I did say active players not systems.
I did say active players not systems.
The problem is the real-time requirement that was introduced with regard to collecting PP materials for delivery.
Other online MMO games that require real-time involvement to secure materials and resources (e.g. Grepolis) have a facility to do this "on the move". Grepolis has a mobile app and it can also be accessed online from any PC. Elite Dangerous has a mobile app but it hasn't been developed to enable the player to do anything at all. Due to the high PC spec requirements of the game, it isn't possible to log-in when away from your games-level machine. A simple web-based access point and / or mobile app would change so much in terms of being able to collect Powerplay materials when you're not with your games-spec machine, for instance when out at work / away from home.
Not all factions have a combat option, and the original brief behind Powerplay was that there would be several different ways to take part, combat being one, trading (delivering materials) being another. Collecting these materials - unless you pay vast sums to speed up your allocations - requires real-time waiting or delays between each tranche. I've never understood why you would pay out for a bulk of PP materials when the rewards will not compensate for the cost. Sure, it makes sense to boost a few allocations near the end of a cycle if you are close to a PP rank threshold, but otherwise it doesn't help. Not getting any merits for defensive combat i.e. on your own territory never made sense to me either.
It's OK(ish) for a player like me who has limited time to play the game, but who can be around the PC enough to load materials to stay in the PP game - I can keep rank 4 this way which over time has generated useful income.
It just means the games PC is on and logged-in for hours on end at the weekend and in the evenings and I have to nip in and load up allocations as near to the half-hour mark as I can. It's quite obtrusive on daily life having to do it this way though - a mobile option for this simple task would be a huge step forward for people who are out at work or elsewhere all day.
Other online MMO games that require real-time involvement to secure materials and resources (e.g. Grepolis) have a facility to do this "on the move". Grepolis has a mobile app and it can also be accessed online from any PC. Elite Dangerous has a mobile app but it hasn't been developed to enable the player to do anything at all. Due to the high PC spec requirements of the game, it isn't possible to log-in when away from your games-level machine. A simple web-based access point and / or mobile app would change so much in terms of being able to collect Powerplay materials when you're not with your games-spec machine, for instance when out at work / away from home.
Not all factions have a combat option, and the original brief behind Powerplay was that there would be several different ways to take part, combat being one, trading (delivering materials) being another. Collecting these materials - unless you pay vast sums to speed up your allocations - requires real-time waiting or delays between each tranche. I've never understood why you would pay out for a bulk of PP materials when the rewards will not compensate for the cost. Sure, it makes sense to boost a few allocations near the end of a cycle if you are close to a PP rank threshold, but otherwise it doesn't help. Not getting any merits for defensive combat i.e. on your own territory never made sense to me either.
It's OK(ish) for a player like me who has limited time to play the game, but who can be around the PC enough to load materials to stay in the PP game - I can keep rank 4 this way which over time has generated useful income.
It just means the games PC is on and logged-in for hours on end at the weekend and in the evenings and I have to nip in and load up allocations as near to the half-hour mark as I can. It's quite obtrusive on daily life having to do it this way though - a mobile option for this simple task would be a huge step forward for people who are out at work or elsewhere all day.
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I am NO authority on this Pesky Power Play but pilots that do not join an active faction might not be getting the most out of this game.
Does the individual player know where to hand in their merits and have a positive effect within the game? We see some systems that have received 10,000% fortification and yet a few place down there might be a positive earning system that has still to be fortified
Playing in a wing and doing things like undermining is not only rewarding from a merit point of view... It can be tremendous fun flying in a wing and having some very friendly competition.
My two penarth is to try and locate a decent group that offers training, teamwork, good fun and plenty of banter (If you find such a group then please let me know) Apologies for my humour and yes... I am happy in the group I am with
And I meant what I said. Clearly powerplay is only being played by a total of eleven players whose only goal is to troll people who ask how many people are actually participating in powerplay.
I'm not prone to trolling if you look at previous posts, merely an observation, no need for snidey remarks.
Yay.. let it die. It was always a folly.
I wasn't suggesting you were trolling. I was suggesting that I and ten other people are trolling you by being the only people who play powerplay.
I think one of the potential problems is people want consequences to powerplay, which there is, but they aren't big or flashy consequences, at most there's a scoreboard and some rewards that relate to that.
So if you aren't part of your powerplay faction for its ideology and beliefs then yeah, powerplay is going to feel pointless, or that's my view on it.
So if you aren't part of your powerplay faction for its ideology and beliefs then yeah, powerplay is going to feel pointless, or that's my view on it.
You could always just ignore it. Or is that too much to ask of you?
Well, for something that is so flawed and half-baked, Powerplay has me hooked. The people do indeed make it, the battles, the stories, everything.
What I find odd is hearing so many people not wanting to get involved.
When what you can do actually has interesting mechanics and involves something actually more interesting than the repacked year old mini-games, with the strongest rewards not going to people simply mindlessly farm, but instead those who participant pro-actively, I might be tempted.
ie: At the moment, delivering news papers to change the colour of systems I don't care about, doesn't float my boat.
With more development time going into Powerplay in Horizons, if it stays as strange quirky "side game" some people like, but most quickly get bored with, I'll get even more frustrated at the thought of what the development time put into Powerplay could have achieved elsewhere in the core game where so many more players do spend their time...
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Define "strongest rewards". Most of the rank 5 players at the Alliance Office of Statistics pour their 50 million pay-cheque back into PowerPlay every week.
Our "reward" is working with other people, cooperating to do what has time and time again been deemed impossible to do - being a non-combat power with a relatively small player base and being not only in the top 3, but quite often number 1.
Case in point - we have the highest number of control systems anyone has had.
We have the highest number of exploited systems.
We have the highest income.
We have the highest default surplus.
We have been ranked number one for more weeks than any other power (10 weeks - ALD's record is 9).
We have been ranked number for more consecutive weeks than any other power (7 weeks - ALD's record is 4).
If your idea of the "strongest reward" is monetary, then Mahon is definitely not for you. Our very best trade route (with the rank 1 bonus) still can't compete with smuggling Imperial Slaves from Torval space into Delaine space. Our PowerPlay weapon simply doesn't work. It's not a matter of it being bad - it literally does not work.
Our rank 5 bonus is a 50% increase on profits from rare goods, which is close to useless, because by the time you're rank 5, you're probably in a Python if you got there trading, and then you're better off doing regular trading instead.
Oddly, the more I work towards an Empire ship, the less interested I have become in being in an empire power.
Powerplay was added, sort of works, and has been virtually ignored since; without something more engaging than "ship some constrained-generation paper if you don't like shooting things" or "shoot things if you don't like shipping constrained-generation paper" and the only other reason to join any power is the faction modules, most of which have arguable value (prismatic shields probably is the only exception).
The 50 mil grinding is ridiculous, given you can earn that in two days flat in LR smuggling, and you're pretty much going to fold most of that back into PP; so why would you shuffle paper, or shoot/ interdict many hundreds of NPCs? The only thing that maybe makes it worthwhile, is the people. But that's not because of powerplay, it's in spite of it and CMDRs simply filling in the blanks themselves to make it interesting.
That might have been Frontier's intention; but wings of people doing PP is in my experience the exception, not the rule. There's quite a few people extolling the virtues of PP, when in fact they are actually extolling the virtues of people grouping up to do something because it supposedly can't be done. It's the challenge, then, not the mechanic.
I'm nearing the point where I will once again be independant. Because although I do have a few CMDRs I will wing with pretty often, none of us see the value in Powerplay, when there's a lot of other things we can be doing. And that's not just a credit-per-hour complaint either. It's just not fun. Or really overly rewarding.
Perhaps I just need to find a few folks who actually want to do PP stuff? They are like gold it seems because I can never find any.
Powerplay was added, sort of works, and has been virtually ignored since; without something more engaging than "ship some constrained-generation paper if you don't like shooting things" or "shoot things if you don't like shipping constrained-generation paper" and the only other reason to join any power is the faction modules, most of which have arguable value (prismatic shields probably is the only exception).
The 50 mil grinding is ridiculous, given you can earn that in two days flat in LR smuggling, and you're pretty much going to fold most of that back into PP; so why would you shuffle paper, or shoot/ interdict many hundreds of NPCs? The only thing that maybe makes it worthwhile, is the people. But that's not because of powerplay, it's in spite of it and CMDRs simply filling in the blanks themselves to make it interesting.
That might have been Frontier's intention; but wings of people doing PP is in my experience the exception, not the rule. There's quite a few people extolling the virtues of PP, when in fact they are actually extolling the virtues of people grouping up to do something because it supposedly can't be done. It's the challenge, then, not the mechanic.
I'm nearing the point where I will once again be independant. Because although I do have a few CMDRs I will wing with pretty often, none of us see the value in Powerplay, when there's a lot of other things we can be doing. And that's not just a credit-per-hour complaint either. It's just not fun. Or really overly rewarding.
Perhaps I just need to find a few folks who actually want to do PP stuff? They are like gold it seems because I can never find any.
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Oddly, the more I work towards an Empire ship, the less interested I have become in being in an empire power.
Powerplay was added, sort of works, and has been virtually ignored since; without something more engaging than "ship some constrained-generation paper if you don't like shooting things" or "shoot things if you don't like shipping constrained-generation paper" and the only other reason to join any power is the faction modules, most of which have arguable value (prismatic shields probably is the only exception).
The 50 mil grinding is ridiculous, given you can earn that in two days flat in LR smuggling, and you're pretty much going to fold most of that back into PP; so why would you shuffle paper, or shoot/ interdict many hundreds of NPCs? The only thing that maybe makes it worthwhile, is the people. But that's not because of powerplay, it's in spite of it and CMDRs simply filling in the blanks themselves to make it interesting.
That might have been Frontier's intention; but wings of people doing PP is in my experience the exception, not the rule. There's quite a few people extolling the virtues of PP, when in fact they are actually extolling the virtues of people grouping up to do something because it supposedly can't be done. It's the challenge, then, not the mechanic.
I'm nearing the point where I will once again be independant. Because although I do have a few CMDRs I will wing with pretty often, none of us see the value in Powerplay, when there's a lot of other things we can be doing. And that's not just a credit-per-hour complaint either. It's just not fun. Or really overly rewarding.
Perhaps I just need to find a few folks who actually want to do PP stuff? They are like gold it seems because I can never find any.
Judging by the fact that powerplay is constantly being talked about (it seems less since this subforum was started, but people continue to discuss, complain, etc), I don't think it's being ignored, even by those of us not currently participating.
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Your logic is flawed, to say "power play sucks, the people make it fun" is like saying "football is a dumb sport, other people are what make it fun", well no duh. Go play football alone, it won't work, it's a team game. That is what powerplay is, it's meant as a way for players to come together and expand their power. Playing powerplay alone is going to be about as fun as playing football alone, you're going to end up feeling like your running around an empty field chasing a ball you keep kicking for no apparent reason. The brilliance of powerplay is how much better it is with other people. I want to join powerplay sometimes (still haven't), but can't decide if I want to join Antal, Delaine or Hudson. I like Hudson as a federal, but the Antal and Delaine groups of players are what really tempt me to be a part of.
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I think we'll see massive improvements to powerplay and I think it will gradually become more and more intertwined with the larger political and BGS structure, it's pretty destined to unless they take drastic measures to keep them separate (though the introduction of minor factions as powers and the ability for independent pilots to resist powers in their systems is not indicative of an intent to keep them separate). I don't think it will ever be a very rewarding experience unless you get involved with other players and that may take some personal initiative to seek out players like yourself, that are interested in being more involved, but don't know where to find that in their power.
Hm, interesting thread, albeit a sad subject to discuss...
As someone with very little experience concerning multiplayer focussed games (IF you count Elite : Dangerous, otherwise zero experience... ) I would like to ask:
How do other games handle large scale interactions of this sort? Does it all have to be that mindblowingly grindy? Is there no other game we can learn from?
I really tried to commit to PP, was pledged for 26 weeks with ranks varying between 1 and 5 (5 for about 4 weeks) and did my homework before contributing to avoid harming my power inadvertently. If I look back now, I got the most fun out of planning my contributions while the action itself was a chore more often than not...
PP is a concept that shines on paper and turned out to have a more limiting than broadening effect on my playing experience... but maybe it can be revived somehow?!
Haggis McMoose,
Merry Christmas everyone!
As someone with very little experience concerning multiplayer focussed games (IF you count Elite : Dangerous, otherwise zero experience... ) I would like to ask:
How do other games handle large scale interactions of this sort? Does it all have to be that mindblowingly grindy? Is there no other game we can learn from?
I really tried to commit to PP, was pledged for 26 weeks with ranks varying between 1 and 5 (5 for about 4 weeks) and did my homework before contributing to avoid harming my power inadvertently. If I look back now, I got the most fun out of planning my contributions while the action itself was a chore more often than not...
PP is a concept that shines on paper and turned out to have a more limiting than broadening effect on my playing experience... but maybe it can be revived somehow?!
Haggis McMoose,
Merry Christmas everyone!
