So, now nearly half a year this thing is running and the balance, despite Fdev trying, is still abysmal. We have a few meta actions (mostly extremely repetitive boring stuff, like essentially reloading an instance to shoot a running paper ship or 1 ton trading) and many gameplay loops that are already developed, but give low merits (combat in salvage POIs, where the ships are beefier but give the same merits than the running paper ships). Why? The game has several well developed gameplay loops that generate merits, but none of those with actual gameplay do well (where most of the existing modules are used for). Now we have again one deactivated, and of course this deactivation unbalanced the powers further.
Powerplay 2 alpha
- Thread starter Agrippa
- Start date
PP2 needs to be much more vindictive and brutal- its far too soft. My pet peeve is that non PP NPC murder is hardly rewarded at all when it should provide the 'fast track' UM.
PP 3.0 required !
The answer is to drive more direct player encounters via a Powerplay PvP mission system. Powerplay missions which generate time-critical counter missions on the opposing side.
Powerplay will always become boring when it's about farming NPC kills, escape pods and data week in week out with next to no player opposition.
Powerplay will always become boring when it's about farming NPC kills, escape pods and data week in week out with next to no player opposition.
Not really, going through already existing stuff and fixing the merits to 1) support conflict and 2) not have excessively boring metas isn't that hard. Take a look at what generates how many merits in 30 min and balance it on that. Everything is there, it only requires actual balancing and not whatever Fdev is doing there. I really wonder why, because it's certainly not player retention.
UM merits earned from NPC PP enemy kills shouldn't be divided by 4 within specific challenging scenarios (+removing the lobotomized wings found in low wakes).
Enhanced SH Conflict: where 2 (or more Powers) have strongholds in range, the closest ones for each power enter in a special and unique SH conflict state (i.e. a power can have only one of such conflict state toward another power, so every power can have max 11 of these conflict states). Losing the conflict means losing the stronghold system to unoccupied (and potentially all systems attached if no other support systems are available).
A definitive fix for the disappearing PCZs bug has to be implemented... PP2 is out from 8+ months and they didn't resolved this game balance-breaking issue so far.
Enhanced SH Conflict: where 2 (or more Powers) have strongholds in range, the closest ones for each power enter in a special and unique SH conflict state (i.e. a power can have only one of such conflict state toward another power, so every power can have max 11 of these conflict states). Losing the conflict means losing the stronghold system to unoccupied (and potentially all systems attached if no other support systems are available).
A definitive fix for the disappearing PCZs bug has to be implemented... PP2 is out from 8+ months and they didn't resolved this game balance-breaking issue so far.
Especially this, given that powers do things asymmetrically.
EDIT: I would also add that non PP NPC murder is universal across powers (i.e. its a player driven thing) and that really there should be at least one 'hyper' UM method as well as one 'hyper' fortification method that is available to players.
For example: delivery of PP cargo (like a rare) that attracts dedicated PP NPCs balanced against non PP NPC murder....er hang on thats PP1
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Except most of those values aren't constants.
Rares depends on whether Ngurii is in a highly specific state as to whether it's "decent" or "extremely good".
Mining is excellent in a few systems and impossible-to-useless in most.
The Odyssey actions don't do a lot in systems without landable planets (but can generally all be done together in those that do)
Scanning is pretty terrible for merits/hour if you don't exploit the bug, but adds to a whole range of Reinforcement actions.
Whether you can get good values for donation missions depends on the station economy and the factions present and their BGS states.
Exobio is far more powerful if you use 3rd-party body databases to quickly get undiscovered Stratum candidate systems.
(etc)
If they balance the actions to their fastest ideal-case value, then most of them end up useless in any other case.
If they balance the actions to their "in an average system" value, then a lot of them will be massively overpowered (like mining is) in the right sort of system, with no guarantee that they'll be offset by a comparably overpowered action for the other side.
They could certainly do better than they have done - and should certainly have planned to need to do more continuous rebalancing than they have - but there's too many variables for it to be possible to balance properly just by tweaking a few baseline numbers.
(For that matter, even having the merit earning rates balanced out to an "ideal" where it doesn't matter what you do, you get 3000 control points an hour for it ... won't solve any of the issues around undermining generally being a really inefficient way to benefit your own Power)
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
I blame the removal of hostile NPC's. Flying in opposing's Power territory should be a risk. As it was in the beta.
I'm absolutely gutted that they nerfed it
I agree....IF at the same time the PP modules get removed from PP and made available in another way.I blame the removal of hostile NPC's. Flying in opposing's Power territory should be a risk. As it was in the beta.
I'm absolutely gutted that they nerfed it
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
Why? Genuinely interested why this would be your condition for this change.
Personally I'm happy with the modules being accessible via PP2 reward system. And I say that as a person that never tried any of the modules (never actually played PP1 at all, despite 7k hours in the game lol)
At this point in the game especially the prismatic shields are a mandatory piece of equipment, especially in a PvP environment (so basically all of open). I'm absolutely against forcing players into PP to get them if it would be as cutthroat as requested.
I didn't read your whole post, but how would your system handle exploitation with collusion or alt accounts? People sign up with different powers and then intentionally fail at the PvP missions to give the reward to the other side.
I blame the removal of hostile NPC's. Flying in opposing's Power territory should be a risk. As it was in the beta.
I'm absolutely gutted that they nerfed it
Ah, its a tricky one. One the one hand, it makes sense. On the other, making sense might not be fun if it effectively means you can't take part in events across the whole bubble (or at least those parts controlled by other powers).
The problem with that is that it makes it even more "Undermining and Punishment", further pushing the incentives to stick to your own Power's space and peacefully reinforce it - which is close enough what everyone does anyway even without NPC aggression.I blame the removal of hostile NPC's. Flying in opposing's Power territory should be a risk. As it was in the beta.
I'm absolutely gutted that they nerfed it
I don't think Frontier can reintroduce that side of things unless undermining gets so much preferred over reinforcement that they need to start putting a brake on it. And I don't think we're ever going to see Powerplay get anywhere near that state.
Adding active hostile NPCs to border territories - so reinforcing near a border gets you almost as much NPC aggression as undermining on the other side of it - might work.
I could not disagree more. It's a big galaxy making powerplay so that most of the bubble is a murder zone and it's Powerplay or normal play for most of the bubble is just bad game design. Performing undermining in opposing territory should be a risk. Flying around and doing non powerplay related stuff shouldn't be grounds for death. It's just an uneccessary friction to the gameplay that should instead be tied to better and deeper activities in hostile territory not just existance in a big galaxy.I blame the removal of hostile NPC's. Flying in opposing's Power territory should be a risk. As it was in the beta.
I'm absolutely gutted that they nerfed it
As is stands they don't constantly interdict you but are still spawning into every single instance you drop into so the mechanics for the risk are there the activities are just missing.
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
Fair enough. Border danger zones would indeed be a good compromise I think.
Even if they are not constant. Rebalancing it around standart time invested isn't bad. I get the same merits for the incompetent runners npc that I get for CZ like NPCs. That's simply idiotic as the latter takes much more time (but is more engaging). If player created or system based exceptions exist, so be it. But the balance of the basic activities is much worse than it should be. Add to that that bonuses are based on some sort of rp, instead of balancing them properly agaist each other (example: Archon UM bonus is crime, which pays 10 or so merits per crime, data UM bonuses are much stronger and have a much more decisive effect).
Can you describe what the beta was like? Zac made posts of how crazy strongholds were and I was expecting all sorts.I blame the removal of hostile NPC's. Flying in opposing's Power territory should be a risk. As it was in the beta.
I'm absolutely gutted that they nerfed it
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
(For clarity, when I say "beta" I mean that 1 week that Partners got the preview access. Just to be clear)
We were getting pulled out of supercruise in enemy territory and attacked on sight, which was really surprising to me. Think current Power USS's with enemy forces, but in SC.
I didn't really play that much that week unfortunately as had some other stuff going on, but for the limited time I did, I was quite surprised that I actually had to pay attention where I am flying and plan my routes more carefully. I absolutely loved it! It really felt like the allegiance actually mattered.
It didn't feel overwhelming or tedious, but dangerous (ha!) instead. Maybe if I played for longer it would have became a nuisance, but for the limited time I spent with it, it was really good IMO. Made the Power choice actually matter for day to day gameplay.