Incrementally Improving PowerPlay - Make PowerPlay Open-Only

First, the TLDR version:

I think PPOO will create a host of negative side effects without providing the benefits it will allegedly bring. As a result, this will further reduce the already anemic powerplay community further. But given that this "macro-political gameplay simulation" is already mostly-dead, at this stage I'm in favor of trying it anyway... if only to see the results.

This would in fact boost the community. Most people that leave PP do it out of ability of sides to hide in Private. In fact, the Empire has done this multiple times to prevent the loss of merits to PvPers in the same instance with them.

PP in other modes is a form of cheating. It is a Player-vs-Player mechanic that people are exploiting the various modes to prevent any risk.
 
What I want is for FD to fully realize Powerplay and actually support it. If they had done that from day 1 we would not be here debating as we are.

I'm aware what you want. If they had done it from day 1 we might still have been debating it, since i probably don't want the powerplay you want :D
 
I think PPOO will create a host of negative side effects without providing the benefits it will allegedly bring. As a result, this will further reduce the already anemic powerplay community further. But given that this "macro-political gameplay simulation" is already mostly-dead, at this stage I'm in favor of trying it anyway... if only to see the results.

Judging by reaction, you'd trade a minority in solo PG for a far larger number. We are talking 300 v 5000 swap. Even if you halve the people coming in, thats a massive swing.

One of the few things that would get me to Buckyball it back to the Bubble would be improvements to Powerplay, especially integrating Powerplay into the mission system. I remained silent on the other topics, because they weren't anything I had something to say on. Being an inveterate role-player, I frequently take sub-optimal actions* because they're in character, so anything that improves Powerplay is for the better in my book.

Working as a team augments the shallow bones of Powerplay enough to transcend missions, IMO. There is no NPC or mission that can match being part of a multi pronged staged plan each week.

This does not. Elite: Dangerous has entirely the wrong network architecture to get the effects you want. It’s peer-to-peer, with instancing handled by Frontier. Frontier, rightly, focuses on ensuring that players have a fun experience. This means that players are instanced with friends first, a host who has a stable connection to the player second, and maximizing player occupancy not at all. To have the effects you want, this game needs to be client-server.

Open powerplay is not 1:1 CQC. It would provide opportunistic PvP co-op situations.

Currently, it dosn’t take much to find yourself in an instance of one, even in a busy system. If you have a firewall with reasonable security settings, you have to explicitly give ED permission to violate them to see anyone. If someone’s watching Netflix in your home, you’ll find yourself alone in your own instance. If you’re playing outside your local prime time, you’ll probably find yourself in your own instance. Generally, you have to take steps to actually instance with friends, rather than the other way around.

The only way is to try it. Seriously, do it for a month and evaluate at the end. Plus, pledges work to the plan and not timezones as the cycle end approaches as things get more heated.

Which makes Open Only a poor solution to the fifth column problem. They’re already acting in bad faith, so I have no doubt they’ll take steps to ensure that they won’t be instanced with anyone they don’t want to.

Open Only is at best a mild 5C action. The bigger problem is blocking.

The other argument for Open Only is that it will attract more players to PowerPlay. And I have no doubt that there’s a cohort of players who very much enjoy asymmetrical PvP combat... as long as they’re not on the receiving end of the equation. And they will flock to Powerplay like crows on roadkill. But they’ll soon get bored, because all the players who currently in Solo and PG, because they don’t enjoy PvP combat at all, will either quit or take measures to ensure they won’t be instanced with anyone they don’t want to.

Currently Powerplay is biased towards defence- its far too easy to haul 100% and never see an opponent. This has led to stagnation- if the bias was towards attack held territory would be smaller and more decent systems would be in play.

The net result will be fewer players playing Powerplay, those who seek PvP getting frustrated by all the cheating going on, but at least thePowers will be smaller.

In the end you'll have to accept some shenanigans and let FD do what they do with bots and people who cheat.

But at this stage, I see very little harm in trying it anyway, given how anemic participation allegedly is these days. Who knows, maybe EDPP will be one of those rare exceptions that bucks the typical trend regarding asymmetrical PvP over the last 35+ years.

Well, its worked for Star Wars Squadrons- Powerplay could be just like that each week with 100% player set tasks and missions.
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* If you want to see a classic example of my sub-optimal decisions in action: I'm currently pledged to ALD, who is a combat-oriented Power that offers a weapon, and I'm a non-combat player. AD would be a much-better choice for my play-style. That being said, I'm playing a traditional Imperial character. As such, she supports ALD because she represents the traditional side of Imperial society. AD, no matter how appealing she is from a gameplay perspective, is a radical who seeks to undermines one of the pillars of Imperial society.

Thats on you though- not the game. Plus if FD actually did what they suggested this would not be an issue for you- that and the anti 5C measures.
 
I'm aware what you want. If they had done it from day 1 we might still have been debating it, since i probably don't want the powerplay you want :D

I don't think you are. Over the years I've suggested Open Powerplay, NPC co-op Powerplay, megaship Powerplay, CG based Powerplay- in fact 3/4 of my suggestions are mode agnostic. I'm enthusiastic for open as this is what FD themselves had suggested, which is the only real new gameplay they have tendered (unless voting over votes is counted as gameplay).
 
Agreed this has been done to death. As I've stated before - every time this discussion comes up - I feel a little dumber for engaging in it.

I'm in favor of open-only for power play. Regardless of what other powers promise or state as is their rules for power play activity, the only way to ensure that players are in fact in open is for FDev to enforce it. The only way that will happen is by implementing a radical redesign of the game system. There are a myriad of reasons why that is necessary, and those reasons have been explained ad nauseum.

It is also highly unlikely that FDev will do any such thing at this stage in this game's life. Forum threads and high horses won't make it happen.

But yes - I'm in favor of it. I'm also in favor of winning the lottery.
 
I don't think you are. Over the years I've suggested Open Powerplay, NPC co-op Powerplay, megaship Powerplay, CG based Powerplay- in fact 3/4 of my suggestions are mode agnostic. I'm enthusiastic for open as this is what FD themselves had suggested, which is the only real new gameplay they have tendered (unless voting over votes is counted as gameplay).

Ah, but did you suggest BGS based powerplay? That's what I wanted. And yes, it would be mode agonstic ;)
 

Robert Maynard

Volunteer Moderator
PP in other modes is a form of cheating. It is a Player-vs-Player mechanic that people are exploiting the various modes to prevent any risk.
While some may consider engaging in Powerplay in Solo and Private Groups to be cheating, it isn't, in fact, cheating - as Frontier consciously implemented Powerplay in all three game modes (DBOBE even participated in an AMA on Powerplay - and he commented on players in Solo engaging in Powerplay).

It's not, as implemented, a feature that requires any player to engage in PvP if they don't want to, no matter how much some players might wish it were.
 
Look, don't get me wrong, i don't have a stake in this.
Right - you don't play PP. So you don't know how it actually works. So when you say "it's all about hauling" - it's simply not. People in here actually play PP. I lead Winters hauling. I know about hauling. It's not all about hauling. Interdiction is extremely effective and time-efficient, and so is counter-interdiction (what we call Combat Air Patrol).
 
Power play in open enrichts game, if you cant be contested in solo/pg, a lot of ships that in enemy player encounter would be usefull are borderline useless now, nobody use cheaper, lower capacity, but more defendable haulers like clippers or t7, there is no point in undermining in speed vipers or couriers in solo as you dont need to run away EVER in engineered medium+ ship, you can just take conda or vette, but those are vulnurable in open, and simply cant continue if contested.
 
Right - you don't play PP. So you don't know how it actually works. So when you say "it's all about hauling" - it's simply not. People in here actually play PP. I lead Winters hauling. I know about hauling. It's not all about hauling. Interdiction is extremely effective and time-efficient, and so is counter-interdiction (what we call Combat Air Patrol).

You're the second person to make that statement and its a fallacy.

I've been involved in powerplay twice. Both times quit out of boredom, but i took part and studied the mechanics. So just because i don't play it now, doesn't mean i don't understand it.

Now, its not ALL about hauling, i've acknowledged that several times, but its mostly about hauling.

Out of the 10 initial powers (because the summary i'm looking at doesn't include Grom):

Preparation: 10/10 perform by hauling
Expansion: 5/10 by hauling, 5/10 by combat
Control: 10/10 perform by hauling
Undermining: 10/10 by combat

That's a whole lot of hauling. Its also worth considering that anyone going up against someone doing a combat oriented task is not going up against a hauler but a hunter. On average this means any PvP encounter could go either way and what i've been saying regarding hauling is not relevant to those activities.

Now, if instead of the dismissal you had simply said something like "I've found interdiction to be effective and time efficient" perhaps along with some rough statistics of how often you are able to stop someone making a delivery, then we might have had a much more constructive discussion :p
 
Actually @CMDR Foursyth - my final point to you was wrong, since you are on the hauling side. You are not on the stopping people side.

So, if you don't mind, i have some questions:

How often do you and your people fail to make deliveries (on average)?
What ships do you fly to maximize your efficiency/chances?
What techniques do you use to get to your destination without being stopped/turned away/destroyed?

And some speculative questions:

I think its safe to say that if it did go open only, not everyone who currently does PP in PG/solo will continue to do so in Open. However, PP going open only is likely to attract a lot more who are interested in the PvP side of things.

First, do you think that is fair assessment of the situation?

If so, what do you think that will do for your chances of making deliveries?

If, as i suspect, it will reduce your chances, do you think it might have a negative impact on the motivation of some of the haulers, especially those who do transfer over from PG/solo, but perhaps also on those who are currently playing in Open and more or less ok with the current survival chances?
 
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And some speculative questions:

I think its safe to say that if it did go open only, not everyone who currently does PP in PG/solo will continue to do so in Open. However, PP going open only is likely to attract a lot more who are interested in the PvP side of things.

First, do you think that is fair assessment of the situation?

If so, what do you think that will do for your chances of making deliveries?

If, as i suspect, it will reduce your chances, do you think it might have a negative impact on the motivation of some of the haulers, especially those who do transfer over from PG/solo, but perhaps also on those who are currently playing in Open and more or less ok with the current survival chances?

My take on this is that currently all the PvPers are in open already. Non-PvPers (or when in open, I guess "escape-focussed PvPers"), like me currently, are split between modes. If everyone in the latter category were in open, those of us already routinely in open would have a better chance of escape, through safety in numbers. It would depend on power, maybe. Currently random, non-PP PvPers target my power occasionally because we have an open mode ethos in the main PP group - i.e. are encounterable. Some other powers you never see in open, some are somewhere in between. Open players for the latter powers would presumably benefit from safety in numbers. But I'd say the majority of PvP contest is from hostile PP groups. Gankers with no knowledge of PP won't know where to find you anyway, compared to CGs and mining sell locations. They could get an indication in the murder stats in inara, but generally it doesn't seem to attract much.

Perhaps you would attract more PvPers since they would know they would get more encounters, but they'd either be redirecting from existing PvP/gank hubs or new/returning to the game. New/returning players are great for the health and financial viability of the game. So I put that in the same category as not chasing away solo/pg players - whether I like them or not, they pay the rent.

If players who prefer solo/pg stopped powerplay, then the "new" PvPers would also presumably lose interest, since their target availability reverts to what it was when said people were in solo/pg.
 
Actually @CMDR Foursyth - my final point to you was wrong, since you are on the hauling side. You are not on the stopping people side.

So, if you don't mind, i have some questions:

How often do you and your people fail to make deliveries (on average)?
What ships do you fly to maximize your efficiency/chances?
What techniques do you use to get to your destination without being stopped/turned away/destroyed?

Hard to be precise here. I've had play sessions that were supposed to be hauling, but were dominated by escape/waiting/dying, when there's a real sh--storm. A "bad" night could mean merits are more than halved.

I fly a t9, which has a bearable rebuy and no grind requirement. I enjoy flying a t7 more, but that would halve my merits. Greater danger could nudge me towards it though.

Learning evasion is a thing. But in a t9 your chances of survival are not great under heavy blockade. Basically highwake if there are too many hollow squares you can't account for, particularly if any go pointy. Adding hull/module reinforcements, bigger shields, engineering, skill and preparedness help, but guarantee nothing. This is about avoiding lost PP progress, and general normal desire not to be pwned, more than credits.
 
3 is better than 9, and at least people can fight others on the same platform (as opposed to having 8 invisible dimensions to think about).



You'd need a 95% plus bonus to offset AFK PG merit farming.

There are many awkward situations coming from the still invisible dimensions, essentially if power players band together in platforms you'd have powers that are super strong in one platform and weak in another, resulting in little hostile interaction once again while entire triggers get filled up. Obviously it's not going to be that extreme but I wouldn't underestimate such a zerging effect.

Considering the many shenanigans you can do with the P2P structure that isn't designed to force everyone in the same instance you'll still have people evade combat in newer, more ridiculous way such as setting up a strong NAT/Firewall so they can't be paired with anyone on Open. A player abusing that will be more productive than ever, since PP is still about filling up triggers, NOT about PvP encounters. This is why I'm cautious about even giving a open-only bonus, suddenly you have a meta about being in open, but still without the goal of pvp encounters.

Making PP open-only would be no small tweak and it feels like that energy would be better spent on many other PP suggestions to spice things up while taking advantage of Elite's strengths, otherwise you just risk ruining the feature as it backtracks on fully supporting 2 game modes almost 6 years after launch in order to listen to a vocal forum complaint. Big, thousands-scale PvP for territory control can be found on EVE, where rebuys aren't a joke and you have to work the entire supply/demand for your coalition's bubble of space. I don't think this can happen unless it's in an Elite Dangerous 2 with an entirely new philosophy about game modes and network structure.
 
Unless FDEV completely rewrites the networking stack and provides dedicated servers, this change wouldn't actually change anything. Currently the game is peer-to-peer for networking so you can easily block everyone in the world (except your friends) with simple Windows firewall rules (or router firewall rules) effectively turning Open into Solo or a Private Group (controlled by IP address).
So yeah, good luck with all that.
 
My take on this is that currently all the PvPers are in open already. Non-PvPers (or when in open, I guess "escape-focussed PvPers"), like me currently, are split between modes. If everyone in the latter category were in open, those of us already routinely in open would have a better chance of escape, through safety in numbers. It would depend on power, maybe. Currently random, non-PP PvPers target my power occasionally because we have an open mode ethos in the main PP group - i.e. are encounterable. Some other powers you never see in open, some are somewhere in between. Open players for the latter powers would presumably benefit from safety in numbers. But I'd say the majority of PvP contest is from hostile PP groups. Gankers with no knowledge of PP won't know where to find you anyway, compared to CGs and mining sell locations. They could get an indication in the murder stats in inara, but generally it doesn't seem to attract much.

Perhaps you would attract more PvPers since they would know they would get more encounters, but they'd either be redirecting from existing PvP/gank hubs or new/returning to the game. New/returning players are great for the health and financial viability of the game. So I put that in the same category as not chasing away solo/pg players - whether I like them or not, they pay the rent.

If players who prefer solo/pg stopped powerplay, then the "new" PvPers would also presumably lose interest, since their target availability reverts to what it was when said people were in solo/pg.

Thank you for your perspective.
 
Hard to be precise here. I've had play sessions that were supposed to be hauling, but were dominated by escape/waiting/dying, when there's a real sh--storm. A "bad" night could mean merits are more than halved.

I fly a t9, which has a bearable rebuy and no grind requirement. I enjoy flying a t7 more, but that would halve my merits. Greater danger could nudge me towards it though.

Learning evasion is a thing. But in a t9 your chances of survival are not great under heavy blockade. Basically highwake if there are too many hollow squares you can't account for, particularly if any go pointy. Adding hull/module reinforcements, bigger shields, engineering, skill and preparedness help, but guarantee nothing. This is about avoiding lost PP progress, and general normal desire not to be pwned, more than credits.

I see. So you take the risk with the type 9 because (i presume) you think the chances of getting through with a bigger haul outweighs the benefit of using something like a Clipper, where you would have to make more runs but are more likely to survive/succeed? Or does it mean that if you are countered, you feel that most of the time you would get blocked regardless of what you were flying, so might as well go for broke with the big haul?

Really i should have broken the question into two parts:

1) How often in reality do you face opposition (accepting that during the early stages probably not much, then later, towards the end of the cycle, probably more opposition as it becomes more obvious where the haulers will be going... less area to cover as it were)?

2) When opposed, how often can you get through? But in a type 9... yeah, i can imagine that is rare :p
 
Unless FDEV completely rewrites the networking stack and provides dedicated servers, this change wouldn't actually change anything. Currently the game is peer-to-peer for networking so you can easily block everyone in the world (except your friends) with simple Windows firewall rules (or router firewall rules) effectively turning Open into Solo or a Private Group (controlled by IP address).
So yeah, good luck with all that.

I suspect that if FD could detect people doing this it might be considered cheating. It depends on whether there could be a scenario where you might have strict firewall rules in place that just happened to also cause problems with matchmaking like you suggest.

However, there are probably other ways to cause matchmaking to fail that don't require you to mess with firewall rules. Perhaps changing your MTU to something silly could do that. I'm fairly certain that sucking all your bandwidth up with torrents could make it so that you don't get matchmaked, and if you did, then you would be lagging so bad in in relation to the other person they would be shooting at a place where you were not.

As I mentioned earlier, its a complitive mechanic, and competitive people will often do whatever it takes to "win". Furthermore, there might be those who are disgruntled with being forced into open but don't want to stop playing powerplay and feel that FD have betrayed them, so these people might also resort to doing things that would be frowned upon.

The question would be, what sort of percentage of players would we be talking about? If its single figures, its probably not much of an issue. If it is widespread, then it undermines the whole reason for open only.

This reminds me of one situation with PP as it is. I've seen accusations levelled of a certain power's supporters all playing in PG/solo. (naturally those making the accusations declare they are all in open... don't believe it for a second, but whatever). If that power's players are all doing it for efficiency/competitiveness, rather than they just prefer to play in PG/solo, then in an open only scenario they might just decide they will all continue to effectively play solo by using tricks to avoid matchmaking.

In short, a switch to open only might not do much to get more people playing in open (or being visible in open).

Its not a reason for FD not to make the change, but its another thing which might mean the result is not what people were hoping for.

Still, i remember when i was doing Powerplay, hauling away from A to B, over and over and over again (boring!!!!), and when i was in Open, i didn't get attacked once by a player. I have no idea why not. Was there no opposition? Or was it due to poor matchmaking? Maybe i'd just selected systems where the PvPers were not. I got lucky. Maybe the time of day when i was playing was a factor. Or maybe it was matchmaking. Somehow i never have problems matchmaking with my friends, they always appear. But i can fly all over alliance space and never see another player. I haven't seen a single random player in open in months while flying around my home system and surrounding space. But there must be players flying around in Open. Its very close to Alioth, a fairly popular area, especially with Powerplay players. Not seen a single Mahon supporter or, for that matter, anyone opposing Mahon either.

If, as claimed, there is a risk of being stopped by hungry PvPers looking to stop Mahon players doing stuff, where are they all? Or are powerplay's numbers so low that chances of meeting anyone are almost zero?

This then makes me wonder, even if FD made all the changes that these proposals are asking for, would there actually be so many more players playing as to make it likely to meet people? From what i've seen of the proposals, there isn't anything there that would get me playing Powerplay again. It would still remain the never ending boring grind that it is today.

Or are there actually loads of people flying around that i'm simply not being matchmaked with?
 
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