Powerplay 2.0 deep dive - Frontier Live 27th March

[Agony_Aunt]

The whole point of PP is to be #1 and see your enemies scattered before you

No, its to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women!

Seriously though, it doesn't matter. Every power bar one could gang up on the remaining one, push them back to their core system(s) and then.... nothing. No way of finishing them off. That's why power alliances are meaningless. There is no way to "see your enemies scattered before you".

 

[Rubbernuke]

Though i don't disagree with the sentiment, do you have a ref to FD saying that? I don't recall that ever being the (publicly announced) case.

Thing is, that plays directly into my concern... it's not actually the case that having powers rise and fall is programatically difficult... it's that having powers rise and fall in the current PP system is programatically difficult, due to a litany of hard- coded/immovable things which, bluntly, need to be ditched. These include:

• bespoke portraiture
• plot armour
• module rewards
• (likely) hard coded influence effects
• decals
• tie ins to specific, balanced government/faction boons/maluses

Correcting that isn't just a case of making the current system better... it needs core rework.

You have all that though (to a point).

Each faction has 3D avatars that emote and are (vaguely) unique.

You could have a catalog of basic rewards to choose from based on your power (at say, mission reward time). Each faction could have one global perk assigned when the system goes live too (from a pool).

Module rewards and decals could be from a pool too.

The issue is that there would be a balance struck- you could never have a faction as perk / nerf rich as a power (since there are thousands of factions) but you could elevate factions above what you see today.

Plot armour would not exist for such factions, as they would remain below PP leaders.

 

[Rubbernuke]

No, its to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women!

Seriously though, it doesn't matter. Every power bar one could gang up on the remaining one, push them back to their core system(s) and then.... nothing. No way of finishing them off. That's why power alliances are meaningless. There is no way to "see your enemies scattered before you".

Absolute destruction is frankly pointless in ED though, and dare I say its not that sort of game (or set up that way)- the goal should be supremacy and being #1 at the expense of all others. Being pushed to your capital pretty much is collapse- the trick is making the loss scale and give the supporters a chance at sweet revenge.

 

[Jmanis]

You have all that though (to a point).

Each faction has 3D avatars that emote and are (vaguely) unique.

You could have a catalog of basic rewards to choose from based on your power (at say, mission reward time). Each faction could have one global perk assigned when the system goes live too (from a pool).

Module rewards and decals could be from a pool too.

The issue is that there would be a balance struck- you could never have a faction as perk / nerf rich as a power (since there are thousands of factions) but you could elevate factions above what you see today.

Plot armour would not exist for such factions, as they would remain below PP leaders.

Yes, but that would look very different to the current PP system, something which (unless I'm mistaken by Aisling being all over the stronghold banners) will at least seek to maintain the status quo in terms of current PP factions.

That was more my point, it does all exist and could be used... my concern is that the (granted, limited) reveal so far doesn't suggest it's going down that path.

 

[Darth Ender]

Though i don't disagree with the sentiment, do you have a ref to FD saying that? I don't recall that ever being the (publicly announced) case.

Thing is, that plays directly into my concern... it's not actually the case that having powers rise and fall is programatically difficult... it's that having powers rise and fall in the current PP system is programatically difficult, due to a litany of hard- coded/immovable things which, bluntly, need to be ditched. These include:

• bespoke portraiture
• plot armour
• module rewards
• (likely) hard coded influence effects
• decals
• tie ins to specific, balanced government/faction boons/maluses

Correcting that isn't just a case of making the current system better... it needs core rework.

your example is the programatically difficult reason that is relevant. they wanted avatars but had no way to generate them dynamically. they wanted certain sympathetic attributes associated with the powers but couldn't spawn those from the component factions that would comprise a power's territory or even stem from the singular base faction it was promoted from.

fdev didn't have the resources or the groundwork to have power collapse and promotion be player driven the way pp was initially designed around. so it's been delivered without the very thing that actually made it matter and work as a game mechanic.

without that or any other meaningful player consequence, pp has no point.

you have to then impact a shared aspect of the game (like the bgs in some way) or design something entirely new to be impacted by the players actions.

the whole restrictions on pp promotion or collapse is (i forgot the baby censorship rules - so imagine an expletive) though. fdev needs to stop trying to control the elite universe and let players take over. pp doesn't need portraits from fdev. it doesn't need details about some figure head back story. it just needs a way to generate a name for any given faction as the leader. then associate certain power behaviours based on the faction identity. players can fill in all of the rest of the content as they have been doing for pp since the beginning. set trigger limits for promotion and collapse and rules around how the mechanic works and let players see where they take the elite universe... or at least the bubble.

that was the premise of pp. the why we didn't get it got hung up on this need to control even the player driven content.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Yes, but that would look very different to the current PP system, something which (unless I'm mistaken by Aisling being all over the stronghold banners) will at least seek to maintain the status quo in terms of current PP factions.

That was more my point, it does all exist and could be used... my concern is that the (granted, limited) reveal so far doesn't suggest it's going down that path.

You could have enhanced factions living under Powers but I agree I don't think a universal system is on its way. That boat really sailed when PP was introduced.

 

[Shurimal]

he current situation in PP does not provide for leadership as a person and rightly so ! Otherwise there will be not only those who manage but also those who are managed, in other words subordinates..

There actually are PP player groups with "generals" and "grunts". It's just that it's out-of-game meta activity hidden in Discord servers. And that is another big failure of current PP—in order to really play the powers you have to be part of some obscure out-of-game group. The in-game systems do not tell you in an easy-to-comprehend way what the important systems are, where to fortify, where to undermine, where to expand. Which makes playing the powers needlessly difficult for those who don't want to join Discord (with all the privacy problems it has) or want to play a "lone wolf agent" taking orders directly from the in-game power contact instead of some middleman/being a grunt in a big group.

 

[Jmanis]

your example is the programatically difficult reason that is relevant.

So... FD never announced it? That's all I'm really after, if they actually said that or not.

 

[Bard Voronwe]

I think that Powerplay should be mostly focused on the concept of "competition". The way you compete with other Powers for domination should be determined by different aspects, like if the two Powers are aligned to the same Superpower and formally allied, or the intrinsic characteristics of the Power itself. Of course more belligeran Powers should be more battle focused (I think about Grom and Delaine), then we have more "economical/political" oriented Powers, such as Antal and LYR. Of course that shouldn't be a linear thing, as always, but such things should be considered.
And then... why to compete with other Powers?
First for the fun of it of course. If you play for a team you want to make it successful.
Then I think that the focal point should be to give great bonuses to players in the systems under the influence of their Power, increasingly from exploited to stronghold to incentivize casual players engagement to the new mechanic.
A great mistake we all do is to keep focusing in the current Powerplay style, which is heavily community-driven. A successful Powerplay should be decentralized and have a great appeal for casual players too to really work.

 

[Rubbernuke]

There actually are PP player groups with "generals" and "grunts". It's just that it's out-of-game meta activity hidden in Discord servers. And that is another big failure of current PP—in order to really play the powers you have to be part of some obscure out-of-game group. The in-game systems do not tell you in an easy-to-comprehend way what the important systems are, where to fortify, where to undermine, where to expand. Which makes playing the powers needlessly difficult for those who don't want to join Discord (with all the privacy problems it has) or want to play a "lone wolf agent" taking orders directly from the in-game power contact instead of some middleman/being a grunt in a big group.

The irony is that PP was never really intended for brain bugs and warriors On paper it was really about majority rule, and that the majority would always seek the best outcome and drown out the spanners.

V2 seems (seems) to handle this differently in that rather than weird quantum maths each system expansion is isolated from the rest- so you won't (or should not) get a situation where you have good and bad expansions, just ones supported.

 

[Darth Ender]

Absolute destruction is frankly pointless in ED though, and dare I say its not that sort of game (or set up that way)- the goal should be supremacy and being #1 at the expense of all others. Being pushed to your capital pretty much is collapse- the trick is making the loss scale and give the supporters a chance at sweet revenge.

no. driving it back isn't collapse if that requires constant effort to maintain. as it becomes easier the fewer systems you have to expand.

so as soon as you let off the pressure, that power could expand out again with minimal effort into the void that can't be really absorbed by other powers because of the size limit they have.

what you have now is a pointless endless cycle of growth and retraction designed to maintain the initial configuration of the power.

any player activity allows some growth / retraction. but it has a natural state it effortlessly wants to be in. a design decision that was needed when they decided they weren't going to put in power promotion and collapse.

 

[Jmanis]

You could have enhanced factions living under Powers but I agree I don't think a universal system is on its way. That boat really sailed when PP was introduced.

Not after enhanced factions, just that cycle that was originally mentioned which was having powers rise and fall organically from the powers.

 

[Rubbernuke]

no. driving it back isn't collapse if that requires constant effort to maintain. as it becomes easier the fewer systems you have to expand.

so as soon as you let off the pressure, that power could expand out again with minimal effort into the void that can't be really absorbed by other powers because of the size limit they have.

what you have now is a pointless endless cycle of growth and retraction designed to maintain the initial configuration of the power.

any player activity allows some growth / retraction. but it has a natural state it effortlessly wants to be in. a design decision that was needed when they decided they weren't going to put it power promotion and collapse.

I was speaking hypothetically from a BGS standpoint. In the BGS losing systems has no intrinsic value other than losing face, while in PP (as you correctly point out) your CC goes up since its spent on less.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Not after enhanced factions, just that cycle that was originally mentioned which was having powers rise and fall organically from the powers.

Thats what I meant- for such a system it really needed to be introduced a lot earlier IMO and that Powers / tier 1 leaders did not exist. The rest would conceptually be easy if rewards scaled to systems held and a leader board based on who runs the most.

 

[Darth Ender]

So... FD never announced it? That's all I'm really after, if they actually said that or not.

the reason pp collapse and promotion didn't get implemented was never officially given. like most feature scope changes... or any design decisions fdev makes... they rarely comment on things they don't have something positive to say about a release. it's just implied by the difference in what they discussed about what it would be... and then what was delivered.

 

[Rebel Yell]

Conceptually PP V1 is fine- the problems it has is with execution and that its been frozen for over eight years. By conceptually I mean PP will still have you prep and contest systems, factions will still somehow be needed to be aligned and used as building blocks, and systems will still need to be kept from degrading.

I came to PP after years fo Anarchy-BGS, so let's compare them for a moment (excluding the PvP part): PP dynamic is a behemot vs BGS, and it failed to be as much as engaging in terms of time/effort... I mean, a player doing right things in BGS gets more immediate return vs a player engaged in PP. Not considering that PP requires way bigger group/community coordination and cooperation. But PP then requires quite a lot of BGS (= avoid bubble degrading) so, why one should be involved in PP when it's been returned to BGS? A bit of a convoluted gameplay.

Execution wise, V1 had little impact, is tedious (as in, the core gameplay is really an open ended cargo haul mission with a shooting equivalent), is hard to understand (it relies more on arcane maths than digestible concepts) as well as not being rewarding at the right times. All of these issues can be resolved using whats in the game now and putting a twist on them- its why I found what I saw interesting as it tentatively shows FD actually understand that (so far, at least) and are morphing V2 to be a visible upper layer to BGS gameplay.

Indeed... PP+BGS on the long run [haul&shoot] become tremendously routined (if not boring) but it's tough to keep peeps engaged/set goals etc. lore is flat in terms of game impact. Some CGs in the past provided some interesting story lines, but may be too sporadic/inconclusive.

The biggest dangers / concerns for me are:

1: C+P- PP and general play are separate since the former is more combat focused ( 1/3 to 50% of it requires lots of shooting for UM). If factions do indeed become UM targets how will the two systems mesh? If its too punative it will just make (3) below worse.

2: PP levels of decay rates / timers: hopefully again FD will use BGS like decay rates (which are more forgiving and logical) rather than brute force cuts. FD should also forget about gating materials behind timers and just allow someone to take what they need.

3: Stasis: V2 has to be dynamic, and avoid the trench warfare present today. I hope FD see that most PP work done today is really BGS work and use that aspect as the 'core'.

4: Its rewarding to those who engage with it properly. While I expect modules to be unlocked / available elsewhere I want to see proper and useful rewards. I certainly hope FD are imaginative here, because they could do so much- we already see exclusive PP FC clubhouses in strongholds where they could go.

5: PvE engagement should provide further layers of challenges, i.e. PP-bosses like Thargoid scouts?

 

[Darth Ender]

I was speaking hypothetically from a BGS standpoint. In the BGS losing systems has no intrinsic value other than losing face, while in PP (as you correctly point out) your CC goes up since its spent on less.

and it's that difference, why it's not really even a good stand in. driving a power to its capital would be satisfying if that meant it was actually very difficult then to expand. or if the surrounding powers could easily gobble up those systems all the way to the capital.

by being unable to consume the systems, and simply making it easier for players to retake most of them, you just end spending an exceedingly larger amount of effort to drive back a faction had you know it's easily going to rebound like 80% as soon as your power burns out. and two weeks later nothing looks any different,

 

[Rubbernuke]

and it's that difference, why it's not really even a good stand in. driving a power to its capital would be satisfying if that meant it was actually very difficult then to expand. or if the surrounding powers could easily gobble up those systems all the way to the capital.

by being unable to consume the systems, and simply making it easier for players to retake most of them, you just end spending an exceedingly larger amount of effort to drive back a faction had you know it's easily going to rebound like 80% as soon as your power burns out. and two weeks later nothing looks any different,

In the end its a closed system, and it has to behave as such.

 

[Rebel Yell]

You're all wrong. We're not even Han Solo. We are one of the many nameless volunteer pilots in the background. If anything, we are Chewbacca - he didn't even get a medal .

ROOOARRGH UR ROO!

 

[Rubbernuke]

But PP then requires quite a lot of BGS (= avoid bubble degrading) so, why one should be involved in PP when it's been returned to BGS? A bit of a convoluted gameplay.

It depends on what that gameplay is though. This is why I was curious about C+P as it might be the UM side is against factions as a whole rather than a few NPCs.

5: PvE engagement should provide further layers of challenges, i.e. PP-bosses like Thargoid scouts?

This is what I've talked about in the past, but by using the POI system (which could be linked to the new V2 state / stage system). You could really have some fun designing encounters that link to your effort / rank etc. Imagine an G5 NPC ace wing that needs taking down, or a nemesis like NPC when you kill too many rival ships?