I think if PP merits/cargo have been collected/carried/redeemed in solo or PG then they should have a reduced value. The player is still carrying out the actions, but they are doing so at a reduced level of risk. And yes, a warning about the reduced value of PP merits will be required when entering Solo/PG.
Incrementally Improving PowerPlay - Make PowerPlay Open-Only
- Thread starter CMDR Foursyth
- Start date
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Rubbernuke has just inb4'd my suggestion! (Although my preference is for open only with personal benefits only in solo/pg, or open bonuses, in that order).
Anyway - make PP NPCs harder. Or rather, have a class of PP NPCs that are competent at interdiction and have powerful enough ships to be at least a nuisance. They attack you in your/hostile control systems and expansions, capitals. The are tough enough in solo and open that particularly haulers have to worry, but combat ops will also be impaired. They are even tougher in PG, so wing advantages of PG are compensated against. PG players are thus nudged towards open to get weaker npcs and retain the benefit of combat escort or wing, solo players are nudged towards open in order to benefit from player escort. This could create a new role for combat pilots of escorting less kitted-out players, without them having to jump all the way to PvP level, in terms of skill and grind.
Anyway - make PP NPCs harder. Or rather, have a class of PP NPCs that are competent at interdiction and have powerful enough ships to be at least a nuisance. They attack you in your/hostile control systems and expansions, capitals. The are tough enough in solo and open that particularly haulers have to worry, but combat ops will also be impaired. They are even tougher in PG, so wing advantages of PG are compensated against. PG players are thus nudged towards open to get weaker npcs and retain the benefit of combat escort or wing, solo players are nudged towards open in order to benefit from player escort. This could create a new role for combat pilots of escorting less kitted-out players, without them having to jump all the way to PvP level, in terms of skill and grind.
Popular among open only advocates. I'm not so sure it was popular among PG/solo players.
Maybe they bought their PS4/Xbox for stuff that didn't require the sony/ms tax and then got ED.
I don't suppose you consdered that?
Or, considering the current global situation, maybe their finances are tight at the moment, and they have had to cut back on things like subscriptions, and perhaps their one escape from life is enjoying playing powerplay (i have no idea how anyone can enjoy playing powerplay, but just roll with me on this one).
Whereas open only powerplay would mainly be a matter of which power has more pilots willing to spend their time grinding merits, just with an added chance of being attacked by another player. But if the other side is fielding hunters, then those players are not grinding for merits. Some haulers will always get through, probably a majority of haulers will get through, especially after a bit of time as people adjust to the reality of open.
So those who are hunting are not contributing much to merits, but may sometimes, perhaps rarely, be stopping the other side. While those hauling are most of the time getting through and occasionally eating a rebuy (which considering the credit situation, its nothing).
Logically, this means for maximum effeciveness by a power, everyone should be hauling. I'd guess a majority will be flying Cutters to and fro.
"I have no idea how anyone can enjoy playing powerplay IN SOLO.... " - FTFY XD
When I started playing this game, I was super enthusiastic about it, pledging for Archon Delaine, coordinating with the Kumo Crew, and even building a small but very talented PMF that persists to this day under fine leadership on the PS4 platform. I personally burned out on the whole thing, though, when I came to understand just how much Risk-averse, PvP-averse players simply negated the entire raison d'etre of a militaristic/piratical faction like the Archon's. I bought into advertising about a robust political and military space strategy game that Frontier hyped Power Play up to be. What I found was carebears grinding away happily in solo mode, indeed, an entire private group community thousands strong literally playing their own game outside of the overall ED playerbase and very much outside of anything Frontier ever intended for the game to be, well beyond the scope of purpose Private Groups were ever meant to serve. In short, what I found was that all of the advertising about Power Play as a robust political and military strategy game were made into outright lies by Power Play being fully available in Solo and Private Group modes. It made the entire thing pointless. Fix it and a lot of people like myself will come right back to ED.
You also mentioned how rare it is to see players in Open. That's because they don't want to risk having space violence visited upon their pixels, and since the game doesn't give them any reason to, they just don't. So you don't see them in Open. Because they aren't there.
Subscriptions in online gaming are a fact of life. It's $10 a month for PS+, and just $60 for the year. I don't know what the price is on XB1, but I can personally attest to how cheap it is on PS4. And that's got nothing to do with ED - it's not ED charging people for PS+. It's Sony. And Playstation players know good and well that most multiplayer games, indeed, ALL of the good ones, will require PS+ for online play. I'm sorry, but this is practically a non-argument. And rather than PP, they can BGS to their heart's content - adopt a MF and take over their whole region with the thing grinding away in solo and pat themselves on the back for a job well done and good for them. But I bought this game on Frontier's promise of a grand PvP strategy game, not to grind against ghosts. Literally paid money to Frontier based on a lie.
You also mentioned how rare it is to see players in Open. That's because they don't want to risk having space violence visited upon their pixels, and since the game doesn't give them any reason to, they just don't. So you don't see them in Open. Because they aren't there.
Pfft. Lots of games do even worse than that, like COD with Warzone being free and the entire rest of the game behind behind two separate paywalls (the game price plus the multiplayer service subscription price). PP being behind the multiplayer service subscription paywall would be nothing compared to most games' paywalls.You're right. Let's put everything else behind paywall then. Wanna see thargoids? that's 5€ per month. How about engineers for another 5€? Just cause they already had multiplayer function behind paywall, let's start locking them out from other stuff tooBest idea ever
Nah. No contribution at all. This type of player is happy to grind their life away with no adversarial interaction. Halve their contribution and they will happily grind twice as hard to have the same invincible (i.e., immune to confrontation) effect on the PP map.
You're right, it's not their fault. It's Frontier's fault for creating a game feature that is PvP by nature and allowing it to be impacted by players without exposing themselves to the players of their enemy factions. And it's long past time Frontier corrected the mistake.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
From reading the game design as pitched in the Kickstarter, it's a game where affecting the game is for everyone, by design, and other players are an optional extra - which in turn means that PvP is an optional extra that is not required for any game feature*.
I'd agree that it needs fixing - the addition of an Open-PvE game mode is long overdue.
*: well, apart from CQC - but that is just another optional extra in the launcher menu.
You are mistaken:
Not every power has to haul merits each week- some powers have slack time that can be used to attack and destabilize another power.
Larger powers generally have to generate merits via some fortification, while smaller powers have excess CC to afford going on the offensive.
The problem with that is you have massive duplication- CGs, Powerplay and the BGS are identical mechanically- what advantage does triplicating the same experience achieve? The BGS has evolved into what Powerplay was supposed to be, CGs now offer unique modules too- so Powerplay is stuck using five year old rewards and mechanics with only two missions / tasks that have to be done over and over and over with some modes never seeing opponents at all.
Don't really know where to start with this one, I totally disagree, on all points I think
But in short, if this were the case, then that would be happening already, where many haulers are invulnerable in pg/solo, and the remainder live in the open world you describe. It isn't. Some people only like one out of PvP, PvE, hauling, others get to enjoy all of them, but anyone can play a part. There's always a value/effectiveness/efficiency weighting in the decision of what activity you undertake, and it's by no means cut and dried in practice.
Powerplay, even as it is now, is all about team work. Not everyone hauls, there are other activities needed for a Power to be successful and anyone who has participated for more than just unlocking modules knows this. You might like it or not but disrupting enemy activities by doing PVP is already part of the game, the issue discussed here is if we want to remove the possibility of escaping said disruptions by switching to Solo.
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Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Freedom of choice of the individual player to engage in any content they choose, from whichever game mode they choose - with, or without, the possibility of PvP, as they choose.
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This is the thing: Open Powerplay would provide opportunistic PvP in condensed areas: as proposed you'd have four general areas- capitals, expansions, prep sites and UM sites. If you really wanted to mess someone up you could mash them in their capital where (under the proposed changes) every hauler must go- prep races could be won not just by delivering the most but by also killing rivals to slow their deliveries.
The problem being that 'freedom of choice' works for 2 out of those 3 features.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
It works for all of them - as none of them require PvP.
It may not work in the way that a subset of the player-base wants it to - however they can't force other players to engage in their preferred play-style.
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If a power has slack time, then it means they are already in a superior position no? If you can be destabilized, how do you counter that? By hauling perchance?
Freedom of choice is great, but it should be fair, with all modes equal. Currently while open is more fun (for me anyway), solo and PG give unfair risk/reward balance - i.e. unequal. In some content I think nobody minds that, but in PP, there are reasonable objections.
And you miss the point: by making one pan modal you create an inferior duplicate the BGS that is essentially a V1 CG from 1.1.
Going by how many engage with Powerplay its easy to see the majority of people see it as not working within the confines of the game.
As I said- either NPCs become much harder in all modes or NPCs are replaced by players (Open only).
Don't really know where to start with this one, I totally disagree, on all points I think
Sorry, i thought one of the reasons given for making it open only was because of all the people alledgedly hauling away in PG/solo?
I'm not sure what else you are disagreeing with in relation to what I posted. Sure, some people like doing PvP, but if all they are doing is chasing down cutters, which most of the time will laugh them off (assuming they even meet) then those PvPers aren't really contributing much. Sure, they could go fight the PvPers on the other side, but none of that makes much of a difference to the actual PP merit situation. It just means PP is being used as a reason to PvP, rather than actually doing anything useful.