Consider this, regarding the game design in Power Play.
Trade Missions
Combat
Powerplay was a really cool idea, there is great art... it's cool to be able to expand and contract powers through player involvement. But most posts about Powerplay warn newcomers that the juice isn't worth the squeeze. That's because every incentive to do Powerplay in the game design is executed more poorly, or less rewarding, than the regular way to play the game.
This wouldn't be too difficult to fix... make powerplay activities more like real missions, with more reason to go there, better rewards, and even some OPEN - ONLY areas with even better rewards. Rewards don't always have to be PvP game breaking things. Decals, tattoos, improved cargo racks, faster scanners, whatever.
Trade Missions
Powerplay - You pay money to fast track deliveries. Eventually, after hours and hours per week for many weeks, you'll start to get ahead but only if you keep it up indefinitely. There is no variety in what you can trade, and Fortifying is only possible from the home system, so you're stuck in one place. Every reward is 1 to 1... take 10 of this... get 10 points.
Regular - You can smuggle goods into a port. You can trade via missions, where sometimes there's a time bonus or a queue of idiots to pirate you. These missions pay more than PowerPlay over less time and you do not have to keep doing them indefinitely. You can trade different things and check market prices to feel like you're doing something to maximize your profit.
Combat
Powerplay - You fly into military strike zones, which I guess function like old Conflict Zones before they were improved. You don't get messages from your side. No capital ships appear. No special targets appear. Nobody wins. You eventually get 10pts per kill towards the 10,000 you need that quickly bleeds away to make 50,000,000 a week. Oh... and if you graze one of the Power supporter ships, they'll try to kill you. I am careful with my weapons and never have issues outside of Military Strike Zones... but every MSZ results in allies attacking me. You can also painfully interdict ships.
Regular - You can fly into a High or Haz Res and watch pirates scan miners while system enforcers or bounty hunters prowl the asteroid fields, then you can engage in a firefight among rocks far bigger than your ship. Within an hour, you can easily net 2,000,000. Or you can fly into a Conflict Zone, pick a side, hear some radio chatter... maybe there'll be a capital ship, enemy captains, Spec Ops, or even a capital ship battle. Wing missions for Conflict Zones to allied factions can pay 30,000,000 for as few as 60 kills, which you can get in a few hours. You can experience combat on other missions as well, possibly with security force interventions.
CommunityPowerplay - Some powers don't have posts at any point in the last 5-6 months. There are no factions on the various game systems... nobody to even wing up with to play a worse version of Combat Zone.
Regular - You can join a big wing on your system and be talking to players and winging up, expanding the influence of some random player faction, and not be glued to that home network of systems.
Ship ImprovementsPowerplay - There's not really a single weapon that makes a marked improvement like... say... engineering, or Guardian modules. If PvP balance was a big issue here, why not have the Powers offer very useful, but non-combat oriented modules? Someone could offer a combined module like a Detailed Surface Scanner + Wake Scanner in one slot... or offer a lighter or faster Warrant Scanner... or whatever...
Regular - Engineering, Guardians, Federal Rank Grind, Emperial Rank Grind... all of these offer something that is a marked improvement in some area. Even when they're painful, they're worth doing for some reason.
The Point:Powerplay was a really cool idea, there is great art... it's cool to be able to expand and contract powers through player involvement. But most posts about Powerplay warn newcomers that the juice isn't worth the squeeze. That's because every incentive to do Powerplay in the game design is executed more poorly, or less rewarding, than the regular way to play the game.
This wouldn't be too difficult to fix... make powerplay activities more like real missions, with more reason to go there, better rewards, and even some OPEN - ONLY areas with even better rewards. Rewards don't always have to be PvP game breaking things. Decals, tattoos, improved cargo racks, faster scanners, whatever.
