Sandros suggested changes condense activity down considerably (by a factor of 15 or more) and make everything inbound. It takes the sprawl and makes it almost multi arena like.
Which is why, should Sandro's suggested changes take place, I suspect that many of the less combat oriented, non-PvP, Open Powerplayers will switch to Powerplay missions rather than hauling. Accomplishing your goals in Powerplay in Open is currently about avoiding PvP, after all. If we actively sought out PvP, we'd be PvPers. If we were playing in other modes, we'd be PvEers. Instead, we're kind of
stuck in the middle.
Interference from non-pledges might also come from the often neglected 'freedom fighters' though in Open PP- you get that for free here. Plus, engineers now have toys that make life a bit more difficult for haulers.
I know all about them, even if I've rarely encountered them in the game.
Its not about straight up killing though. Its disrupting your enemy and minimising the same disruption to you so those who are collecting and moving can do so. Its also self organising, in that activity zones become hot organically as more and more gather together (as seen in that massive wing fight video- that was spontaneous).
As I mentioned earlier too, we have new weapons like reverb torps / mines, ion mines, drag munitions, phasing. With teams working for and against you its a whole new way of approaching Powerplay beyond plain hauling and shooting.
In your example, pledges would protect you, because they have to. Combat expansions have overwatch, as well as others picking off wounded ships.
And this:
it's far more fun to play inefficiently than the alternative
Is exactly why Open is needed- Open breaks the 100% reliability of Powerplay solo / PG activities. It introduces disruption into a system that has become static and that NPCs cannot help with.
Open is needed, yes. Open-Only Powerplay, on the other hand, will drive away far more players than it attracts in the long term IME. What you describe above? I sincerely doubt it will work in this game. There are no Power-wide in-game communication channels. The way instancing "works" in this game means that you are just as likely to be instanced with "overwatch" as they are to be instanced with opposing players, that is rarely. I've played enough PvE/PvP hybrid games to know that kind of thing rarely works as advertised, and those were MMOs with a client/server architecture designed by developers who had actual multi-player and MMO experience.
As for the "super-competitive"... in an Open Only environment, they're far more likely to combat log, fiddle with router settings, and outright cheat than play "fair." I would rather have them playing in other modes, than playing in Open and waste my precious play time on a cheater who'll combat log at the first hint that things aren't going their way... assuming that the risk/reward balance is sufficient for me to even
consider PvP an option, or course. Under Sandro's proposal, their efficiencies will cancel each other out, and maximizing the size of the Powerplayer population would mean that Frontier would be more willing to continue improving it.
Fair enough you dislike combat- but, Powerplay regardless of mode at minimum depending on Power is 1/3 combat.
You say that, but in those four months, the only combat merits I ever earned was the opportunistic ones that I gained from killing an NPC who interdicted me. But then again, my typical play window at that time was at the
start Powerplay cycle, so there was plenty of hauling to do.
Its tedious because its mundane with nothing happening. This is why a lot of people including myself want interaction with players here to influence this.
You're wrong there. The threat of NPCs is always present, should I desire that kind of excitement. It becomes tedious
because I'd learned the destination system. That's why I like missions: they don't take me to the same few systems, so I know where the best routes and approaches are. That's why I'm currently 50kly away from the Bubble, and getting further every play session, and exploring primarily via parallax: each system I explore is completely virgin territory, and doesn't even have navigation aides unless I choose to create them, so I'm flying by feel.
A system I've never visited before is a pleasure to fly through. A system I've flown through dozens of times can be relaxing, as long as its broken up by systems I rarely visit, so their configuration has changed enough that I need to relearn the optimal routes. The same two systems
over and over and over again?
Another player who's interrupting my play session without even showing showing me the basic courtesy of even a communications macro? They can be fun, once moon, to test my skills against, are tolerable in small doses, annoying in moderate doses, and utterly tedious in large doses. Given that I'm not a combat oriented player, and that they are inevitably flying some form of PvP-meta ship, there are no real decisions to make, and thus no real gameplay value.
I agree with you, but for different reasons. Powerplays 'gameplay' is horrific, but I stuck with it all these years for the players and interactions between them in and out of game. I dearly want FD to come in and say a three modes wonderland is coming but sadly its not. The options are few and (IMO at least) Open has the most future potential.
I think the basic disconnect is what we consider
gameplay. For me, gameplay is about the decisions I need to make. Do I work against
this Federal faction in this system, or
that Federal faction in
that system. Do I install another cargo module in my mission runner, or a passenger cabin? Do I have the time to investigate a USS on my flight path, or should I keep flying to my destination? Should I install weapons on my ship to fight the occasional NPC pirate, or should I fly a pure blockade runner?
In game activities are what I do
once that decision has been made, but they are
activities, not gameplay, to me. Calling activities gameplay is a bit like calling pressing a button is gameplay IMO.
That is why I'm attracted to the potential of Powerplay, even if Frontier's execution is pretty atrocious. More factors to consider = more decisions to make = more gameplay for me.