Powerplay kills the fun!

[Shadowsnog]

... that PP2's value add seems to be, for most player's lived experience, a glorified TODO list.

pp2 is the biggest chessboard you can get and its extending the "carving out my own place in space" aspect that bgs provided. its a way how to symbolically plant a flag and say this is mine on a larger scale than just acquiring assets. a way to unite larger amount of players to achieve common goals. a place where your actions can mean something for the greater good.
but hey, if you want to look at it that way, what isnt a glorified todo list?

I genuinely don't know if that's an artefact of players, or the game itself. Probably both.

its your opinion thats what it is

For me, the fact there's rewarded weekly task lists suggests that there's not enough to PP2 to stand on it's own.

you control the buttons you press. you can do weeklies, you can push your power, you can set your own goals based on your ambitions, you can just live in your powers space and have fun and passively collect merits over time, you can stay completely absent.
for example if my weeklies dont directly align with my activities, they wont get completed. (not to mention those that are uncompletable)

The issue is that its degenerated into mindless monolithic grinding, rather than at least trying to make higher risk but more rewarding tasks.

A while ago people suggested that all of PP should be mission based- after all we already have the weekly missions- which would then equalize Powers and tasks. Essentially Powers ask for job seekers like factions do, and that UM is a mix of current attacking but also 'super' UM from murder (which is already balanced).

Whats happening is FD have done a HAL 9000 and 'cured' PP2 by switching off parts rather than fix the underlying problems.

the modus operandi seems to be that if at least something at least somehow works, theres nothing to fix (or at least very low priority).
how dare you expect more than bare minimum

 

[Jmanis]

People called me a crazed fool for pointing out PP2 has to offer something new, compared to the rest of the game to make it stand out- while the mechanics of PP2 are good, what it essentially done is (PP2) becoming a more rewarding and responsive BGS layer and not done something adjacent.

Which, holy hell is a total misfire.

The more rewarding and responsive BGS layer should have been the BGS. It screams for T2 NPCs and interactions based on long-term relationship building with the on-foot contacts Odyssey provided, as a vector for accessing all the desirable "stuff" that doesn't come naturally from typical activities, and the commoditisation of reputation.

The difference then between "simply roaming the galaxy doing stuff" and "doing Powerplay", which naturally evolves into "personal narrative" then boils down to who you prop up, and how they align with the relevant power's machinations.

Imagine having the area you operate out of with a very rewarding mix of contacts that play well with each other... as an Imperial power supporter, you're propping up various Imperial contacts around the neighbouring systems... with the occasional Federal or Alliance contact you've developed to help keep you clean in those jurisdictions, and because they offer some services that provide significant amplification of your income. Enemy of my enemy stuff. Then, because you support Patreus, it becomes apparent that in order to continue that support, you're going to have to burn some of those hard-earned Federal contacts.

The pivot between "Just doing stuff" and "Doing powerplay stuff" is then surfaced as the pivot from "Doing things that meet your needs", to "Doing things that meet their needs, and working out how to make that work best for your needs", which is how you determine if a Power is aligned with your interests or not.

That's always been the trade-off for the BGS; I could earn way more by working for everyone, but the faction benefits more if I do more things for less, because it's only for them and their needs, because doing so aligns with my interest too.

In that sense, your actions feed in to what happens to the BGS, and the Powerplay impact represents how you did it.

EDIT: And then you know what? You could go one step further and say PP is no longer opt-in then, because if you happen to be a trader that only deals with the Empire, which puts a Federal power out of action in the area. Sure, you're not part of the power you propped up, but sure as anything you've made an enemy out of the Power you've put out of place.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Which, holy hell is a total misfire.

The more rewarding and responsive BGS layer should have been the BGS. It screams for T2 NPCs and interactions based on long-term relationship building with the on-foot contacts Odyssey provided, as a vector for accessing all the desirable "stuff" that doesn't come naturally from typical activities, and the commoditisation of reputation.

The difference then between "simply roaming the galaxy doing stuff" and "doing Powerplay", which naturally evolves into "personal narrative" then boils down to who you prop up, and how they align with the relevant power's machinations.

Imagine having the area you operate out of with a very rewarding mix of contacts that play well with each other... as an Imperial power supporter, you're propping up various Imperial contacts around the neighbouring systems... with the occasional Federal or Alliance contact you've developed to help keep you clean in those jurisdictions, and because they offer some services that provide significant amplification of your income. Enemy of my enemy stuff. Then, because you support Patreus, it becomes apparent that in order to continue that support, you're going to have to burn some of those hard-earned Federal contacts.

The pivot between "Just doing stuff" and "Doing powerplay stuff" is then surfaced as the pivot from "Doing things that meet your needs", to "Doing things that meet their needs, and working out how to make that work best for your needs", which is how you determine if a Power is aligned with your interests or not.

That's always been the trade-off for the BGS; I could earn way more by working for everyone, but the faction benefits more if I do more things for less, because it's only for them and their needs, because doing so aligns with my interest too.

In that sense, your actions feed in to what happens to the BGS, and the Powerplay impact represents how you did it.

EDIT: And then you know what? You could go one step further and say PP is no longer opt-in then, because if you happen to be a trader that only deals with the Empire, which puts a Federal power out of action in the area. Sure, you're not part of the power you propped up, but sure as anything you've made an enemy out of the Power you've put out of place.

Whats frustrating is that FD could have taken all the half baked gameplay left over from the BGS and crafted PP2 into something far more representative.

Examples:

Passenger gameplay in PP2 could be a mix of shipping in agents to sabotage (I.e. one way to UM which is high risk) that on scan acts like illegal passengers / reinforcement via security (so bulk passengers). You could then mix in 'super' agents (i.e. high end passengers) for mission like bonuses. You could also then craft extraction spy missions, pure sabotage (to say, induce plague) and so on. Give me a flip chart and pen and I'd fill it up in a day.

Powerplay acts like evolved black markets when infiltrating systems, slowly destabilizing until its overthrown. Cargo missions are gun running and stockpiling arms and supplies for the coup. This then leverages and augments smuggling and criminal elements left fallow.

Make strongholds actually strong: mix CZ like captains, press / VIPs for opportunistic targets.

Make more of war: when PP conflict breaks out, have secret POIs in space and on foot you can get sent to for chained missions (like any of the above) to bring extra context.

I could go on and on, its so frustrating because all of this is in game right now, but is barely touched.

 

[Darkfyre99]

I find Powerplay 2 to be incredibly perplexing. In a game of:

• 400b Star Systems
• ~22,000 populated systems
• ~77,000 factions across the 4 superpower blocs
• ~350,000 stations (I don't believe this figure includes the non-dockable installations and ports, so double that I guess?)
• 200+ missions available at any time in (almost) any station
• The multitude of bio/geo/anomaly signatures to discover
• a multitude of USS and other dynamic events
• the BGS and it's conditional effects across the populated regions
• Thargoids and Guardian stuff
• Probably heaps more

... that PP2's value add seems to be, for most player's lived experience, a glorified TODO list.

That pretty much describes BGS manipulation as well. The only difference between that and PowerPlay is that BGS manipulation has a wider variety of activities to choose from, and isn't as rewarding, depending upon the choices you make.

I genuinely don't know if that's an artefact of players, or the game itself. Probably both.

There's an old observation in game development: "Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game."

For me, the fact there's rewarded weekly task lists suggests that there's not enough to PP2 to stand on it's own.

Which I started ignoring after a couple of weeks. I view these less as "to do" lists and more as bonus merits for doing what I'd be doing normally. Generally, they're a distraction from my strategic and tactical goals, and really aren't worth diverting from them to complete. But sometimes they'll provide useful information (such as the fact there's an unacquired system near where I'm operating) or have enough synergy to make the diversion worth my while.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

2) for going up the ranks i guess the discussion should be how long do we think it should take an average player dipping into and out of elite and power play every now and then to get to level 100. it is possible to get to level 100 without ever getting even close to top 10% in the rankings (which is fine, i think everyone should be able to get to 100 sooner or later not just the top few, and i always hated rank degredation)

i would be fine with it taking a player like that who only dabbles (which these days is not so far from myself for the most part) a number of years to get there. From what you are saying i think you believe it should be much quicker?

Certainly for a module shopper the gross number of merits is going to be the important factor, not some position within a Power.
On that basis it might be worth considering the number of merits a player at around the 50% level is making per week and thus how long they might expect to doing PP to reach level 100 or whatever level their objective actually is.

 

[Jmanis]

That pretty much describes BGS manipulation as well. The only difference between that and PowerPlay is that BGS manipulation has a wider variety of activities to choose from, and isn't as rewarding, depending upon the choices you make.

I'd disagree with that on the point of the BGS being freeform. There's nothing telling me "Go do X"... if I'm interested in rewards, I can seek it out or craft a situation to create those rewards while still supporting a faction.

The biggest frustration with PP1 was how it just boiled particular actions down to a single task (deliver these leaflets repeatedly, or run this CZ). PP2 has opened the gates more, but it still holds things back somewhat, and just seems a thin veneer for getting "extra rewards"

Which I started ignoring after a couple of weeks. I view these less as "to do" lists and more as bonus merits for doing what I'd be doing normally. Generally, they're a distraction from my strategic and tactical goals, and really aren't worth diverting from them to complete. But sometimes they'll provide useful information (such as the fact there's an unacquired system near where I'm operating) or have enough synergy to make the diversion worth my while.

Which, again, kinda seems like a total misfire here. If PP isn't shaping what you're doing more than that, it's pretty irrelevant.

 

[Darkfyre99]

I'd disagree with that on the point of the BGS being freeform. There's nothing telling me "Go do X"... if I'm interested in rewards, I can seek it out or craft a situation to create those rewards.

That's exactly what BGS manipulation did in my experience. "Go fetch this." "Go deliver that." "Go kill these people over there." PowerPlay 2.0 has been much more freeform... with the caveat that the list of activities that affect it is smaller. For example, there's no point in carrying a passenger cabin (as @Rubbernuke mentioned above) because PowerPlay 2.0 doesn't do passenger activities, nor are there any SRV-based activities I could do.

But that's a minor quibble, relative to the fact that I can pretty much do PowerPlay activities as long as I have, at minimum, ten minutes to play. This is a far cry from BGS manipulation, which required a much larger block of playable time.

Which, again, kinda seems like a total misfire here. If PP isn't shaping what you're doing more than that, it's pretty irrelevant.

Not really. There's no reward for completing all your missions, and they don't provide any control points for my Power. As a result, there no strategic point in doing them, only a personal reward. On the other hand, those completely optional missions do sometimes point out things I may miss, and sometimes there's synergy which make them worth pursuing. As a result, they can also sometimes create a dilemma:

For example, one of my weekly missions is to scan holo-ads in an undermining system. Among the systems in my sphere of operations just happens to be an undermining system with holo-ads which I frequently visit, where I most definitely want to remain allied with the locals. Completing the mission would naturally tank my reputation with the faction controlling the station, which would weaken my ability to undermine the system a bit. On the other hand, it would be nice to have a better grip on exactly how much hacking those ads will cost me in reputation, because it's pretty much a guaranteed source of undermining merits. It's quite the quandary, which IMO is a good thing.

My only real complaint about PowerPlay 2.0, besides the still disabled activities, is that relative to Reinforcement, Undermining is both much less efficient, and much less rewarding.

 

[DjVortex]

Wait… you’re disappointed with an earned merit rate of over 20 kilo-merits per hour? With Aisling Duval, who doesn’t have a bonus to mining? Were you honestly expecting to earn a million an hour, rather than a million a week full time?

The entire saga started because of what someone wrote on page 3 of this thread:

no kidding, ever since I found that tool, I gained over 1.5 mil merits from just mining lol Never did mining for merits before but that tool made it easy-peasy

 

[Jmanis]

That's exactly what BGS manipulation did in my experience. "Go fetch this." "Go deliver that." "Go kill these people over there."

Is it? Genuine question, who told to do those things? I don't recall that ever being a thing in the BGS in my experience.

Rather, I would come on and go "Right, today I feel like doing combat" and I would proceed to do combat activities to support a faction. Or I might feel like doing trade, so I do that.

I've never had an enumerated list of tasks appear for me with the BGS like it does with Powerplay. Whether that's the weeklies, or the "Here's the specific activities which support this power" type thing.

PowerPlay 2.0 has been much more freeform... with the caveat that the list of activities that affect it is smaller.

... which is 100% my problem with Powerplay, and Powerplay 2. I can't come on and do whatever the heck I want to support a faction[1]. It must be this specific subset of things.

[1] Notwithstanding things like "Combat helps in war, other things don't" which is kinda a "duh" thing, though let's not get arcane about this

But that's a minor quibble, relative to the fact that I can pretty much do PowerPlay activities as long as I have, at minimum, ten minutes to play. This is a far cry from BGS manipulation, which required a much larger block of playable time.

Hold up a sec... let's clarify something. Are we talking about deliberate BGS manipulation, or are we talking about simply supporting a faction?

The two are very different things here. The distinction I'd make here is that "deliberate BGS manipulation" is all that pointless trash where people try to head off things like "Unwanted expansions" by their factions and all that other stuff that, in my opinion, goes against the grain of what the BGS is actually about by deliberately conducting awkward, time-consuming activities to achieve very specific effects.

For me, the line stops at "I want to do something that supports this faction"... there's no such thing as an "unwanted expansion". The factions respond how they want... it just so happens that my agenda is one of "I want to support the Empire".

Point of fact: For me, substantial BGS manipulation has been an indirect consequence of my actions. Specifically, my routine gameplay which, if i could spare just 10 minutes, was 10 minutes, or it might be an hour session at night, resulted in the faction expanding in such a way that it basically became self-sustaining via casual traffic. That was never a goal, it just happened.

Not really. There's no reward for completing all your missions, and they don't provide any control points for my Power. As a result, there no strategic point in doing them, only a personal reward. On the other hand, those completely optional missions do sometimes point out things I may miss, and sometimes there's synergy which make them worth pursuing. As a result, they can also sometimes create a dilemma:

For example, one of my weekly missions is to scan holo-ads in an undermining system. Among the systems in my sphere of operations just happens to be an undermining system with holo-ads which I frequently visit, where I most definitely want to remain allied with the locals. Completing the mission would naturally tank my reputation with the faction controlling the station, which would weaken my ability to undermine the system a bit. On the other hand, it would be nice to have a better grip on exactly how much hacking those ads will cost me in reputation, because it's pretty much a guaranteed source of undermining merits. It's quite the quandary, which IMO is a good thing.

But that sort of gameplay has always been there, regardless of whether PP2 existed or not. It's only since the BGS pivoted to what I refer to as "Elite: Best Friends" where negative effects are purely punitive/fail states or simply random chance. PP2 quite literally just forces the issue because the core mechanics for antagonistic activities are, fundamentally, broken these days.

Put short; PP2 just seems a kludge to shore up the shortcomings of the game at large, where it would be better served for the game at-large to just be fixed, so that PP2 can be focused on being that strategic layer that actually shapes the bubble while people go out on their freeform adventures.

 

[metatheurgist]

And I still can't try to give the finger to all powers. I have to sign up to something if I want anything out of it. So I just refuse to do the thing they spent all this time making out of spite. Which is a real good use of dev time imo.

 

[DjVortex]

And I still can't try to give the finger to all powers. I have to sign up to something if I want anything out of it. So I just refuse to do the thing they spent all this time making out of spite. Which is a real good use of dev time imo.

I can't even begin to comprehend the logic behind this paragraph.

 

[vlazet]

The entire saga started because of what someone wrote on page 3 of this thread:

Stop pointing fingers at a single individual. Have you ever looked at top 10 list in your PP window? every single cmdr on that list got there through mining, and the top 1 usually makes a mil or over in a single week.

 

[Rebel Yell]

Stop pointing fingers at a single individual. Have you ever looked at top 10 list in your PP window? every single cmdr on that list got there through mining, and the top 1 usually makes a mil or over in a single week.

Try to match that with combat... even if PCZs wouldn't be broken, it gives a fraction of what mining payouts are.

 

[Darkfyre99]

Is it? Genuine question, who told to do those things? I don't recall that ever being a thing in the BGS in my experience.

Rather, I would come on and go "Right, today I feel like doing combat" and I would proceed to do combat activities to support a faction. Or I might feel like doing trade, so I do that.

I've never had an enumerated list of tasks appear for me with the BGS like it does with Powerplay. Whether that's the weeklies, or the "Here's the specific activities which support this power" type thing.

The factions themselves, naturally. Every time you visit a station, you can get a list of tasks (AKA missions) they need you to do . If you’re actively manipulating the BGS, you do which ever mission which is the best fit for your agenda given the constraints on your time, regardless of what it is.

Granted, there’s enough variety to that you can usually avoid doing what you don’t enjoy, but every so often there’s enough synergy to push you out of comfort zone. I would’ve never voluntarily mined enough to unlock a certain Engineer if not for that fact.

And I consider that to be a good thing,

Hold up a sec... let's clarify something. Are we talking about deliberate BGS manipulation, or are we talking about simply supporting a faction?


The two are very different things here. The distinction I'd make here is that "deliberate BGS manipulation" is all that pointless trash where people try to head off things like "Unwanted expansions" by their factions and all that other stuff that, in my opinion, goes against the grain of what the BGS is actually about by deliberately conducting awkward, time-consuming activities to achieve very specific effects.

For me, the line stops at "I want to do something that supports this faction"... there's no such thing as an "unwanted expansion". The factions respond how they want... it just so happens that my agenda is one of "I want to support the Empire".

Point of fact: For me, substantial BGS manipulation has been an indirect consequence of my actions. Specifically, my routine gameplay which, if i could spare just 10 minutes, was 10 minutes, or it might be an hour session at night, resulted in the faction expanding in such a way that it basically became self-sustaining via casual traffic. That was never a goal, it just happened.

I’ve never cared about things like “stopping expansions,” but for me, supporting a faction means much more than simply working for it. It means deliberately shaping a system by ensuring that neutral system traffic works for the faction you’re supporting, and more importantly doesn’t work for the factions you’re working against. In BGS 1.0, that meant trading reputation and influence to manipulate faction states. In BGS 2.0, it’s more of an influence grind.

Either way, you get the best results by not being picky about your missions.

But that sort of gameplay has always been there, regardless of whether PP2 existed or not. It's only since the BGS pivoted to what I refer to as "Elite: Best Friends" where negative effects are purely punitive/fail states or simply random chance. PP2 quite literally just forces the issue because the core mechanics for antagonistic activities are, fundamentally, broken these days.

Put short; PP2 just seems a kludge to shore up the shortcomings of the game at large, where it would be better served for the game at-large to just be fixed, so that PP2 can be focused on being that strategic layer that actually shapes the bubble while people go out on their freeform adventures.

That’s one way of looking at it. A needless to say, I view it completely different. I’m no longer a slave to the tyranny of the mission timer, and that’s a very good thing.

Even if it means I miss out on a handful of activity types.

 

[Rock Hunter]

All this talk of mining and mega merits…I’m assuming this is purely for personal merits and rank progression?

I’m trying to make moves to push a reinforced system into stronghold. Any mining done here, with a single rocky ring and no hotspots (with the restriction of mining and selling within the same system) awards scant merits despite pushing the lead faction into a Boom and Civil Liberty state due to the low demand.

My point being, surely once people have unlocked their modules, reached level 100 and achieved all the perks it will all be pointless. They’ll either stop pursuing merits completely or they’ll be attempting to gain control points via merits in situations that aren’t necessarily optimal and certainly aren’t able to be maximised with a third party tool?

Apologies if things have moved on in this thread but I’ve been meaning to ask this for sometime after first reading this thread sometime ago.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

And I still can't try to give the finger to all powers. I have to sign up to something if I want anything out of it. So I just refuse to do the thing they spent all this time making out of spite. Which is a real good use of dev time imo.

Virtually all of what I did was undermining, whether against Patreus, Grom or Antal mostly.
It was more interesting than hauling and I certainly wasn't mining.

 

[Darkfyre99]

All this talk of mining and mega merits…I’m assuming this is purely for personal merits and rank progression?

Yep! Same with the “one ton trading” trick. They’re great for making a lot of merits, but have very limited use when it comes to control points.

I’m trying to make moves to push a reinforced system into stronghold. Any mining done here, with a single rocky ring and no hotspots (with the restriction of mining and selling within the same system) awards scant merits despite pushing the lead faction into a Boom and Civil Liberty state due to the low demand.

Same here, but I’m not bothering with mining. Without the right set of rare circumstances, they can’t be used strategically.

My point being, surely once people have unlocked their modules, reached level 100 and achieved all the perks it will all be pointless. They’ll either stop pursuing merits completely or they’ll be attempting to gain control points via merits in situations that aren’t necessarily optimal and certainly aren’t able to be maximised with a third party tool?

Personally, I find it more satisfying to create my own tools. I noticed long ago that 3rd party sites perform pretty poorly in comparison to what I can achieve on my own.

Apologies if things have moved on in this thread but I’ve been meaning to ask this for sometime after first reading this thread sometime ago.

Completely understandable. There’s a wide variety of ways to interact with most of this game’s features. 3rd party sites to reduce it to one shallow and grindy way.

 

[Screemonster]

My point being, surely once people have unlocked their modules, reached level 100 and achieved all the perks it will all be pointless. They’ll either stop pursuing merits completely or they’ll be attempting to gain control points via merits in situations that aren’t necessarily optimal and certainly aren’t able to be maximised with a third party tool?

yeah, this will lead to some systems becoming extremely defensible (good luck shifting a power from a good mining spot) and others less so in the long run but in terms of personal merits you're likely to end up with whatever your power's meta merit spot is just getting fortified to hell and back by a constant tide of people looking to make rank 100 (or possibly even just whatever rank they need to unlock all the modules) and then stop bothering.

Which isn't all that different a situation to "whatever control system is closest to the HQ gets fortified to 1000% every week" under pp1 and happens for the same reason.

 

[Rock Hunter]

yeah, this will lead to some systems becoming extremely defensible (good luck shifting a power from a good mining spot) and others less so in the long run but in terms of personal merits you're likely to end up with whatever your power's meta merit spot is just getting fortified to hell and back by a constant tide of people looking to make rank 100 (or possibly even just whatever rank they need to unlock all the modules) and then stop bothering.

Which isn't all that different a situation to "whatever control system is closest to the HQ gets fortified to 1000% every week" under pp1 and happens for the same reason.

Yes, so Wargis will remain forever LYR

….that second paragraph seems a fair analogy too.

 

[Rock Hunter]

Yep! Same with the “one ton trading” trick. They’re great for making a lot of merits, but have very limited use when it comes to control points.



Same here, but I’m not bothering with mining. Without the right set of rare circumstances, they can’t be used strategically.



Personally, I find it more satisfying to create my own tools. I noticed long ago that 3rd party sites perform pretty poorly in comparison to what I can achieve on my own.



Completely understandable. There’s a wide variety of ways to interact with most of this game’s features. 3rd party sites to reduce it to one shallow and grindy way.

No me neither, I tried and soon discovered that simply collecting power commodities twice an hour provided a greater return in control points than mining under those circumstances.

I do wish the conversation could move on a bit from focusing on ranking up to focusing on power play itself.