Except a lot of the 18% qualified their position with something like, "Yes, I am, but only until......."
Im worried Fd doesnt know that some of us enjoy powerplay.
- Thread starter rbstewart7263
- Start date
Except a lot of the 18% qualified their position with something like, "Yes, I am, but only until......."
I just defected. I got chased halfway round the core by Adjusters. I'm loving PowerPlay. Like Winterwalker pointed out, there are issues with it. If they manage to polish out the flaws that's great. If they find the flaws go too deep then I'm actually okay with that as well. PowerPlay is not the be all and end all of Elite and you don't have to spend all your time on it. There's more to Elite than that. I just hope the developers realise that fact as well and don't spend too many resources trying to polish it when the mission system is so obviously in need of attention.
That happens in real life.
Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
This indeed.
Plus, coincidental or not PP and related improvement discussions is the topic that we ll see Sandro Sammarco more heavily involved with of all in the last few weeks, with up to 4 threads of detailed feedback. And by the looks of it many of those suggestions made by the community may actually make it into the game in one way or another.
The key thing to realize is that the timeline horizon for many of the significant changes can be next year ish.
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Ideals? Motivation? Why would you need those? You've got Pictures!
Seriously, I agree. Make a pledge of allegiance, surrender my commander's independence, shed my killer "moody loner" rep......... for what? A For Next loop for redundant players?
For me, FD seriously misjudged this one, and its a great shame because of all the work they've put into it, and the expectation (they created) prior to its release, as well as the "missions are being rebuilt from the ground up" statements.
But its still a great game, and FD are still a great team, so I take heart in that, and we'll see what the future brings.
I'm hoping for adventure.
Thats what people said about Age of Conan, Wildstar, Star Wars The Old Republic, Firefall.
I played them all, among many other MMOs, lived the hype and watched them fail.
These games had very promising hundreds of thousands of sales / subscribers. For a year or so, until other games appeared or got updated.
Any game can generate sales with proper marketing, especially on Steam, with curious people and weekend sales.
Player retention? That's a different story and the key to a profitable online game.
And it doesn't really seem to happen in ED, at the moment.
I think we're more active on the forums than ingame.
Totally agree! Said it all. Rep+1 I'm going for level 5 this week..MAD..mad...ma
Im worried that with all the negativity going around that FD doesnt know that alot of people really do enjoy powerplay. For me I just make sure to not do it a whole lot. Im not rich so I do what I can to support my power after making money as a trader or bounty hunter. I dont grind and I dont care about reaching rank 5, Usually I just go for rank 3 or 4.
What do you guys think do you think the devs know that we dont all hate it? How bout the devs that frequent the forums let me know so that I wont have to worry.
I should add that I do want improvement to powerplay just that i dont think its "trash" or needs to go away.
I love/hate it.
Hate: Mostly because of the punishing merit decay.
I love it for the political layer it adds to the universe and for the fact that it changed the way I look at the Elite universe.
I also love the political map. It gives a face to all that faceless space.
I stopped PP because of the merit decay, but I would not want PP to get removed from the game.
I expect improvements and tweaks and will then get re-involved.
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Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
I dont know tbh, it is very difficult to conclude anything just yet either way. Space sims are not mainstream MMO game material. They are niche by definition, so if you are expecting to see retention figures similar to other mainstream MMO's then I can understand your opinion, but I d think it is a bit out of scale.
FDEV seem to be enacting a very deliberate plan of development whereby additional chunks of significant content are added at regular intervals (some are free some will be paid ones) and therefore keeping some of the existing player base interested and following up while also attracting new players as those new chunks of content get marketed and released etc. To be successful there you need more or less stable sales going. And if that happens within this strategy a significant attrition figure (higher than in your usual MMO's) can be perfectly entertained eventually.
As I said it is very early to conclude anything either way just yet. But so far sales figures seem to be heavily on FDEV side. Only time will tell.
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I don't think that FD will rollback power play. IMO it was released prematurely and has not offered much to the community as a whole. I say they should keep power play for those that like it but reduce the resources they are committing to it. I mean, it is just a bad business practice to focus a large portion of your resources to a product that only 18% of your consumer base is consuming. I would be more worried about the 82% of the consumer base that is not consuming your latest product. Think about it....if Apple were to release a new I-Phone and only 18% of their consumer base bought the product, Apple would quickly go back to the drawing board. Try to figure out what went wrong and get a better product out there to recapture the other 82%.
Source: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=169171
Source: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=169171
You keep hitting 10,000 merits each week with only 5 hours of play per week? I would like very much to learn how you do that! I play 3-4 hours a day and can easily maintain rank 4 but 5, hell no! Of course, I'm not a merits grinder. I contribute when I see fit. So, maybe that's the difference. Still, with the 30 minutes delay before you can get additional stuff to deliver, I take it you must be undermining a lot, the only, non-restrictive way of earning merits (which I occasionally do).
Whether or not you don't hate it, I think the sensible thing would be to let go of whatever Powerplay is, and hope for a better Powerplay, one that you'll also like - and hopefully like more.
You don't want to be one of the bitter 18%ers when the axe drops...
Well, since FD doesn't operate on a subscription model, player retention is more or less a moot point. For FD, they need to get the sales coming to stay afloat.
That is an interesting theory but we don't know the sales figures either.
I have a different theory. I think Powerplay is the pet project of a few senior developers. It is a type of game they personally like to play. But Powerplay sits in a totally different genre of games (3rd person view, serving a master) than Elite (1st person game, serving yourself). To convince the Frontier management I think they pitched the idea to use the Elite Galaxy as a common foundation for many Elite-themed games (Powerplay, CQC, Planet landings + FPS) as the long term business case for Elite: Dangerous.
A big disatvantage is that development effort will be stretched thinner when more games are added to the Elite Galaxy. More importantly, these games will start to interfere with each other via the common background. Powerplay does this already but it is explained away as "using commanders to drive the backgound simulation of Elite". They probably hope to establish some synergy between the games but that requires a solid overall design and a lot of testing. Especially if the game genres don't match a disrupting effect is more likely IMHO. I hope I'm wrong but I cringe thinking about the secretive "Next Big Thing" for Elite: Dangerous they have announced.
--update:
Thinking about it some more I wonder why they didn't create a second inhabited bubble for Powerplay on the other side of the Elite Galaxy. Call it the Delta Quadrant or so
Just my 2cr.
You nailed it.
Wait until the Borg assimilate Thargoids...
Not until the Lord High Developers reach the fifth stage of grief, will we see improvement.
Succinct. Thanks.
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Bring back The Crimson Field!
Downton Abbey Meets M*A*S*H!
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Yea, verily.
Duly +1'd
Agreed, but do you *have* a year?
Not so, well at least they're not solely dependant on new players. Players that leave are players that don't buy expansions, paintjobs, mugs, and tshirts. They are also players who don't encourage their friends to buy it, in fact they are players who DISCOURAGE their friends from it. It's not sold in traditional shops so it's very reliant on word of mouth, online reviews, and social media. Player retention is still important.
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Don't worry - they have all the player data on Powerplay... who plays when, how often, how many.
So no matter how noisy some people might be on the forums, and even if hypothetically (ahahahaha) someone did a poll on the forums which showed that of all people who bother to go to the forums and can then be bothered to vote on a poll about Powerplay (hm, there seem to be some self selection bias problems right there), 80% voted that they didn't like Powerplay, Frontier have the actual data about it and know whether it's actually representative.
I'm fairly sure most people at Frontier already know that internet forums already select for more negativity because of some pretty well-known bias effects. So they'd likely want more and better data than forum teacup storms before they start changing game mechanics.
So no matter how noisy some people might be on the forums, and even if hypothetically (ahahahaha) someone did a poll on the forums which showed that of all people who bother to go to the forums and can then be bothered to vote on a poll about Powerplay (hm, there seem to be some self selection bias problems right there), 80% voted that they didn't like Powerplay, Frontier have the actual data about it and know whether it's actually representative.
I'm fairly sure most people at Frontier already know that internet forums already select for more negativity because of some pretty well-known bias effects. So they'd likely want more and better data than forum teacup storms before they start changing game mechanics.
You have no idea if it didn't happen. And neither does FD. All they know is what did happen. It is possible that without powerplay, new sales would have been less than they are now. It is possible that without powerplay, but the reaources put onto feature X, that sales would have been much bigger. Nobody knows, because FD did not do the exercise to find out. The decided that PP was good for the game and put their money where their mouth is. As, indeed, they should. Whether they were right or wrong is almost moot, since it is done. All they need to do now, is decide what best to do given where they are. And no matter what that decision might be, large numbers will criticise it.