Ha-ha-ha.
Since the stickers bought for arxs and if the forum is read by the developers, I'm afraid we will not see PP2 this year, it will be postponed.
Powerplay 2.0 deep dive - Frontier Live 27th March
- Thread starter londonx
- Start date
Since the stickers bought for arxs and if the forum is read by the developers, I'm afraid we will not see PP2 this year, it will be postponed.
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Well, given the drama we got when FDev placed a Megaship in a PMF backyard, so players can get a permit for an otherwise permit_locked_by_BGS system due of PMF direct actions, i really dont think they will do anything major to BGS - unless they really want to shed most of the BGSers and PMF supporters.
And i dont really think they can lose more players - i would expect ED to lose some players due to PP20 not being what they hoped it to be, so there is that too...
"Don't mess around too much"? Crumbs, I don't think I'd ever bother to reply to such entitlement.This. It shouldn't be possible to expand a faction to hundreds of star systems and not do some crazy amount of maintenance to not lose these systems. Last time I checked some minor faction on Inara it was controlling 170-something star systems and had listed something like 20 supporters/members in the associated squadron, IIRC. That's just silly, if you ask me. You can't figuratively swing a stick in any inhabited system and not accidentally hit a player faction in the process—I was quite recently contacted by another player (paraphrasing):
—"What's going on, you're on station bounty board?"
—"Oh, that... I was just taking some surface scan and power failure missions in the neghbouring system. Sorry!"
—"OK. Just don't mess around too much, please."
—"Sure, I'll do some missions for your faction, then, to balance things out!"
—"Thanks, it's fine!"
They did say "please"...
Well, if you play mostly in open, a certain degree of curtesy goes a long way to keeping you off everyone else's KOS list.
Nah, I looked them up--they are a small player group of around 10 people and their faction is present in just a half dozen systems surrounded by several other, much bigger player groups. They had reasons to be worried, for all they knew it could have been some of the big groups prodding around and eyeing potential systems to expand into. Besides, they're neighbors to my own chosen "home system" and it's good to have friendly relations with neighbors, especially when big player groups tend to pull shenanigans around the block--you may never know when mutual aid and communal protection might come in handy
This, too. I'm sure some enjoy being an agent of chaos everyone around tries to kick out of their backyard, but I prefer a bit more surgical approach to my shenanigans
The ability of players to influence systems needs to be notable, to a point.
FD needed it so that if a player(s) constantly, say, traded with a faction, they'd enter boom... if they were always shot at, they'd go into civil unrest. So it needed to be easily changeable by players.
Incidentally, this is also its greatest strength. A single player can cause a larger group dramatic expense simply by hating on a single faction... thanks to diminishing returns, the effort for a group in control to counter that single player is orders of magnitude higher.
But anyway... because FD incorrectly thought players would care more about the superpowers, rather than factions, i guess they assumed the likelihood of a faction spreading to control dozens of systems was unlikely.
A mechanism to throttle on how expansion works is all that's needed... they almost got there with Happiness... if that was needed to be a certain level across all locations before a faction expanded, or even if they needed to hit the 70% everywhere before expanding, it would drastically increase the workload to get beyond a half dozen systems, without hurting the first expansion or two too much.
Additionally, FDs fatal mistake of by coupling "negative" states to player failure and "positive" ones to player success. States should just be pure opportunistic conditions, with no right of wrong necessarily to them.
In that context, PP is the meat and potatoes of the meal, while states become the seasoning... you can eat meat and potatoes without spice... you can't just eat spice.
On a complete side note, the piece of concept art in the video thumbnail above, is one I have long thought could be a neat starting point for an extensive story campaign paid DLC, which would for unknown purpose allow you (without any of your stuff) into a system that has been permit-locked for "conservation" reasons, where a generation ship has ended up, and its people have established a civilisation with its own distinct diverging culture and architechture. :9
Nobody except possibly FDev knows however the disgust if it is will be widespread.
Like always and no matter what they do, there will be happiness in some corners, and disgust in others..
I agree that the BGS needs to be more interesting. I don't think players should be able to mold it like putty. Commanders are supposed to be hard up pilots in a hard galaxy, not middle managers, logistics guys, lords in the making. We're Han Solo, not the Emperor. Han Solo clearly had an effect on his galaxy but he had to become part of something much larger to do it and he did it by participating in key events in the narrative, not by writing it.
Helldivers 2 is showing how that's done right now.
if fdev wants to keep trying to make everyone happy by delivering something that isn't what anyone actually wants because it compromises everywhere, then pp 2.0 and any other new feature will fall as flat as pp 1.0 and most of all of the features that came before and after that.
For pp 2.0 to be good, it's going to have to step on some toes. A completely optional - ignorable feature who's entire premise is that it puts agency in the player's hands is dead on arrival.
For pp 2.0 to be good, it's going to have to step on some toes. A completely optional - ignorable feature who's entire premise is that it puts agency in the player's hands is dead on arrival.
Han Solo was a General in the Rebel Alliance during the Battle of Endor. Players shouldn't become emperors, but player created and managed minor-factions aren't too much to ask. If they want more players to care about PP then they should have a bigger stake in it.
He was appointed a General by the Alliance (which he didn't want btw). He didn't create the Alliance and make himself the
I'm a bit more hardline in that i think it's time for people messing around with factions to realise that simply wasn't the intent.
I'm going through a software refresh to replace a decade- old tool using long- redundant HCI systems. A lot of people are saying the replacement "needs to work exactly like the current one" which is very aligned with "asking for a faster horse".
That said, the wording of FD does have me worried. It looks like powers won't rise and fall from power status, instead just continuing the current ones.... but it did worry me when words to the effect of "PP2 will be like PP but super- enhanced!" came out... made me worry the core mechanics aren't going to change.
They axed the idea of power collapse and power promotion because it was too hard to do programmatically ...back when they had way more apparent funding in the game.
supposedly this work has been going on for a long time though.
without that, it'll be really interesting to hear how they've improved things. I'd have serious doubts that powerplay can be a means for player agency while being mostly isolated without being able to at least control the powers within the PP game mechanic. If players dont have the ability to control that PP specific thing...then fdev would have to give players agency over something that is likely more shared. And while i would not be opposed to that: it goes against the general MO of fdev up until that point of making sure anything new added to the game can be completely ignored by existing players and that would result in no negative consequences.
Yes, but Solo accepted and exercised the job. Generals are high ranking leaders and managers. Leia Organa was also a General of the Rebel Army, a senator and a princess. Minor Factions in ED are small and subordinate to the Powers. So managing a minor faction is peanuts compared to being a general of the Alliance.
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He exercised exactly nothing, which is what they chose him for. His rank was largely ceremonial just like our kings and admirals. And yeah, Leia was a Princess, a Power. That's exactly what players shouldn't get. What a waste of time and resources promoting Yuri Grom turned out to be.
Solo was promoted to general because he had great skills in leadership, battle and the Rebels needed him to lead a mission. He did do a bunch of stuff as general. Princess Leia was a general in the Empire Strikes back. She was responsible for various strategies, and leading pilots, personnel of the Rebels. As senator she did significant diplomacy. Such roles in a Minor Faction would be small scale, but it should make players more invested in PP.
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