Powerplay I hate my job and resent the success of others: Passive-Aggressive Power Play?

[SamSlade]

I'll preface this query by saying I'm quite new to powerplay and Elite Dangerous in general.

So, on to my query:- Essentially it boils down to 'Why does the organized player group conflict system revolve around passive-aggressive action?'

For context I'll give a simple example: I decide to 'fortify' a system, I grind through the process and hit 100%: tres smug face. I look an hour later and there is 70% 'undermining'...

*gasp* The enemy is here! I jump in my lame but valiant Viper to go forth and attempt to foil the undermining effort... I fly around for a couple of hours looking for the nefarious enemy... no one. Feeling smug at the fear I no doubt caused I go back to the station only to discover that my fortification efforts are now 160% undermined!

How!?!

What!?!

They must be very sneaky and experienced... I Viper my way out to search anew... still nothing... undermining continues.... no enemy. I jump on Reddit and ask;

"what gives!?! how are they so sneaky!?!"

"Oh they are in Solo".

So... back to my query: why does the only mechanically supported conflict between PLAYERS exist in a purely Passive-Aggressive context? There is no sandbox here; it is a simple grind fight and, again as a newer player, makes me question why I would want to engage in this interaction.

Now, before you rabble at me about 'Don't tell me what to do!' I would ask you why you engage in a player versus player mechanic that has no player versus player interaction? It is the very definition of passive aggressive behavior.

I totally understand people being concerned about 'griefing' and 'trolling' but isn't the profound irony of engaging in systematic passive-aggressive actions and then calling someone who desires a player conflict mechanic be active a griefer or troll brain damaging in scope?

Help me to understand how this is at all logical? Surely the Background Simulation is the PvE aspect of empire expansion? Wars do breakout... you can convert systems to Empire/Alliance/Independent governments.

I fundamentally do not understand why this passive-aggressive nonsense happens? Clarify!

EDIT: snarky auto-correct messing with me

EDIT2: <COMMENT REMOVED. PLEASE DO NOT REPEAT THIS ACTION>

 

[tomalus]

Mye we all know this, in my opinion powerplay should be limited to OPEN only.

But its possible you were not in same instance with other player/s
There might be a wing or more players undermining in their private group.
From what I noticed organized groups tend to turn in points in the last second, to prevent response.So its possible some players turned in thousands of points when they saw somebody fortified.

This topic has been beaten to death for 1 year.

 

[SamSlade]

It's been like this for a year!?!

Seriously, why? It doesn't seem to make any sense: I get that some people like/don't like it but I'd love to know why!?!

I've been playing in open pretty much exclusively(except fort that handy station grind of charity missions) and I never get to see anyone: I went out in my Viper looking for people to fight and couldn't find anyone. Half the reason I joined in Powerplay was I assumed to would be a Player vs Player scene because it's designed that way... and then giant logic hole with Solo/Private Groups.

Someone explain! (and not in the "you dirty PKer/snowflake" sense: I mean really, why?

 

[SCSkunk]

Welcome OP, to the future!
Where the "No Child Left Behind" program has proliferated, School Teachers are fired daily for reprimanding a student, and Feelings are more important than Logic. Every Special Snowflake is treated as a figure of the utmost importance and everyone has an equal say in everything, deserving or not.

Didn't you know that if you play in Open, you'll never leave the Station because 3 Wings of PvP Griefers are permanently settled in outside the mail slot? You'll never accomplish anything because you will be Interdicted and shot down every 4 minutes?

This is sarcastic of course, but a common theme for this ongoing argument. I wish it were Open only as well, where we have to learn to deal with other humans, instead of hiding from social interaction. It makes for better coping skills in RL to deal with occasional adversity.

+1 for you, enjoyed your post and I agree completely.

 

[Earth Ultimatum IV.]

+1, YES.

Doing your personal business (bounty hunting, trading, mining, missions, exploring) is all fine because you're by yourself and you're only influencing yourself in SOLO/PRIVATE.
On the otherside, doing Power Play in solo/private is a total jerk move. You're influencing factions where other people participate and care about. We at Archon's lost an expansion weeks ago where I spent 6 hours a day fighting, and I haven't met a single player, yet the resistance merits were sky-highing.

Lock cowards out of Power Play - make it open only.
I'm fine with people doing personal business in SOLO/PRIVATE but PP is not your personal business anymore. You're influencing factions of other players!
Open only, howgh.

 

[Tataboj]

It is also possible that someone from your power undermined it using exploit which allows that.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Mye we all know this, in my opinion powerplay should be limited to OPEN only.

Its quite clear there is a strong movement from the PvP community to lock PP to open.

However, since PP is half pew-pew and half deliveries, I think for this to go ahead it would need some additional changes.

Firstly, i would make player kills in each others' territories provide merits. Kill an opposing player in your own territory, you get 100 merits (subject to revision based on testing) towards fortification. In prep/expansion systems the similar. Killing an opponent in their systems provides 100 points towards undermining.

Since its obvious that the PvPers aren't going to care much for the transporting stuff, we can scrap that side of things from powerplay. You don't want to be carrying heavy cargo in PvP situations. Got to keep up with the meta! No room for cargo anyway, need all those slots for HRPs! And since its PvP people are after, don't really need those military strike zones and whatever, its just PvE fluff and gets in the way. Let's get rid of that.

So now we have powerplay as a pure PvP activity! PvPers rejoice! Anyone who doesn't want to PvP can stay out, anyway, they are cowards aren't they? Not real men!

However, can't just completely close off the PvEers from a whole part of the game that they used to have access to. Especially since they paid for that content.

Therefore i'd follow this up with a new feature, called Rulerplay. This feature would be available from any mode, although obviously would expect most people playing it will be in Group/Solo, because apparently they are cowards. Rulers are similar to powers, just different. They have their own borders and realms, that probably to start with will overlap the powers. However, they do not affect powers and powers do not affect them. Can't have the cowards affecting the powers can we?

Rulers work exactly like the old version of the powers. At least none of that code goes to waste, although they make some improvements to the Rulerplay system, probably in line of what they were originally planning for powerplay, but that's no longer needed for that.

There might be some details that need working out, like what happens if a ruler that opens black markets in systems overlaps a power that closes blackmarkets, but i'll leave it up to the devs to sort out niggling little issues like that.

Anyway, I think that will make everyone happy right? PvPers get powerplay where they can PvP to their hearts content, affecting the powers without worrying about what the cowards are doing. And it will be challenging combat, no need to go shooting up people flying around in trade ships for merits!

And the PvEers will be happy, since they get a version of powerplay (but its definitely not powerplay, its something completely different!) and they can still do the same activities they did before.

Anyone find any problems with my solution? I think its perfect.

 

[Alexander the Grape]

Yeah it's kinda ridiculous, we've been trying to change this for literally years now

I don't think powerplay should be Open only. Elite should be playable by all, and that includes people who have crappy internet or don't want PvP

However there should be balancing mechanisms that mean that Open isn't inferior to solo/PG. Which is why I like Sandro's suggestion of a % bonus impact to Open merits earned

 

[Heater]

Although I do not play PP... (never have liked it for many reasons and the OP's point is just one of them.)
I do believe that it should be Open only. Just my two cents worth.

 

[StiTch]

Anyone find any problems with my solution? I think its perfect.

I do like the suggestion, but unfortunately it reinforces something FD are really trying to shoot down; this allusion that "Open play" equates to "PvP Play" and "Solo Play" equates to "PvE Play".

As it stands from my end I'd like to think I can just enjoy a communal open world. I really appreciate the thought process that went into the Open/Private/Solo system, but there isn't the player base atm to really populate Open in a meaningful way. The last thing we need is to cement ED's Open play into effectively being a PowerPlay and PvP/grieifing instance.

That's not to say I disagree with OP. That you can play in an honest sense, working to help your chosen power in Open against the risk a wing will come and stomp you, and see your hard work turned to dust because of a couple of people in Private/Solo is just ludicrous. It's the only time I've disagreed with FD's stance on their Open/Private/Solo modes, and I'm pretty sure they know it's not right.

In all honesty, maybe all it needs is to adjust how much contribution Solo/Private gives compared to Open. If - as a hypothetical example - solo/private play causes 25% of the change that Open does, and people realise that their wing of 4 is now struggling to negate the efforts of a single man, it'll encourage a healthy/competitive PP competition without messing with the activities people like to do, and allows the casual players to make a contribution in Solo without the fear of an enemy wing blowing them up every 5 seconds. They won't be able to push their power as far as they could in Open, but as a casual player you're probably less worried about that.

 

[ever]

They mentioned at some point, that open will give bonus points to your Power, not to you. I think that's the best solution. Simple and effective. I just hope they will introduce it. There are still many reasons for not finding other players: instancing and different platforms.

OPEN PLAY
Many people are scared of being shot upon. BUT: Nothing happens if you die, you just pay the the price and you're back in your ship. If you get killed twice in the same system and you go back the 3rd time in a raw, I'm sorry that's your mistake, even if you're dealing with a terrorist, which, btw, has his own place in the galaxy. They said they will make the NPCs stronger and smarter, which means, the elite NPC will be more skilled than a "competent" Cmdr. A "competent" Cmdr might find it safer in open, since he can receive help from other Cmdrs. But basically the open is not so dangerous as people might think, even for PP. Sure you get shot at from time to time and you might even go to the re-buy screen, but it's relatively easy to make credits and it sure is a lot more fun playing against other players.

There is no enemy blowing you up every 5 seconds. There are ways to escape. But sometimes you have to pay the price and sometimes you make others pay.

 

[CMDR John Casey]

As it stands from my end I'd like to think I can just enjoy a communal open world. I really appreciate the thought process that went into the Open/Private/Solo system, but there isn't the player base atm to really populate Open in a meaningful way. The last thing we need is to cement ED's Open play into effectively being a PowerPlay and PvP/grieifing instance.

I cannot rep you enough for this.

 

[StiTch]

*snippedy snip*

There is no enemy blowing you up every 5 seconds. There are ways to escape. But sometimes you have to pay the price and sometimes you make others pay.

I agree, but a) hyperboles guys, and b) that kind of experienced mindset isn't necessarily available to the 'casual' players, or newer ones for that. That section of the post was aimed at people who might not necessarily have that kind of familiarity with the game, and may generally keep to Solo modes because they're just not up for or ready for PvP engagements.

But quite frankly if anyone thinks games should be made less accessible or enjoyable for those who can't dedicate an hour (or six...) every night to it, they need a sanity check. PP was a big thing to FD, and if people wanna enjoy that aspect of the game without learning how to take on a wing of SR FDLs with railguns and HRPs, all my luck to them. The point of my post, though - lessen the effects of the solo/private PP participation, because the casual players aren't going to be too worried about getting all the efficiency they can and it hinders the more involved players using the modes as grounds to undermine with impunity.

 

[TaoZero5]

I agree with what Stitch says but I would put it less charitably.

If you are not completely concerned with winning then you are just playing and the outcome is not really important.

If you are concerned with winning then you need to do what others who are only concerned with winning do.
You need to band together with others to achieve your gains and hold them.
You need to use every tool and exploit.
You need to use all modes. (Solo for the Grind - Group for Planning and Training - Open for coming down hard on those who are just playing at it.)

Because that's what the Serious Gamers do.

It's like Capitalism - if there is not 100% policing and security then some will bend or break the law and will have an advantage over the others - the result of this is that the others will eventually go out of business - there can never be 100% policing so there is the endless game of Cops and Robbers - and every generation of new entrepreneurs gets milked like sheep.

 

[SCSkunk]

However, since PP is half pew-pew and half deliveries, I think for this to go ahead it would need some additional changes.

I know this isn't the actual spirit of your post, but this statement is important. Isn't it perfectly clear that half and half is exactly what would balance Power Play into a fair fight? It's not PvP folks get more targets (I have killed exactly one CMDR myself, I Trade and I do it in Open), it's a Yin-Yang situation.

Even if a Group tried to blockade a system with combat ships, instancing would only allow a finite number of match-ups against Fortifiers/Preppers/Expanders. So it turns into a cat and mouse game. How many can you block against how bad does the opposition want it? But at least it's a fair fight, not on a Ferdie vs. Type-9 level, but in the Big Picture sense. And if your opponent put all their Combat Wings into one or two Systems to defend, go around and hit them somewhere less defended. I can't believe it doesn't already work like that.

Power Play has devolved into everyone holding their cards until the last ten minutes in a week long cycle. And everyone shows their hand at the same time, hoping to surprise everyone else and pull of a coup. I don't believe this was the intended mechanic, but the Community figured out how to min/max it, by utilizing what equates to the PP version of Combat Logging. Is that too far fetched a comparison? Solo mode grinding with zero risk of the opposing force being able to touch you is like playing a game you can't lose. If you can't see your opposition, they've effectively pulled their plug. But worse yet, they are still attacking you. You are defenseless. Yet we worry that it's the Grinders who would be defenseless...

Instead we have Prep wars where ludicrous amounts of credits and effort go on invisible to someone floating in Supercruise. If it were all in Open, it could be done for a fraction of the cost, as tactics would change on the fly regarding how much trade is needed or combat, instead we have the current, "Well I can dump 600 million credits into that system this week." And hope everyone else can too.
About to get back-stabbed by an Ally? MUCH harder to hide that in Open.
Your systems are getting Undermined? Fly over and see who's doing it. But that's not possible right now, because any sane person is doing it in Solo, where they can't lose.

Solo should exist. But by definition, you are not apart of the Community. By choice. But Solo still tampers with said Community, which is sort of twisted IMO.

My ranting has confused me. I can't organize my thoughts any longer, and that was a poor job of it as is. If it is not feasible to make Power Play be Open only, then increased incentive is a good start. Nice move Sandro. And not because "PvP Griefers" but because it's one step closer toward Balance. And I still like the OP, paints a picture of what is expected when you first sign-up and then the current reality sinks in.

 

[SamSlade]

Its quite clear there is a strong movement from the PvP community to lock PP to open.

However, since PP is half pew-pew and half deliveries, I think for this to go ahead it would need some additional changes.

Firstly, i would make player kills in each others' territories provide merits. Kill an opposing player in your own territory, you get 100 merits (subject to revision based on testing) towards fortification. In prep/expansion systems the similar. Killing an opponent in their systems provides 100 points towards undermining.

Since its obvious that the PvPers aren't going to care much for the transporting stuff, we can scrap that side of things from powerplay. You don't want to be carrying heavy cargo in PvP situations. Got to keep up with the meta! No room for cargo anyway, need all those slots for HRPs! And since its PvP people are after, don't really need those military strike zones and whatever, its just PvE fluff and gets in the way. Let's get rid of that.

So now we have powerplay as a pure PvP activity! PvPers rejoice! Anyone who doesn't want to PvP can stay out, anyway, they are cowards aren't they? Not real men!

However, can't just completely close off the PvEers from a whole part of the game that they used to have access to. Especially since they paid for that content.

Therefore i'd follow this up with a new feature, called Rulerplay. This feature would be available from any mode, although obviously would expect most people playing it will be in Group/Solo, because apparently they are cowards. Rulers are similar to powers, just different. They have their own borders and realms, that probably to start with will overlap the powers. However, they do not affect powers and powers do not affect them. Can't have the cowards affecting the powers can we?

Rulers work exactly like the old version of the powers. At least none of that code goes to waste, although they make some improvements to the Rulerplay system, probably in line of what they were originally planning for powerplay, but that's no longer needed for that.

There might be some details that need working out, like what happens if a ruler that opens black markets in systems overlaps a power that closes blackmarkets, but i'll leave it up to the devs to sort out ling little issues like that.

Anyway, I think that will make everyone happy right? PvPers get powerplay where they can PvP to their hearts content, affecting the powers without worrying about what the cowards are doing. And it will be challenging combat, no need to go shooting up people flying around in trade ships for merits!

And the PvEers will be happy, since they get a version of powerplay (but its definitely not powerplay, its something completely different!) and they can still do the same activities they did before.

Anyone find any problems with my solution? I think its perfect.

I find it rather disconcerting that a Moderator would reply with such an nonconstructive, passive-aggressive 'flame-bait' comment.

I was not aware that this issue was such a contentious topic(and had been for a full year) and was actually wondering if it was a Power Play 'work in progress' or something: to be honest I had thought that this kind of Solo/Group action was part of the Fifth Column activity one of the Devs posted about.

Thanks to your input I know it is working as intended and that Moderators actively encourage a toxic forum environment: thank you for your beneficent knowledge and I'll be sure to avoid the forums and stick to the, unbelievable that I say this, more mature environment on Reddit.

 

[Bigglesof206]

Oh good,
another open v solo debate.
And I don't think Agony Aunt is as bad as you suggest... because raising this same old argument for the umpteenth time needs to be at least lightly grilled.

In my never so humble opinion the chief problem is that PvP players just want to kill ships, and do that v the average cargo ship so easily that PvP and Open fortification are bloody near incompatible. I think that if PP were indeed swapped to Open only you'd find that Fortification ended up being removed because too few would do it for it to remain as a contributing factor to the week's efforts.

 

[Earth Ultimatum IV.]

Exactly, you've hit the nail with this post. Solo players are not part of the open community but they influence us. That's wrong.

But by definition, you are not apart of the Community. By choice. But Solo still tampers with said Community, which is sort of twisted IMO.

Oh good,
another open v solo debate.

Problem is still here, and so are the threads.

 

[xondk]

.

I must admit, I don't see it as passive-aggressive, especially since its been proven time and time again, even if everyone was in open, no one would always be able to find everyone, because games of these scales and types need instancing, I mean would you want to be connected with someone who had a very poor internet provider, causing both of you to lag and stutter about unable to hit each other amongst other things.

One of the advantages the setup has as it is, by basically having players supporting a group to do something, is that everyone can do it on equal ground regardless of connectivity issues, what matters is that the area is won or lost, and that everyone can do equally.

PvP gets slightly pushed to the side here, because even assuming that you could have perfect connectivity worldwide with perfect ping and everything (quantum router's cant come fast enough), the only you would know is from power tags, where people are from, but even then, that person might not be at that moment undermining, you simply do not know what that person is doing, sure it COULD be that single person you see that is undermining, but if you saw say 10 players total 7 of enemy faction, you'd attack them one after another? and that's not even assuming that they would overwhelm you, and so on and so forth, there are a TON of possible variables when it comes to PvP, that make it highly unlikely that PvPing people would have any real effect on the overall numbers going on in terms of transportation.

Even if you could make a 'perfect' blockade you run into the same issue, so solution is? shoot everyone?
Even in games that are based entirely around PvP, there is no guarantee that will work, especially since your enemies will have an equal advantage, and say, what if you are up against a dedicated group of power players? sure you and your friends could try to take on them and theirs, trying to create big battles, but that wouldn't win or lose power play, it would just stall at best, and if anything people would work to sneak around busy defenders. And then you get complaints about that, and a ton of other things.

So yeah, In short, Elite is a game with PvP in it, it is not a PvP game, so its mechanic makes sense in that scope.

 

[Sir.Tj]

I find it rather disconcerting that a Moderator would reply with such an nonconstructive, passive-aggressive 'flame-bait' comment.

I was not aware that this issue was such a contentious topic(and had been for a full year) and was actually wondering if it was a Power Play 'work in progress' or something: to be honest I had thought that this kind of Solo/Group action was part of the Fifth Column activity one of the Devs posted about.

Thanks to your input I know it is working as intended and that Moderators actively encourage a toxic forum environment: thank you for your beneficent knowledge and I'll be sure to avoid the forums and stick to the, unbelievable that I say this, more mature environment on Reddit.

Just to let you know,

Moderators are allowed to post their opinion Just the same as any other forum user.

If you disagree with another forum members post (this includes a moderator posting in a non Moderator capacity) you can of course disagree with them as long as it's:

1) Constructive
2) Abides by the forum rules.

It is not however acceptable to accuse another forum member of "flame-bait" and similar comments irrespective of their forum status.

The correct and only course of action is to report the post you feel breaks the rules where it will be reviewed.

That being the case, please consider how you post in future.

Thanks.

Now let's get back to the topic in hand.