So this argument is an argument over arguing a point then? Surely we are debating this in the end?
Powerplay Whatever happened to the Powerplay Open only Proposal (POOP) ?
- Thread starter zarrazee
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So this argument is an argument over arguing a point then? Surely we are debating this in the end?
Been playing Powerplay since the beginning (though with the occasional break, such as DW2) but I’ve been primarily been involved in the BGS side of things for ALD, or helping brave freedom fighters resist the cruel Galactic Federation, and I mostly play in Open. One of the biggest ironies is that I support ALD for roleplaying reasons, and she is one of the worst Powers to pledge to if you’re a non-combat player.
Half the time, I haven’t been able to muster enough interest in either combat farming or ABA cargo runs to maintain even a tier two ranking, so I was really looking forward to Powerplay missions. It doesn’t look like it’ll happen anytime soon, though.
As for the idea that “Powerplay is designed for conflict”... there’s a difference between conflict and PvP combat. Powerplay was, IMO, designed (poorly) as a politics simulation, and the focus was on PvE conflict. You cannot push your Power’s agenda via PvP, by design, so the only thing you can do with PvP is hinder other Powers. I’ve played games with that exact make up before, which means that anyone who wants to advance their Power will do so by avoiding PvP.
I’ve seen it all: playing during off-peak hours, sending in alt-accounts to see if anyone’s there, Zerg rushes... and of course combat logging, and outright cheating. As a winning strategy these tactics make sense, but it rarely makes for good PvP, at least as far as I’m concerned. And these were games that had a client/server architecture.
Elite Dangerous’s peer-to-peer networking opens the door for other rather cheap tactics, as well as complicating the situation for non-Prime time players like me. I generally play during peak players, which corresponds to European Prime Time, but I live in the US, so I play well before my local prime time. I rarely see players even in busy systems, due to the poor latency I get to European Players.
The thing is that the few Powerplay PvP encounters I’ve had, I’ve found enjoyable. Every single one of them took the time to at least send a message, which is a far cry from the normal so-called “PvP Pirate.” Furthermore, unlike other “Enhanced PvE” games I’ve played in the past, I’m actually enjoying myself in Open. I attribute this to Frontier controlling the player-killer population not by heavily punishing the PvP, but allowing those who don’t enjoy PvP to opt out on a case by case basis. This means that player-killers don’t have a target “audience,” and the current Population in Open is tough enough to not be fun to try to kill. I, quite frankly, don’t want to tinker with a winning formula.
Back before I stopped running fortification Merits, the biggest threat to me wasn’t other pledged players, but unpledged player-killers. Not that they were much of a threat, but it does get old after a while. They stopped after a few weeks, primarily because they didn’t get a lot of kills from Open Powerplayers. I believe should PP go Open Only, they’ll return until they’ve driven off most of those kind of on the fence between PvP and PvE, get bored,and move on again.
I could be wrong. Heck, I hope I am wrong if Open Only Powerplay happens, but I’ve seen this happen with too many MMOs chasing the proverbial holy grail of MMOs not to be skeptical. History as shown that once a game loses customers, they rarely come back. I don’t want to see that happen to Powerplay. It has too much potential, even if it’s currently unrealized.
Well, i'd just like it if we could discuss things while respecting the opinions of others, even if we disagree with them.
I respect your position on PP and understand your desire for it, and i hope you will understand and respect the opinions of people who disagree with you, and not just dismiss their opinions as being without reason.
But I'm not. If I call someone a headbanger, I say why I think they are a headbanger.
Been playing Powerplay since the beginning (though with the occasional break, such as DW2) but I’ve been primarily been involved in the BGS side of things for ALD, or helping brave freedom fighters resist the cruel Galactic Federation, and I mostly play in Open. One of the biggest ironies is that I support ALD for roleplaying reasons, and she is one of the worst Powers to pledge to if you’re a non-combat player.
Half the time, I haven’t been able to muster enough interest in either combat farming or ABA cargo runs to maintain even a tier two ranking, so I was really looking forward to Powerplay missions. It doesn’t look like it’ll happen anytime soon, though.
As for the idea that “Powerplay is designed for conflict”... there’s a difference between conflict and PvP combat. Powerplay was, IMO, designed (poorly) as a politics simulation, and the focus was on PvE conflict. You cannot push your Power’s agenda via PvP, by design, so the only thing you can do with PvP is hinder other Powers. I’ve played games with that exact make up before, which means that anyone who wants to advance their Power will do so by avoiding PvP.
I’ve seen it all: playing during off-peak hours, sending in alt-accounts to see if anyone’s there, Zerg rushes... and of course combat logging, and outright cheating. As a winning strategy these tactics make sense, but it rarely makes for good PvP, at least as far as I’m concerned. And these were games that had a client/server architecture.
Elite Dangerous’s peer-to-peer networking opens the door for other rather cheap tactics, as well as complicating the situation for non-Prime time players like me. I generally play during peak players, which corresponds to European Prime Time, but I live in the US, so I play well before my local prime time. I rarely see players even in busy systems, due to the poor latency I get to European Players.
The thing is that the few Powerplay PvP encounters I’ve had, I’ve found enjoyable. Every single one of them took the time to at least send a message, which is a far cry from the normal so-called “PvP Pirate.” Furthermore, unlike other “Enhanced PvE” games I’ve played in the past, I’m actually enjoying myself in Open. I attribute this to Frontier controlling the player-killer population not by heavily punishing the PvP, but allowing those who don’t enjoy PvP to opt out on a case by case basis. This means that player-killers don’t have a target “audience,” and the current Population in Open is tough enough to not be fun to try to kill. I, quite frankly, don’t want to tinker with a winning formula.
Back before I stopped running fortification Merits, the biggest threat to me wasn’t other pledged players, but unpledged player-killers. Not that they were much of a threat, but it does get old after a while. They stopped after a few weeks, primarily because they didn’t get a lot of kills from Open Powerplayers. I believe should PP go Open Only, they’ll return until they’ve driven off most of those kind of on the fence between PvP and PvE, get bored,and move on again.
I could be wrong. Heck, I hope I am wrong if Open Only Powerplay happens, but I’ve seen this happen with too many MMOs chasing the proverbial holy grail of MMOs not to be skeptical. History as shown that once a game loses customers, they rarely come back. I don’t want to see that happen to Powerplay. It has too much potential, even if it’s currently unrealized.
Ok finally some arguments.
First of all about the "Open Player Killers": honestly I think it's gonna be much easier for them to simply pledge to a Power. There's a lot of people that simply can't find a purpose in game, and Player vs Player interaction should be a relevant part of this game, at least in some part of it, and not just as a limited and self-sustaining part like CQC (which makes sense on its own as a game mechanic, but clearly it's not enough for the Open Play community, which isn't just "pvp"). Oh and by the way, you forget that not-pledged player killers would gain a great bounty by killing any pledged player, the real problem in all of this is, again, the lack of balancement: right now we've got a game where is ludicrously easy to do credits, and the very fact you can do bilions in a few hours in solo makes any wannabe seal-clubber basically untouchable. I know a couple of guys who do pvp-bounty hunting and they always lament the fact that's very hard to find actual targets, they usually find people roleplaying criminals which enjoy being chased anyway. I'll be honest: I'm a big fan of the two-galaxies solution, because I believe firmly that an Open Only Galaxy would regolate itself, because we already have game mechanics which would work the best in Open. But this is another matter, let's stick to Powerplay.
I've done my big part in Kumo's BGS, I am quite proud of the work I did in the last two years, even if I'm in a semi-pause-period from PP (I just keep my rating 5), and if Powerplay will change with Powerplay missions, I think that it should be completely disconnected from the BGS, or at least Powerplay shouldn't depend on BGS as it is right now.
If Powerplay is gonna evolve into "something else", it's gonna be something that mix the BGS mechanics with the actual Powerplay conflict-driven philosophy.
So yes, I'm not one of those guys that think that Open Play would be the panacea for botting, 5Cing etc, if you look at my last threads I proposed much more complicated mechanics to make the bots basically impossible to... well... bot, as a totally different system to calculate Command Capitals and in general administrate Powerplay to make 5C basically useless.
Powerplay must evolve. But it can't become "just a galaxy-wide-scale BGS" because... we've got already BGS for that.
You talked about roleplay before, and I'm totally ok with that, but there's a lot of other ways to roleplay (for example) a Kumo Crew member, or a Emperess supporter, we've got the BGS for example and it works as a local way to try some roleplaying or the game mechanics in general.
The crucial point in all of this situation is that right now this game is basically headbutting an invisible concrete wall, people are not satisfied with that and I had plenty of "not-so-PvP" experiences during many Powerplay operations: as I wrote many times before, running away can be fun, as cooperating with other people to avoid enemies' attention somewhere else.
There's a lot of potential in Open Only Powerplay and yeah, there's always gonna be people seal-clubbing, but Powerplay should become some kind of "end game" game mechanic.
Like Thargoids for example. Never read somebody crying about how Thargoids are hard to kill. Powerplay should be the same: a last step for people looking for very advanced gameplay, where cooperation is the key, PvP is a factor but not as crucial as going to PvpP-hubs and shooting people around without a real purpose.
You said it before: it's not easy to kill a CMDR that's enough experienced. That will change things, because we will see a lot of different builds, ships designed to the sole purpose of interdict and slow down other ships, other ships to kill those ships the faster they can, haulers, escorts, tanks, the human factor would make this game eally unpredictable and really engaging.
We'd have different roles, real roles, born by necessity to make your team win. This is the reason why I'd love to have Open Only powerplay. Not because bots, or 5C or cheats, that's another problem, even if it would help, of course. It's how the game would change for the better.
Much more dangerous? Hell yeah. Much more entertaining? I really believe so.
You don't believe me? Ask the hippies. I've been an for all week, jumping around from system to system, making them chase me, while my mates were undermining somewhere else. That's funny. That's something to play for. Not one milion merits in preparation done by bots probably for more than the 70%. That's bad, tedious and unfair. In my vision of a future Powerplay, the preparation wars should be more like blitzkriegs, with few CMDRs occupying the supercruise space while other CMDRs haul like crazy, protected by them. Even better? While those very same CMDRs do missions all around the bubble, and other Powers' CMDRs are waiting for them, to try and stop them from completing their tasks.
Isn't that a much more funny game than what we have today? All alone by ourselves?
This is going to have to be a quick reply to both of you. What both of you wrote? I want that. I've wanted something like that since I started online gaming, way back before Ultima Online was even a thing.
The problem is, I've rarely seen that kind of thing... at least in a way that I find to be fun. In my experience, every single attempt at the this kind of game devolves what is essentially two blindfolded people groping in the dark, swinging wildly at the slightest sound, hoping they hit their opponent. Game sessions begin to feel more like a job, where you need to follow the orders of those placed above you, or you get kicked out. Casual play is discouraged, and you frequently end up spending more time trying to coordinate an activity than you do actually doing it.
Furthermore, if you want to have a hope of being able to fight back, to be something other than a target, you pretty much have to turn playing the game into a full time job, and abandon having fun for pursuing the inevitable meta-game. I can't stand the meta-game, because I prefer to immerse myself into the game's setting, and meta-gaming is about as from doing that as you can get.
And those were games with a client/server networking architecture. This game is peer-to-peer. Even if there were any in-game communciations in the various Powers to try coordinate things, the chances are that because I play during European prime time, but live in the US, those players won't be in a position to help me anymore than the opposition will be in a position to oppose me. Which is why I'm far more likely to just use a blockade runner and take my chances, and perhaps, if the stars align and Great Cthulhu stirs from his deathless sleep, I might actually wing up in a PUG.
As I've said before, I've played enough games similar to Open Powerplay to know that the kind of PvP that results from this type of game isn't the kind I generally find fun. PvP can be fun, but it has to be set up that way. I would be more than willing to support adding a PvP oriented layer to Powerplay (and, ideally, the BGS as well) that would encourage PvP by rewarding it. I know I've made some suggestions in that direction in the past, but the problem with rewarding PvP has always been one of player collusion, and preventing collusion requires a lot of development resources. Resources that quite frankly I would rather spend on other aspects of the game, like atmospheric worlds and Elite Feet.
Trying to encourage PvP by punishing non-PvPers by gating the gameplay they enjoy behind the threat of PvP doesn't really encourage the fun kind of PvP. I honestly think that PvP in Powerplay is as good as its going to get, short of Frontier investing significant development resources into PvP itself. And given Frontier's track record when it comes to the multi-player aspects of this game, I don't think they have the experience to do it well. I could be wrong. Should Powerplay go Open Only I really hope I'm wrong, because Powerplay, even in the state it is now, adds an additional layer to the game to consider.
But until that happens, I'll keep on alternating my time between helping spread the light of Culture, Prosperity, and Freedom throughout the galaxy on behalf of the Emperor, or aiding those brave Freedom Fighters resisting Federal Oppression. I'll be out on DW2 for a while, so perhaps when I get back, the rest of the proposed changes will happen.
I understand your concerns, but I think that Elite Dangeorus has one decisive difference from every other game: it's true that Elite has metas, the Plasma/Railgun FdL is everybody's knowledge, but differently to many other games it's not enough to be best equipped to gain the kill.
And I understand your concerns about Powerplay becoming a job, but somehow it's what's already become, especially because of its rules you need a strictly organised chain of command to let people know how to not do damage to your very own Power.
The Powerplay I want should have a different user interface: one of the most prominent proposals by Sammarco was to make the triggers "competitive", with a +/+ 100% to decide if a system was fortified, undermined or canceled, in a new Powerplay it should be evident which systems are in peril that very moment, so you can decide where to act to defend the territories of the Power you're rooting for. This would make Powerplay really decentralized as FDev want it to be (and I do too).
Of course organisation would be really important, but casuals could contribute anywhere if any action in this new Powerplay can be only positive, or if they like contribute to attack anywhere what they consider the enemies of their faction.
I've been in Kumo leadership for a couple of years, and you can imagine how I am sick of sheets and especially make people follow sheets (and I did almost all of them
). We're already in a "job-like" situation, and that's neither healthy or funny.If we really want a decentralized, funny, engaging Powerplay it must go Open Only not because I want to be able to stop every player in the world (it's gonna be a task for any player rooting for my same Power to stop them, I'll deal with the ones I can instance with), change the rules (no more overheads,higher upkeeps, single systems turmoiling etc), make Powerplay something similar but totally different to BGS, with much more complex actions.
Then I think we'll be able to enjoy every victory and defeat, because at least we'd be able to have a little fun, because I don't know how you feel about it, but I can't find fun in looking at bot-numbers growing.
True story. We were watching the undermining coming in from opposite ends of our bubble, spreading systematically towards our capital. We'd fortified every system in two days, and weren't interested in escalating the conflict so went for disruption & defense. We jumped ahead of the progress to ambush, tracked them back to grouping areas, I remember sitting above an outpost for 20mins waiting for an fdl id been tracking to undock. I caught him the next day & got a kill. We'd noticed they were consistently rallying to the 4th closest system, and used that, along with starport knowledge to harry a group back to their staging post. It was a fascinating game of cat & mouse, throughout our space. Old-hands came back to help, new friends found. Our numbers more than tripled because of the attack, but it took an enormous amount of work to snipe us, and we locked it down in just two days of fortifying. Negotiating the peace afterwards? that was the hardest part, lol.
I wing with ppl from South Africa and Oz regularly (as well as US and all over Europe) and it lets them instance with ppl I can instance with, and vice-versa. Having a spread of time zones/regions in a wing causes some rubber-banding (nothing like as bad as the effect in dedicated server FPS games btw) but increases the chance of instancing with a wider range of players. Being in the US makes you a local by our standards tbh. Also, because these folk are on my friends list, when i drop-in to a location I usually instance with them straight away even when not in a wing. It sounds like you may not have tried these steps, & if not I encourage you to try, you might be surprised how it all comes together.
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(not aiming this at anyone in particular-) A lot of the other networking & instancing problems that are frequently mentioned around this topic are either historic & obsolete or extrapolated from other games and just don't apply in practice. That's what I find frustrating in some of these 'debates'. A solid background in forum arguments & rhetoric doesn't make up for a lack of practical experience. :/
Umm... what?
Again, you said people disagreed with you without reason. They had their reasons, you just don't agree with their reasons.
"Again, you said people disagreed with you without reason."
And these people are headbangers and impede progress with baseless noise.
" They had their reasons, you just don't agree with their reasons."
Then perhaps they should say why they don't like something rather than come across as a screaming infant. You imply that people don't need to tell you why they hate something in a debate and still remain valid.
eye twitches
Then we would need to go to the threads you are referring to and you could show that people are not giving reasons (although best done in those threads if not already locked rather than taking this further off topic, plus it would avoid anyone making selective quotes to support their point).
As far as i can see, in recent threads at least, people have been giving reasons.
What happened was it's not important.
/end.
/end.
And I'm talking historically, mainly from the flash topics and in general from over the years.
For example, I went through the entire first flash topic from end to end, counting yes / no / don't care. The amount of rubbish (and eventually moderated) content was incredible. People who play that feature fully every day can see the problems, have told the devs (who agree from whats been posted), give structured, reasonable suggestions on how to fix things. Aside from a few notable exceptions the main counter response is emotional, which is not exactly helpful when you need rational solutions.
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This is the biggest wing fight I've seen from Powerplay on camera (cycle 146)- Watch at about 6:10 for a good crowd in shot.
While it still throws problems (mainly with wing missions and objectives) straight instancing seems to run OK.
So basically, you are making sweeping statements without giving us anything of substance to discuss.
Now, consider, what would you think if i said "All the arguments from OOPP proponents over the years have been largely without substance. I made a thread about a change to the exploration mechanics and every single OOPP proponent jumped in and opposed it without reason!!!!"
You see, how can we have any sort of meaningful discussion like that?
Do you have evidence about that or you're claiming wrong things voluntarly as usual?
Isn't the burden of proof on the person making the claim? Rubbernuke claims people (specifically, making it sound like all people who opposed him) made no worthwhile comments in various threads over the years, including one amazing thread where EVERY SINGLE explorer (his words "bar none") on the forums posted opposing comments without any substantial reasons in a thread that wasn't even about exploration. Its also worthwhile noting that there are quite a few Powerplayers and PvPers that consider themselves explorers.
I hope you can understand why i'm being skeptical about his claims here.
EDIT: Let me clarify what i'm trying to say here. If Rubbernuke had said: "Some people sometimes make posts without giving substantial reasons" then i think we could agree on that and not even discuss it, because it happens all the time. But then, such a comment would not be useful for supporting his points.
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yes I can understand that: considering you've got no more arguments to go on with the discussion you're just attacking the messager, trying to make his opinion not relevant or biased.
That's usually how people with biased opinions act to begin with.
Rubbernuke told that many people that didn't Powerplay at all seemed to be incredibly interested in Powerplay only when the Open Only factor became relevant, and that's a fact, there was a lot of people that even admitted that they were not interested in Powerplay but were against any kind of Open Only game mechanic because "kickstarter". Too bad we lost the Focused Feedback forums in the migration (or at least: I can't find them anymore), but that's another fact you're trying to bend to simply compensate your lack of arguments about all of this.
I've been very technical with you a lot of times, and every single time you tried to claim that I was trying to shut you up.
I don't want that. But I've got my right to say that your opinion is biased, your knowledge of what you're trying to discuss about is incredibly low, and it's evident to everybody that your only goal is to discredit a solid proposal that wouldn't change a thing in the rest of the game.
Why are you doing that? Well, I've got my opinions about, but those are just opinions. About the former statement? Well let's say it straight: if you think you're being somehow subtle trust me: you're not. You're not that good.
This is true... to a degree. Unlike many games where the deciding factor is pretty much how much time you're willing to spend grinding in pursuit of the current meta, there is a degree of skill involved. In fact, it's one of the reasons why I still play in Open, when I pretty much expected to shift to private group or solo after a while. In most games, if you don't follow the meta, especially if you prefer to play a civilian/non-combat role, your choices are pretty much run or die... and running rarely worked unless you saw them first.
In this game, I have other options, except for one. Unless I'm planning on actually doing PvP, I shouldn't fight back. Fortunately for me, I find outmaneuvering them to be fun, both before an interdiction attempt is even made, and on those rare cases I can't outmaneuver them in Supercruise, while waiting for my FSD to spool up. At least, I find it to be fun when it's infrequent. Having to do that frequently gets old really quick, which is one of the reasons I'm glad I no longer play during my local prime time.
You don't need a "strictly organized chain of command," though. At this time all you really need several people who enjoy distilling the disparate sources of information in the game into one easy to understand format. Players who actually care about advancing their power will take care of the rest. The problem is that most players don't really care about their power, but getting Powerplay modules, and that this information exists outside the game itself. This is the kind of thing that should've been in the game from day one.
I agree that systemic change is needed. At the very least, I want Powerplay missions. Variety is the spice of life, and currently I frequently have to go out of my way to earn any merits what so ever, and the "easy" source of merits are things I don't enjoy doing. Which is why I've been playing the BGS portion of it.
I've been in Kumo leadership for a couple of years, and you can imagine how I am sick of sheets and especially make people follow sheets (and I did almost all of them
Again, agreed.
And this is where we disagree again. If Powerplay goes Open Only, it won't be fun or engaging for everyone. It'll be fun for the PvP Powerplayers, and perhaps tolerable for those who fall in the middle of the PvP/PvE spectrum... depending upon their tolerance for random attacks of course, but for those PvE Powerplayers, they'll be coerced into participating in something they do not enjoy in any way, in order to play a part of the game they do.
Successful games, even subsets like Powerplay, need to be appealing to a broad range of players, not a narrow one. Currently, to my extreme and everlasting surprise, a significant majority of players play in Open. I attribute this to Frontier's brilliant tri-mode system, which allows those who don't enjoy PvP to still play the game, thus ensuring that the type of players who drive away others in droves don't have their preferred "audience." This also provides a psychological "out" for those who fall in the middle of the PvP/PvE spectrum. Being allowed to choose, on a session by session basis, what mode you'll be playing is far preferable to having to choose right from the start if you'll go all PvP, or all PvE.
As for bots... again, I don't think Open Only will be the solution for players who are cheating, thanks to Frontier's Peer-to-Peer networking architecture. It's too easy block being instanced with anyone simply by setting your firewall to a reasonable security level, let alone some of the stronger ones. I have to whitelist ED after every single update, just so that I can be instanced with others. The only solution to bots is Frontier finally deciding that cheating should not be tolerated in a multi-player game. Given Frontier's track record to date, I won't be holding my breath on that.