Powerplay Power Play Overhaul Idea

[OdstBrownie]

First a little about myself, I am CMDR Ster1ingArch3r. I fly for Planet Express. I have over 700 hour’s gameplay between both PC and Xbox One. I have never once committed to Power Play in game due to the toxicity surrounding what you have to do to get ahead. Still with me? Good, on to the meat of this issue!

Fixing power play. We all know that in its current state it is absolutely awful. I hope to put forth an idea that fixes the grind for merits and fixes the rank progression of the game using powerplay. This will be a complete overhaul of how I think powerplay should work. Feel free to comment below and if enough people think this is a good idea I will post this on the forums and maybe, just maybe, FDev will hear our pleas.

The first thing that needs fixing is the merits system. It’s complex and grindy and near impossible, from what I have read, to maintain top tier with a faction without essentially grinding merits and only merits every time you play. In my system, you only earn 1 merit per kill, per commodity, etc. but your merits do not expire. The tier system would stay in place, but with a tier system up to tier 6. A couple leaders will have a different system, but I will explain that later.

You will be paid weekly based on your tier: Tier 1: 25,000 cr, Tier 2: 75,000 cr, Tier 3: 225,000 cr, Tier 4: 675,000 cr and ship unlock, Tier 5: 2,000,000 cr, and Tier 6: 6,000,000 cr and access to all permit locked systems for your faction.

As I said earlier there are a handful of factions that will go to Tier 14. These are the leaders of the Empire, Federation, and the Alliance. These are where you will be able to rank up to the upper tiers for the Navy of your chosen side. This adds naval ranks for the alliance!

Rewards will be as follows: Tier 7: 10,000,000 cr and ship unlock, Tier 8: 15,000,000 cr, Tier 9: 20,000,000 cr, Tier 10: 25,000,000 cr, Tier 11: 30,000,000 cr and ship unlock, Tier 12: 37,500,000 cr, Tier 13: 45,000,000 cr, and Tier 14: 50,000,000 cr and additional 5% discount in all systems.

I consider all factions that are not the “Heads of State” to be minor powers and can get some of the benefits, but not all of them. You will also lose all of your merits if you defect to another faction. However, moving to another faction with in the Empire, for example, will not cost you merits unless you are going from the Head of State faction to one of the minor ones.

Merit Tiers are as follows: Tier 1: 50, Tier 2 through 6: 500 merits per tier. Tier 7 through 14 1000 merits per tier. I want Tier 1 to stay at 50 merits so you can "enlist."

I know this seems grindy but, hear me out. There will be a number of faction missions that you can run from the Home systems of the heads of state which will give merits and credit rewards in addition to the current power play system. You will be able to complete at least 3 of these per day with increasing rewards as your military rank increases. Up to a maximum of 10 missions per day. Merit and credit rewards can vary, but will always be at least 5 merits and 500,000 cr.

Tell me what you think I know there are some holes, but I think this works a lot better than the current system.

 

[aspiringexpatriate]

First a little about myself, I am CMDR Ster1ingArch3r. I fly for Planet Express. I have over 700 hour’s gameplay between both PC and Xbox One. I have never once committed to Power Play in game due to the toxicity surrounding what you have to do to get ahead. Still with me? Good, on to the meat of this issue!

Power Play is a competitive system pitching 'teams' of players against each other. This DailyGarlic comic pretty much sums up the purpose Power Play feels designed to serve. So if the team PvP mindset is what you're calling community toxicity, then that will always exist. If Power Play wasn't moderately competitive, I don't know if anyone would play it.

The first thing that needs fixing is the merits system. It’s complex and grindy and near impossible, from what I have read, to maintain top tier with a faction without essentially grinding merits and only merits every time you play.

I have say, I don't know where your sources are coming from. To maintain Rating 5, you only need 5334 merits every week. That can be done in just over 7 Cutter trips or around 14 TradeConda trips. Yes, it will cost you at least 50 million credits, but it doesn't have to take more than four hours in a Cutter (eight in a Conda), and that's counting 1 free allotment every half hour. There are scripts that allow you to load in free allotments while docked, thereby costing you fewer credits. Now, I have heard many commanders claim they only have 4 hours a week to play, and yes, if that's the case, then Power Play is too time intensive for the higher ratings. But they can still easily meet the low amount of merits to maintain the Rating 2 power bonus and likely the Rating 3 requirement for the module.

As for your pitch, it sounds like you want Power Play to be more about creating a Naval progression career for the superpower you pledge to, and yeah, that concept has merit, but at that point, that concept is not power play.

Honestly, I like the idea of the current mechanics being overlayed to a superpower naval career: if you maintain Rating 1 with the navy, you're an active member, but your naval rank progression proceeds at the snail's pace it does now. Every higher rating tier reached will give you a percentage boost to your naval rank progression rate for that next week. And, yeah, I mean current mechanics with merit degradation, because the point is to make it a naval career, not a simple progression bar. Basically, that adjustment would require two different types of 'naval missions' offered by the mission board, one that awards you Naval merits, and one that awards the next promotion. It could still function the way it currently does, with those missions being behind allied locks on aligned factions.

And there is a solid debate that once that naval career adopts the power play merit system, players will choose to stop participating in power play even more than they already have.

 

[bigity]

It seems a meme is appropriate here, but Ill just put the text.

I've never played Power Play, but here is how to fix it.



But it needs some fixing, that's for sure.

 

[Ray "Stingray" Robertson]

Powerplay is okay as it is. I maintain rating 5 by doing 3 to 4 deliveries a day with my Python. There are a few small details that aren't correct, but the core concepts are fine.

 

[krylite]

There was another thread on how to fix merit degradation. One idea which I thought was good, was a % decrease in merit decay based on how many weeks a player stayed continuously with a power with a minimum decay at 10% (or whatever numbers deemed 'balanced') instead of 50% where each week continuously stayed with a power would decrease the merit decay by 5%. This would also probably need a decrease in salary as the decay % decreases. i.e. consider it balanced by "benefits" of less decay where 10% decay payout would be 10 million instead of 50 mill, which would align with the current policy of nerfing quick credits. This would also simultaneously make less credit incentive for 5C prepping of negative systems like Yaque while promoting loyalty, the main point of powerplay.

 

[Ray "Stingray" Robertson]

Merit decay is important, it has to be there. A power needs its pledgees to continuously have to gain merits for its survival and progression. Especially from those dedicated ones.

 

[krylite]

That's a good point about the point of merits. However, I tend to see it as higher ranked and longer term pledgers have attained more of a loyal recognition and as a reward for sticking to a power for months, may not be required to do as much grunt work where they can work more on flipping systems and other pp activities or even taking a break to explore the galaxy, as the current balance has merit grinding slanted to be too much of a chore for the majority of the player base especially sticking with a pledge past a module requirement. As I mentioned, the minimum merit decay % could be adjusted, to say 20% instead of 10%, however is needed to be more palatable for those on the fence of being involved with pp with the added benefit of a player incentivized to stay with a particular power longer and less credit incentive for rating5 5C prepping. In any case, a dedicated rating5 pledger can still choose to over-haul merits past the weekly tic requirement. The main point is to make it easier and incentivized for a dedicated pledger to stick with a power simultaneously disincentivizing 5C prepping, while also making it easier for more to be involved in powerplay which could also balance out with more merits due to more player involvement.

 

[Ray "Stingray" Robertson]

Maybe they can make those activities also make you gain merits? By giving you merits for contributing positively to a faction's influence who's government type your power is strong against in your control/exploited systems and for factions your rival powers are weak against in their control/exploited systems.

 

[krylite]

I'd agree that would be nice to see. I wish they would do something like that, or even pp specific missions for pledgers as seen in the pp trailer mentioned by Fergal's thread.

 

[Arkadi]

Maybe they can make those activities also make you gain merits? By giving you merits for contributing positively to a faction's influence who's government type your power is strong against in your control/exploited systems and for factions your rival powers are weak against in their control/exploited systems.

+1.

It would also make the connection between BGS and PP more visible and a reward for it would make more poeple interested into it. One problem is that the practicability of working the BGS is uneven spreaded among the powers. So maybe this should be looked into too.