Oh my god this is fantastic. This thread is now diamonds.
The Powerplay discussion thread.
- Thread starter Matt
- Start date
Oh my god this is fantastic. This thread is now diamonds.
FD, I'm not asking for an ETA, but could you confirm you're working on Powerplay balance?
I understand this is an extraordinarily busy time at Frontier - E3, XB1, Powerplay, upcoming Gamescom and the big new announcement there... I, and I bet most commanders, am quite willing to be patient. What is a shame, though, is that while your community representatives here and on reddit are doing a great job of interacting with the community, we're yet to hear even an acknowledgement of some of the issues with PP that the community has pointed out. Without any deadlines or promises, could you kindly give us Frontier's take on these few points, and if you're planning to address them?
Well, that's it, really. I've made this post partly because I'm a little confused with the current situation, where on one hand we have awesome engagement with the community by several members of the team, but on the other hand some oft-repeated, important questions and concerns just aren't being answered. I understand you guys are working hard and may not be able to answer, but either way, thank you for your continued contributions - especially whichever one of you trudges through the forums and subreddits to find stuff to put on GalNet, you're a star o7
I understand this is an extraordinarily busy time at Frontier - E3, XB1, Powerplay, upcoming Gamescom and the big new announcement there... I, and I bet most commanders, am quite willing to be patient. What is a shame, though, is that while your community representatives here and on reddit are doing a great job of interacting with the community, we're yet to hear even an acknowledgement of some of the issues with PP that the community has pointed out. Without any deadlines or promises, could you kindly give us Frontier's take on these few points, and if you're planning to address them?
1. Power perks and bonuses. The controlled/exploited space effects have been a great addition, and they have made different regions of space feel truly, well, different from one another. Likewise, perks for hitting rank 2 with a Power are a nice idea. However, it's clear that some Powers are in a much, much better position than others. Perfect balance is impossible, and it's probably not even desirable, but it's not fair and not fun when some Powers (e.g. Arissa, Torval) get great, useful perks and controlled space bonuses while others (e.g. Antal, Winters, Archon) get "bonuses" that are somewhere between mildly interesting and completely useless. Additionally, at least in some cases the effects don't have a lot to do with a Power's lore. Can we expect a rebalancing or revamp of Powerplay perks and bonuses in the future?
2. Power ethos and tasks. Currently, Powers with a non-combat Expansion ethos are at considerable advantage over those with combat expansion tasks. A single player can deliver roughly as much Powerplay commodities as a combat player can earn in PP combat zones, but at a fraction of the risk, and with the option to increase his output several times if he's willing to spend some credits. With Expansion conflict zones only awarding 1 merit per kill, fighting there does not feel rewarding, especially compared to the considerable difficulty facing pilots (bravo on that, btw, the new AI is deadly). Additionally, Power actons often don't match the ethos displayed on their Powerplay page. For instance, Hudson's Fortification and Preparation is supposed to be "Combat", but his followers complete the exact same tasks as followers of non-combat Powers. Similarily, Antal's Expansion should be "Social", but it's exact same as for Combat Powers. Is this as intended, and ethos is meant to simply be RP "fluff", or can we expect a change to Powerplay tasks?
3. Undermining and Opposition. From a purely mercenary perspective, Opposing and Undermining other Powers is much more profitable, merit-wise, than actually supporting your own Power's fortifcation, preparation or expansion. This leads to a strange situation, where combat pilots pledged to Powers with combat Expansion tasks are given an incentive to not actually participate in that Power's expansion, but instead interfere with their neighbours. Is this as intended, or can we expect a change to incentives to make supporting your own Power as attractive as opposing others?
4. Powerplay weapons. This is a very new addition, so imbalance is very much expected, but it would still be nice to hear something from the devs. Player testing over the coming weeks may dig up some hidden gems amongst the new modules, but others are extremely unlikely to be useful (Cryotoscrambler, for example). It would be great to hear that these modules are working on and to hear the devs' thoughts behind the design of individual modules, so we can understand what sort of role they seem for them in the meta.
5. Lore. It has been a little while, and several Powers are still barely sketched out in the lore - we know little about them, their beliefs, their organisation or their long-term plan. At the same time, members of the FD team (whoever it is, kudos) have done a great job of monitoring the player activity in each Power and using player initiatives for GalNet posts, and even CGs (such as the recent one in HIP 116213). Should we take this to mean that you're expecting players to write up and create lore for the Powers, especially the fringe ones (Archon, Antal, Sirius), or can we expect more information and more delicious background bits in the future? There's a lot of very talented, very creative and very passionate people in this community, I am sure that if their efforts are needed, we'll see a lot out of them.
2. Power ethos and tasks. Currently, Powers with a non-combat Expansion ethos are at considerable advantage over those with combat expansion tasks. A single player can deliver roughly as much Powerplay commodities as a combat player can earn in PP combat zones, but at a fraction of the risk, and with the option to increase his output several times if he's willing to spend some credits. With Expansion conflict zones only awarding 1 merit per kill, fighting there does not feel rewarding, especially compared to the considerable difficulty facing pilots (bravo on that, btw, the new AI is deadly). Additionally, Power actons often don't match the ethos displayed on their Powerplay page. For instance, Hudson's Fortification and Preparation is supposed to be "Combat", but his followers complete the exact same tasks as followers of non-combat Powers. Similarily, Antal's Expansion should be "Social", but it's exact same as for Combat Powers. Is this as intended, and ethos is meant to simply be RP "fluff", or can we expect a change to Powerplay tasks?
3. Undermining and Opposition. From a purely mercenary perspective, Opposing and Undermining other Powers is much more profitable, merit-wise, than actually supporting your own Power's fortifcation, preparation or expansion. This leads to a strange situation, where combat pilots pledged to Powers with combat Expansion tasks are given an incentive to not actually participate in that Power's expansion, but instead interfere with their neighbours. Is this as intended, or can we expect a change to incentives to make supporting your own Power as attractive as opposing others?
4. Powerplay weapons. This is a very new addition, so imbalance is very much expected, but it would still be nice to hear something from the devs. Player testing over the coming weeks may dig up some hidden gems amongst the new modules, but others are extremely unlikely to be useful (Cryotoscrambler, for example). It would be great to hear that these modules are working on and to hear the devs' thoughts behind the design of individual modules, so we can understand what sort of role they seem for them in the meta.
5. Lore. It has been a little while, and several Powers are still barely sketched out in the lore - we know little about them, their beliefs, their organisation or their long-term plan. At the same time, members of the FD team (whoever it is, kudos) have done a great job of monitoring the player activity in each Power and using player initiatives for GalNet posts, and even CGs (such as the recent one in HIP 116213). Should we take this to mean that you're expecting players to write up and create lore for the Powers, especially the fringe ones (Archon, Antal, Sirius), or can we expect more information and more delicious background bits in the future? There's a lot of very talented, very creative and very passionate people in this community, I am sure that if their efforts are needed, we'll see a lot out of them.
Well, that's it, really. I've made this post partly because I'm a little confused with the current situation, where on one hand we have awesome engagement with the community by several members of the team, but on the other hand some oft-repeated, important questions and concerns just aren't being answered. I understand you guys are working hard and may not be able to answer, but either way, thank you for your continued contributions - especially whichever one of you trudges through the forums and subreddits to find stuff to put on GalNet, you're a star o7
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I support this effort, we need an answer, PP if anything brings all the flaws of the game into spotlight, so instead of finding a way to turn down the brightness of it or just letting the light bulb burn out...
I am still a fan of Powerplay, don't get me wrong. It's a huge, very original addition to the game, and it has addressed one of the big complaints we had, the lack of a feeling of community in ED. It comes with a lot of problems, which is pretty natural, and I think peoples' patience is tried more than it would normally be, by the fact that we're not getting much in the way of communication. I still have a good deal of faith in FD, if we they just said something to the tune of "we're aware of these issues, we're working on them, we're just busy and can't give you an ETA" I would be perfectly happy with that.
At first glance I'm inclined to think the latter, but Powerplay as a whole needs a definite balancing and polishing pass. At the very least we need more ways to make merits just to mix things up a bit.
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Oh dear, Cadoc's well written post has been dumped in the graveyard thread. Shame really as now no one will read it.
Thanks for the kind words. It's a bit of a shame - I bet most people don't check out this megathread - but I imagine at least someone from the Frontier dev team at least skims these threads. Besides, I haven't written anything new, really, it was an attempt to just compile some common concerns in a one, non-ranty, non-hostile thread. I can't say I'm not a little annoyed, but I get why the mod team do merge these threads.
Some good points here.
Oh dear FD censorship at its finest... again...
Do we need to start campaign about spamming emails at developers/community manager just to get simple answers to crucial questions that pretty much everyone asks and wants an answer from?
Is that what we need to start doing?
Again, get the forum cleaning thing and the allowance of other topics to be discussed, but when topics are hot, ADDRESS THEM instead of tossing them into "threads of doom" (Not my language, one of the Mods named it).
It's not like we are asking you to address everything and anything, if the topic is scorching hot, ADDRESS IT.
Look FD, even if you tell us to "screw" off and you aren't going to fix anything, tell us that so those that don't want to deal with it can leave.
People are putting in time and effort to write very well written and constructed proposals, suggestions, and criticisms. How about you confront them with appropriate answers and apologies if necessary to let the community know you listen? No, instead they get tossed into garbage cans.
I get it, you're a company, revenue is priority.
This is speculation but you are probably dragging everything out until you can sell expansions to us before you pull the plug on the project and run off with the money.
But if you are not like that, tell us, show us you are different than EA/Nexon.
Inb4 I get banned from the forum for criticizing the company.
Do we need to start campaign about spamming emails at developers/community manager just to get simple answers to crucial questions that pretty much everyone asks and wants an answer from?
Is that what we need to start doing?
Again, get the forum cleaning thing and the allowance of other topics to be discussed, but when topics are hot, ADDRESS THEM instead of tossing them into "threads of doom" (Not my language, one of the Mods named it).
It's not like we are asking you to address everything and anything, if the topic is scorching hot, ADDRESS IT.
Look FD, even if you tell us to "screw" off and you aren't going to fix anything, tell us that so those that don't want to deal with it can leave.
People are putting in time and effort to write very well written and constructed proposals, suggestions, and criticisms. How about you confront them with appropriate answers and apologies if necessary to let the community know you listen? No, instead they get tossed into garbage cans.
I get it, you're a company, revenue is priority.
This is speculation but you are probably dragging everything out until you can sell expansions to us before you pull the plug on the project and run off with the money.
But if you are not like that, tell us, show us you are different than EA/Nexon.
Inb4 I get banned from the forum for criticizing the company.
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"Nothing to read here, move along" and scroll through the chaff to get to the relevant points. Poor move for the community, and the discussion as a whole. Cadoc took the time to write and compile his thread so that the community and FDEV alike could more easily read a much more concise and to the point view of this megathread.
Hah... I really don't know if FD ever cared about the community to begin with...
I got my 60$ worth of the game, I will be honest.
But... this is just... saddening.
Again, sorry about your thread Cadoc, it is very well written, shame that it got tossed into the graveyard.
Very disappointing - that was a great thread and I hope they reconsider.
Brett C
Frontier
Actually, I get the task of reading over these threads.
So yes, we do read these mega threads.
Actually, I get the task of reading over these threads.
So yes, we do read these mega threads.
Thanks for your time and effort in sifting through the megathreads.
However, many threads such as Cadoc's must be just as visible to the community as a whole. If threads such as this continue to be placed in megathreads, so that community members cannot easily see them, then the visibility and transparency of FDEV can be called into question.
Actually, I get the task of reading over these threads.
So yes, we do read these mega threads.
That's great to know, though I do feel bad for you, Brett