Do you Powerplay?
- Thread starter Moriarte
- Start date
Deleted member 37733
D
I haven't really thought this through so it may not be totally coherent, but a couple of things off the top of my head in answer to your points.
- Introduce crafting. Players pledged to a station or system vote on what stuff to build. It could be armour, weapons, exploring, mining, or trading related stuff. It could be raw resources. If you don't like what a station builds, pledge to another one. CMDRs need to bring in some sort of raw materials (miners bringing in ore for refining, traders bringing in refined ore for manufacturer etc).
- Building stuff gives you discounts on buying it and/or you can trade it with other player based stations. This is done on a station level, once again decided on a vote basis.
- You can sell the raw materials to CMDR traders to do with it what they will, once again player votes decide what price to sell it for (there is a base construction cost). This is done by vote, a simple 'up' or 'down'. Profit gets split between members minus some sort of in-game tax so generated money does not cause massive inflation.
- Stations can be upgraded in certain ways, e.g. tech research upgrade, raw materials upgrade (decide by vote again). Station defence upgrades, introduce station attack in the future. Anti-espionage upgrades, introduce some sort of way for opposing CMDRs to infiltrate. CMDRs need to bring in some sort of raw materials or it needs to be manufactured.
- All of this needs to be balanced so you don't get loads of CMDRs congregating at just a few stations. The more CMDRs pledged to a station any manufacturing or income gets more difficult on a logarithmic scale.
- You can charge a docking fee if CMDRs vote for it and can set the level with a simple up/down again.
If I wanted to spend the time and flesh this out more I think it could really work, but I'm not getting paid for it so won't.
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You may already know this about World of Tanks but that had a similar situation. Wargaming introduced a Historical Battles mode. Big hoo-ha by them, added in a blaze of publicity. Almost everyone hated it, almost no-one played it. Wargaming had to pull it out, saying it would be reworked and reintroduced at some point. Egg on their face for all of five minutes then they were congratulated for removing it.
The point here would be similar. FD keep it going for a few more months, look at the stats, decide to take it out, very few will actually care or miss it.
No.
Oh, I mean, no, no, that's not what I meant! No, I never, um... yes, I... not yes! No! Oh, damn...
What's confusing about Powerplay: No?
Only if she decays my merit!
I take heart in the fact that we will never receive an update as lame as PowerPlay again. It's all uphill from here...
I think you're underestimating FD's ability to stick their fingers in their ears and sing "lalala I can't hear you". After witnessing some of the most unpopular and bizarre choices made by them over the last two years or so I have no doubt that they could churn out something equally as lame if they put their minds to it. Mind you, if one of them (probably the one with the OBE) actually gets inspired AND is willing to listen to players during the design phase AND can prevent it being rushed to release before it's finished they could aso turn out something brilliant. (That's a big "if" though with three very bigs "ands".)
I did power play.. got to rank 5 for three weeks, but I've un pledged. I gave it a good crack but ended up feeling like a second job, although I did go a bit nuts on it. There are several issues in my view 1) Solo and P/G - can't even see who I am competing against half the time and it often felt like a grinding contest. 2) Despite our efforts what does it matter who is number 1 or in turmoil? I think it was somewhat of a mistake to introduce such a feature without running it by us.. The DDF would have pointed stuff out but it was all hush hush for some odd reason and oh yeah the DDF is no more.
I think they can make PP work somehow but I'm tired of pointing stuff out and it falling on deaf ears. All I seem to end up doing is upsetting the devs.
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Can I please ask a question given you invested a fair amount of time & effort into Powerplay?
For those three weeks, when you were working so hard, was your main objective:-
a) To help your Power in key areas via key tasks?
b) Farm enemy Powers Control systems to simply get your 50mCR salary? And did you basically just go to the nearest/most convenient Control system, and continue to kill the ships there, even if most likely the targets had already been reached?
I suspect - like most people - you're mainly interested in your own experience in the game so you'll be answering (b). And indeed this is the main reason Powerplay is IMHO failing, and will continue to fail. Most people just generally don't give two hoots about obscure systems being in one Power's colour bubble or another. They're (quite rightly) more interested in their own progression and the how much they enjoy what they're doing.
IMHO, until the back end of Powerplay is automated, and players can take part in Powerplay more easily, and in more varied, deeper and interesting ways, it'll remain little more than an oddity and wasted opportunity.
I know what you mean. I raised concerns before its release, and have since raised other dedicated threads, a posted multiple times on what I think Powerplay's issues are... and I basically feel spent now...I think they can make PP work somehow but I'm tired of pointing stuff out and it falling on deaf ears. All I seem to end up doing is upsetting the devs.
I fear it'll be tinkered with, where infact it needs re-thinking and re-writing.
I fear it will consume yet more development time and effort, where infact from the outset this should have gone into the core game mechanics (eg: missions/occupations/space content/exploration content).
I fear worn out that so much time and effort has been spent on something so completely over engineered and so worrying off target when clearly the core game is in serious need of such time and effort.
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I agree - Same thoughts as my post prior to yours put forwards:-
I fear worn out that so much time and effort has been spent on something so completely over engineered and so worrying off target when clearly the core game is in serious need of such time and effort.
Powerplayer could have been a far smaller step/development surely. It could have still let us sign up to a Power, to create "conflict" between players. It could have still have changed the economic behaviour of systems (eg: closed black market, increased/decreased specific commodities etc), but all via a far simpler mechanic; Let the Powers decide their own goals/moves. Let players then help/support these by doing missions/tasks from the Bulletin Boards (or similar). Reward players with CR (as per normal) and by raising their rank within the Power.
Indeed - as many have said - use the existing Factions in someway. ie: An exploited system has a Faction for the Power exploiting it, which players can then choose to help, with a view to finally controlling the system.
Basically make it far simpler and more integrated with no need for players to vote and take part in deciding "moves."
And most importantly, introduce more interesting, involved and deeper missions and tasks! We're over six months since release and we still have little more than taxe X to Y or go to X and blow up Y. Seriously? Yet we have buckets of time to allocate to over engineered Powerplay developments, buckets of time to then further modify it (seems that's what they're now doing) and buckets of time to develop CQC? Yet no time available to develop truly deeper missions & NPCs, or improve occupations, or add more content to general space flight or more content to discover/witness during exploration? I'm a tad worried!
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yep.....
