Powerplay A frank discussion about the future of Powerplay.

[Bad_Player]

I’m Bad_Player, a member of the /r/EliteHudson leadership team, but today I’m acting on behalf of the Powerplay community as a whole.

I'm just going to start off by saying that everything else surrounding 2.1 is fantastic, but the effect the patch has had on Powerplay is catastrophic. The delicate economies that have been built to make the whole thing manageable are broken due to the significant increase in undermining difficulty from the police response.

The big powers have all built their economies around the fact that we're going to get undermined massively every week. Week in, week out, with those systems undermined our economies were at least somewhat manageable. I think post 2.1 we can all agree those days are gone. What do we do about all that extra CC? There's no more profit in the bubble. We ate it. What do we do about the torrent of sabotage/bad prep that's coming next week? Mahon and Winters both have current 5c problems, while Hudson and ALD have grinder hordes that do whatever is easiest for merits. The week after next, the 5c will have a field day with the trade powers while the combat power's grinders will go grind out their merits on horrible expansions. Every large power now has more CC than they can reasonably control. As of Saturday, Hudson was the only power with a fully undermined system. Without being able to manage the CC economy, everything we've worked to built is wasted.

The increase in undermining difficulty, along with the new crime and punishment system, is negatively impacting all of our player bases.
From John Casey:

"Some powers are also hit worse than others. For instance, let's take Hudson and ALD: they give bonuses for bounties. But if you can't do bounty hunting because wings of Powerplay NPCs keep spawning and attacking you (immune to local security, because being from opposing powers they don't become wanted), then you cannot profit from that bounty. Yes you can do your BH outside the Powerplay bubble, but then you can earn the same profits without being pledged and without the need of relocating outside the bubble. This problem will probably shrink the player base for combat-oriented powers."

Rubberboots on the police response:

Combat-based powers, just like combat-based credit-earners, are going to struggle now. It's not that we don't love the challenging new combat--we do! It's that we're being rewarded half as much as we were before for the same time commitment. Cargo-based expansions will now be very difficult to oppose because the opposition has to work twice as hard as we did before, while the expansion effort is unchanged.

Undermining is exciting now--much more fun. But it also takes at least twice as long because the combat is more challenging and because you are interrupted so frequently by bounty hunters. These bounty hunters are a great new addition to the game--they are very exciting--but their interrupting every five minutes both breaks the immersion and gets in the way. They could stand to have their frequency reduced.

Undermining has also become a bit lop-sided. The bonus Hudson and Winters receive to security intensity makes undermining these two powers (especially Hudson) far more difficult and dangerous than anyone else, now that the security AI are so bloodthirsty--even compared to ALD and Aisling whose security increases do not seem to work in the same way.

The bugs affecting Kumo are also causing problems with their player base.
From McFergus:

“The harder AI has made some of our guys give up on Power Play, but our Power’s bonus of producing Battleweapons and Narcotics at a discount in our control systems has been removed and this has caused more of them to leave. I put a bug report in about that in the beta, but nothing was done, and it is not even listed as a known bug, and our expansions not working has made even more leave Power play”

We're hemorrhaging our organized player bases. No, it isn't just people going to fuss with the engineer upgrades. On each of our subreddit's people are posting that they're done with Powerplay. On our Enjin sites, in our Discords and Teamspeaks, we're all hearing the same thing from our players. They're done. They're not going to put up with the constant harassment from NPC bounty hunters, the police swarming them before they can kill a T9, or Powerplay npc's swarming them in RES sites in their own space. They're tired of getting hit with treachery penalties for self-defense against powerplay NPC's from the same super-power. More than that, they’re tired of the Plight of Sisyphus that is your normal Powerplay cycle.

For most of the cycle two powers (Kumo and Antal) were incapable of earning merits in their own expansions. This was tested. We could oppose the expansions, but they could not contribute merits towards the success of the expansion until the final ours. My guys (Hudson) were able to put prep into Shinrarta Dehzra. The one system that is completely exempt from Powerplay we were able to prep. I also have a report from an ALD commander of a broken system in our space that does not generate undermining merits. As of this update Powerplay is riddled with crippling bugs.


The only productive thing we can do at this point is to try our best to hold our communities together.

We want answers. What is the plan for the future of PowerPlay? Right now, it's looking pretty bleak.

Signed,

Bad_Player (Hudson Leadership)
Rubberboots (Patreus Leadership)
Jay Cee (Sirius Leadership)
McFergus (Kumo Leadership)
Raptor-i7 (ALD Leadership)
RebelPants(Aisling’s Angels)

 

[Rubbernuke]

Well said. You can add my name from Utopia too. I maintain the main (only?) Utopian Reddit.

 

[Evil Flanker]

I agree, the update has killed powerplay, which is sad, personally I think PP could be so much more and be a solution to the so called 'griefer' situation.

I left ZH today as no matter how much I'm going to undermine, the benefits vs cost (of repairing a Corvette every outing) is astoundlingly unbalanced, bye bye, 50m & BH bonus (not that BH is profitable anymore with up to 250-500k repair bills on a Corvette) - it's like it wasn't even thought about and factored in to the update, forgotten about maybe....

 

[CMDR John Casey]

Why your post is in black on black? I can't see anything

 

[Space2504]

I'm CMDR Jay Cee (LYR) and have signed the above. Before I start on the bad of 2.1, I'd like to say, I love the new difficulty, the mods etc. All really well done... with the exception of the PP changes...

I'd like to add that it isn't just the larger powers that are struggling after the change. You might think that being a trade only power that we'd be sat back having an easy time, far from it. We rely on being undermined to a certain amount every week in order to manage our CC (you can see this as we actually managed to get a CC balance of 0 a few cycles ago). As mention in the main post, there is little left that has positive value, the net result is we will end up with a large CC balance that will be used to prep awful systems. As the leadership we then have to fight our own playerbase to avoid the bad expansions. We normally do this by prepping something that another power is prepping that we know we won't win. The changes are already having a negative impact on what is already a small group.

We know the game of PP will result in friction and war between the powers as they try to grab valuable assets from each other. I think this is where the non-combat factions will start running into trouble, any players not interested in combat will start to drift away from the smaller non-combat powers. If we could have other options to combat or change some of the mechanics in order to make some of the smaller powers more attractive to combat players, that would go a long way to making our lives a lot easier.

As an aside, I'm a 3000+ hour player. I have 2 accounts, on my main account I am no longer pledged... it has been so painful to go anywhere or do anything without being constantly hounded by PP attackers that I de-pledged in order to maintain my sanity. Surely this wasn't the idea? I enjoy combat and don't shy away from it at all, but rather than being enjoyable and frantic, the constant interdictions, attacks around stations, or in Res Sites has made me rethink. When I want to do PP related activity I drop to my second account, do what I need to do and then swap back to avoid the insanity.

Please have a think about the points in the main post and at least let the community know that you are going to address the concerns before it splinters and vanishes.

Thanks,

Jay Cee

 

[AreZee]

Why your post is in black on black? I can't see anything

people don't understand the concept of different forum themes from time to time. My guess is that he is using the white theme. He should have used the "automatic" font coloring instead he used black manually. While black is the automatic option for the white forum theme, white is the default forum font color for the Elite theme on the forums. Just an oversight

 

[Jaiotu]

I don't do power play but new patch notes are up. Does any of the following address the problem's you guys have been experiencing?

Powerplay
- Fix incorrect thresholds displayed for Fortify and Undermine actions
- Fix being unable to deliver Powerplay commodities in a handful of starsystems, including Sol
- Fix Zachary Hudson's actions when being opposed by other Federal powers
- Fix supporters of Independent powers being unable to earn merits from conflict zones
- Fix a bug in the Powerplay turn processor so it once again gives the correct result for preparations

 

[xDreadnoughtx]

I don't do power play but new patch notes are up. Does any of the following address the problem's you guys have been experiencing?

No. Because the damage from the last tick is not repaired.

It is another plaster. It's being applied to a patient that's already dead.

 

[Rubbernuke]

You can fix losing a ship to a bug.

You cant fix losing a whole week of player interaction.

In no uncertain terms this will make a great number of players leave.

 

[withnail]

I agree with all of the above. I'm thoroughly disillusioned with Powerplay.

 

[maddog_uk_69]

Agreed also. I have supported elsewhere the idea of pausing PowerPlay until the problems can be resolved. To continue is just pig-headed on FDEV's part.

 

[jprelph]

I think the combination of yesterday's SNAFU and 2.1 have probably killed PowerPlay for a lot of people. The changes to undermining may have led to another meta building up but the tick issues were just the final nail in the coffin for a lot of people. It's also re-inforcing the opinion of a lot of players that PP is the red-headed stepchild of Elite Dangerous - despite all the issues we've not really had responses to direct (and reasonable) questions.

 

[Bernie65]

I'm sad to say that I agree. I enjoyed PP, the spirit within my wing and the feeling to achieve something, doing something for my pledged power. But it has becoming too much of a chore. I do like the new AI - no, I *love* it since FD fixed the engineered weapon NPC bugs, but too much is too much. I have a tough job in real life and I play ED already more than what's good for me. I just wish that PP would get some love now... It could be PP specific high reward missions, getting merits to eliminate other PP player outside of enemy control systems, PP specific engineers or anything. But as of today, PP has becoming a waste of time. So sad, it is a great concept, but just so poorly executed.

 

[Starwolfe]

I'm Starwolfe, another member of the Hudson Powerplay leadership, and I've been supporting this since Bad_Player has started it.

I don't do power play but new patch notes are up. Does any of the following address the problem's you guys have been experiencing?

Powerplay
- Fix incorrect thresholds displayed for Fortify and Undermine actions
- Fix being unable to deliver Powerplay commodities in a handful of starsystems, including Sol
- Fix Zachary Hudson's actions when being opposed by other Federal powers
- Fix supporters of Independent powers being unable to earn merits from conflict zones
- Fix a bug in the Powerplay turn processor so it once again gives the correct result for preparations

To answer your question, no. The core of what we wanted was an opportunity to talk with them, and adress these issues. What is going on and find out what FDev is planning to do in the future.

It is bleak for any new power, and the inherit problems that already exist are a serious one that needs fixing - and none of what they did has addressed the core of what was mentioned. This is a hotfix for what they broke last week, and even then its not doing such a great job at it.

 

[CMDR Endincite]

Indeed. Meaningful dialogue between FDev and the players that saw - and still see, for my part - the great potential of Powerplay, and have clung to hope for a year now, is desperately needed.

When Powerplayers new and old ask me what hope there is for Powerplay, I'm dying for something else to show them beyond vague, 9 month old dev ideas.

You can sign my name on there as well, but as moderator of /r/EliteLavigny if you please. "Leadership" is an extremely muddy concept in Powerplay, and not one I ever aspired to.

 

[ever]

I think we wished more a Power Play update than an Engineer update. For me and our community Power Play created content in a game that lacks content. The Engineers would be a very nice addition, if Power Play worked better. It's nice to take a space ship and watch some rocks or fly around, but it's not that interesting to do this almost every day for 4-5h, for a year and maybe more to come. Power Play is what brings loyal customers, everything else is very nice, for those who want to spend some time trying out a space sim.

In my opinion you should call year one of PP a test and bring something new, that works and takes players' opinions into account. If you would have PP decals and other Power Play related stuff for sale, it would create a nice revenue for you. I hope you will understand the content is hard to create in a sandbox game and motivation depends on loyalty and interest, not on grinding. I still see no use for a bad-ass ship, if I have no other purpose for it, than make credits faster, so I can buy more ships. The BGS is in my opinion the only thing you did right, in respect to content, as it gives player groups something to do. Maybe you should build Power Play starting from there.

 

[-Pv-]

"The BGS is in my opinion the only thing you did right, in respect to content, as it gives player groups something to do. Maybe you should build Power Play starting from there."

My impression is PP is already a layer over the BGS, both strongly influencing each other with PP being a big picture political influence on the BGS which players can manipulate through Power influence and ethos.
I would say then that Frontier DID start with the BGS and attached PowerPlay to it. Starting over... Well that seems a good idea to many, but would have to shut it down completely for a great deal of time while a
new thing is conceived, planned, coded and tested. Probably a better idea to change or get rid of the things in the existing PP which players hate the most. For me, it's the unimaginative merit gathering role playing.
It would satisfy me more if it was more adventure-mission based with merits tied to the target system as the reward rather than a pay for influence system by hauling meaningless cargo as it is now.
If I think of myself as a diplomat for my Power, what kinds of risks and adventures tied to relationships with system faction representatives could be imagined? Many and interesting to my mind.
-Pv-

 

[Junchoon]

*snip*

We're hemorrhaging our organized player bases.

As of this update Powerplay is riddled with crippling bugs.

Agreed. You'll find me in game as CMDR Junchoon. I've been making 10-40k merits per week undermining, preparing, and fortifying for Hudson, I was attracted to the /r/EliteHudson after looking up how to afford the Corvette in 1.4 In 2.0 Combat was still an effective Return On Investment for Powerplay as Hudson. It enabled me to achieve my goals of having a Corvette for fun and exciting times. I was bombing Cubeo 3A and HIP 10716 for fun & profit (~ 162m cr / week for 2 days of work) when 2.08 came down the pipe and 'Fixed' the double-double of combat bounty hunting.

I watched as roughly 65% of the combat oriented players vanished from Powerplay overnight. The only way to keep up with the economy of preparation & keep up with fortification, was suddenly to shelve the Corvette, and take the Cutter out for slave trading.

If you had already ground your combat rank to Dangerous or Elite, you could make pretty profitable turnaround on the Cutter Grind. I watched about two dozen people go through this process in the path leading up to 2.1.0

We developed strategies and played hard, and the 2.1 patch has essentially shat on the multiplayer community as a whole.

From FDEV:

Thanks for getting in touch.

Yes, I'm afraid we did        it up a a bit. You have my most sincere apologies and also the return of your ###,###,### CR. This brings your current balance to #,###,###,###.
CMDR Luna

They acknowledge they made a mistake, but we need to engage with them in dialogue in real-time, as a community, with our own representatives (many of whom are on the invite already) to actually get this addressed.

Bad_Player's done something pretty much nobody's managed to do so far and it's incredible. He's managed to get 10 warring powers together under a single banner to agree, this is [REDACTED] up and it needs to get fixed, and it needs to get fixed now, rather than 'soon', or the game will die.

 

[CMDR Endincite]

My impression is PP is already a layer over the BGS, both strongly influencing each other with PP being a big picture political influence on the BGS which players can manipulate through Power influence and ethos.

They certainly do not strongly influence one another, much as I/we might wish they did. The BGS impacts Powerplay in exactly one way - gov't type in exploited/potentially exploited systems can affect triggers. Powerplay affects the BGS not at all. The intra-system BGS has a great number of facets that could be attached in some way to Powerplay, but virtually none are.

 

[Darrett]

This is going to seem harsh, but this sounds like a good thing. Powerplay needs to be rebuilt from the ground up to attract players since the vast majority have nothing to do with it. It currently lacks a purpose.

They need to tear it down and start again; integrate it into the game fully rather than having it be a disconnected side venture. Let it be the political and back alley dealing side to the game. Have the powers from a superpower essentially be allied on the surface while performing subversive acts in the background to position themselves internally. Open conflict between powers should rarely happen, and should be considered assault- there should be no special rules in the criminal justice system to apply if you're in another powers territory.

This all requires that the old system be largely discarded. If this patch has killed Powerplay in its current state, it may represent an opportunity to make it a worthwhile addition to the game for more players, with actual visible, tangible effects.