They could have tried one of the Mac game specialists, but I imagine with so few Mac players it was easier to simply stop it- just like 32bit.
PLEASE MAKE POWERPLAY IN "OPEN ONLY"
- Thread starter CMDR KOBAL
- Start date
They could have tried one of the Mac game specialists, but I imagine with so few Mac players it was easier to simply stop it- just like 32bit.
True, but it keeps coming up, each year, every year. Over and over. And PP has little impact on the shared galaxy, its practically a layer apart.
Well all I can say to that is, see them next year. Again.
Lestat
Banned
Maybe what you should do is go back on the older topics and READ them when Frontier talked about Mac Not supporting OpenGL and why Frontier had to drop Mac users. Note there a Lot of Mac users most of them are using Wine program so they could continue to play the game.
When Adam says the words Powerplay and discusses it openly (excuse the pun) then I'll simply stop championing it if they discount it. Until then I'll keep on extolling its virtues hoping FD actually make long needed changes.
I know about FD trying to use other methods like Open CL for terrain, but in the end why did they stop the working Mac client altogether? Porting the core game over to Metal (which for the core game would surely be easy, unless it was not worth it). If a large % of ED owners don't have Horizons, surely a Mac client could have been supported longer?
I think you do not actually have a good grasp of the technical issues in play - the fact you (seem to) think it would be realistic to maintain 32-bit support in modern games just highlights that.
It is just a re-iteration of the modes debate in a different form. Nothing new, and nothing that IMO has any validity behind it.
It has an impact - which PP faction has influence affects the universe state for everyone operating in a given region to one degree or another, you can try to claim otherwise but you would be being fallacious in the process.
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Powerplay, when initially introduced, always seemed to me some kind of simulation of galactic politics, an attempt to recreate BGS "play" at the national and galactic level, as opposed to being about territorial conquest. Yes, there are certainly Powers who ethos are combat oriented, and yes Powers did control territory, but we’ve also got a mega-Corp, a cult, and Kim Kardashian’s blue-haired clone thrown into the mix as well. A game of territorial conquest would, at least in my opinion, involve a lot more combat, defending and attacking positions.
YMMV
At any rate, it is what it is, and unless Frontier decides to fix the systemic problems of Powerplay, things won't be changing much... at least until the Powerplay community reaches a critical shortage of players.
Regardless of intent, that was the rule- 'popularity' was abstracted to population exploited by your power and you had to expand each turn as I explained. Plus, every power undermines by combat, attempting to destabilise these systems enough so they drop away- so on the surface there are differences, but when it comes to making your opponent fail they are the same.
After we found out that part was missing PP simply degenerated into what we have now, and although well meaning the addition of consolidation has made the galaxy far too stable.
What I am more interested in was that there were a small percentage of people (I think it was 2%) who still used the 32bit client and were told to contact FD when it was phased out- so when that was cut people lost out as well. So again, games change as time goes on. Why was it that FD did not start with 64bit to begin with?
Except its FD soul searching while features fail because they are trying to square the circle. Sometimes a square has to be a square.
And as I keep saying, these changes are minimal at best, credit inflation and void opal mining has drowned out all passives. Plus, if you don't actually play the feature whats the difference anyway? If you are not guiding any power you are still a passenger. If the majority of EDs players don't play Powerplay, locking PP to Open won't make any difference.
At the time of ED's release, 32-bit OSs were still quite common but were effectively on the way out from mainstream use, thus "at the time" it made sense to support 32-bit where possible. FD are not either the first or only developer to do this (start with support for 32-bit then drop it at some point after release) and realistically speaking there was always going to be a point where the 32-bit runtime environment was not going to cut the technical mustard any more for a variety of reasons.
Nope - just because some in the community can not except FD's commitment to all modes being equal does not make Open mode bias/exclusivity inevitable for any given feature. Sure, if a quorum of CMDRs scream loud enough for long enough about any given feature, FD will probably start an investigation at some point but that does been and gone. General improvements to PP are almost certainly inevitable eventually but Open bias/exclusivity is probably just wishful thinking on the part of those asking for it.
In at least some cases, PP affects NPC spawns and/or what is considered illegal goods. Whether the changes as a whole are insignificant in your mind is irrelevant, they are still there - it does not matter how minimal it may seem to you personally.
But they canned it, i.e. things that were, no longer are here. Just as Mac owners were dropped, so were they because circumstances changed.
I want Powerplay to have a giant overhaul, with all modes balanced by actually designing PP properly- I wait every day for FD to say this (and myself plus many others have suggested ways to do this for years). I hope that with 2020 we might see some rethink, but by then it might be too late with the communities simply ceasing to be that sprang up around it.
However nearly every FD post that offers to improve Powerplay so far is either weighted or open (its been said exactly four times- two open only, two weighted merits). At this time of writing its all thats on the table to drastically change PP- it may be all that FD are willing to change. Despite everything else fitting the modes well, Powerplay as it is now simply does not. If a grand redesign is out, and you don't have a way to give Powerplay something new, you are still left with a failed feature even with 70% of the changes (omitting those that are built around the open clause, fort direction, 100% + UM, Open itself).
Well, I hardly notice them. I am Kumo pledged and I do a lot of BGS work. Security is supposed to be halved, but as far as response times are concerned they are exactly the same with the same sets of ships responding, with ATR appearing exactly the same in all sec levels. Plus you seem to have ignored the point that if you don't play Powerplay, then what mode you play in elsewhere is meaningless. These people simply accept the differences they might perceive and don't care. When you can make a billion credits in a week what difference does 15% do for purchases? If FD cranked up the perks to fit the rest of the game then I'd agree with you wholeheartedly.
Not the same thing - dropping support for both the Mac and 32-bit were for "technical" and "practical" reasons but in BOTH cases the relevant customers did not completely loose support for the product since they still have the right to run other versions of the product which have exactly the same features and gameplay. A more comparable situation to the dropping of Mac/32-bit support would be if they dropped support for deprecated and unsupported versions of the Microsoft OS as some point in the future.
Changing the product to either remove or bias any given existing gameplay options based on mode choice is not even close to being comparable to dropping Mac/32-bit support.
WRT specific changes to PP, FD have just investigated options and discussed them - some of those options were requested by segments of the community, others not, but they have made it crystal clear it was all just discussion with no guarantees. There are other cases of potential changes being discussed and then FD doing either something completely different or nothing at all, what you are trying to peddle as inevitable is more like wishful thinking.
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Thats if they chose to- PC and Mac are interchangeable licenses, but some might not ant to buy a PC, buy Windows for Bootcamp etc. Some someone will get caught up inevitably lose out. Its best for the game as FD saw it, so they made that choice and some people were left out. And if your machine is archaic and has to run the 32bit version to cope, then you need to upgrade, some might or can't. In the end someone lost out because FD made a business decision to make managing FD going forwards easier.
With Powerplay (on PC at least) you are not losing Powerplay, you are just choosing not to play it since Open is still in your options. Console owners do have a case, but again only FD know the amount of people on PS4 / XB with subs who play the feature- and that weighting does not 'remove' Powerplay at all.
It might be that FD just remove Powerplay- 'amicable' as Maynard put it because the issues around modes is intractable and would cost too much to rectify. What I fear is that FD just take the lazy option and just keep it in but not bother with it at all.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Four?
From memory, we had Sandro's "hand grenade" (weighting) in March'16; Flash Topic 1 (Open only) in May'18 quickly followed by Flash Topic 2 in May'18 with the fallback to the March'16 weighting.
When was the second Open only post?
You still don't get it - the technical issues involved with trying to support those options were either intractable or at least impractical. You seem to think it was purely a business decision but as I understand it there was much more to it than that in both the Mac/32-bit cases. Ultimately, the business impact to FD is that they would notionally be compelled to (but not necessarily legally obligated to) offer some form of real world compensation to those that for what ever reason lost support for the environments they have access to.
Ultimately, that particular side discussion is moot and irrelevant to the matter at hand - there are no technical nor practical reasons to justify the proposal being addressed by this thread.
False - the Open only/Open bias proposal(s) is adding an arguably unreasonable and unjustifiable restriction to EXISTING gameplay.
The situation could be addressed by a two fold approach:-
- Universal updates to PP that is common across ALL modes
- Add a new PP-like gameplay option that is based around squadrons (for example) but has no effect on the single shared universe state and is completely optional on at least a per squadron (if not per player) basis that may or may not be tied to Open or some form of common look-aside environment.
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That was the private one. So from memory we had (overall) for PP- the x10 trigger increase (in game), overhead curve tweak (in game), consolidation(in game), Powerplay map improvements (i.e. they showed actual values and not the misleading ones that confused everyone), turmoil mechanics proposal, weighted merits proposal (1 + 2), Powerplay update (internal) around Open, and Powerplay update proposal 2 with Open. We also had one power (Grom) uprated in the Rise to Power.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
So four from one perspective, two from another, i.e. March'16 weighted and May'18 Open only with a fallback to weighted as less contentious (possibly) option.
The fact that the weighted merit proposal re-surfaced would suggest that Open only was perceived by Frontier to be too contentious - not that the weighted proposal was not contentious (and basically shelved) by December'16 (when Sandro answered my question on the hand grenade in a livestream).
Options removed due to technical issues > some players filtered
Powerplay excluded from being in all modes > some players filtered
The outcome is the same, some players through choice exclude themselves. Its up to FD to balance if the excluded outweigh the players the changes include.
It is reasonable and justifiable, over the last 30 pages I've laid it out, and on paper it would be night and day compared to what Powerplay is now. Yes it is contentious, but its the only choice FD have given us, and they've done variations of that same choice four times over.
The bottom line is Powerplay is dull played in Solo, breaks part of PP in PG and given the options FD have Open seems to solve more than it breaks.
Alternatively a good way to start would be to change PP CZs to the new style, which would solve AFK turretboats. But they remain the same old rebadged CZs. But that does not make Powerplay any better to play overall. Unless FD change the fortifying / prep loop its still unopposed A to B hauling. But that would take much more investment, which FD won't do, so we are stuck with what we have.
The state Powerplay is in speaks volumes- unless FD make NPCs much tougher and responsive (and different) in Solo with more things to do then players will have to take that role in being effective opponents to create dynamism, hence why Open is an attractive, imperfect, alternative. In addition FD see that people in open take more risks, so they want to reward them for taking that risk (hence weighting). Someone hoarding merits could change the outcome of a prep / expansion battle, but in a typical ship are immune to any PP NPC, surely that needs recognition?
Well its a cyclical problem FD keep returning to- as opposed to no change weighted seems the best compromise out of it all other than outright removal.