But this came from them- it was FD saying in hindsight Powerplay was seen as more PvP like, them suggesting Open only. While they did say some, if you take away Open from that proposal (which was incredibly light to begin with) you also take away uncapped UM, fortification directions and are left with....votes on votes, weighting and...no new gameplay- at all.
Incrementally Improving PowerPlay - Make PowerPlay Open-Only
- Thread starter CMDR Foursyth
- Start date
But this came from them- it was FD saying in hindsight Powerplay was seen as more PvP like, them suggesting Open only. While they did say some, if you take away Open from that proposal (which was incredibly light to begin with) you also take away uncapped UM, fortification directions and are left with....votes on votes, weighting and...no new gameplay- at all.
Sure, whatever.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
At best it can be described as asynchronous indirect PvP when players engage in it in Solo or in Private Groups with friends. While it is a competitive feature, it does not require any player to engage in in-the-same-instance PvP combat. Some players do engage in it in Open and engage in in-the-same-instance PvP combat - that's their choice, of course, and they can't force others to do so.
The proposal removes Powerplay from Solo and Private Groups - which is a PvP-gate, as the only game mode it would be able to be played in is Open, and any player can shoot at anything they instance with.
I find PvP to be a tedious and predictable waste of my game time - so I choose not to engage in it, in a game where is it an optional extra for those so inclined. If an Open-PvE game mode were added to the game, I'd be rather pleased - as players could play in it co-operatively without the unwelcome (for some) distraction of other players wishing to engage in PvP.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
A bit of retconning did go on around the time of the flash Topic, given that Frontier consciously implemented Powerplay in all three game modes in the first place.
Well, Will did only say "some". We'll see, in time, which ones go forward.
Deleted member 192138
D
"tedious and predictable waste of my game time" sounds like a lot of the implemented and unavoidable gameplay loops for progression, so I guess we should all be used to that by now.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
For some, maybe - at least no-one needs to endure PvP, if they don't want to.
Its not retconning, its taking stock and actually thinking about where Powerplay fits in.
And considering it was about eight things that at least half were co-dependent on each other, I really hope they know what they are doing. If after 5 years of waiting we get the joy of votes on votes, Aisling and Hudson get a BGS tweak and weighting I'll laugh myself silly.
Even when Powerplay is supposed to be built on conflict? If its not players its NPCs that should be attacking you...but, they don't.....
Plus, you forget that you have teamwork in Open too.
I like it when moderators are actually contradicting what the original lead developer of Powerplay said, that this is meant as a consensual PvP gameplay.
Anywayas someone mentioned before a lot of us got into Elite and Powerplay because it was hyped as a competitive and strategy powers political war. They lied, and that is no surprise form a company that till this day still repeats the lie that the game is "Player driven Narrative" while in reality it is only about personal narrative and players have no control over anything in the narrative, even when presented with a CG.
Anywayas someone mentioned before a lot of us got into Elite and Powerplay because it was hyped as a competitive and strategy powers political war. They lied, and that is no surprise form a company that till this day still repeats the lie that the game is "Player driven Narrative" while in reality it is only about personal narrative and players have no control over anything in the narrative, even when presented with a CG.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
It is consensual PvP, as implemented - players choose to pledge and then choose which of the three game modes to engage in Powerplay from. The fact that I am a moderator is irrelevant to the topic as, when engaging in a discussion, moderators enjoy the same privilege to express opinions as other forum users do.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Even then - it's for Frontier to set the challenge posed by NPCs.
.... and in Private Groups, don't forget.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
That would seem to be a matter of opinion.
We'll see, at some point.
I'll agree with you here. All features should be open to revision over time, whether it be open only or the Cobra Mk4 exclusivity.
What FD need to do is balance the loss of trust that would happen over breaking what was taken to be promises over what might be something that improves the game (or not). Its a gamble of course.
FD already got plenty of stick over their decision not to provide offline mode.
Would FD be willing to take stick over going back on their all modes are equal policy on what would be a gamble that might improve the game? Especially with a feature that currently isn't that popular?
And this should be a concern whether you are an open only proponent or not. Because if they are willing to do this, what else might they then be willing to do? What other things that were taken as promises might they then be willing to change? The next thing might be something you don't support, but if you got open only because they were willing to break promises, you can't complain when they break other promises. That would be hypocritical.
Lootboxes anyone?
Yes of course I did not imply that moderators don't have the right to engage in discussions at all, but you need to understand why we are bitter, when we see that most moderators are carebears while the mods who use to be pro-skill gaming are no longer around. When we see that as soon as Sandro "leaked" and forced a focused feedback about powerplay where he suggested open play, he got moved to another game, coincidentally of course
We love this game and its potential and this is why we are hating on the developers, we want to love them but again how can you love a company that does not treat everyone equally and then lies about doing it?
Frontiers are tyrants, they have been treating us as second class costumers for years, and when people get back to us with "you cannot force anyone to play as you want" I just do not know if I should response to such void and totally empty argument. Doesn't it work the other way around? Anyone who doesn't want to engage in a game that requires skill and practice and does not want to be involved with PvP, can do ANYHITNG else in the game, nothing affects them if they do not participate in Powerplay, while we only have Powerplay. but WE are the ones forcing others to play our way, aha... But this seems to have been Fdev's logic, we got use to this nonsense form a company that was one of the best and has dropped to incompetence of high levels.
If you want proof that Fdev are not only incompetent but tyrants, remember the Gnosis incident, players were punished to DARE engage in a Player Driven Content that Fdev did not spell out from A to Z. Or what happened during one of the most ENGAGING and most interesting events to ever happen in Elite, which is the Salome incident, no matter how it ended up THAT was player driven narrative that was far more interesting than any boring CG Fdev have put up... And players were banned and punished for that... Great work.
SO understand we LOVE this game, and we want to stay playing, but you cannot when you are being treated this way by the developers, they took our money and they don't care, a true corporation but definitely not an honest nor even a qualified game development company.
I rant because I lost hope, a lot of us deleted Elite 2 weeks ago and, all I can say is, I regret all the cosmetics I bought for ships I do not own only to Support Fdev because at the time they were dong a good job and we thought they will continue.
![[VR] Bulbulunufus](https://d2aefvhu2f0gi9.cloudfront.net/data/avatars/m/261/261245.jpg?1671230473){kind=avatar}
Here's an idea. Bonus merits or multiplier for contact with hostile pledges in control, expansion and prep systems -
X for instancing with
Y for being shot or losing N% of hull, and leaving instance (escape)
Z for killing a ship, maybe proportional to ship's rebuy
Z > Y > X
One award per hostile CMDR per day (or 7 per PP cycle), so the only way to build it up is to instance with lots of hostile commanders.
To restrict exploits you might do things like require being in a squadron and the hostile CMDR to be in another squadron.
This would reward players (and powers) undertaking higher risk PP activities, and be available across all game modes. Or if PP were open only, it would make exploits less effective.
You'd probably want to redefine hostility though - erstwhile allied powerplay groups that the game defines as hostile to each other could exploit this (e.g. FUC and Kumo, Empire and Grom).
X for instancing with
Y for being shot or losing N% of hull, and leaving instance (escape)
Z for killing a ship, maybe proportional to ship's rebuy
Z > Y > X
One award per hostile CMDR per day (or 7 per PP cycle), so the only way to build it up is to instance with lots of hostile commanders.
To restrict exploits you might do things like require being in a squadron and the hostile CMDR to be in another squadron.
This would reward players (and powers) undertaking higher risk PP activities, and be available across all game modes. Or if PP were open only, it would make exploits less effective.
You'd probably want to redefine hostility though - erstwhile allied powerplay groups that the game defines as hostile to each other could exploit this (e.g. FUC and Kumo, Empire and Grom).
It's great idea Bulb
No thanks.
Powerplay already exists. I appreciate that in some fantasy realm there are folks that believe that this is a PvP heavy, combat heavy affair that is designed to be participated in a certain way, but that's simply not true and "forcing" people to pretend it is isn't the answer. If it were to be re-imagined as something to actually make it the reason for PvP that was originally advertised, it'd need fundamental changes in how it works.
You don't need to force players to do anything. In fact, attempting such is just dumb and unproductive. Strong incentives, on the other hand, can create a situation that you're really looking for.
Let's use the real world reality of what we've got right now as an example. We've got a boring background simulation that most of us give exactly zero craps about, and once every four weeks we can acquire a new gizmo. We can do this, incidentally, by loading up a T9 and making one run to wherever is currently accepting the garbage we just threw in our cargo hold. We don't care if it actually fortifies or undermines anything. Don't get me wrong, the powerplay interface has colors on it and a spreadsheet and everything, but so does my 401k balance webpage and frankly it's more exciting than the BGS because it relates to an actual reward and ultimately even uses more exciting colors and more exclamation points. Yeah, I'm saying that Powerplay is boring, and the problem isn't that we're hiding in solo to do it, the problem is that we aren't actually doing it at all.
Imagine if taking on a faction let us make a million credits per kill of opposing factions. Imagine if our employer covered our rebuys, or substantially discounted them, for powerplay warfare so that the risk was on them, not us. Imagine if a single PvP kill, which is infinitely harder than one run with a T9, paid the same in merits, and had the same effect in terms of fortification or undermining, etc.
See, if we offer actual PvP incentives, now a player can still choose to not participate in PvP and do their mundane T9 run, or they can strike out there and PvP in a venue that has less risk of loss for themselves and more gain than PvP in other areas of the game. In addition to that, even small PvP skirmishes would have a much larger effect on the BGS than huge amounts of perfectly safe cargo running, which would mean systems are won/lost much more often and much more readily to the PvP aspect of the gameplay.
Ultimately, I think this would allow PvP to continue to be consensual, nobody would be forced to to anything they didn't want to do, gear would still be available to everyone, and the gameplay effects behind the whole thing would incentivise the type of activity that the system was originally intended to incentivise.
Powerplay already exists. I appreciate that in some fantasy realm there are folks that believe that this is a PvP heavy, combat heavy affair that is designed to be participated in a certain way, but that's simply not true and "forcing" people to pretend it is isn't the answer. If it were to be re-imagined as something to actually make it the reason for PvP that was originally advertised, it'd need fundamental changes in how it works.
You don't need to force players to do anything. In fact, attempting such is just dumb and unproductive. Strong incentives, on the other hand, can create a situation that you're really looking for.
Let's use the real world reality of what we've got right now as an example. We've got a boring background simulation that most of us give exactly zero craps about, and once every four weeks we can acquire a new gizmo. We can do this, incidentally, by loading up a T9 and making one run to wherever is currently accepting the garbage we just threw in our cargo hold. We don't care if it actually fortifies or undermines anything. Don't get me wrong, the powerplay interface has colors on it and a spreadsheet and everything, but so does my 401k balance webpage and frankly it's more exciting than the BGS because it relates to an actual reward and ultimately even uses more exciting colors and more exclamation points. Yeah, I'm saying that Powerplay is boring, and the problem isn't that we're hiding in solo to do it, the problem is that we aren't actually doing it at all.
Imagine if taking on a faction let us make a million credits per kill of opposing factions. Imagine if our employer covered our rebuys, or substantially discounted them, for powerplay warfare so that the risk was on them, not us. Imagine if a single PvP kill, which is infinitely harder than one run with a T9, paid the same in merits, and had the same effect in terms of fortification or undermining, etc.
See, if we offer actual PvP incentives, now a player can still choose to not participate in PvP and do their mundane T9 run, or they can strike out there and PvP in a venue that has less risk of loss for themselves and more gain than PvP in other areas of the game. In addition to that, even small PvP skirmishes would have a much larger effect on the BGS than huge amounts of perfectly safe cargo running, which would mean systems are won/lost much more often and much more readily to the PvP aspect of the gameplay.
Ultimately, I think this would allow PvP to continue to be consensual, nobody would be forced to to anything they didn't want to do, gear would still be available to everyone, and the gameplay effects behind the whole thing would incentivise the type of activity that the system was originally intended to incentivise.
I like some of this but it sounds as though it would create two sets of separate, unconnected activities, whereas a lot of the attraction of powerplay is the joined-up nature of its different parts, that allows a variety of symmetric or asymmetric interactions, as well as interesting emergent strategy. Also, if you overpower it you may open the door to exploits. It sounds a bit like Rubbernuke's proposal, which has solo/pg phases and open play phases, except what you describe seems less integrated. I realise you're throwing a concept on the table, not presenting a finalised proposal, so it's more of a comment on the sort of considerations that'd be needed to get from the former to the latter.
It's a game, why do people get bitter over a game? That's silly.