Has Fdev said anything about powerplay lately? They need to either make it open only and updated or scape it as right now all it accomplishes is messing up the BGS.
Powerplay news?
- Thread starter Threeofseven
- Start date
With the 2020 announcement, it would seem it has been abandoned.
Why should powerplay be open only?
Because it was designed to be a PvP system (Sandro Sammarco said this many times on livestreams), but by making it available in all modes the PvP side of it never took off (because it's nearly impossible to find anyone doing PP activities in open).
From 7th March:
While the first two small interim updates are New Player Experience, QoL & bug fixes, the following ones (until New Era arrives) are to contain new features and content. It's anyone's guess if Powerplay changes will be amongst them.
As others have mentioned, there WAS a big fat discussion about switching PP to Open Only, the thread fell into "don't tell me how to play because I don't want to play YOUR way" etc. There are a LOT of good arguments for making PP Open Only since players have to actually become involved in pushing their Power's agenda and suppressing the agenda of a rival Power. You can't stop players from taking over YOUR little piece of the pie if they're in Solo. Or on Xbox. Or PS4 (if you're on PC). You can't do a lot about 5C problems if "they" are doing this activity in Solo, either.
The entire discussion never resolved into a decision (or an announcement that enough people have expressed opinions to form a decision) of any kind; the thread simply went dead (I'm talking about the "official" thread, not the follow-up threads still in the PP section of the forums).
For now, just assume the status quo is being maintained, nothing has changed, nothing is expected to change, and what you see now is what will be happening for the next few weeks (at least). And I'm being optimistic.
The entire discussion never resolved into a decision (or an announcement that enough people have expressed opinions to form a decision) of any kind; the thread simply went dead (I'm talking about the "official" thread, not the follow-up threads still in the PP section of the forums).
For now, just assume the status quo is being maintained, nothing has changed, nothing is expected to change, and what you see now is what will be happening for the next few weeks (at least). And I'm being optimistic.
I understood it that way that we will get new community goals sometime this year and nothing much else until 2020... sooooo, powerplay? Take it as it is or leave it, I guess. I hope Frontier might do a powerplay overhaul when they implement fleet carrieres so those two features can complement each other better...
Huh, I was told that PowerPlay is perfect as it is, used by hundreds if not thousands of CMDRs on a daily basis for engaging gameplay.
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AKA nothing will be done. I hope I’m wrong. Honestly at this point they might be better off scrapping the whole thing and making PP modules available for purchase. I’m constantly at war with power players who keep trying to flip my system to a faction that benefits the power (doing it from solo as I never see anyone), which is useless because no one ever actually undermines. All systems are literally at 0% undermined 99% of the time.
And all Federation factions HURT Hudson which is turning his space yellow and blue because Imperial factions actually help him... a drunk monkey could have designed a better system than this.
In it's current incarnation there's nothing PvP about, though. Everything I need to do for my power has nothing to do with other players whatsoever. You can pretty much farm the whole thing with just NPCs, so yeah, it would work in solo.
That shouldn't change, though. Ideally, you'd add some engaging and rewarding reason to make it PvP-centric. IE: adding battlegrounds (contested systems) where you get extra points for killing invading players/defenders. Or like CQC arenas where you can banner a power and earn merit with them. But the current system... yeah it's really just PvE.
This is because they made some frankly naive design decisions early on - it should have been locked to open from the start for it to work as a PvP system. But, it has to have a PvE base to function; i.e. Player A decides to go kill some power NPCs in a rival powers territory to undermine them, so Player B is encouraged to defend the territory by killing Player A. This is how its supposed to function, but modes make this occurrence rare as Player A will be in solo or a private group 9 times out of 10.
Optional conflict areas won't encourage PvP (because the weaker PvP side will always retreat to solo/PG to prop up their power)... How it should work is; you want to undermine territory or expand a power? You take the unavoidable risk of PvP. This is the whole reason for Powerplay to exist, otherwise its just a BGS v2...pointless, might as well be scrapped.
You just assume all power play is PvP centric; it just isn't. Aisling Duval's method for gaining merit is delivering materials between stations. Not all powers are hostile fighting forces. How am I to PvP delivering goods within my own borders? Makes no sense. Granted, I can fly to any "enemy" state and partake in contested zones there, but there's NPC transports and faction ships that attack me and vice versa.
All that said, you are not wrong and I do not disagree with you. For the hostile border powers, war and fighting between factions should be very real. Those areas should be dangerous to be in. However, since the background simulation can't actually allow anyone to win said war, none of it makes sense anyway.
Power play is just bgs, but not as good
You do know pvp doesn't exclusively refer to combat?