Power Play 2.0 Merits Progression Feedback

[Revelation_jeff]

I finally got a few days to start powerplay and while I enjoy the premise here, the merit progression has been nerfed back into the old days of engineering again. F-dev fixed the pace of engineering mats gathering to now make the same mistake as before with merit nerfing and an imbalanced pace of merit progression. Merits per action are too small, slow and not meaningful enough to get excited about doing activities to me. The artificial caps on rare trading goods and undermining commodities is both unrealistic and NOT fun. It's an unrealistic cap to force repeat trips on the player for simple basic goods I should be able to fill my cargo racks with.

The design by nature renders the trade role of having large ships with ample cargo racks meaningless. What's the point of the Type 8 or Type 9 when each rare good has such a tiny supply limit forcing us to drive all over which completely defies the logic of the rest of the trade game loop else where. It's stupid.

I'm already getting bored of it because I now see the grind and lack of interesting rewards at a pace that modivates player engagement. So for now my interest has greatly decreased to particpate from a high original exicement.

• Increase merit payouts per activies
• Increase the cap of rare supplies to be more realistic with our larger cargo ships.

That's my initital feedback from the first few days.

 

[zimms]

Regardless of current merit "payout", what would differentiate rare commodities from regular commodities, if they were available in the same quantities? (Other than the bonus payout, depending on distance.)

I think rare commodity quantities are an unrelated topic to what you actually want - higher merit payout.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Regardless of current merit "payout", what would differentiate rare commodities from regular commodities, if they were available in the same quantities? (Other than the bonus payout, depending on distance.)

I think rare commodity quantities are an unrelated topic to what you actually want - higher merit payout.

Agreed - there are plenty of bulk cargo activities available in various systems (flood market with low-value goods; sell for large profits; sell mined goods [1]; haul Power commodities [2])

The disparity between those actions and rares trading is a problem and Frontier should definitely rebalance it one way or the other. That rares trading isn't a job for a bulk freighter is not a problem.

[1] When it works.
[2] At higher ranks when you've got the allocation, or as a supplement to one of the other bulk cargo tasks

 

[Ashnak]

Get organized. Groups like the Hutton Truckers have devised ways to fill up a carrier with rares in a matter of hours.

As I understand it, higher level PP 2.0 is s group activity, so there should be a few incentives to get a group together and organize their activities.

 

[Revelation_jeff]

Regardless of current merit "payout", what would differentiate rare commodities from regular commodities, if they were available in the same quantities? (Other than the bonus payout, depending on distance.)

I think rare commodity quantities are an unrelated topic to what you actually want - higher merit payout.

Right I understand what you're saying. Merit payout & Rank progression being too slow and imbalanced for interest lvl is the key concern. Obviously rare commodities should be rare to differentiate them from normals. I was pointing it out as it was recently nerfed even further than it was just days ago which is just a bit frustrating.

 

[zimms]

Right I understand what you're saying. Merit payout & Rank progression being too slow and imbalanced for interest lvl is the key concern. Obviously rare commodities should be rare to differentiate them from normals. I was pointing it out as it was recently nerfed even further than it was just days ago which is just a bit frustrating.

I understand that at the end of the day, this feels like a nerf. But to me personally, that's just getting rid of some outliers. I don't know why some of these would let people get 128t at once. Or maybe that's just me being used to not expect to get more than 4-10t.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I understand that at the end of the day, this feels like a nerf. But to me personally, that's just getting rid of some outliers. I don't know why some of these would let people get 128t at once. Or maybe that's just me being used to not expect to get more than 4-10t.

They've always had a spread of allocation sizes, but 128t did seem bizarrely large. Mid-double figures, sure, plenty of those.

(Rares, I suspect, are just unbalanceable between "using a carrier" and "not using a carrier" methods of transport - certainly Rares CGs saw the biggest jump over their historic figures comparing pre-FC and post-FC tonnages - which is probably going to end at best with them requiring a FC to be competitive with other routes)

 

[Therinfluffs]

The thing keeping me from touching PP2.0 is that they said to 'just play the game' to earn merits and every reasonable method of earning enough merits to achieve anything in my lifetime involves limiting myself to my powers' systems and hard grinding my face into a wall for 5-6 hours daily to get a 10% bonus to selling organic data or slaves or something within said small number of systems in under a week.

If you aren't really interested in the modules there isn't much purpose to Powerplay in the first place, the passive rewards being restricted to only power systems is still not worth being harassed by npcs, even in solo play either. We should get more for sacrificing the ability to peacefully traverse the entirety of the bubble, regardless of how terrible said NPC's are.

Each power should have some sort of global benefit tied to them other than free buybacks for dieing to awful npcs and the occasional pvp encounter in exchange for restricting our gameplay so much.

 

[Gabriel H]

FDev in effect raised the level cap, and as incentive threw in extra rewards for reaching the new cap. To get to the cap, you have to grind - just like in every game. Is the level of grind acceptable? Depends what you are comparing it to.

 

[Sneake Llama]

Wholeheartedly agree. Merits per activity need increased. It's not fun to work hard and not see the bar move. It's very deflating. No one wants wars of attrition over months instead of weeks.

 

[Scienti5t]

Why not just 'weeks active'?

With some minimum merit to count as an active week.

 

[Therinfluffs]

FDev in effect raised the level cap, and as incentive threw in extra rewards for reaching the new cap. To get to the cap, you have to grind - just like in every game. Is the level of grind acceptable? Depends what you are comparing it to.

People need to grind around 80 weeks to get to what they had before if they just follow traditional powerplay mechanics instead of grinding rare goods. That's not even a level cap increase, that's being forcibly reset and then told to do it over for nothing. None of the passive rewards have increased either so there's no extra rewards other than modules that are ONLY useful for combat and only combat.

Explorers/traders/miners, any non combat profession gets nothing out of the new ranks added.

 

[Hibiki54]

I have been doing a significant amount of my PP2.0 time doing on-foot Undermining.

The game play is fun. The credits earned doesn't mean anything to me because I also do AX. But the merit gains suck.

For the amount of time and effort it takes to sneak into a settlement, turn off the alarm and murder everyone in the base, 3-4 minutes to download/upload data per data port, find and collect Power Play Goods from lockers, you will probably only end up with around 500 merits for 1 settlement that takes 20 minutes to complete. And if you throw in bounties gained, notoriety and wanted status from committing murder at non-anarchy bases, its better to haul rares than do this.

 

[Purged]

I finally got a few days to start powerplay and while I enjoy the premise here, the merit progression has been nerfed back into the old days of engineering again. F-dev fixed the pace of engineering mats gathering to now make the same mistake as before with merit nerfing and an imbalanced pace of merit progression. Merits per action are too small, slow and not meaningful enough to get excited about doing activities to me. The artificial caps on rare trading goods and undermining commodities is both unrealistic and NOT fun. It's an unrealistic cap to force repeat trips on the player for simple basic goods I should be able to fill my cargo racks with.

The design by nature renders the trade role of having large ships with ample cargo racks meaningless. What's the point of the Type 8 or Type 9 when each rare good has such a tiny supply limit forcing us to drive all over which completely defies the logic of the rest of the trade game loop else where. It's stupid.

I'm already getting bored of it because I now see the grind and lack of interesting rewards at a pace that modivates player engagement. So for now my interest has greatly decreased to particpate from a high original exicement.

• Increase merit payouts per activies
• Increase the cap of rare supplies to be more realistic with our larger cargo ships.

That's my initital feedback from the first few days.

Yeah I quit it after rank 8, Tried everything and got no Merits all night. Back to Lawless now

 

[Rebel Yell]

• Increase merit payouts per activies

Redacted by Archon Delaine:

Increase merit payouts per COMBAT activities DONE IN OPEN.

We'd have also other suggestions (i.e. regarding crimes, smuggling, etc) but then we have a statement regarding merit progression (don't get me wrong): Powerplay 2.0 is not going to be a fast food service, the framework has been designed for engage CMDRs someway on a longer and much more articulated path. Rushing after merits, which is a one-way grind (the most common method used is rare commodity trading, as OP said) couldn't result obviously in a totally positive gameplay explerience... but again, that's up to the single CMDR to decide what suits best for her/his progression.

 

[Revelation_jeff]

Redacted by Archon Delaine:

Increase merit payouts per COMBAT activities DONE IN OPEN.

We'd have also other suggestions (i.e. regarding crimes, smuggling, etc) but then we have a statement regarding merit progression (don't get me wrong): Powerplay 2.0 is not going to be a fast food service, the framework has been designed for engage CMDRs someway on a longer and much more articulated path. Rushing after merits, which is a one-way grind (the most common method used is rare commodity trading, as OP said) couldn't result obviously in a totally positive gameplay explerience... but again, that's up to the single CMDR to decide what suits best for her/his progression.

I would be interested in some type of higher merit payout IF done in Open play as another layer to incentive it. But for now it holds no benefit other than being attacked while not being able to fight back in most cases so not really worth the risk.

 

[Gabriel H]

People need to grind around 80 weeks to get to what they had before if they just follow traditional powerplay mechanics instead of grinding rare goods.

FDev have already said they are re-balancing the numbers. I honestly don't know where this "80 weeks" is coming from, as it would suggest that someone playing, lets say 2 hours a day, 5 days a week, would only be earning 300 credits an hour. From the data I have seen, you can get 225 merits just from one megaship datalink scan.

Explorers/traders/miners, any non combat profession gets nothing out of the new ranks added.

You mean other than being able to earn credits without deviating from exploring/trading/mining etc? Plus each power has perks for specific jobs, these perks increase as you rank up. A trader pledged to Mahon for example, will see increased bonuses on sales as they increase in rank.

Test Server Data Showing Rank Rewards

 

[Elpapo]

I have been doing a significant amount of my PP2.0 time doing on-foot Undermining.

The game play is fun. The credits earned doesn't mean anything to me because I also do AX. But the merit gains suck.

For the amount of time and effort it takes to sneak into a settlement, turn off the alarm and murder everyone in the base, 3-4 minutes to download/upload data per data port, find and collect Power Play Goods from lockers, you will probably only end up with around 500 merits for 1 settlement that takes 20 minutes to complete. And if you throw in bounties gained, notoriety and wanted status from committing murder at non-anarchy bases, its better to haul rares than do this.

It is still one of fastest methods for either kaine or mahon cmdrs due they cant really take advantage of local rares...

1 settlement for 20 mins? 3-4 mins per data port? If not anarchy, then it might take that long... but thats why is better to only focus on anarchy settlements, since there is no notoriety gained, thus killing anyone along path does not affect rep either, and overall makes that grind much faster.

5 data ports(upload+download) in specific layout anarchy settlement takes for me about 13 mins to complete with bunch of power goods colllected while at it.
But I am also used to "Speedruning" settlements, from time when I was grinding G5 gear, so its probly why I quite efficent at it... merits gain per run is more or less 500.
I even consider to skip malware upload, as this alone means shaving whole 5 mins spend in each per run... and only focus on power goods and data download.



Mining (deep core mining in my case) in other hand (to gain merits from mining, it must be sold in very same system where it was mined!), yields about 400+ merits per rock pop... so its bit too much luck based for my taste, since sometimes one can get lots of core asteroids found within one hour, sometimes not. But about 200T of minined cargo does gives 3-4k merits as well, depending on price where it is sold... but for me to mine such 200T it takes 2-3 hours for me, and again, its much of luck based, whenever I can find many as deep core deposits within short amount of time.


Lastly, rare running.... for most of non-alliance powers, it is way easier for them due of rares cluster in old worlds systems, but in other hand, if someone is pledged to either mahon or kaine, it will take them a bit longer to match merits gain per hour compared to other powers by rare running. With carrier jump times of 1 hour or more and extended times spend witchspace due of server overload, while jumpin from one system to another, that "extra" time wasted due of longer "loading of system" adds up rather quickly, but even then, it still remains one of fastest and easiest methods to gain merits.


Not sure about "Scan Datalinks" at megaships for 225 merits per scan, but if same megaship can be scanned repeateadly (by instance reset), it might be good too... Actually, gonna go and test this one, once I finish this post.

Any other activity is significant slower, where some activities does not even match 1k/hour merits gain.



Either of way, PP 2.0 is grind fest, no more 4 weeks of waiting and done very litte of nothing to gain powerplay modules... now one really needs put a some real work behind, to reach that 34 level or more. I really liked one thing about older system, atleast it didnt forced to grind whenever someone wanted get specific module.


Merits from any combat activities, especially PVP, should be paying better, or have Open only bonus that affects it... in fact, any activities should have "open only" merits bonuses... something like 25-35% more merits gain if done in open.

 

[Einar Donarsson]

I already dropped PP2.0 I chose a power that supports one of my main professions which is Bounty Hunting but the Merits gained from Bounty hunting are laughable.

It feels like i have to give up my life in order to ever reach max Rank with a power so nope. Not doing that.

100 Merits for a Elite Anaconda Kill that pays a little over a Million while one Million Trade profit from rare good gives 1000 Merits
Merc Activities like Ground Combat and Conflict Zones in Space give ZERO Merits. If Frontier does not Act fast power play will just die again but we all know that Frontier is only fast in nerfing stuff.

 

[BDelacroix]

It is only 8k merits per level after a certain point. That isn't actually that bad.