this morning is now going to be the balance forever. Yes, the current balance is rubbish. Yes, this always happens.

Of course, releasing PP 2.0 when there was zero in the tank to deal with balancing anything was suboptimal in the first place. I note a certain other game has a hotfix release on the 21st at which point maybe just maybe something other than indefinite-duration nerfs will happen.

How often does fdev buff anything?