What do you think we're building here?
A wishful thinking thread of the millennium.
Incrementally Improving PowerPlay - Make PowerPlay Open-Only
- Thread starter CMDR Foursyth
- Start date
A wishful thinking thread of the millennium.
There's a few methods I see to this. Probably the plainest solution is to allow players to continue to earn merits in Solo/Private Group, but these merits to have no effect on the global Powerplay. In short, allowing only for personal gain, and requiring the global game, preparation, expansion, and fortifying, only being contributed to by activities conducted in Open Play. This could even be healthier for some powers, as it gives a clear path to shortcut getting access to modules without potentially sabotaging that power.
Pad blocking would need to be dealt with separately, as I feel it a general issue
Pad blocking would need to be dealt with separately, as I feel it a general issue
You really dont understand that there always will be open only groups that lose efficiency vs solo/pg only players and this favour in unfair way solo/pg players becouse of efficiency? Nobody would care what you are doing as long as we had parallel PP galaxies, 1 for open and 1 solo, this would be fair as diffrently minded players would play against people who play in similar way, else without open only or at least HUGE merit bonuses to open, current system is both not fun and very unfair, as it gives extra privilages to players who are usually less skilled and less devoted.
The other thought I had was about quotas: could you have a cap on merits delivered in the modes?
So, you'd have 50% available in solo and 50% in open (after which they count as personal merits only).
So, you'd have 50% available in solo and 50% in open (after which they count as personal merits only).
However, I would say that's a lot more development work rather than having the 'Preperation' task available to all modes and 'Expansion' and 'Control' tasks in Open Only.
It depends how PP is structured code wise. As long as what mode you are in is recorded at the time of redemption it would be quite simple as to check mode, UI total for each mode and adding it. UI wise it would be a simple bar split.
Simply put, we don't need them! They're not beating us on the solo level! We're on the podium for Powerplay squadrons with every single merit earned in Open because we ran into Fed resistance working on objectives, honed our interdiction evasion strategies and fighting skills, and pushed through. Last big objective, our squad alone hauled about 13% of the total tonnage for an expansion attempt that totalled 1.9 million merits, pushing through that blockade every step of the way. It came down to around 200k between us and victory, and because we work in Open, part of that gap can absolutely be attributed to the impact of the Federal blockade.
I led with talking about what changes I'd like to see in the game mode, but there are things that we can do today to help improve the experience. I'm doing my best to improve the culture surrounding the issue of Powerplay in PGs to try and get more people to realize both that the Feds are putting a lot of work in and it's disrespectful to bypass that using instancing, and that with the right moves and some cooperation you can get a wing of shieldless T9s full of cargo past two whole blockading wings over and over again. Powerplay in Open, even just the hauling objectives, is extremely fun! Half the work is done for us! We can work toward a cultural change among the Powerplay community where when people talk about doing tasks in PG or hiding in Solo after taking a rebuy, they can expect to get told that isn't the way to play. We'll never reach everyone, but just like during our expansion attempt foiled by Federal blockade, we don't need to. Even if only 20-30% of Powerplay merits are earned in Open, that is more than enough for activity in Open to make the difference between victory or defeat in a cycle!
PowerPlay's in need of a true power structure for each faction; defined and formed by the players themselves.
Think an elected council, and a council-elected leader - who lay down the rules for each week of PowerPlay.
What we have today is essentially Anarchism. Anyone can join, and piddle around with the mechanics on their chaotic own, to the detriment of the group.
With a formal power structure in the game you have a council or leader that will decide IF things can be prepped, what can be prepped, what the priority lists are for fortification, what the prios are for undermining.
All this command-and-control already exists, but it's outside of the game. Hidden. On an obscure subreddit, or trello, or discord.
It needs to be brought into the game and formalized. Then give these leaders the option to decide if it's going to be authoritarian (you can only prep this system) or anarchistic (no limits) or something inbetween.
When PP was introduced, we didn't have avatars. Now we do; you can trivially display mugshots of the players on a council, which councilor was denoted Leader by the council, etc.
Give the playerbase the proper tools to leader/herd/manage their faction (just see the subreddits/trellos/discords for inspiration on what to offer and how to present it) and see if things improve.
Think an elected council, and a council-elected leader - who lay down the rules for each week of PowerPlay.
What we have today is essentially Anarchism. Anyone can join, and piddle around with the mechanics on their chaotic own, to the detriment of the group.
With a formal power structure in the game you have a council or leader that will decide IF things can be prepped, what can be prepped, what the priority lists are for fortification, what the prios are for undermining.
All this command-and-control already exists, but it's outside of the game. Hidden. On an obscure subreddit, or trello, or discord.
It needs to be brought into the game and formalized. Then give these leaders the option to decide if it's going to be authoritarian (you can only prep this system) or anarchistic (no limits) or something inbetween.
When PP was introduced, we didn't have avatars. Now we do; you can trivially display mugshots of the players on a council, which councilor was denoted Leader by the council, etc.
Give the playerbase the proper tools to leader/herd/manage their faction (just see the subreddits/trellos/discords for inspiration on what to offer and how to present it) and see if things improve.
Oh, I don't doubt it's fun, but it's be nice if the achievement were more recognized, rather than be merely a badge of honor as it is now.
FWIW again in the hope that FDEV will listen and finally change their game for the better acknowledging legitimate concerns from players who have no wish to grief, just to play PP how David Braben once envisaged! Make PP open only, reduce the rampant blocking in open to comms only so instancing has a chance of working.
bit new but what if merits were for open only and reputation was for solo and privet groups? would it not be more meaningful for each side to have its separate but just as important role in the power play? you could have it work quite well in the sake of saying if you are open you earn merits for the good of your faction, However without the influence or reputation to balance it out, Your faction will need to have some kind of influence over other factions. it would greater harmonize both spectrums of play because even though open and the other instances of play do not always see each other, BUT you could all work together for the greater cause of your faction?
No it wouldn't, people who want to play in open already do, people who want to play in solo for various reasons will still play in solo, they just won't bother with PP.
Powerplay as it stands now, needs to be scrapped and completely redone. Make it another proper layer of the BGS and have them intertwined with factions. Pushing an aligned faction will help your power etc. Doing certain missions for an aligned faction will grant bonuses to the faction. Get that faction in control of the system and it becomes easier to handle.
Have the powers make major changes to the places they have influence in, like Archone Delaine makes every system he has influence in an anarchy, have the powers make sweeping changes to the BGS depending on what they stand for and this will give a reason for people to get involved in it. Create more powers for the alliance instead of the one and a few more criminal ones and it's all set.
Make it PvE with optional PvP like the BGS is and we can scrap all this open only rubbish for good.
Have the powers make major changes to the places they have influence in, like Archone Delaine makes every system he has influence in an anarchy, have the powers make sweeping changes to the BGS depending on what they stand for and this will give a reason for people to get involved in it. Create more powers for the alliance instead of the one and a few more criminal ones and it's all set.
Make it PvE with optional PvP like the BGS is and we can scrap all this open only rubbish for good.
That's it, that's all we want!!!
ok...how about..just no.
This forum has been on the go for many years. All topics have been covered. If we only discussed new things then it would be a very quiet forum indeed. New people are coming to the forum all the time. If your argument is text only then why not just copy and paste it here instead of expecting the new forumites to go trailing through all the threads?
I'm sure Frontier has got enough space on their servers for a bit of duplicated text
The question isn’t how much of the PP community support the suggestion but how much of the player base support the suggestion or at least how much of the player base actually do PP for any reason other than the toys.
Personally I am against open only for anything because console players have to pay their service provider for multiplayer activities, if the console providers dropped that source of income I might be interested in why some people want to restrict gaming options.
I would disagree with that. After playing if for the last year, I've found it to be quite an exciting game mode but (like things like CQC, Multi-crew and C&P ) it just needs s small push to make it more engaging. I have some tips for the present game mode and what is needed for the future and (to be honest, it's not that much).
- The most important thing to join one of the organised group. Powerplay doesn't really work as a single player experience, it can be boring and grindy in this mode and this is where it gets it's bad reputation.
- When you are transporting powerplay goods, you have to get into the mindset of a Smuggler or 'Blockade Runner'. Your objective is not to win any interdictions or fights against enemy ships, you objective is to escape and deliver the goods. If you're in an organised group, ask for help from other players to escort you. The most fun I've had is when there are a team of enemy players in a control system and so a wing of one blockade runner and player wingmen make a run for the control system.
- You have to remember that Powerplay is a 'Secret War' which happens behind the scenes.
- Everything in Sandro's proposal be implemented apart from the open only part. It would really help counter the C5 problem.
- In game tools to help players within the same power communicate would be really helpful.
- Small powerplay rewards can be earned by running missions for the controlling faction in a Power Control system.
- Frontier to take action against Automated Players (Bots).
- When making preparation and control runs, more NPC interdictions if there arn't any enemy players in system. This is to enforce the smuggler/ blockade runner.
- Make the Powerplay Modules available behind the tech broker with an equivalent time requirement to powerplay (Module shoppers do distort the BPPS).
- Only people pledged to a power get the daily powerplay updates via galnet, and even then only for their power.
- Players that play in open only have greater rewards and influence within the BPPS.
- The BPPS requirements for preparation, control and expansion is raised so that, in conjunction with point 5, open only players have a stronger influence over the BPPS.
*BPPS - Background Power Play Simulation - Powerplay's equivalent to the BGS.
We all have our preferences and opinions which are valid. I'm not interested in PvP, so would much prefer a more PvE experience, like the BGS. And having the BGS and powerplay intertwined could really make the bubble come alive and be more interesting in general. But thats just my subjective opinion.