Why is that an issue? How can using excessively actions being an issue? Is being excessively against certain rules? Think twice before releasing a new Feature. To me it just looks that you just dont want Player are ranking up so fast. Ridiculous behavior
Elite Dangerous | Powerplay 2.0 Update
- Thread starter Paul_Crowther
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Working as intended.I've done power cz's, bounty hunting, defend megaship scenarios, interdicting traders, stalking and killing enemies at stations, scanning ships, wakes, and data points, picking up escape pods and wreckage, trading, trading rares, exploration, exobiology, donation missions, selling surface power items, hauling power commodities, hacked holoads and even refueled a ship once.
I'm at rank 6
(edit: rank 6, not 7)
Not.
Rare Goods trading was far and away the most cost effective method of earning merits. Once players found that out, it became the meta act in powerplay. FDev doesn't want the majority of powerplayers engaging in only one activity, so they've disabled it for now until they can figure out how to better balance everything else in a similar manner.
Settlement Data Delivery had a blatant exploit. Each data port is supposed to have a limited number of powerplay data to download, but players found a way to make each data port spawn limitless amounts of powerplay data.
Escape Pods had a similar exploit, which allowed players to sit in one space and just farm them endlessly.
Not mentioned here was SLF farming from stronghold carriers, which produced an insane amount of merits for very little effort.
Why they still do not make merits an optional reward from mission board rewards is mind-boggling to me. They hyped us up talking about how we can see the effects of reinforcing/undermining settlements if we disembark from our ships and walk around, but then they failed to give us any reasons to leave our ships in the first place.
FDev wants all forms of powerplay activity to feel engaging, and worthwhile. Activities with clear advantages over others will become the meta as organized powerplay factions determine the best ways to maximize merit production in the shortest amount of time, to the exclusion of all other activities.
We expected FDev to get it 100% correct from the word "Go" and in just two short weeks, it's clear they've messed up.
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My hopes:
Rares Trading is nerfed to be slightly worse than normal trading, but without requiring specific system states to achieve it.
Normal trading - fix the 1 ton trade exploit
Normal trading: gives 1/3rd for raw tonnage and 2/3rds for profit. Ideally around ~400 merits per trip.
Mining changed to give diminishing returns depending on how far away the minerals were mined, inverse to rare goods. You should want to mine nearby, but you shouldn't have to necessarily mine in-system, like right now.
Stronghold Carriers should only be attackable in Open. Attacking them in solo should give significantly lower merit rewards.
Uploading Power Malware should give 2x the merits and take half the time.
That's all I can think of, for now. Overall, things aren't too far off now that fighter merits have been nerfed.
Rares Trading is nerfed to be slightly worse than normal trading, but without requiring specific system states to achieve it.
Normal trading - fix the 1 ton trade exploit
Normal trading: gives 1/3rd for raw tonnage and 2/3rds for profit. Ideally around ~400 merits per trip.
Mining changed to give diminishing returns depending on how far away the minerals were mined, inverse to rare goods. You should want to mine nearby, but you shouldn't have to necessarily mine in-system, like right now.
Stronghold Carriers should only be attackable in Open. Attacking them in solo should give significantly lower merit rewards.
Uploading Power Malware should give 2x the merits and take half the time.
That's all I can think of, for now. Overall, things aren't too far off now that fighter merits have been nerfed.
FDev, Your balance isn't good and your rewards are neither engaging nor rewarding. If anything they've made myself, my partner, and I'm sure several others avoid PP 2.0 entirely and this mentality is just turning the two of us at least away from the game entirely until this blows over.
Kinda hoped to have fun again but it really feels like nothing substantial has really changed over almost 10 years, as usual players just aren't allowed to be rewarded for the time or effort they put in. This is coming from someone who has dumped hours into grind-fests like Black Desert and Lineage 2 which are notorious for demanding hundreds of hours to get anything done. Elite is somehow WORSE at making the player feel like they're accomplishing things than pay to win korean MMO titles.
Please think about that for a moment from a player with well over 2000 hours in your title who from before engineering was a thing and who actually pre-ordered odyssey before you called it a season pass.
Kinda hoped to have fun again but it really feels like nothing substantial has really changed over almost 10 years, as usual players just aren't allowed to be rewarded for the time or effort they put in. This is coming from someone who has dumped hours into grind-fests like Black Desert and Lineage 2 which are notorious for demanding hundreds of hours to get anything done. Elite is somehow WORSE at making the player feel like they're accomplishing things than pay to win korean MMO titles.
Please think about that for a moment from a player with well over 2000 hours in your title who from before engineering was a thing and who actually pre-ordered odyssey before you called it a season pass.
Sounds fair enough. I was searching for high buying systems for monazite and sadly I haven't found one with a rocky ring in-system yet.
Oh, I almost forgot, all missions really need to give some merit rewards. At present donation missions do give merits, but not trade missions, for some reason? If I do trade missions, I should get merits for it.
It's clear that what they want to achieve is the same timeframe to achieve things as it was in 1.0. I look at it in relation to the powerplay modules: in 1.0, you could get all the modules in 11 months or so. By using some of these exploits I've seen here, you could get those same modules in 5 hours or less.
They clearly wanted to make each rank take a while to get. This is something I'm fine with, because getting levels and the benefits of higher levels isn't what motivates me.
It's the merits required to reinforce/undermine now not scaling with the updating changes that demotivates me.
But these are teething problems. I don't think anyone expected FD to get it right ~2w after launch.
They clearly wanted to make each rank take a while to get. This is something I'm fine with, because getting levels and the benefits of higher levels isn't what motivates me.
It's the merits required to reinforce/undermine now not scaling with the updating changes that demotivates me.
But these are teething problems. I don't think anyone expected FD to get it right ~2w after launch.
11 months for a bunch of side-grades is way too much to ask from players. They are all literally just side grades and you are expected to grind nearly a year for them while you can literally double your jump range and dps output by flying to a bunch of engineers back and forth for one evening.
If Fdev expects players to grind the same weekly tasks for 11 months, which is approximately 8035 hours of my life, for just side grades, I want no part in it. That is literally $58,253.73 working minimum wage before taxes.
That is how much you have to wait to get a side grade for your mining laser that does a depressing amount of damage to your enemies shields so you can stare in awe at how truly depressing some of these development decisions really are.
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If they're just side-grades, then it's not such a big deal not to have them, no?
I do agree that the current setup is not ideal from a satisfaction or encouragement standpoint, but the answer is not to just make it easy.
It's not adding any challenge either. It's just making it dull and depressing and more like some job or forced AA meeting but instead it's "hours of my life I could spend doing something more entertaining in Elite" Anonymous. Which inevitably evolves into feelings of "things more entertaining than Elite."
Because you grinded for a year for a worse mining laser that deals slightly more damage to players.
I mean, I have all the modules already, but I'm still enjoying engaging in powerplay. It gives context to my actions and makes it feel like they matter.
I do agree the mining lance is terrible, though. I think it should be able to mine asteroids forever, in exchange for its terrible mining speed. That'd be neat.
Power Play 2.0 reminds me of the Imperial Clipper, to large for what it offers... To universal to be anything decent... Other things offer way more for what it can be... Locked behind locked gameplay... Horrible design over all... So both Imperial Clipper and Power Play needs to be medium sized, less grindy, and over all way more useful...
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Clipper is actually amazing. Insanely agile and fast for its capabilities, class 7 optional slot allows it to do many things that no other similarly agile ship can hope to achieve. Bar none THE best core miner, and probably the best solo space axcz runner, too.
Python is best over all mining ship, for all styles. AXCZ can be skilled from a Chieftain, Python MK2 could arguably be better as well. Sadly I did find a Clipper Farm build but that was out-classed by the Anaconda as is normal when it comes to the Anaconda. Maybe one day there will be a better Clipper build that's actually useful lol
Thank you. I guess I wasn't looking closely. I'm bounty hunting and agent extermination before I reach rank 3 ...
I haven't been able to find any Conflict Zones that give merites either.
OK, since you were not doing taipan-farming, escape pods, rares (and obviously not the dataport exploit), may I ask what it was that you were doing to make ~9000 merits per hour?
(Rank 30 is 215000 merits, 1 hour on weekdays and a few (lets's say, 2x3) hours on weekends is 22 hours total in 2 weeks, 215000/22 = 9772 merits/hour.)
Even if it was twice as many hours, it would be still close to 5000 merits per hour.
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Time for everyone to unpledge and give up. I'm not spending 2 years getting all modules when a ton of commanders got a huge advantage early. Mass reset merrits, revert this change, or start boosting other ways to curve up the balance instead of down. It is a ridiculously long grind considering other grinds have been steeply reduced.
Oh, that's hilarious, but I suppose we should not be surprised that the ONLY new reward that this update has to offer is broken.
Ahh, so you are a Canyon Racer then. Shame about Odyssey removing all the good Canyons for racing.
I'm don't think anything, even the exploits, could unlock the modules in 5 hours. Optimal Rares trading would have taken 27 hours to reach rank 100, and the reports I've seen about the data pad exploit suggest it would have only been marginally faster. Only selling stockpiled exploration/exobiology data on day one before the first nerf could have achieved that, and those players had put literally years worth of effort into collecting that, so that hardly counts either.
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This is beyond stupid. Yeah, trading rares goods was the 'best' method, but it was still a time consuming grind and not that great. I've spent several hours trading rare goods and I'm barely at rank 6 because I don't own a fleet carrier. The other methods weren't even worth logging in for. I don't have 80 hours a week to grind endlessly for pocket change. This is the exact same thing they did with laser mining years ago, and now it's nothing more than a waste of time. Devs, you need to get away from this 'Grind = Good' mindset.
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