Elite Dangerous | Powerplay 2.0 Update

[Darkfyre99]

Yesterday, I was having fun hauling rares for 3000-3500 merits for each round trip, and even more fun Buckyballing it out of a blockaded station.

Today, I'm hauling high-profit commodities for 117 merits a trip... which would apparently give me 1600 merits a trip if I could be bothered to sell them one ton at a time!

Or I can drop into Power Wreckage USSs in a system I'd like to undermine, won't earn any merits from the life pods I can pick up, and wait around desperately hoping a hostile ship(s) will show up so I can kill them for maybe 100 merits at best.

[dull deadpan] yay... [/dull deadpan]

Oh, wait... I could mine for massive merits, which I find even more unappealing than combat...

[even duller deadpan] yipee... [/even duller deadpan]

 

[LordKabal]

Frontier has clearly learned nothing... making grinds worse for the sake of the grind is a sure way to make people NOT want to participate... so good job I guess, killing off PP2.0 in record time.

 

[St0rmFury]

Players: "It's not a sprint, it's a marathon!"

FDev: "It's actually a walkathon..."

 

[Cmdr Hbomb]

Nerf is not the way... we all have seen what happened to mining.

Mining nerfed -> mining died.

Mining used to be fun and profitable...they destroyed it. Borran was such a fun time in Elite's history, and like all fun times in this GAME, its creator destroyed it.

 

[Mood]

While they are nerfing everything maybe they can fix the Concord Cannon. FYI you can't reload them, only Synth.

 

[Cluster Fox]

First, playtesting should have identified a lot of the exploits and lack of balance.

Second, this is being handled very poorly. Like a 5 year old who asks you to play with them but won't let you touch anything because you're "playing wrong"

You realize that a ton of players are engaging just for the merit grind and not the powerplay effects, right?
That's because modules are locked behind the merit-grind...

How about freezing only the power-play effects on those activities but let the players earn their merits while you re-balance the merit values ?

 

[Sighman]

Okay, something I suggested yesterday on a Discord channel:

Why not unlock a powerplay module with each set of weekly tasks? They can remain in the same order they are now with each power, but players will have a time-gated way to obtain the modules they seem determined to grind for, and it will still be much quicker than the old Powerplay 1.0 'sign with power, wait 4 weeks, fill a T9 with leaflets'

 

[SergMx]

Well, they nerfed merit gains from the second and third. When a bunch of people go to combat as a result of the nerfs, they'll be like "Oh no, too many people doing Combat, we should nerf the rewards." and then the cycle repeats.

Is this what inflation looks like in space?

Yes, I understand. But the point is that transporting goods and picking flowers are not the same thing as fighting a war.
Many people have rank 5 Elite in trade, among researchers there are not a few of them. But not many people have rank 5 combat Elite.
I'm not saying that fighting is hard, with the current level of enemies it is VERY easy. But that doesn't give people the opportunity to watch the series on a different monitor.

 

[IstvaanDCIV]

Frontier has clearly learned nothing... making grinds worse for the sake of the grind is a sure way to make people NOT want to participate... so good job I guess, killing off PP2.0 in record time.

FDev have definitely dropped the ball with aspects of this update, but calling for a time of death on PP2.0 is massively premature.

 

[SergMx]

Okay, something I suggested yesterday on a Discord channel:

Why not unlock a powerplay module with each set of weekly tasks? They can remain in the same order they are now with each power, but players will have a time-gated way to obtain the modules they seem determined to grind for, and it will still be much quicker than the old Powerplay 1.0 'sign with power, wait 4 weeks, fill a T9 with leaflets'

I have all the modules and PP1s except the Concorde. Nothing special about them. But what is interesting for me personally is that getting modules now looks the same as before.
If I need a module I will choose a power where this module can be obtained the fastest (like level 34) and then just leave the power and go to another Power where the same first module that I need.
The current system does not give advantages of getting any modules in one power as the progress of getting it is very long.

 

[Falco]

Selling stuff a unit at a time to gain something that selling in bulk didn’t sounds like exploiting the mechanic. It doesn’t feel like it is breaking the rules but…

That is a design decision. If selling 1 item at a time gives you more than 1/100th of selling 100 items at once, then that is a design decision - they clearly made it that way, otherwise why put in the extra work to make it work that way? The logical conclusion is that selling 100 items one piece at a time is therefore more profitable, which makes it a dumb design decision. Because that is bad gameplay, and also makes no sense logically. They advertise they pay some amount of credits per ton, and they want a maximum of some amount in total. Then they should honor that advertisement. If they say "I want 200t of biowaste for 50cr/t" and you bring them 200t of biowaste, then they better pay you the whole 10000cr, and not just 7000 or whatever. In real life that would be fraud.

I think we need some clear communication as to what the expected level of merit/hr is from the devs perspective. if we have a guide rope we can give better feedback as to which avenues are under or overperforming

They won't do that because that requires commitment and testing. If they say they want 8-12k merits/h for all activities, then people will be quick to complain that activity x does not provide that (say holoscreen hacking, or wake scanning)

How should this continue? What about a reset?

Since Oddysey I'm unfortunately more and more disappointed.

There were no Onfoot Thags in the Thargoid War and Onfoot CZ is missing in PP 2.0.

Oh but you can get merits with on foot activity. you can go to data ports and download data for 90 merits each, taking only 10-35 seconds of your time. if they fix the bug you can happily jump to supercruise and come back down to do it again, for about... 300 merits per hour, maybe even 400. Oh wait, they just killed that.
You can kill people on the ground for a whopping 1 merit per kill instead.
Or you can upload viruses for 1 minute each and some 60 odd merits.

 

[Falco]

[please delete this]

 

[kofeyh]

Ohh! Just had a thought!
What's colonisation gonner be like @ rollout???

"We have identified excessive colonisation occuring, as a result, subjugation item** will be turned off while we figure out how to force players to only do specific things at specific times at specific rates in our sandbox game."

** Frontier will absolutely have yet another thing to grind, that commanders will find an efficient farming method of, that will deeply offend and upset the developer and the community engaging with legitimate mechanics will be made a scapegoat in the process.

Powerplay 2.0 has massive promise. These heavy handed actions from Frontier ain't it, chief. It's not setting a good tone at all.

It's reasonably to say that the BGS freaking out isn't ideal. Or that there are really only a couple ways to progress ranks is sub optimal and commanders should have really several ways that reward the approximate same amount of time, with the same effective reward. Frontier would not add multiple options if that was not true.

The core issue seems to be Frontier's unreasonable desire to force (barbarically) slow progression in powerplay, which by design is supposed to be highly dynamic in nature. There does not seem to be a value of cmdr time, where maybe there should be.

 

[St0rmFury]

If I need a module I will choose a power where this module can be obtained the fastest (like level 34) and then just leave the power and go to another Power where the same first module that I need.
The current system does not give advantages of getting any modules in one power as the progress of getting it is very long.

Nah bro.

After you unlock your first module, you'll unlock a new one every 5 ranks. It's more practical to just stick with your chosen power and keep gaining ranks to unlock the rest of the modules permanently.

 

[Kamiyoda]

"We have identified excessive colonisation occuring, as a result, subjugation item** will be turned off while we figure out how to force players to only do specific things at specific times at specific rates in our sandbox game."

The Reapers in Mass Effect are actually just Frontier Developments nerfing real life, who knew?

 

[kofeyh]

In case anyone was curious the new meta is core mining, mind you have to sell in the same system you mined in.

15k an hour.

And this is the result of Frontier being precious about powerplay merits and levels. People will absolutely find the path that reduces the time spent because players, whilst happy to spend time, value it whereas Frontier seemingly are illustrating they do not.

I haven't seen a developer be this angry at players engaging with their content in a long, long time. It's absolutely wild to me.

 

[St0rmFury]

The nerfing will continue until morale improves.

 

[SergMx]

Nah bro.

After you unlock your first module, you'll unlock a new one every 5 ranks. It's more practical to just stick with your chosen power and keep gaining ranks to unlock the rest of the modules permanently.

Is gaining ranks linear ?
It seemed to me that to get the next rank you need 2 times more merits than the previous one.
Am I wrong ?

 

[St0rmFury]

Is gaining ranks linear ?
It seemed to me that to get the next rank you need 2 times more merits than the previous one.
Am I wrong ?

It's linear after the 1st 5 ranks, 8000 merits per rank.

 

[LSDL]

First they came for the explorers, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a explorer.

Then they came for the exobiologists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a exobiologist.

Then they came for the traders, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trader.

Then they came for the rare traders, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a rare trader.

Then they came for the rescuers, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a rescuer.

Then they came for the hackers, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a hacker.

Then they came for the fighter pilots, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a fighter pilot.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.