Bonjour (check me out with a little bit of French there!)
Over the past few weeks, Sandro Sammarco, Frontiers Lead Designer has been working with the community closely on the topic of Powerplay. He wanted to address some of the most pressing topics and discuss, at a very early stage, ideas that are being considered.
Once again, he would be delighted if you were able to have a look give your thoughts.
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Hello Commanders!
Following on from previous discussions about steps we’re looking at, to address a few pressing issues with the core mechanics of Powerplay (such as powers expanding themselves into oblivion J), I thought now might be a good time to take a look further ahead into the future, at Powerplay ideas we’re mulling over for potential deployment next year (as we’ve already rather a full calendar up to the end of the year!)
And now, here comes the caveat: This is stuff we’re *
considering*. It’s not yet planned or scheduled, and certainly not guaranteed.
That being said, we’ve a clutch of ideas that we want to float to see if we can’t rustle up some interesting feedback from you folk. Especially as I think these suggestions - at least to some degree - address a few of the more interesting issues we’ve already received via feedback (again, thanks for this – we do listen, even if we can’t always answer, or don’t always agree!)
Favour
Part of Powerplay is about rewarding effort, which is why the merit system works as it does. However, there has been lots of feedback from Commanders who perhaps don’t have much time to devote to the game, let alone Powerplay; they make a very reasonable argument that potential gameplay is locked from them based on arbitrary time limits rather than skill or something equally nice.
Whilst I think it’s fair to suggest that time paid in can be considered effort of a sort, it got me thinking: perhaps there might be a reasonable compromise. The result: “Favour”.
The idea behind this suggestion is that each time a Commander earns a merit, they also earn a favour. However, favour does not decay – it’s a permanent resource (well, permanent as long as the power remains active, of course).
At any time during a cycle, a Commander could “spend” favour to trigger a an individual rating’s benefits until the next cycle. The cost of triggering a rating’s benefits would likely be significantly more than the merit total required to activate them, keeping merits as the “supercharged” currency of Powerplay.
Such a system would mean however, that Commanders would not necessarily have to put large amounts of constant effort in to taste the benefits a power might offer, instead building up their rewards over time in a piecemeal fashion and choosing when to execute them.
With such a system, I believe we could also consider reverting the way merits rewards are calculated back to the more competitive allocation method we started with, where rating requirements are based on success versus one’s peers as opposed to an arbitrary threshold. I know that this proved less than popular in the first instance, but I’d be interested if folk might reconsider its value if coupled with a favour system for the less competitive power supporters. Don’t worry if you strongly disagree, just say so!
Powerplay Flag
I make no bones about my personal support for Powerplay: I love it. Grand scale power-struggles, driven entirely by Commanders, with special supporter rewards and legible, dynamically altering system rules that affect all Commanders, not just supporters.
But of course, I would say that J.
However, looking at the feedback, I observed an interesting theme: Commanders upset by the perception that once pledged to a power they felt “locked in” and unable to enjoy the freedom the game normally offered them because of the extra dangers they faced.
Again, whilst there are reasonable counters, we had a think to see what kind of options we might employ to directly address this concern, because it is a legitimate one: in general you are at significantly greater risk when pledged. The coolness of space geography offered by Powerplay does come with this increased, potentially oppressive, danger.
After a lot of furrowed brows and sugar-filled cakes, we have a suggestion that I’d love to get feedback on. Again, remember, this is just us brainstorming. We’re not locking anything in, we just want Commander opinion.
The suggestion is, simply enough, giving the ability for a Commander to toggle their Powerplay status to be active or hidden.
Now, an ability as powerful as this would absolutely have to have some pretty iron-cast rules to prevent exploitation and to keep pledging as an important decision. We’re talking within the realms of having significant enforced cool downs when hiding your powerplay status before you get the benefits (e.g. when you switch to hidden you lose all Powerplay benefits and the ability to affect Powerplay immediately, but remain visible as a target for a significant amount of time. In addition, perhaps you can only cycle this flag when docked at a starport or outpost in one of your power’s control systems).
We *
think* this might give a couple of fairly strong benefits: It would hopefully reinstate to a greater degree the freedom for Commanders to choose how they spend their time.
It might also tempt more Commanders to sign up to a power, feeling a little safer in the knowledge that they would not necessarily have to swim with space sharks *
all* the time thereafter.
We also think that the Powerplay flag idea and favours work well together, as they both support more freedom without taking too much away from the importance of pledging to a power.
So, such an ability as the Powerplay flag would need to be carefully controlled to prevent it from undermining Powerplay, but do you guys and gals think it would be worth the effort?
Up/Down Vote
We understand that Commanders want to be able to communicate with their own power’s supporters in game. Because of Elite’s architecture, creating large scale communication is very challenging. That’s not to say that it can’t be done or that we aren’t going to look at it, but there are significant issues and costs involved that would need to be overcome.
Putting that to one side for a moment, we want to float a simpler concept that, whilst not trivial, might offer a surprising amount of bang per buck and is almost certainly doable.
This suggestion is the idea of being able to “up vote” or “down vote” a system involved in Powerplay action. Other Commanders from your power would see this data, and we think it might function as a very clean, contextual communication of ideas.
For example, if you looked at one of your power’s control systems and saw that it had a tremendous amount of “down votes”, you could clearly infer that many supporters considered fortifying this system would be a waste of time.
Similarly, lots of “down votes” on an enemy control system would indicate that undermining it would not be appreciated by lots of folk. Importantly, you’d be able to see totals for both “up” and “down” votes for systems involved with Powerplay.
This voting is different from that used in preparation: in that instance, your votes represent your ability to influence your power’s decision process. However, up/down votes could be rationed in a similar fashion, with more being allotted to supporters of a higher rating. I guess that at the end of a cycle all such votes would be removed, ready for the next cycle’s strategy to form.
Take a moment to chew on this one. I have a feeling that it could be deceptively effective. Your thoughts are?
Freedom Fighters
Some of the feedback we’ve collected has been from Commanders that do not wish to pledge support to any power (which is totally fine, of course!), instead wanting to remain as champions to minor factions/systems they have adopted.
In general the idea of having more dovetailing between minor factions and powers is something we’re interested in, beyond the government versus ethos effect that currently exists (and that we might consider buffing significantly).
One concept that’s currently acting as a chew toy for us is the idea that Commanders could pledge to a system under the yoke of a power’s control, becoming system “freedom fighters”, ready to push back against the invader.
As a freedom fighter, a Commander would be able to take part in undermining and opposition for the system they had pledged to, effectively working with opposing powers to weaken the controlling power’s presence (and if you’ve been reading some of our other posts on Powerplay, you’ll note that we’re also considering allowing massive undermining to force a system into collapse, allowing it to shake of power control without the power being in a CC deficit – personally, I see possibilities...)
Clearly, such courageous/dastardly behaviour would not be without *
substantial* danger: we’d consider freedom fighters to possibly be valid targets in any system controlled or exploited by any power that shared a major faction with the one being attacked by the freedom fighter. We’d also likely want to limit Commanders to support one system at a time, with maybe a cool down before being able to pick a new one (or perhaps some mission to “wipe” their status clean?)
I think that such a feature would require the use of Powerplay flags, discussed earlier, to prevent the role of freedom fighter being a permanent death sentence across massive swathes of human space. I also think it offers a new way to enjoy Powerplay, without being beholden to organisations you might not approve of. What do you think?
More Powerful Ethos versus Government Effect
This is another idea to increase the interaction between minor factions and powers. Of all the suggestions, it’s possibly the smallest change, but I think it has enough potential for change to be called out.
Currently, you can affect the success thresholds for expansion and fortification by flipping systems so that they align or with, or against, the ethos of the power involved. The way this works is that if more than 50% of exploited systems are aligned (either for or against) then the threshold is raised or lowered by a set percentage, around 50%. Flipping the control system in question gives an additional effect.
Whilst these are fairly solid mechanics, I can a potential issue: flipping over half of the systems exploited by a control system is a *
very* big ask. Yes, it’s a simple concept, but perhaps in this case it’s a little too simple. Also, the success threshold modifier, being a static value, can potentially become irrelevant if lots of Commanders take part in the Powerplay expansion/fortification.
Our proposal would be to have the benefits and penalties of ethos versus government scale per exploited system rather than at a set 50%. This more granular approach would mean that Commanders could affect change without having to commit to such a large amount of work as flipping half the systems. It would also allow us to increase the overall range of effect – so that Commanders who did manage to flip loads of exploited systems could impose a much larger benefit/penalty. Also, this change would add another dynamic to space geography: areas of densely populated space would fundamentally have the potential to be affected more strongly than sparse areas.
Do you think this is a worthwhile idea, or do you believe it would be a waste of time! Thoughts will be greatly appreciated.
Missions, Variety and Rewards
I add this section for the record, even though I don’t have much to add apart from:
yes, we will be looking at these aspects, simply because feedback has been clear and I want to emphasise that we have been listening. As usual, no ETA, but truth be told, this stuff has always been on the agenda.
Conclusion
It’s worth noting that these ideas are separate from more conventional number tweaking and balancing that we treat as an ongoing task (for example, the balance of success from different activities).
There are also any number of smaller changes that could pop up as well, like offering sanctuary from opposing powers at home systems that we suspect might offer reasonable benefits, but for this update, I wanted to cast a weather eye towards the horizon and chat a little more speculatively about what the bigger picture could evolve into.
I hope this makes our current heading a little clearer and (importantly) sparks some juicy, constructive feedback!
