Elite Dangerous | Powerplay 2.0 Update

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Ozric

Volunteer Moderator
Dear @Ozric , English is not my first language, but I can't see any offence to anyone in @Poonjabby 's post either. Even with the help of Deepl.com, I can't agree. The post is simply criticism, and some of it is even constructive.

Best regards.
Dear user, who's first post this is in over 18 months... That's because I deleted the bad parts.
 
Some of us have alts, you know. Young, cytoless alts. Will no-one think of the alts?!
I definitely think the conversation needs to consider the general implications, not just the idea of "we've all been here long enough, it shouldn't affect you". Even if I did have all the modules in storage I'd still be questioning how long it takes to get through the PP2.0 ranks, just from a holistic point of view; "what's it like for a new player?"

It's well known I reset my account earlier this year, and as part of that I avoided PP1.0 as I knew PP2.0 would be coming, and I wanted to experience it fresh. I'm taking my time this time round, and not rushing, but even at a casual pace things should be achievable.

I'm hopeful Frontier will land on their feet given the statement in the patch thread to significantly reduce the time to gain ranks/modules. I'm hoping they do find a balance that makes it rewarding regardless of the activity you prefer, and makes it more palatable for new, returning, or alt CMDRs.

The lifestyle gamers will always be leagues ahead of everyone else, and that's their choice to play the game as much as they do and I hope they enjoy that, but the game cannot be built around those select few.
 
For context. Planet Zoo and Planet Coaster (1) sold about 2 - 3 million copies each within 2 years. ED has sold about 5.5m in 10 years.
Are those numbers from the sales report? I thought there were over 10m Elite accounts on Epic alone. Maybe those didn't count as sale, but surely Frontier would have gotten some kind of compensation. Or am I completely misremembering those numbers?
 
It's really not valid to compare player numbers and revenue directly - that is simply not how corporate finance works. And even within the ED ecosystem, you have to remember ARX has been there all along AND for this year ARX is explicitly the revenue focus, so it doesn't matter anyway.

This does relate to PP 2.0 in that PP 2.0 is about player retention in the context of 2024 strategy, and FDev have persuaded shareholders that is exactly how FDev are thinking about it. And because of that, FDev announced that under standard accounting principles, the "non-CMS games" drove "impairment charges for underperforming non-CMS games and restructuring costs" - and these amount to £28.4m. (Source: yearly report.)

If people want to discuss 10 years of ED financial history can we please do that on a different thread, most of us have seen it all before. If we want to discuss how PP 2.0 might or might not drive revenue going forward that seems fair enough on this thread.
 
Put a weekly merit cap and reduce the overall merit requirements for each tier. Simple

Not that simple I'm afraid. At the very least you'd have to separate the systems for merits for personal rank and merits for system influence.
A weekly cap is one solution, but I don't think it's a good one. If I had to guess, my thoughts are that they were fine (mostly) for the amount of merits we gained from these now nerfed/disabled activities, in regards to gaining ranks. What set them off was the fact that it totally unbalanced the PP system as far reinforcing/undermining territory. On last weeks cycle, I reinforced a system by 217000 (rounding, don't remember exact number) merits. The system progression bar went from the first 10% of exploited to about 80% exploited. I'm also fairly certain I was the only working on that system (not very attractive, only one orbital outpost).

So if they want to bring the merits earned down but then also bring the amount gain ranks down by the same amount, fine.

Also, for context and in regards to my previous posts, I have these statistics straight from the video of the person who did carrier dumping rares, then SLF harvesting, and is now mining. He is getting 6500-8000 per hour mining now, which he claims is about 40% of what he was getting per hour doing SLF harvesting, and he used to make 46000 merits/hour doing rares with his carrier (he hit level 118 in the first week). For contrast, I just did rare loops in my Type 8 and I made between 8000-10000 an hour (usually much closer to the 8k side).

So trading rares - while exempting carriers - is either not an egregious amount to earn OR expect them to mine nerfing next.

I tried to do my 5 weekly tasks last night and only completed one. Another one was bugged (can get PP items from Odyssey settlements if they aren't in the crates) and the rest would take too long. Just doing the one task - which took 2-3 hours of game play - netted me a whopping 500 merits total, bounties, notoriety level 6, and local faction rep loss.

In conclusion:
  1. Rare trading should be re-enabled at it's current rate, but only work if you don't store the rares in the carrier. If this method is "too high" then I expect mining to get nerfed next.
  2. Combat against other PP entities should earn you a lot of merits - at least as much as hauling rares. I'd say more, but once you reach a certain rank you get 100% rebuy when either killed in your territory or when killed by another PP entity, so I think combat actually becomes slightly less risky then say getting blown up and losing a cargo hold full of rares.
  3. Odyssey activities should earn you a lot of merits.
  4. Something needs to be done in regards to local faction rep getting hammered for doing PP activities. I'm supposed to thwarting another PP power, why are they always getting caught in the cross fire (and then blaming me).
  5. Exploration/Exobiology data rewards should be reinstated. Don't penalize the players who spent all that time out in the black. If necessary, give them full merits for rank but limit how much those merits affect reinforcement of PP systems.
  6. Look into setting a ratio for merits earned for your rank vs. for PP affects (maybe 4 to 1, 2 to 1... I don't know). This could also change depending on the activity. For examply, actually delivering PP cargo for undermining/acquisition/reinforcement might only award 1 merit for rank vs 5 for the activity (so a load of 100 might earn you 100 for rank and 500 for reinforcement).
Anyway, those are my suggestions and only a starting point for ways they can fix it. This is not an all inclusive list. I'm not on their development team, not even getting paid to test it, so it's not my job to fix it. It's the Devs. My message to them is "Get to work."
 
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I can't have been the only one following this to-and-fro with some interest.. Any chance you could settle once and for all with some kind of mining race?
Racing in Mining should be illegal, no point in going fast when mining. It's just becoming Drama at this point. You want to try it, the builds are there go try it for yourself. I'm not wasting time on that when I can go about in my Type-9 https://s.orbis.zone/qEtr fill up 512 cargo and sell from my Cutter https://s.orbis.zone/qEtt

Lets be real mining is more enjoyable when going slow. I would be willing to use my Courier https://s.orbis.zone/qEtw to see if I can destroy the Racing Mining Clipper. Sit nice and cozy right behind the Clipper the whole way through. lol
 
Racing in Mining should be illegal, no point in going fast when mining. It's just becoming Drama at this point. You want to try it, the builds are there go try it for yourself. I'm not wasting time on that when I can go about in my Type-9 https://s.orbis.zone/qEtr fill up 512 cargo and sell from my Cutter https://s.orbis.zone/qEtt

Lets be real mining is more enjoyable when going slow. I would be willing to use my Courier https://s.orbis.zone/qEtw to see if I can destroy the Racing Mining Clipper. Sit nice and cozy right behind the Clipper the whole way through. lol

So that's a "no", then?
 
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