Incrementally Improving PowerPlay - Make PowerPlay Open-Only

[DemiserofD]

I don't think you understand anything at all about PowerPlay. Not one single thing. I guess that's why you don't play it. In which case why are you even replying?

Sounds like the sort of personal attack someone who has no actual defense would say.

Let's make it simple; your vision of powerplay is not everyone's vision of powerplay. Further, it's probably the worst vision of powerplay I've seen offered. It would forcibly eject a huge number of potential players, would draw in absolutely no new players, and would turn it into even more of a broken husk than it already is.

Any suggestion that actively hurts a huge number of players for the sake of a small number of whiners is, by definition, a terrible idea.

So I'll say again; get over it.

---

Now if you wanted to offer actual incentive for players to participate in pvp/open, that would be more sensible. Give players a reason to allow themselves the risk of being attacked, or to fight other players. Powers covering insurance costs, for example, or paying bonuses for being attacked by an enemy and then escaping. Offering bounty multipliers for taking down highly active pvp players.

But you don't want that. You just want to punish the people who don't think exactly like you do, who don't want to play the game the way you want it to be played.

And if that's going to be your viewpoint, then you can now and forever get the heck out.

 

[CMDR Foursyth]

Sounds like the sort of personal attack someone who has no actual defense would say.

Hey, you're the one that came into my thread and said:
"All I'm seeing here is massively uncontrolled elitism."
"You're making the ridiculous assumption"
"Get over it."

I not heard any constructive comments from you at all, just a bunch of whining about how the people who are actually playing and enjoying PowerPlay are wrong. The evidence is not in your favour.

And if that's going to be your viewpoint, then you can now and forever get the heck out.

I am in. I am playing PowerPlay, and have been for many years. I even enjoy it. You are are not in. You are out. You do not play, nor do you understand. You already ejected yourself. Good-day sir.

 

[Dragsham]

Not funny. How a debate can degenerate into a mud slinging exercise. Not a question of who's right or wrong. Just tolerance of one another's opinions no matter how polarised you are.
Our role here is to listen learn partake and help out.
As to the Op. Totally in agreement.
Do think other aspects of the game would need an overhaul as well to help things along a little.
Namely a player driven economy. A real economy. So making stuff farming etc can pay well. The recent tritium haulers heyday is a good example of player driven.
Just my humble opinion

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

Sounds like the sort of personal attack someone who has no actual defense would say.

Let's make it simple; your vision of powerplay is not everyone's vision of powerplay. Further, it's probably the worst vision of powerplay I've seen offered. It would forcibly eject a huge number of potential players, would draw in absolutely no new players, and would turn it into even more of a broken husk than it already is.

Any suggestion that actively hurts a huge number of players for the sake of a small number of whiners is, by definition, a terrible idea.

So I'll say again; get over it.

---

Now if you wanted to offer actual incentive for players to participate in pvp/open, that would be more sensible. Give players a reason to allow themselves the risk of being attacked, or to fight other players. Powers covering insurance costs, for example, or paying bonuses for being attacked by an enemy and then escaping. Offering bounty multipliers for taking down highly active pvp players.

But you don't want that. You just want to punish the people who don't think exactly like you do, who don't want to play the game the way you want it to be played.

And if that's going to be your viewpoint, then you can now and forever get the heck out.

I think we're going back down the "powerplay needs a rewrite" route again - overhaul powerplay and the solo/pg/open question might go away - yes please but we have no evidence that Fdev value PP to anything like the required level for that.

I'm going to take a different perspective to Foursyth (we're in the same PP group btw) - I prefer to avoid fast-tracking my game by mining all the collective knowledge and try to avoid game spoilers, although when you join a discord inevitably shortcuts present themselves - same as any game community be it a squadron or something bigger. I joined with a couple of million credits in a cobra, which I still love flying, and I'm not the only one by any means. Some people are very part time, others are on daily, all are valued in the team, which is a community and shared culture as much as anything else (not to mention that BGS work can be done in a sidewinder pretty safely even in open, and is fundamental to powerplay and the work of the team). Noone prodded me to get rich quick, although once I was already self-sufficient and wealthy, I have started taking e.g. lucrative wing missions occasionally from squadmates to compensate for the cost of fast-tracking merits (anyway, unbalanced markets (mining anyone??) are the real problem). None of that is connected to the game mode I choose to play in. I've been on the team for best part of a year, and currently have few engineers unlocked - again far from the only one. So I don't recognise your description. Open only is about fair play, and engendering trust between opponents, in the absence of a larger initiative to reform powerplay in the way you understandably advocate, hence the frustration above perhaps. You could have suggested a compromise solution, e.g. only merits above a certain threshold per week need to be earned in open, thereby protecting more vulnerable cmdrs, this thread should be as much aimed at thrashing out ideas as the base concept itself.

 

[Robert Maynard]

You could have suggested a compromise solution, e.g. only merits above a certain threshold per week need to be earned in open, thereby protecting more vulnerable cmdrs, this thread should be as much aimed at thrashing out ideas as the base concept itself.

The proposal to PvP-gate the ability to affect Powerplay is an attempt to force any player who wishes to affect Powerplay to play in Open to be available to be engaged in PvP by those who wish to engage them in that optional play-style. It seeks to actively exclude players who don't share a preference for that optional play-style from a five year old game feature. It completely disregards the fact that there is no requirement to engage in PvP to affect any game feature (except CQC, of course) and that all players bought the same game regardless of play-style preference.

Having been disregarded and excluded, why should those who only stand to lose out if such a proposal is implemented give it any consideration or seek to compromise in any way with the demands of those seeking to change a game feature shared by all players in a way that would suit the optional play-style preference of a subset of the player-base and exclude those who don't share it?

 

[Agony_Aunt]

And that means forcing out the vast majority of players.

Actually, that still needs clarifying. According to some, most are already in open and want the competitive experience. According to others, everyone except their side are hiding in open.

Its a funny situation really. Heisenberg's uncertainty of which modes people are in. Apparently even hardcore PPers can't agree on where people actually play.

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

The proposal to PvP-gate the ability to affect Powerplay is an attempt to force any player who wishes to affect Powerplay to play in Open to be available to be engaged in PvP by those who wish to engage them in that optional play-style. It completely disregards the fact that there is no requirement to engage in PvP to affect any game feature (except CQC, of course) and that all players bought the same game regardless of play-style preference.

Why should those who only stand to lose out if such a proposal is implemented seek to compromise in any way with the demands of those seeking to change a game feature for all players to suit the optional play-style preference of a subset of the player-base?

Maybe recognise that the health of the game feature relies on the functioning communities that support it, and rather than insisting that the feature itself be compromised at the expense of that health, suggest a compromise that you as a powerplayer could live with and wouldn't cause this grave loss-out of which you speak. For instance inhibiting the mid-week mode switching that occurs when players who are happy to enjoy the open playstyle when they are winning, switch to invisible modes to ensure that they do win, in an unsportsmanlike way. This costs them in my view more than the credits for a rebuy or the trauma of dying (well, respawning slightly poorer) in a game. If you care about the feature and the game, ergo its players, constructive input please.

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

Maybe recognise that the health of the game feature relies on the functioning communities that support it,

I mean seriously, powerplay can not be done without a unified, organised community for a power, the numbers are just too large, the tasks required far far beyond an individual commander or small group.

 

[Bashy81]

You know, this is why I didn't like it when the Powerplay Community vanished en-masse behind private discord servers. It used to be easy to keep up with the latest happenings throughout the entire community, not just your tiny slice things. It made the game feel alive, and that you were a part of something bigger.

It really says something when the public information available about this newsworthy event is from 2017 at the latest...

It's a fair point ive passed on to my comrades. War was never officially declared, we just came under defacto siege. An act which will live in infamy... If we ever start actually talking/whinging about it publically, anyway. Might be about time we did xD

I was reading my way through this thread oh, but I had to stop and comment on this; never have I agreed more with something in my life. This is, one hundred percent, absolutely, the problem with PowerPlay as it currently stands.

What PowerPlay truly needs, is a system of rewarding players for interacting, even if that only translates to surviving. Heck, even if you don't survive.

Powerplay isnt really about what your CMDR can get out of it, but what you can contribute to your Power & playergroup. we get plenty of new players through too & we help them help us, if theyre good with that, otherwise we just help them until they move on in their quest for more stuff or whatever their goals happen to be.

Fdev dont like to stamp labels on things when they dont have to, but its pretty obvious to me that a playstyle about the meta game, is primarily aimed at people who are meta game.. meaning theyve already completed their initial in-game goals and are looking for something to replace the drive for say, that 'next big ship'.

Some players have initial goals that are more open-ended or clearly defined & they can carry on carrying on & thats cool. powerplay probably doesnt scratch an itch for them, and thats absolutely fine.

Regardless of how fdev brand it, Powerplay by its nature is end-game content meaning you dont attract players to stay with direct rewards, because the players Powers most need (the effective, reliable ones) are not particularly influenced by what they can get out of it, because theyve already got most things that theyre interested in..

Here's the fundamental disconnect I think. Everybody who plays PowerPlay for real - and those folks are pretty easy to spot in this thread - talk about how it's a community, how you strive for the common goal, how it sucks when people take shortcuts, how they want to promote big space battles where lots of people kill each other all the time. Dying? Yeah you die all the time, it's just rebuys. Credits? I have 348 rebuys on my Cutter so I'm good. Merits? I forget - obviously rating 5 - I'll pick up merits as we play the game.

The folks in this thread who don't play PowerPlay talk about how dying is scary. How making them come out of solo to earn the salary is mean. How there's not enough rewards for them to play PowerPlay because it's dangerous and they might die. Or how fancy ships and engineering are expensive.

The fact is, once you're in a group of 50+ folks who know how Elite works, all the in-game currencies vanish. When you work together, merits and credits and rating are all secondary. Your primary focus is on the big tactical game and working as a team and coordinated action. And if you focus on those things, all the other stuff just comes along as part of the deal. PowerPlay played right is its own reward - making friends and influencing people (with lasers). Nobody should have to bribe you with credits to play it - that's not the point, but sure here have some credits whatever.

The problem comes when all your planning fails, when you're not going to manage to win, and there's a simpler more seductive path to victory. Drop into Solo. It's not as fun, but you're more likely to win. Do you take it? Well that depends how badly you're losing and how much you want to Win At All Costs versus Have Fun Trying. Some people are weak, and they take that easy option, and then the amount of fun drops for everyone - including those who chicken out. This proposal is just trying to turn off that easy path, so everyone can have fun, even when they're not winning.

If you're still hung up on credits and modules and ships and wanting Elite to hand you a reward for playing it in the form of currency, then you're doing PowerPlay wrong. Hell, you're doing Elite wrong. Come to one of the Powers' Discord servers and find out the right way to play it. The victory in PowerPlay is the friends you made along the way. I'm totally serious.

im completely in agreement. except I dont recall anyone saying 'dying is scary' ; more sort of 'inconvenient & unwanted'. which is where we're all in agreement. dying is inconvenient and rarely (but sometimes) the end-goal of an ED session. there are more ways & likelihood of coming across inconvenience & death in Open which is exactly why so many want mode separation in Powerplay in the first place.

As for your whining that people go to solo when you gank them until they stop enjoying open?

I don't think you understand anything at all about PowerPlay. Not one single thing. I guess that's why you don't play it. In which case why are you even replying?

Sounds like the sort of personal attack someone who has no actual defense would say.

Yeah. its also the kind of thing someone says when they cant even begin to bridge the knowledge gap between what you presume, and what they know to actually be the case.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Maybe recognise that the health of the game feature relies on the functioning communities that support it, and rather than insisting that the feature itself be compromised at the expense of that health, suggest a compromise that you as a powerplayer could live with and wouldn't cause this grave loss-out of which you speak.

The game feature would continue to exist, as it did at the very beginning before player groups formed around it. Those player groups formed around a feature that does not require PvP, even though they now seem to seek to change that. It might be more constructive for all players if those groups attempted to seek a compromise proposal within themselves that didn't involve actively excluding players based on their preferred play-style (or lack of preference for an optional play-style).

For instance inhibiting the mid-week mode switching that occurs when players who are happy to enjoy the open playstyle when they are winning, switch to invisible modes to ensure that they do, in an unsportsmanlike way.

While playing in Solo and Private groups is quite often referred to as playing in an "unsportsmanlike way" or even "cheating" (by some players), mode switching at will has been a part of the game for longer than Powerplay - about as long as the ability for all players to affect game features from any game mode. Frontier have made clear their stance, i.e. that all game modes are equal and valid choices, a number of times now.

There seems to be some confusion regarding where Powerplayers actually play - with insistence from some groups that all of their Powerplay is done in Open with no admission by those who are assumed to play in a manner that gains disapproval from those who would prefer that Powerplay would be PvP-gated.

This costs them in my view more than the credits for a rebuy or the trauma of dying (well, respawning slightly poorer) in a game. If you care about the feature and the game, ergo its players, constructive input please.

What cost is referred to here?

If knowing where merits were handed in is so important to player groups that have formed to support Powers, why not request that an optional pledge tier be introduced for those players who only want their merits to be counted towards Powerplay if sourced, transferred, and delivered in Open and have that badge visible on the CMDR information panel and a tally of badged participants and their associated merit totals available for all to view in the Powerplay summary display? If a CMDR signed up to the optional pledge tier was carrying merits gained in Open and started a Solo or Private Group session then the badge would be lost and the CMDR might not be able to re-badge for a period of time. It would not change the game for anyone - just the meta-game.

 

[Rubbernuke]

You're making the ridiculous assumption that everyone who wants to play Powerplay wants to be slung up to massive wealth/have their experience stolen from them by getting the best tactics from experienced players.

That's a terrible way to play a game as diverse as Elite. Probably the worst possible way to play Elite.

Besides which, if someone doesn't want to engage you in pvp, you're not going to force them to engage in pvp. All you're going to achieve is driving them out of powerplay entirely. And that means forcing out the vast majority of players. Do you want powerplay to become as dead as CQC? Because that's what you'll get.

Sorry dude, but this suggestion is, and always will be, absolutely terrible.

As for your whining that people go to solo when you gank them until they stop enjoying open?

Get over it.

Ridiculous.

One minute credits are important

we help each other get wealthy

Credits are evil

Learning is evil

Teamplay is evil as well. All of this totally against Elites ethos.

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

What cost is referred to here?

Cost of a depriving themselves of the fair, competitive victory they subscribed to at the start of the week, and possibility of the slow decay of the meta gane they are committed to as disillusioned players undergo natural wastage.

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

If knowing where merits were handed in is so important to player groups that have formed to support Powers, why not request that an optional pledge tier be introduced for those players who only want their merits to be counted towards Powerplay if sourced, transferred, and delivered in Open and have that badge visible on the CMDR information panel and a tally of badged participants and their associated merit totals available for all to view in the Powerplay summary display? If a CMDR signed up to the optional pledge tier was carrying merits gained in Open and started a Solo or Private Group session then the badge would be lost and the CMDR might not be able to re-badge for a period of time. It would not change the game for anyone - just the meta-game.

Solo/pg shaming of individual powers - I like it! XD
But it probably won't work, some groups are content with a higher degree of "grubbiness" in their victories. It would serve to hollow them out slightly, though. And impart the appropriate sense of moral superiority to others!

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

What I don't like though is that it might stratify powers by playstyle and further frustrate peoples' sense of fair play.

I.e. one power has all the solo players, another all the open players, approximately. Interesting experiment though.

 

[Darkfyre99]

It's a fair point ive passed on to my comrades. War was never officially declared, we just came under defacto siege. An act which will live in infamy... If we ever start actually talking/whinging about it publically, anyway. Might be about time we did xD

Thank you kindly. If I have a false impression of the PvP-combat side of things, it may be because I never read about such goings on. Back before ALD disappeared behind Discord*, the general impression I got was that it rarely happened, mostly because everyone (but us, of course. We didn't behave like the dishonorable Federalists!) were hiding behind Solo/PG. It also feels like that the only massive PvP battle that ever happened was the one that happened in Mb-whatever.
__
* Which I didn't bother joining, because I prefer forums like this one. At the time, I had a good source of information for my BGS activities, and currently I'm exploring until Frontier adds Powerplay missions... assuming they do anything with this, of course.

 

[Robert Maynard]

What I don't like though is that it might stratify powers by playstyle and further frustrate peoples' sense of fair play.

What constitutes "fair play" in a game where PvP is entirely optional is a matter of opinion, noting that the complaints from some Powerplayers are no different from those of some players who engage in Faction related BGS activity with regard to players in Solo and Private Groups affecting "their" game.

 

[Rubbernuke]

What constitutes "fair play" in a game where PvP is entirely optional is a matter of opinion, noting that the complaints from some Powerplayers are no different from those of some players who engage in Faction related BGS activity with regard to players in Solo and Private Groups affecting "their" game.

Its the opposition that counts- in solo you have the (low) chance of NPCs having a go. In Open you have the chance (depending on factors) of seeing an angry opponent who is far more dangerous than any NPC. Is it fair one chanced it in Open, while the other did not?

 

[Robert Maynard]

Its the opposition that counts- in solo you have the (low) chance of NPCs having a go. In Open you have the chance (depending on factors) of seeing an angry opponent who is far more dangerous than any NPC. Is it fair one chanced it in Open, while the other did not?

Given that PvP is an optional extra in this game for those so inclined to engage in but is not required to participate in any game feature, yes, in my opinion.

No-one is forced to engage in PvP in this game (apart from CQC) to participate in any game feature - that some choose to is, of course, up to them. They are not in a position to enforce their personal play-style preference on other players though.

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

What constitutes "fair play" in a game where PvP is entirely optional is a matter of opinion, noting that the complaints from some Powerplayers are no different from those of some players who engage in Faction related BGS activity with regard to players in Solo and Private Groups affecting "their" game.

What I'm saying is that it might exacerbate current complaints.

 

[cmdr Ramius007]

Besides which, if someone doesn't want to engage you in pvp, you're not going to force them to engage in pvp. All you're going to achieve is driving them out of powerplay entirely. And that means forcing out the vast majority of players. Do you want powerplay to become as dead as CQC? Because that's what you'll get.

If you are not doing power play in open, it's actully better fo orgenized power groups that you stop doing anything in power play, you may not like it, but it's like this, some random values in excel you provide is not content for other players, sorry mate.