Incrementally Improving PowerPlay - Make PowerPlay Open-Only

No, right now, EVERYONE can vote. 90% of people have no idea what to vote for. The vote is useless. It needs to go.

With the new system, only the ones who are willing to put in the time and effort necessary get to vote. They are already the ones who know what to do. They were already the ones deciding the movement of the power. Only now, it will be explicit.

Even better, it will be simple. There will be a list of the top 10 players. You get into that list, you can vote on which system(s) to prepare. Simple, easy.

FAR easier than a bizarre system of weighting. Most players ALREADY don't understand how the heck system value works. Just look at the systems that get prepared and you'll have an excellent idea of how true that is. Adding weighting will only make that even harder for the average player to figure out, and when you've got a system that's already at risk of collapse because barely anyone participates, that's a huge problem. One you can't afford to exacerbate.

Because of this exact problem, having the top 10 choose the selected systems, and issuing missions to that system(As outlined in my suggestion) would be infinitely simpler and more comprehensible to the average player than anything else.

Right now, a player wants to join a power. They join, and go to the central system. They grab 50 merits, and go to the map, and stare in utmost confusion at all the green and red and orange dots that make no sense. They haul them to one of them, and...nothing happens. Yaaaay. A week later, their effort is swept away, because they didn't support the right system, because they didn't want to read a 25 page excel sheet on optimum preparation guidelines. They quit, because this is boring.

With the new system, they join the power and go to the central system. There, they take a mission, which directs them directly to a system that was targeted by one of the top 10. They go there and attack a base, or haul in some needed commodities, or haul a spy. They're rewarded with credits and merits, and a shortly later, they watch as the system THEY helped prepare, now goes into the next stage. Again, they're back to that same system, helping with missions, and this time, their power TAKES the system!

THEY did that. Simply. Easily. Straightforwardly. They stay in the power, and start working towards taking the next system.

And 5C will be in that top 10- voting for the worst systems possible, meaning people have to spend huge amounts of time and money. You can create extra accounts on consoles, multibox etc and they'll do it. 5C will stack your prep, expand for you and fortify everything just so you can't turmoil out of it, because of lack of weighting- so linking decisions to effort won't work because it greenlights 5C actions and that credits are so easy to farm.

Weighting ensures 5C have to work exponentially harder to do what they do. 10 prep spent in a good system is worth 0.1 in a bad one.
 
I missed this- but the people talking here are people heavily involved in Powerplay. For example I used to be part of Utopian leadership, had played since day 1, ran the Utopian Reddit for 2 years, was part of the Powerplay discord that talked to devs, and answered dev questions when they DMed them from community managers. Up until I injured my arm a few months ago I was with the Kumo.

So they know what they are talking about. How long have you played, and to what level?

Been on and off since around the beginning. PP was the first time the game ticked with me since it is far more visible and reaching than the BGS, and even fits the BGS within it. This includes when being pledged to a power made you very annoyingly get interdicted by PP NPCs no matter if you didn't have PP cargo or merits, and played on and off a bit every year, PP always being the most interesting aspect of the game ever since its beginning.

Each time I've returned, I've seen it in a better state mostly thanks to its community, and I've put more effort than previously. I see entire powers getting undermined and fortified, the weekly effort is clearly at a CG level, it just isn't that apparent due to PP not being just one big objective bar all effort is pooled into. It's a shame the collapse mechanic never got activated, because I could see there being 1 or 2 less powers around by now and I hope they don't do it through a CG. Clearly it could be so much more, but the same could be said of many of ED's features but delving too much into such negativity isn't productive.

My point wasn't doubting the game knowledge of who is here, neither doubting the value of the work the leaderships put in coordinating their communities. The point is using these positions to push in a change that is more their personal preference than a 100% actual improvement like many of the previous threads, and all these pages of discussion show it. Players are free to play in any mode they wish, Powerplay included.
 
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Been on and off since around the beginning. PP was the first time the game ticked with me since it is far more visible and reaching than the BGS, and even fits the BGS within it. This includes when being pledged to a power made you very annoyingly get interdicted by PP NPCs no matter if you didn't have PP cargo or merits, and played on and off a bit every year, PP always being the most interesting aspect of the game ever since its beginning.

Each time I've returned, I've seen it in a better state mostly thanks to its community, and I've put more effort than previously. I see entire powers getting undermined and fortified, the weekly effort is clearly at a CG level, it just isn't that apparent due to PP not being just one big objective bar all effort is pooled into. It's a shame the collapse mechanic never got activated, because I could see there being 1 or 2 less powers around by now and I hope they don't do it through a CG. Clearly it could be so much more, but the same could be said of many of ED's features but delving too much into such negativity isn't productive.

My point wasn't doubting the game knowledge of who is here, neither doubting the value of the work the leaderships put in coordinating their communities. The point is using these positions to push in a change that is more their personal preference than a 100% actual improvement like many of the previous threads, and all these pages of discussion. Players are free to play in any mode they wish, Powerplay included.

Its good to see that you have been coming back to it, but from my perspective 5C has gotten worse and not better, and FD themselves have dropped the ball several times to make matters worse.

Getting back to the topic- the reason why a lot of people support Open is because from what FD themselves offer its the only new gameplay. If you look at Sandros proposal, 9 out 10 things on it are rule changes and not adding anything. Now, based on that scope available you have limited choices to add anything without resorting to a total rebuild. Either NPCs get harder and more numerous, or players replace NPCs to make the rigid back and forward travel an actual game and not just a blind race against a UI bar.

To do nothing with Powerplay is to keep it where it is. To make it Open crafts a strategic CQC like game which differentiates PP from the BGS and CG gameplay. Unless FD are going to pull something out of the hat (which I'm totally for by the way if they do it right this time), those are the options. FD don't want to do very much- they only put effort into features that players use- so options are limited.
 
And 5C will be in that top 10- voting for the worst systems possible, meaning people have to spend huge amounts of time and money. You can create extra accounts on consoles, multibox etc and they'll do it. 5C will stack your prep, expand for you and fortify everything just so you can't turmoil out of it, because of lack of weighting- so linking decisions to effort won't work because it greenlights 5C actions and that credits are so easy to farm.

Weighting ensures 5C have to work exponentially harder to do what they do. 10 prep spent in a good system is worth 0.1 in a bad one.

But then, why have good and bad systems?

If the system is designed so that expanding into the bad systems is functionally impossible unless it's the only option, why have the bad systems in the first place, they'll just never get prepped.

(In fact yeah, why have bad systems. The only reason really to have them is to enable this sort of fifth columnist activity but since powers are anonymous and non-communicative it can't generate gameplay within the power.)

I suspect fifth column activity is as bad as it is because the active PP player base is so small and so a very small number of players can wield outsized influence within a power)
 
But then, why have good and bad systems?

If the system is designed so that expanding into the bad systems is functionally impossible unless it's the only option, why have the bad systems in the first place, they'll just never get prepped.

(In fact yeah, why have bad systems. The only reason really to have them is to enable this sort of fifth columnist activity but since powers are anonymous and non-communicative it can't generate gameplay within the power.)

I suspect fifth column activity is as bad as it is because the active PP player base is so small and so a very small number of players can wield outsized influence within a power)

And I'm in total agreement with you- in my mind I'd just want sheer numbers and happiness to dictate things, with each system having no intrinsic value (like a BGS view).

I suspect fifth column activity is as bad as it is because the active PP player base is so small and so a very small number of players can wield outsized influence within a power)

You are correct- Powerplay is intended to even out good and bad choices by assuming the vast majority want the best interests of the Power, and that they are numerous. This is why weighting is needed because it scales up good actions, and dials down bad ones for the available players.
 
Been on and off since around the beginning. PP was the first time the game ticked with me since it is far more visible and reaching than the BGS, and even fits the BGS within it. This includes when being pledged to a power made you very annoyingly get interdicted by PP NPCs no matter if you didn't have PP cargo or merits, and played on and off a bit every year, PP always being the most interesting aspect of the game ever since its beginning.

Each time I've returned, I've seen it in a better state mostly thanks to its community, and I've put more effort than previously. I see entire powers getting undermined and fortified, the weekly effort is clearly at a CG level, it just isn't that apparent due to PP not being just one big objective bar all effort is pooled into. It's a shame the collapse mechanic never got activated, because I could see there being 1 or 2 less powers around by now and I hope they don't do it through a CG. Clearly it could be so much more, but the same could be said of many of ED's features but delving too much into such negativity isn't productive.

My point wasn't doubting the game knowledge of who is here, neither doubting the value of the work the leaderships put in coordinating their communities. The point is using these positions to push in a change that is more their personal preference than a 100% actual improvement like many of the previous threads, and all these pages of discussion show it. Players are free to play in any mode they wish, Powerplay included.
I think you need to look past prejudice here, its not what OOPP or hybrid PP is about. there is a real problem with the difference in effort and accountability afforded by mode choice and they do need consideration, or youre penalising ppl who socialise most within an MMO. thats bad game design even from a shareholder POV, as well as every other perspective (apart from those who wish to maintain an unfair advantage)

I suspect fifth column activity is as bad as it is because the active PP player base is so small and so a very small number of players can wield outsized influence within a power)
That is a side-effect of the longstanding problems. 5C is such a problem, not so much because 'these 5C people do bad things' but because these actions are so much more cost-effective than undoing them, and attacking in any normal way takes so much more time & effort.
Plus the constant suspicions, due to considerable evidence that at least some 5c groups use bots.
 
And I'm in total agreement with you- in my mind I'd just want sheer numbers and happiness to dictate things, with each system having no intrinsic value (like a BGS view).

At minimum just cap the lower bound on a system's value to a small positive number not allow it to go negative...

You are correct- Powerplay is intended to even out good and bad choices by assuming the vast majority want the best interests of the Power, and that they are numerous. This is why weighting is needed because it scales up good actions, and dials down bad ones for the available players.

Yeah, the opacity of the system doesn't help there, of course. A new player coming into powerplay doesn't have an easy way to find out how to advance the interests of their power.
 
At minimum just cap the lower bound on a system's value to a small positive number not allow it to go negative...



Yeah, the opacity of the system doesn't help there, of course. A new player coming into powerplay doesn't have an easy way to find out how to advance the interests of their power.

Its why in my proposed changes every good (i.e. CC positive) action is labelled as such, and negative the same, so people can look around and be guided in a passive way. Groups came about in Powerplay because people (as you point out) had no guidance at all, and pooled views.
 
Which is exactly why I say that needs to go.




As I literally posted immediately afterwards, this wouldn't work, because they'd have to act in such a way as to ACTUALLY support their Power, not just ship merits to a useless location. They MUST go to the systems the top 10 select, or they get nothing but an embassy in their target location.

Bizarre systems of weighting are only going to make everyone confused via massive overcomplication. The ideal system is as simple as possible.

And this is exactly that. Simple. Effective. Flawless.

The top 10(plus the Power itself) decide via vote what systems to expand into. Everyone else supports this action if they want to gain rank.

If someone wants to get into the top 10, they need to outhaul(and therefore outSUPPORT) everyone else for four weeks. And even IF they went to those lengths, supporting their enemy against themselves, they'd still be only 1/13th the total voting power!

You would need to get SEVEN players in the top 10 to turn the power against itself, and at that point, you've basically BECOME the power. They've already lost, utterly.
how would your proposal cope with a hypothetical like this..
to avoid any RL offence, lets call hypothetical Power A 'Bumo'. So say Bumo has an eternal vendetta against hypothetical Power B 'Metopia' due to some old beef against a guy who left years ago, a system we dont want, and gee do they hate quiche and homemade footwear.

However, Bumo also have a thing thats not a thing with hypothetical Superpower, 'The Bederation'. they meet up some times, they ball, but its cool they dont put a name on it, they dont do posession in their relationship, they can invade other people on the side too.

So Bumo underminers pledge to Metopia, and meet up in an imperial motel for a fling with the bederation, and theyre hammering away at granny, undermining at 50k merits each per week, for a month.

at the end of this month, theyve accumulated enough merits to lock-out the top10 of Metopia and choose their next moves, or demand a ransom from the playerbase for the return of their Power.

All while doing nothing for Metopia at all.

So do you fix this by saying only haulers get a say ? thats a kick in the teeth for folks doing a legit 50k UM week, or anyone who feels obligated to do whatever madcap combat expansion the haulers thought theyd like to see ppl fight in.
how else would you deal with that?

The lack of ownership of Powers & any imposed leadership structure is a strength, its a benefit. leaderships only exist in PP because people choose to listen to them. thats a very good way for things to be, its a utopian ideal, frankly, and shouldnt be thrown-away in favour of a more dictatorial model.

edit: added some UM numbers to put into context.
edit2: changed hypothetical Power A name from 'Boomo' to 'Bumo' to avoid offence to Torval
 
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How exactly is open only going to fix 5c problems? Fixing that's going to require a more fundamental change to the power play system.
Previous cycle AD had internal 5c prep to system nearby to Cubeo, you may just go to this system and educate or shoot players for doing this, in case of external 5c, you can just go to system when you spotted traffic and just kill everything on sight + you have names of cmdr's engaged in 5c, it's not rocket science
 
Previous cycle AD had internal 5c prep to system nearby to Cubeo, you may just go to this system and educate or shoot players for doing this, in case of external 5c, you can just go to system when you spotted traffic and just kill everything on sight + you have names of cmdr's engaged in 5c, it's not rocket science

If I remember correctly, you lose merits and even get un-pledged if you keep shooting down ships from your own power, right? Getting them into open would accomplish nothing because you're not going to be able to fight your own 5C.

The way to fix 5C prep is to further change preparation to avoid 5C, I haven't talked much about this because it gets off-topic from the OOPP discussion. There's Rubbernuke with weighted preparation based on sphere profitability, DemiserofD with his idea based on top10 merit earners directing preparation. Personally I have a third one which would be adding a list of bad governments for preparation, which would either block preparation on that system or at least make it take two preparation spots (so preparing a bad government would require 50% vote instead of 75%).
 
And 5C will be in that top 10- voting for the worst systems possible, meaning people have to spend huge amounts of time and money. You can create extra accounts on consoles, multibox etc and they'll do it. 5C will stack your prep, expand for you and fortify everything just so you can't turmoil out of it, because of lack of weighting- so linking decisions to effort won't work because it greenlights 5C actions and that credits are so easy to farm.

Weighting ensures 5C have to work exponentially harder to do what they do. 10 prep spent in a good system is worth 0.1 in a bad one.

I simply don't believe you're ever going to have 7/10 of the top 10 players in a power over four weeks being actively against that power.

If they had no competition, then maybe such a thing might be possible. But if there WERE competition, you'd be looking at massive merit inflation, and then all they're doing is making that power stronger for four weeks in a row, and likely much longer than that.

Remember, because the current top 10 are picking which systems they MUST work in, there is no option to build merits without actually supporting the power, like there is now. This means that 5c attempts become a GOOD thing for the defending power, because it only makes their current attacks stronger.

how would your proposal cope with a hypothetical like this..
to avoid any RL offence, lets call hypothetical Power A 'Bumo'. So say Bumo has an eternal vendetta against hypothetical Power B 'Metopia' due to some old beef against a guy who left years ago, a system we dont want, and gee do they hate quiche and homemade footwear.

However, Bumo also have a thing thats not a thing with hypothetical Superpower, 'The Bederation'. they meet up some times, they ball, but its cool they dont put a name on it, they dont do posession in their relationship, they can invade other people on the side too.

So Bumo underminers pledge to Metopia, and meet up in an imperial motel for a fling with the bederation, and theyre hammering away at granny, undermining at 50k merits each per week, for a month.

at the end of this month, theyve accumulated enough merits to lock-out the top10 of Metopia and choose their next moves, or demand a ransom from the playerbase for the return of their Power.

All while doing nothing for Metopia at all.

So do you fix this by saying only haulers get a say ? thats a kick in the teeth for folks doing a legit 50k UM week, or anyone who feels obligated to do whatever madcap combat expansion the haulers thought theyd like to see ppl fight in.
how else would you deal with that?

The lack of ownership of Powers & any imposed leadership structure is a strength, its a benefit. leaderships only exist in PP because people choose to listen to them. thats a very good way for things to be, its a utopian ideal, frankly, and shouldnt be thrown-away in favour of a more dictatorial model.

edit: added some UM numbers to put into context.
edit2: changed hypothetical Power A name from 'Boomo' to 'Bumo' to avoid offence to Torval

Lmao, this made me laugh, thank you.

The solution's pretty simple, though. Top 10 have to vote on which systems to undermine, too. It'll still work otherwise, just like right now, just you won't get any merits for it. It's kept as a legacy system, just like how hauling merits instead makes embassies as a legacy of the current hauling system.

Because one of the fundamental premises of the idea is that hauling merits is replaced/supplemented with missions(taken either from the power's home system or the target system), you won't be excluding combat from the scenario, you'll just take combat missions if that's what you want.
 
I simply don't believe you're ever going to have 7/10 of the top 10 players in a power over four weeks being actively against that power.

If they had no competition, then maybe such a thing might be possible. But if there WERE competition, you'd be looking at massive merit inflation, and then all they're doing is making that power stronger for four weeks in a row, and likely much longer than that.

Remember, because the current top 10 are picking which systems they MUST work in, there is no option to build merits without actually supporting the power, like there is now. This means that 5c attempts become a GOOD thing for the defending power, because it only makes their current attacks stronger.

5C in the past have done worse, and poured huge amounts of money into things (billions of credits). The Kumo for example have had 5C push two bad expansions, expand them, fortify everything (40 odd systems) (so you can't turmoil to cancel) like magic while we looked on- its why any system that allows a choosing based on effort and being able to buy merits is flawed. If your system breaks those relationships then it won't be a problem.
 
I find it interesting how at every CG, the gankers are aligned to the power of the station where the CG is sponsored. There really needs to be a mechanism to prevent PP from being used as a ganker's club IMO.
 
5C in the past have done worse, and poured huge amounts of money into things (billions of credits). The Kumo for example have had 5C push two bad expansions, expand them, fortify everything (40 odd systems) (so you can't turmoil to cancel) like magic while we looked on- its why any system that allows a choosing based on effort and being able to buy merits is flawed. If your system breaks those relationships then it won't be a problem.

Yes, and those things would have been impossible if the top 10 had chosen where you could expand into.

Because it wouldn't be just 'pour loads of resources into bad systems', anymore.

It would be, "Support good systems for four weeks, actively helping the power. Outcompete seven of the top ten players in the power. THEN, KEEP that level of activity maintained perpetually, to make sure NONE of your seven dummy characters drops off the list and you lose 100% of your power."

You're talking about a massive multi-month effort to achieve what you can more practically achieve just by attacking them directly/undermining them. If you fail, you've only helped the enemy power! You're talking about basically playing a new character full time, just to keep from having to play your other character against them!

Would 5c still technically be possible? Yes.

Would it be practical? In almost every circumstance, no.
 
Next you'll be saying you want all interdictions removed from the game.

I'd be happy if interdictions were changed to be balanced rather than favouring the interdictor. That's the biggest problem with it. Of course, including bias depending on your ship's SC manouverability.

That would encourage traders to consider whether its better to make a big haul or a smaller haul in a more agile ship. As i understand it, especially with engineering, a player attacker will win all the time even if you keep on target 100% when flying a more agile ship as long as the interdictor is decent at the game.

If both are on target 100% nobody should be gaining, it should be stalemate. If one loses it, then the other gains.

I'm not sure why this is a difficult concept for FD, and i can only presume that if they did it this way, then NPCs would never be able to interdict anyone, and therefore, since PvE is the vast majority of the game, they feel its better to take the hit on the PvP side instead of the PvE side.
 
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