this is one that had been reported and was soooooorta known about and passed around before pp2.0 apparently, just nobody cared to kick up a fuss because it didn't particularly matter on a competitive level if someone decided to fill their maverick with manufacturing instructions to upgrade their gear faster.
Elite Dangerous | Powerplay 2.0 exploration and trade balance changes
- Thread starter Paul_Crowther
- Start date
This thread has been going for twelve days with all of us investing time and goodwill in what might be broken in the balance and giving constructive feedback.
Frontier's only response has been to ask for feedback in a different thread on a different topic which no-one was complaining about. There have been zero updates on here.
I don't even have a comment on that really, I'm just actually staggered by it, even considering how terrible FDev are at this generally.
Frontier's only response has been to ask for feedback in a different thread on a different topic which no-one was complaining about. There have been zero updates on here.
I don't even have a comment on that really, I'm just actually staggered by it, even considering how terrible FDev are at this generally.
Yep, finely tone deaf, but that should surprise no one.
No-one has been complaining directly about.
Complaints about how long it is taking to move one's Fleet Carrier (to avoid having to care what the ship and module storage and transfer arrangements are) on the other hand, they're way up since the update.
Asking for feedback on a possible solution makes a lot more sense than starting an official thread on "do you think Fleet Carrier jump times are a bit slow right now?"
There is absolutely no way a select group of people can substitute for the full community discovering solutions to Frontier's propensity to gate stuff behind an interminable grind.
If you think "more beta testers" or "specific types of cmdrs" would some how be representative, and somehow find all these issues - I have a bridge in Sydney to sell you.
There is no substitute for what happens when Frontier releases an update. They can do some testing to try and find egregious issues that will block entire aspects of the game working at all - but find all the quirks and edge case issues?
Not at all.
If you think "more beta testers" or "specific types of cmdrs" would some how be representative, and somehow find all these issues - I have a bridge in Sydney to sell you.
There is no substitute for what happens when Frontier releases an update. They can do some testing to try and find egregious issues that will block entire aspects of the game working at all - but find all the quirks and edge case issues?
Not at all.
You're not wrong, maybe not all of them. However I'd strongly suggest you compare the beta-testing we all did for PP1.0 with this? Because it was definitely nowhere near as bad, and IIRC, they pushed out tweaks over the process of the Beta as things became discovered.
I wouldn’t expect that either but a wider beta test has a better chance than a marketing preview and since a lot of people spend a lot of effort over a rather long time putting these powers into thier positions, its a bit disappointing more effort wasn’t made there. People are blasting through the ranks in a couple of weeks. Its pretty busted.
As for carriers my strongest gripe comes that as a member of 2 power based squads I was gleefully looking forward to the end of dedicating nights to hauling. Really was excited at the variety. Then the undermining started and there is exactly one answer to it. Haul. And haul goods that suck even worse than PP1 cargo to obtain. They get to enjoy private wing combat. I get to haul. That sucks and I am quickly becoming disenchanted with it.
If there were some signal source that provided simlar combat style merit gains in a tick that the system is undermined I’d find it a lot more tolerable. Hauling rares to counteract undermining is terrible.
Similarly the data port exploit absolutely needs shutting down hard and fast ... but I feel a lot of the anger over it is specifically because it's a fast undermining technique and Frontier removing a fast fortifying technique (like Orrerian Vicious Brew) instead mostly gets "why has Frontier nerfed this" reactions.
In general i see you saying it might or might not have helped to beta test. This is of course true. We beta tested Ody and while it certainly helped identify early issues many persist to this day. So it may have changed nothing but it certainly can’t have any impact if it isn’t done at all. I feel like it is generally beneficial especially when it involves so many moving parts. Devs just will never look at their work the same as players and so they really can’t be expected to catch these things well.
Im not kicking sand at FDev here. I appreciate the update and I know a good balance will take time. I’ll just express the opinion that a robust beta period might have made it less of a wild-ride for those that care about the PP overall versus just ranking up for modules.
I think FD need to at least keep players updated as to when they (FD) will be releasing updates or tweaks for PP2. PP2 lives or dies on building stable foundations, and going radio silent / fiddling things in secret on a new feature is not doing them or PP2 any favours.
Having lived through the release and aftermath of PP1 I would have thought FD would at least give some sort of outline of what is coming. Instead its the wild west where people don't know what the hell is going on, balance is out the window and exploits are rife. The situation will corrode the enthusiasm that came back into ED with U19.
Having lived through the release and aftermath of PP1 I would have thought FD would at least give some sort of outline of what is coming. Instead its the wild west where people don't know what the hell is going on, balance is out the window and exploits are rife. The situation will corrode the enthusiasm that came back into ED with U19.
I honestly don't even know what I'm supposed to do in order to engage with Powerplay at this time. Exobiology did not yield any merits when I tried it, my weekly mission to upload malware cannot be done, I hear they are adjusting all sorts of values or at least expecting them to, so not so keen on hauling stuff. Really I just want to shoot spaceships, but cannot find any conflict zones like last week. Oh, does that tiny tiny x on the map mean there could be conflict zones? Imma go check out.
I'm not so sure. There were far fewer moving parts on the spaceship-flying level in PP1 (you could shoot stuff, you could haul stuff, that was it) so sure, that mostly worked ... but in terms of balance and design issues missed by the Beta which needed to be addressed afterwards:
- collusion piracy as a super-powered undermining mechanism
- collusion PvP kills as a super-powered undermining mechanism
- overheads not being displayed in the interface despite being critical
- systems getting the wrong CC allocations
- the inevitable consequence of the original overheads curve (and as a result of that, the original plan for collapse being unviable too)
- all the various "systems that hurt powers to capture" issues resulting from CC which ended up essentially unfixable because it wasn't just a case of a few numbers needing tweaking
There are a lot of balance issues with PP2 but they're largely appearing to be of the order of "X needs to be halved" or "Y needs to be doubled" which is manageable rather than "the whole system needs to be rewritten"
Mmm, very cheesy, maybe I'll try that. I mean, I did find a conflict zone but it was not fun after spec ops dropped in. Though I could be willing to admit that a Mandalay is better suited for interdicting traders and less engineered pirates and such. I think the point is I feel a bit entitled after playing for a long time and on numerous occasions the game hasn't progressed towards my particular tastes.
Edit: Megaship defending scenario is okay for all purposes
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It was not a beta test, it was pretty much the same exercise as with PP2.0 (marketing/early access preview), with the difference being that it was made available to a wider audience i.e. the entire player base, with the caveat you'd have to pre-order (and at a price premium, to add insult to injury).
Once the release date was published so shortly after the beta phase (3 weeks or so iirc) it was clear that they never planned to review and implement any 'beta' feedback for the final version. We did play the final version already at the time, some of us (myself included) just didn't want to admit it. Hadn't felt gaslighted like that in a while, and it cost Frontier my custom ever since.
Yeah, I guess I can't argue it as a real beta. But I do know a lot of early and pretty bad bugs were discovered in that process and they made the unfortunate choice to pretty well just send it anyway with all but a few of the most broken things still bugged. But they WERE identified.
I imagine its all hands on deck for new waterpark sim and then PP2.
I was peeking my head in here to see how PP2 is going. Seeing you this pessimistic isn't a great sign. I'm feeling secure in my decision to continue a hiatus til Mandalay is freely available.
The thing is- PP2 is not that far gone. It requires lots and lots and lots of balance tweaks but at its core most of it is good.
What I am disappointed with is the radio silence from FD. PP is a team / community game, and fosters groups, squadrons and players to work against others and for it to gel it needs consistency and trust between players and with FD.
PP1 was destroyed by mistrust with 5C as well as not sorting out glaring issues, and FD needed to really keep on top of PP2 in the early days to ensure things stayed controlled. Instead its been very knee jerk reactionary, and that players have made a mockery of the 100 tiers with farming.
I do expect there are devs looking at data for the next moves, but the thing is PP2 is 'live', and communication is key with people pouring time into it.
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I am at times hard on Frontier, but in this case, I am very willing to cut them a lot of slack. Why? it's been two weeks since the update. Just two weeks. ~14 days. Patience. They will not (and realistically cannot) solve all the edge case issues and what not in that time. It's a big update, with a lot of (new) moving parts. Yes, it's rough, yes it needs work. And? so does anything meaningful.
And I am sure the spike in user engagement is being considered as well; sacrificing the many, for the few, doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Frontier seem keen to keep the game going, so let 'em figure it out.
Also try not to be angry at players just trying to farm merits; Frontier made the choice to do what they did, being angry at players for engaging with what is present, is just shifting disappointment/ blame to an easy target.
Give it time; the bones and foundation is good. A few tweaks here and there and it'll be something decent as a result.
And I am sure the spike in user engagement is being considered as well; sacrificing the many, for the few, doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Frontier seem keen to keep the game going, so let 'em figure it out.
Also try not to be angry at players just trying to farm merits; Frontier made the choice to do what they did, being angry at players for engaging with what is present, is just shifting disappointment/ blame to an easy target.
Give it time; the bones and foundation is good. A few tweaks here and there and it'll be something decent as a result.
Yep. That has certainly been a very long-standing issue with Frontier.
I keep pointing to Arrowhead with Helldivers 2, and with good reason. Even their summer vacation (presumably celebrating a successful full game release and all) was still punctuated with massive efforts to communicate openly with the playerbase about what they're doing, when, and why; and when a negative community response was received to interim updates (which I want to also highlight as them having updates even when much of the office was on vacation), it was swiftly acted upon, learned from, and promises made to apply those lessons to the future.
This year has mystified me...because it's showed that Frontier has, contrary to all prior experience, started to head down that track. But only started. There's a lot further yet to go in the community communication department.
Something else that continues to mystify me, is how their customer support staff have been stellar since day 1 with interacting & service to the playerbase & have maintained that reputation, and yet somehow that still has not carried over elsewhere.
It supports my personal theory about serious issues with management-level errors in decision-making, including lacking focus & clarity of vision for the game - which I think equally needs continued improvement. It's not a stretch to imagine that this is the ultimate cause of the issues in communication we've continued to observe, either.
edit/post-script to my rant: I'll keep my hopes up for PP2, but I'm still going to give this time to cook before getting myself a taste.