New answers from Devs, I quit Powerplay

[Moriarte]

It's been obvious since February that the game has lost it's way. Realise that, take a deep breath and move on, or like it for what it has - a theme park & arcady game play. Nothing can fix PP, BGS, certainly not paying 100 times more money/merits for same dull A to B endeavours, which I have to do ad infinitum to move the name up in the spreadsheet. We've seen GTA, Skyrim, Witcher - carefully handcrafted planes of existence filled with surprise, thrill of the hunt, atmosphere and storylines created by intelligent people with great sense of humour. Now I see ED - a Microsoft flight sim. type of game with Risk and Arena bolted to it. Yeah, and you can land on procedurally generated planets. Maybe .. next year.

Inspiring stuff.

 

[sbdags]

I've just quit power play as well and unpledged. I've had enough of the merit grind - I'd rather go back to blazing my own trail. Power Play was a nice little distraction for a few weeks but I couldn't recommend it for any length of time unfortunately.

 

[Snarfbuckle]

I've just quit power play as well and unpledged. I've had enough of the merit grind - I'd rather go back to blazing my own trail. Power Play was a nice little distraction for a few weeks but I couldn't recommend it for any length of time unfortunately.

Yup, the only fun thing from pp was new modules but we have to suffer pp to be use them.

 

[Andromalius]

I have the vague impression that the dev anserving just didn't understand the question he was asked....
He's asked about merit farmers being detrimental and answers about opponents to the power.....

 

[Ben Ryder]

I play a lot of strategy games, have done since I was ten and became chess champion for South East London. I learned poker at 13, almost 30 years ago. Now I teach it. Studied The Art of War and other associated texts at 15. I've broken the world record for games like medieval total war and shogun total war series countless times. I've table top gamed, live role played, studied at degree level in political philosophy and practice and on and on (it's my thing...). Power Play is terribly put together in my opinion. From making sense right down to role playing. I've been in power play since week 2 and mainteined rank 5 without carrying out a single undermining mission. With the greatest sincerity, I thin Monopoly has far better rules. Not being big headed about my back ground just giving some context of where my opinion is coming from. Th eonly thing Monopoly was missing was brothels and corner shops and a nice cafe selling cream teas in Mayfair.

 

[Carro]

I play a lot of strategy games, have done since I was ten and became chess champion for South East London. I learned poker at 13, almost 30 years ago. Now I teach it. Studied The Art of War and other associated texts at 15. I've broken the world record for games like medieval total war and shogun total war series countless times. I've table top gamed, live role played, studied at degree level in political philosophy and practice and on and on (it's my thing...). Power Play is terribly put together in my opinion. From making sense right down to role playing. I've been in power play since week 2 and mainteined rank 5 without carrying out a single undermining mission. With the greatest sincerity, I thin Monopoly has far better rules. Not being big headed about my back ground just giving some context of where my opinion is coming from. Th eonly thing Monopoly was missing was brothels and corner shops and a nice cafe selling cream teas in Mayfair.

You sound like a really cool guy! Nice.

 

[CMDR Hagglebeard]

Yep. I'm very quickly losing hope in this game. I see the devs are working very hard, but they aren't working efficiently. I don't take part in Powerplay, I won't take part in CQC, etc...

THey need less pew-pew stuff. This sort of thing makes me upset.

 

[Ben Ryder]

You sound like a really cool guy! Nice.

Thank you

 

[FuzzySpider]

I've also quit powerplay.

I complained about it constructively during beta. I then ranted about it endlessly when it went live. I realized I hadn't properly tried it since it went live, and I was being a massive hypocrite, so I tried it. I played 3 days and unpledged. I hated it just the same.

I detest powerplay, the mechanics of it, the unimmersive nature of it, the arbitrariness, the whole "move" thing at the end of the week, and I wish they'd pull the plug.

I also hate SCBs.

I also hate that the Empire get all the cool ships and the Feds are still stuck with a space cracker that goes bang when you pull it apart.

Other than those three things, I love the game and I love Frontier, so please hear my moans as the moans of love and affection.

On powerplay specifically, I suggested this to rectify the situation (that was its own thread, I don't know why it got merged unless they are now unifying all powerplay critiques into one thread?)

 

[Evil]

I play a lot of strategy games, have done since I was ten and became chess champion for South East London. I learned poker at 13, almost 30 years ago. Now I teach it. Studied The Art of War and other associated texts at 15. I've broken the world record for games like medieval total war and shogun total war series countless times. I've table top gamed, live role played, studied at degree level in political philosophy and practice and on and on (it's my thing...). Power Play is terribly put together in my opinion. From making sense right down to role playing. I've been in power play since week 2 and mainteined rank 5 without carrying out a single undermining mission. With the greatest sincerity, I thin Monopoly has far better rules. Not being big headed about my back ground just giving some context of where my opinion is coming from. Th eonly thing Monopoly was missing was brothels and corner shops and a nice cafe selling cream teas in Mayfair.

I think there's a lot more they can do, and I see your point, atm I see PP as just a framework for something better, and while monopoly is one of the "grandfather" of board games, its rule system works for the number of players. I dread to think how many players PP has to accommodate (10k? 100k? 1mil? players), and balance before everything falls over to an irreversible mess.

I agree with the OP on the merits system, but me personally, I wouldn't look for a band aid, I would look towards the current missions system to be integrated to PP, where supporting a specific system with goods or combat would be key in the functionality of powers control/expansion/undermining .

 

[Phil^]

I'm not sure you understand how bad the expansion system for Patreus is. Its worse than you think
Yes you only get 1 merit per kill for killing military ships.
How do enemy factions oppose Patreus' expansion?

They can also go to the same place and get 1 merit per kill, thats balanced, and thats what the in game PP UI tells the other Powers to do, but right now they can also just interdict the supply ships of Pateus and kill them for 15 merits each.

Not only is 1 merit per kill a poor return on your time, you are competing against players who are getting 15 merits for killing sidewinders and type 6s.

This was the case for ALD as well when trying to expand into Pancienses - the merits were being gained for each side at a rate of 15:1, against. They still took it despite this, even with all of the opposition - after pouring a heck of a lot of time and effort into doing so.

its a scenario that is doable - but only if you have a lot of people to counter the hard coded disadvantage

 

[Ginrikuzuma]

Yeah not to mention the actual merit grind by spending credits is questionable considering the math doesn't add up properly most of the time.
I think I'll stay with hudson one last week to grab my credits before I jump off ship as well.

 

[Hootmon]

You sound like a really cool guy! Nice.

Its how he earned his Professor Elemental avatar.

 

[RipperJack]

Given this situation, and I've given it a good crack, my intention with PP is to do the rounds and get some weapons I want.. After that I am out too. I cannot continue my involvement when it turns out we are having a grind competition with people we can never see.

Nailed it. Get what i need, pull my tongue out of my current pledge and leave it be. It doesent help also getting these awful interdictions from another faction, halfway across known space and it turns out to be a random eagle or something vs a 'conda.

 

[Ben Ryder]

I think there's a lot more they can do, and I see your point, atm I see PP as just a framework for something better, and while monopoly is one of the "grandfather" of board games, its rule system works for the number of players. I dread to think how many players PP has to accommodate (10k? 100k? 1mil? players), and balance before everything falls over to an irreversible mess.

I agree with the OP on the merits system, but me personally, I wouldn't look for a band aid, I would look towards the current missions system to be integrated to PP, where supporting a specific system with goods or combat would be key in the functionality of powers control/expansion/undermining .

Very true. Im enjoying powerplay but I can see why so many are not.

FD have a issue with reinventing the wheel and over complicating things that could be simple. I think we can look at ship upgrades for instance. Not meaning to side track this thread. For example only, was there any need to create such incomprehensible barrier and then not give plain well written descriptions of the modules and their behaviors. Things like this turn people off.

 

[Alexander the Grape]

Agree with the senitment. Powerplay needs to be balanced hard

 

[TruffleSnout]

I understand where OP's frustration comes from, but at the end of the day I believe that a lot of people made PP out in their minds to be something that the devs perhaps never intended. This frustration comes from the lack of dev exposure. The dev's have never talked about how they thought people would play, so naturally the PvP crowd played PP as PvP, and the PvE crowd played it as PvE. Turns out the PvE crowd is more effective. Was this intended behavior? Unintended? No one knows. I know, I know: "Play your own way", but without communicating a basic framework for the mechanics of PP, it just feels like they are throwing stuff up against the wall to see what sticks. And that is frustrating. Even to a solo-only player who never felt the urge to join PP in the first place.

the moans of love and affection.

Oh my

(I too despise SCBs)

 

[woodhouse]

I've participated in PowerPlay for a little under 4 weeks now and I have decided to quit soon. I am only waiting because I am thinking about getting a Prismatic A7 shield for the Clipper.

I was primarily in it for the weekly 5 million CR bonus but I am getting tired of the interdicting and killing grind. It's a waste of precious time better spent at CZ to rank up for Deadly.

What disappointed me is I was trying to take smart targets for undermining control systems. But a control system is never undermined, it always ends up Cancelled. This makes it feel extra fruitless.

My PP time will be spent on Community Goals. CG at least changes the perspective from time to time.

 

[Wicz]

I play a lot of strategy games, have done since I was ten and became chess champion for South East London. I learned poker at 13, almost 30 years ago. Now I teach it. Studied The Art of War and other associated texts at 15. I've broken the world record for games like medieval total war and shogun total war series countless times. I've table top gamed, live role played, studied at degree level in political philosophy and practice and on and on (it's my thing...). Power Play is terribly put together in my opinion. From making sense right down to role playing. I've been in power play since week 2 and mainteined rank 5 without carrying out a single undermining mission. With the greatest sincerity, I thin Monopoly has far better rules. Not being big headed about my back ground just giving some context of where my opinion is coming from. Th eonly thing Monopoly was missing was brothels and corner shops and a nice cafe selling cream teas in Mayfair.

So very much all of this, PP is little more than a rapidly deployed smoke screen to divert attention from the fact that nothing has actually changed. I would have been much happier with three or four months worth of bug fixes, more bug fixes and mission improvements; with possibly a vague hint of what we could expect next.

Sadly we got PP and silence, and I haven't felt the urge to play since.

 

[FuzzySpider]

I play a lot of strategy games, have done since I was ten and became chess champion for South East London. I learned poker at 13, almost 30 years ago. Now I teach it. Studied The Art of War and other associated texts at 15. I've broken the world record for games like medieval total war and shogun total war series countless times. I've table top gamed, live role played, studied at degree level in political philosophy and practice and on and on (it's my thing...). Power Play is terribly put together in my opinion. From making sense right down to role playing. I've been in power play since week 2 and mainteined rank 5 without carrying out a single undermining mission. With the greatest sincerity, I thin Monopoly has far better rules. Not being big headed about my back ground just giving some context of where my opinion is coming from. Th eonly thing Monopoly was missing was brothels and corner shops and a nice cafe selling cream teas in Mayfair.

You REALLY need to try out Chaos Reborn.