Powerplay: Ideas from the devs - Feedback wanted! #3

[Lobstris]

Something like a transponder?

Lol! I was just about to say that. I think the idea of a 'transponder' to hide power affiliation could work, if coupled to other mechanics, such as active scanning (inc. active scanning of some kind whilst in supercruise) of some kind can reveal affiliation - else it will be abused. (Likewise when *ARE* we getting player transponders?)
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As others say though - the main problem is lack of mission variety, the linkage of things to the existing minor factions and major superpowers, and the concentration of PowerPlay seemingly only on the military side of politics.
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Competing with others in the power for reward? Nice idea for a cutthroat galaxy, but its never going to work, surely?
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Finally, if things like faction comms. for PowerPlay are going to take time and resources away from other game aspects and adding depth and gameplay to the heart of Elite 'lone pilot in a lone ship' - then Heck No!

 

[Athan]

Up/Down vote would be improved by seeing a total of how many pledged commanders have voted at all this cycle. This is a proxy for "how many commanders actually care about this power at all". If you have 10k voters and only 100 downvotes on a system then you might ignore that, whereas with 1k downvotes it probably does mean something.

 

[Space Guru]

These are all nice ideas, I guess. Knowing that it's all just hot air is a little distressing, since it means that meaningful changes to the current, highly flawed system is still a significant distance out, tempers my enthusiasm. Alas.

Anyway, none of the proposed ideas would make me more engaged about powerplay, mostly because as far as I'm concerned, the powers don't have very much to offer me. The maximum weekly salary I can earn for myself, after a relentless grind, is $5mil a week. I can make that in a day of focused play. And I only unlock that $5mil if I grind my face off, and then continue grinding my face off (to no immediate reward during the process).

If I spend, say, one night out of the maybe three or four I play, I'll get DIDDLY SQUAT, which seems like a stupendous waste of my time and effort. The only reason I pledged was for the bounty % benefit and even that seems a little regrettable considering how often I get interdicted (by idiot NPC vipers pulling over my combat-geared Python, whom I then easily destroy to no benefit for myself).

Hey, Frontier: if your game is going to pull me into "random encounters", reward me for participating in them. I don't get warm fuzzies blasting soulless NPC robots to stardust. I do that all the time anyway, but when its on my terms it rewards me. What you're forcing me into is annoying busywork.

Here's an idea: Yank powerplay out of the game completely and maybe bring it back when it isn't a horrible pile of broken and half-baked game ideas. I'm sorry guys, I like the game, but holy hell.

 

[younzo]

Thanks for getting us involved !

Some feedback :

1) Favour : Sounds good, a non-decaying reward is definitely needed for casual players.

2) Powerplay Flag : I do not like it. It reduces the impact of 'pledging' too much. In Star Wars Galaxies, there was a somewhat similar 'flag' system (Overt vs Covert, i.e. open to PvP or not). It was confusing, exploited and overall not good for the game.

3) Up/Down Vote : Good idea, seems intuitive. The powerplay UI is quite overloaded already though.

4) Freedom Fighters : Great idea ! All for it. Except for the flag thingy, see (2).

5) More Powerful Ethos vs Government Effect : Again, all for it.

6) Missions, Variety and Rewards : Can't wait !

 

[Parmo]

Sandro, I applaud your efforts. But it seems you have run the well worn developers' path of not consulting the prospective users of your software feature. It may be what you wanted in the game called ED; it may be you love it but from all the anecdotal evidence I've seen the majority of ED account holders do not.
[===]
For me ED has an emotional pull. That being of surviving all what the Universe can throw at me, from NPCs to Commanders, the struggles and grind of exploring, trading, mining and bounty hunting.
PP has no emotional gravity. Where's the emotion in Command Capital? Merits?
One pledges support to a what? A pretty picture? And one does not defect when given support. One withdraws support. One pledges loyalty to someone and that means something, down in your gut.
If you pledge loyalty and defect you are a traitor! And traitors are hunted down and killed! Why? Because of emotion! A sense of being betrayed!
What happens in PP when you 'defect'? Not much.
Make it when you pledge loyalty to a Faction or Power leader you pledge loyalty to all the Commanders who also have taken the oath, yes an oath.
If you defect then you have betrayed all of your fellow Commanders and they should be given missions to hunt you down and kill you.
That's player involvement. Players forming strong relationships, comradeship if you like. I don't see that in PP.
Commanders need to be in action together for some real strategic resource against another set of adversaries that are Commanders who have pledged loyalty to another Power.
Let players form their own Squadrons pledged to a Power and that can create their own histories and thus a sense of Pride. 633 Squadron?
And they get a mention in dispatches on Galnet news for some heroic deed. Like rescuing the blue haired Princess from an attack of dastardly pirates!
[===]
Up voting, down voting! Yeah, that has real emotional pull.
On the Galaxy map I just see volumes of different colours.
[===]
I know that what I desire is not possible but at least I can dream.
So PP is not for me and your suggested tweaks are not going to grab me anytime soon.
Hey, I still get a thrill dropping out of hyperspace! So ED is still for me!

 

[AlSki]

Favour: I like it, but would it make sense for the CMDR to choose if they get paid in Merits or Favour, not both. Also rather than make Merits worth more than Favour (when spending them) why not simply earn less Favour e.g. 10-50%.

PP Flag: Why not go one step further, I'd love to be a double agent, working my way into the Federation heartlands while still keeping my Imperial alignment. As your more in depth missions come on line, this could really open up some more scenarios. So I accept a mission that turns off my Imperial Flag, and align myself with the Federation temporarily.

Up/Down Vote: Sounds good, but unlike the current voting which you can only do once per cycle, please consider making the votes re-assignable during cycle. Your aim here is to enable a powers more active members to promote systems in the lists, but that promotion can sometimes need to change within a cycle.

Freedom Figthers: Really nice idea. This might be very popular.

Ethos changes: Is very worthwhile. It opens more player missions than simply on the boards or in PP, and should be a really good way of deepening the involvement. In fact with this, you may find that your reduce your reliance on using fake tokens such as "sealed contracts" but instead ship real tradable commodities that favour one government, with a competing Power using different commodities.

Missions: Can't wait

 

[Raist]

These are all nice ideas, I guess. Knowing that it's all just hot air is a little distressing, since it means that meaningful changes to the current, highly flawed system is still a significant distance out, tempers my enthusiasm. Alas.

Anyway, none of the proposed ideas would make me more engaged about powerplay, mostly because as far as I'm concerned, the powers don't have very much to offer me. The maximum weekly salary I can earn for myself, after a relentless grind, is $5mil a week. I can make that in a day of focused play. And I only unlock that $5mil if I grind my face off, and then continue grinding my face off (to no immediate reward during the process).

If I spend, say, one night out of the maybe three or four I play, I'll get DIDDLY SQUAT, which seems like a stupendous waste of my time and effort. The only reason I pledged was for the bounty % benefit and even that seems a little regrettable considering how often I get interdicted (by idiot NPC vipers pulling over my combat-geared Python, whom I then easily destroy to no benefit for myself).

Hey, Frontier: if your game is going to pull me into "random encounters", reward me for participating in them. I don't get warm fuzzies blasting soulless NPC robots to stardust. I do that all the time anyway, but when its on my terms it rewards me. What you're forcing me into is annoying busywork.

Here's an idea: Yank powerplay out of the game completely and maybe bring it back when it isn't a horrible pile of broken and half-baked game ideas. I'm sorry guys, I like the game, but holy hell.

I completely agree.

Frontier have taken the endless possibility of space flight; with the unknown sparkling at the tips of your fingers, just waiting to be discovered

and then grounded us, by not expanding what Elite is about, but by focussing precious development personnel / resources plus the months of tweaking/fixing;

on a toothless political hissy fight between factions led by:- insert random name here with "wall of txt" generic background!

And then expecting us to care!

Well done Frontier, you have taken Elite with all it stands for and made 'space risk'..... The aim of which is to increase borders/territory for figureheads.

scrap it.

p.s. how many have to say that you should concentrate elsewhere, for you to take notice? see link

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=169171

 

[teedle]

I like all of the ideas, especially favour and variety/missions/rewards. The main things that put me off of Powerplay are the boring samey tasks, and then the decaying of my effort doing those boring tasks. The game tasks already needed variety before Powrplay even. I initially thought Powerplay would add to the variety of the game, so I'm very very happy it is being looked at.

Also if flagging can keep me from being interdicted every 12 seconds while I'm trying to do other stuff, I am so on board with that.

 

[Cula-Ta]

Favour
Can't argue with this idea, it gives casual players or those with limited time a boost. But how would it effect explorers? Not sure there is much love for those looking for that perfect spot to expand into...

Powerplay Flag
Not a good one IMHO. I would prefer to see factions that powers are closely allied to and those they are absolutely opposed to. That way you could travel 70-80% of the bubble without any issue, but would suffer serious consequences in the other areas. Opting in or out just sounds like a bit of faf to me.

Up/Down Vote
I suspect the reason why systems are being undermined when it makes no sense is because people don't understand PP. That may well be because they can't be bothered to read into it properly, their just throwing behind one or another. Not sure this would help, but no harm in trying I guess.

Freedom Fighters
Interesting idea but would it have mass appeal? My comments earlier about allies / opposed powers may well remove the need for this?

More Powerful Ethos versus Government Effect
Couldn't be to read all that.

Missions, Variety and Rewards
Brilliant news!

 

[Bruce Warren]

I have a question about the powerplay flag.

When you say hidden, do you mean just from the other players, or do you mean the NPCs as well? How about the leaders of the rival powers? Is it hidden from them and if it is, would that make it possible to be a double agent, ostensibly working for one power, but with your true allegiance to another?

 

[withnail]

All good ideas.

Up/down votes get my vote! Consider that an up vote from this voter!

Edit: for all of you querying the flexibility of the proposals (will they/won't they etc), this discussion is the same kind of discussion that we had in the DDF.

Some of it may be incorporated, some may not. You are being given the opportunity to put your own ideas to the Devs though.

You got supercruise out of something like this.

 

[Sinsecato]

These ideas seem to hold a lot of potential, and it's especially good to see that you and the team are listening to player feedback and creating these thoughtful solutions.

One further suggestion I'd make is to change the allotment timers for Free Merits from 30 minutes to 24 hours. That is you get a larger allotment of Free Merits (Deeds/Trade Agreements/etc) available all at once, but they must be picked up and delivered within the 24 hour cycle. The current system seems a bit gimmicky, and has the further drawback of hindering Dev attempts to scale merit rewards, as some players can collect their Free Allotments AFK all day at work and net close to a free $50mil each week with very little actual gameplay. If the Free Allotments worked on a 24hour cycle you could control the number of Free Allotments possible in a cycle and scale the salaries more accurately. This would also allow Players to better organize their delivery schedules and thus their schedule of PowerPlay activities vs other forms of gameplay.

One issue I and many others have, who do enjoy PowerPlay overall, is that its easy to feel stuck to playing PowerPlay at all times in our limited gameplay time. I want to collect my Free Merit Allotment every 30 mins, but I also want to trade/bounty hunt/mine etc, and am forced to make an often unsatisfying decision of killing some time delivering small amounts of Merits, trading with Merits taking up cargo space while waiting for the next allotment, forgetting about the Free Merits and fast tracking them, or other irritating compromises. If I could have access to all the Free Merit Allotment at once I could more easily plan my gameplay sessions, for instance take 1 full load now, do other gameplay, then take the rest. At the same time the Devs can control total Free Merits and thus scale salaries more accurately, and the 24hour timer encourages logins with actual gameplay (instead of leaving my laptop on at work).

I really don't see a negative to this, and would appreciate any thoughts/comments you may have.

 

[XHawk87]

Favour

Favour seems like a good addition, as it would bring rewards into the reach of more casual players.

A more competitive merit allocation method would be interesting, however my main gripe with the merit system is that merits are awarded for stupid actions that do nothing to benefit the power: Over-fortification, over-undermining, preparing and expanding into nearby unprofitable systems for no other reason than there is a good trade route there. If you're going to add competition on top of that, I believe the selfish merit grinders will come out on top due to optimised methods for earning merits over actual helpful but less profitable actions the true supporters of the power will be doing.

Powerplay Flag

Seems fine, so long as due care and attention is given to the balance. Too many penalties and it isn't worth doing, too few and everyone will be doing it to avoid trouble. Frankly, I haven't had any trouble doing my normal activity during powerplay when I felt like taking a break. The higher level NPCs really aren't that good (maybe there should be an AI update... hint hint)

Up/Down Vote

I don't see that as being useful. The current system is already a popular vote with no debate or leadership. Adding another blind vote on top of that is not going to help guide people in any useful direction. A populace can only make a good decision when they have all of the facts, and can understand outcome of the choices they are making. Too many people have misconceptions, and even amongst those of us who discuss the strategies of powerplay, there is often confusion. A lot of players need to be able to debate strategy in order to make an informed decision. For that we need to be able to talk to eachother. There are also many who don't want to have to think about it and just want guidance. For that we need to be able to talk to eachother. In the end it is unavoidable, if you want it to be player-driven, we have to be able to talk to eachother. Otherwise it will just be mob-driven, a mindless stampede with no cohesion or organisation, that will run off a cliff because only the people at the front could see it coming, and they get pushed off by the teeming masses behind them.

Freedom Fighters

Fantastic idea, I am sure a lot of players would really love to fight for minor factions.

More Powerful Ethos versus Government Effect

This sounds like a really good idea. We're not too confident that it even works as intended at the moment, so attention in this area would be really useful.

Missions, Variety and Rewards

Perhaps as a means for rewarding performance in a single critical moment than through hours of tedious grinding?

 

[teedle]

But how would it effect explorers? Not sure there is much love for those looking for that perfect spot to expand into...

well theoretically you could save up favors and get li-yong's exploration bonus right? although it's still rank 5... or did you mean how does it affect explorers gaining favour and doing powerplay.

 

[lysan]

Great ideas, love it! and I'm very impressed that you actually listen to the community.

Thank you very much, <punch on shoulder, and manly hug>

 

[The_Tenderizer01]

I love these ideas. They will definitely assist in makimg PowerPlay not as hated as it currently is. The grind for fortification and grind to expand with combat ethos (like Military Strikes - 1 merit per kill, versus 15 per interdiction (undermime)) hasn't been mentioned, but these ideas are fine.

 

[Cryptonomica]

...The PowerPlay Powers are not in line with the established Main Factions. Someone who is a Federation Post Commander can pledge to Senator Duval, and a Baron in the Empire can go to work for Zachary Hudson and no one bats an eye. Attacking or undermining a Power has no effect on reputation with the main faction unless you specifically attack one of their subfaction, but there is currently no tie between a Power who holds a system or the subfaction who controls it in the Background Simulator.

Rank in a Power has no tie to rank with a Faction. For example, being a top ranked member of the Federation gets you no sway with the Federation Powers, nor does ranking up with a Power affect your standing with the aligned Faction...

+1

This has always been one of my main problems with Powerplay - its lack of proper integration with the BGS and the complete disconnect with existing owernship/influence/reputation mechanics and major/minor factions.

 

[enderwiggins]

Suggestion regarding the Powerplay Flag: have that be toggled by accepting a specific kind of mission (for example, a mission about Going Undercover).

- It is started and finished by interacting with the bulletin board while docked;
- It is shown in a different manner in the transactions tab (like a CG would be displayed), without the option to dismiss the mission/give up;
- It stays active for a minimum amount of time, or until a goal is reached;
- If you want to stay off the radar for a bit longer, simply don't turn it in;
- If you change your mind, complete the goal so you can turn it in earlier;
- From a RP standpoint, explains why you're absent.

Edit:
- And of course, the goal/mission text should be flexible enough so as to not lock the player into it/allow the player to run it or roam as he sees fit.

 

[Derthek]

Forget it. I had a few points to make, but I realize I'm the minority here.

Powerplay feels like something designed by a middle-aged man who's been out of touch with games for the past decade. Inspiration seems to have been taken from game of thrones and your wife's soap operas combined with a lifetime of working an unfulfilling job.

Perhaps it is aimed at the same demographic?

Now... that's fine, do your thing, but don't be surprised if gamers well versed in modern games are tired of repetitive uninspired grind central gameplay. You've developed nothing new here, and you're hoping to implement another resource (favour) to further complicate the mess.

Complexity does not compensate intelligent.

For example you could fix the issue regarding "powerplay flaging" by reducing the number of powers to
1 imp
1 fed
1 ally
1 anarchy
1 indie
that would give players larger areas to fly in an there for eliminate the need for flagging.

Keep it simple.

 

[Perseus]

Good ideas all except flag toggling. Why does ED keep making strong brews only to dilute them?
If you take the coin, you wear the colours.
Either that or you make faction rewards more suited to a pure mercenary approach rather than an ideology.