Better Feedback about why Minor Faction Influence changes happened.

Athan

Athan
Stop. Read the title again. This isn't about feedback when an individual commander takes or completes a mission.

This is copied, and tweaked a little from my post on Dev Update (11/02/16)

We could greatly benefit from better feedback about why the last influence changes in a system happened. Probably something to put in a system-local galnet post each time there's an influence tick. I'm thinking something along the lines of how much trading, pirating, bounty hunting, selling of mining materials, and mission running contributed to each minor faction's change. Preferably each of these would have both a plus and a minus column, not just the net effect.

I know it might not be something that's easy to display succinctly. It might involve exposing underlying numbers rather than just the current influence percentages. But knowing why things changed would go a long way towards judging the best actions to achieve a given aim.

For instance in 3 Corvi we still want to boost the influence of 3 Corvi Inc. in order to trigger a civil war with EDC Commonwealth in order to then win that war and have EDCC take over the outpost 3 Corvi Inc currently owns. We 'make some progress' for a few days and then it all appears to get reset. We can only see so much data currently (my google docs sheet where I started tracking the data we do have), so can't tell if this is failure to do enough for 3 Corvi Inc, actions against it, or simply far too much action for other minor factions in the system that have drowned out what we did.
 

Athan

Athan
I know full well about that post. It tells you the sort of effect a single action may have. But I'm concerned about knowing which actions were summed up to cause a specific change in an influence tick.

If you have 5 factions at 55/15/10/10/10 and then the next day they're 65/10/10/10/5 that table doesn't tell you why that change happened. Maybe you'd done a load of work for the faction that was at 15%, yet it's lost 5%. It would be helpful to actually know why that was. Did the work you carried out actually count? Was it less than optimal? Did someone actively work against this faction, by killing its ships ? Or did positive work for the 55->65 faction just swamp it ? You can't get that out of the bounty and ship traffic information.

That's what I'm getting at. After seeing a change in %ages there's no way to actually know why those changes happened.

In my example it could be that no work was done for the 55->65 one at all, just a lot of negative work was done against all of the others. Or it could be nothing was done for them and a lot of positive for the large one. Or it could be a mix. It's totally opaque.
 

Roybe

Roybe
This is something that has been asked for since the BGS went live. Michael has said that with the new missions coming Soon™ there will be some more clarity....however, that being said....the devs desire a sense of discovery related to this part of the game...and most players that have been in it for the long haul..tend to agree. The BGS is to opaque/the box is to black....moving towards some clarity is a good thing...to much and most of the fun will be removed from the process.
 

Athan

Athan
If that is a concern then it would be nice to at least get data, per minor faction, about the amount of positive versus negative actions for each, on a scale where you can compare it for each. So not necessary the detail of how much trading contributed versus bounty hunting, but at least know a little more about why the percentages shifted how the did ("lots for them, versus lots against us").
 
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Muffet

Muffet
I understand where you are going at, and yes it would be pretty neat to know how a minor faction was affected and which actions impacted it. But there is so many minor factions the amount of data to be refreshed would be huge, so i see why it wouldn't happen.
 

Athan

Athan
Muffet said:
I understand where you are going at, and yes it would be pretty neat to know how a minor faction was affected and which actions impacted it. But there is so many minor factions the amount of data to be refreshed would be huge, so i see why it wouldn't happen.
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Nonsense. Something in the game backend is having to touch all that data during the influence ticks anyway. The only extra would be generating a fresh local galnet report for each system as it goes.

Edit: Either way I'd leave it up to FDev to tell us if it's not possible, rather than making assumptions about their code and server setup.
 
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CMDR Byr Goefin

C
Athan said:
Nonsense. Something in the game backend is having to touch all that data during the influence ticks anyway. The only extra would be generating a fresh local galnet report for each system as it goes.

Edit: Either way I'd leave it up to FDev to tell us if it's not possible, rather than making assumptions about their code and server setup.
Click to expand...

THAT happening would only be slightly more miraculous than getting the data you want.


P.S.
The design philosophy is to only keep interesting data. This does not seem like interesting data.
There is also some evidence that unless a player at least jumps through the system, the BGS does not run for that system. FDEV has stated that the BGS does not run on NPC actions alone, it requires some level of player interaction. That might be as low as being observed by a CMDR passing through.

Yes, that is right... the universe is a giant Heisenberg Uncertainty Trap.
 

Esvandiary

Esvandiary
CMDR Byr Goefin said:
There is also some evidence that unless a player at least jumps through the system, the BGS does not run for that system. FDEV has stated that the BGS does not run on NPC actions alone, it requires some level of player interaction. That might be as low as being observed by a CMDR passing through.
Click to expand...

OK, how is that a problem? No player-driven action, no GalNet report because nothing's changed.
If a player is able to read the local GalNet posts, they're in the system and thus the BGS is ticking.

I think showing this data in some way is a very good idea, would go a long way towards making the BGS at times seem like a big ball of arbitrary spaghetti.
 

CMDR Byr Goefin

C
Esvandiary said:
OK, how is that a problem? No player-driven action, no GalNet report because nothing's changed.
If a player is able to read the local GalNet posts, they're in the system and thus the BGS is ticking.

I think showing this data in some way is a very good idea, would go a long way towards making the BGS at times seem like a big ball of arbitrary spaghetti.
Click to expand...

I didn't say it was a problem, I was pointing out how system works, and works to keep load down.

It is a bit of a problem once the trading effects prices more clearly. NPC traffic would not be accounted for in the simulation if no commanders visited the system.

In the Bubble, this is probably not a big deal to be honest.
 

Marc_Hicks

Marc_Hicks
Based on what Michael has been saying since the start of the New Year, I believe we will see a compromise, namely seeing faction influence & the system state being less opaque to players, but done so in a believable fashion-via stuff like the cost of goods & services, the state of in-system assets, the messages in your comms during Super Cruise, info in the local papers & the demeanour of the faction mission givers you deal with.
 
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