Powerplay Powerplay a hit or miss from FD?

kiario

kiario
I have not tried it yet. I was thinking of digging into it but when i read that you need to grind a lot of merits every week just to keep ranks then I stopped there. I cant play that much per week.

I dont know if it is fun or not.

So was it a hit or miss to prioritize development of ED on powerplay or should Frontier had prioritized something else?
 
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Windscreen Smudge

W
Hit: It adds plenty of new elements of gameplay which are fun to pursue with groups of other players.

Miss: It's easier/more profitable to grind in Solo, so nobody does it regularly in Open, let alone groups up to do it.
 

Envy661

Envy661
From everything I've seen/read, it's a pretty substantial miss. Barely anyone really uses it. There are a few hundred, maybe a thousand active people who use it, but it's a woefully substantial minority of the actual active community size.

I myself FINALLY just tried it for the first time and pledged to the people's waifu. However I was struck with a sense of "Oh dear God please tell me this isn't the only thing you can do to rank up" almost immediately. To make matters worse, powerplay objectives are not even remotely clear. You'll have to do some surfing online to figure out what you need to do to get started.

Long story short, if you like trading small amounts of cargo repeatedly for the rank grind, you'll like it. If you're anyone else, the rewards don't even come close to compensating for the risk... And the grind...
 
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Windscreen Smudge

W
Envy661 said:
From everything I've seen/read, it's a pretty substantial miss. Barely anyone really uses it. There are a few hundred, maybe a thousand active people who use it, but it's a woefully substantial minority of the actual active community size.
Click to expand...

20% of the player base is not insubstantial, nor is it a few hundred. That's about the number of people who're on the forums and reddit talking about it, the rest just google the basics and solo it because that's exactly what all of the guides on the internet tell them to do.
 

h347h

h347h
If you actually look at the support that powers get during the weekly cycles it is apparent that a lot of players do Power Play. Tons of player groups have made communities around it and it has fostered lots of pvp, RP, and general interest in things other than grinding.

Take all the whining and nay saying about it here on the forums with a grain of salt.
 

Sugarat

Sugarat
Biggest win from Power Play that many miss is how it focuses player bases.. players are easier to find now in HQ and contolled/exploited systems.
Since 1.3 my friends list has doubled and I've played more frequently in wings than before.
Also, I doubt FD have finished with Power Play yet, I can see there being more added to it at a later date :)
 

DanTheMan

DanTheMan
For me it has been something that I have been delighted to avoid.
What a waste of good development effort (IMHO).
There are too many things broken in the core game to waste time on something that was never in the DDF archives, was never requested, nor even suggested.
But then CQC is the same. A treat for the FPS shooter brigade but a crashing bore for me I'm afraid.
 

[VR] Frank_G

[VR] Frank_G
I dont take part in power play and havent even pledged to a power yet. However i feel affiliated with a faction which i support. I deliver goods to specific stations, sell my exploration data exclusively to that faction and so on... and while not being really interested in taking part in politics and the big game, i read the news, check the factions rankings and such things every time i log into the game. For me, it adds a lot of depth to the world, even when not taking part.
 

Siddius

Siddius
i'm fine with it's existence but don't utilize it beyond the bonus's everyone gets, because i'm a trader so clearly i have to take it in to consideration
 

Hadron-Higgs-Boson

Hadron-Higgs-Boson
Dont play it myself, but when I read the comments from those that actually do they seem to say it's a hit, it's not perfect and there seems to be a lot of things they would change, but that's life in ED. So a hit :)
 

Bigglesof206

B
I do it, and I spend part of each session furthering my power's goals, the rest of the time I'm trying out other stuff - I spend a lot of my time trading rares in an ASP for example, but I'm gradually working through the other ways of playing, this week I tried mining for a while.
It seems to me that the people in this thread fall into two groups - those who do play it, and consider it a useful extra, and those who haven't played it but see no reason to let that colour their opinion about it being rubbish.

PP is like a big game of Risk, there are several actions (these vary a bit from power to power) that you take to earn points, these points are used to advance your own rank within your power (with increasing rank come increasing rewards, up to 50m credits a week pay packet for the maniacs with no life, whilst a 5m cr weekly pay packet is doable although does take a good few hours to run off). The points also advance the cause of your power, allowing you to defend systems against enemies or push into and capture theirs.

Some of those missions involve running between allied bases carrying packets - this might be referred to as intel, or supplies, but basically amounts to small loads of cargo that get eked out every half hour. Other missions will involve going to enemy systems and shooting their ships up, or going into combat zones and having a good scrap. Most normal players will, I imagine, do it the way I do - run a few missions to rack up some points, then go off and trade or whatever as per the normal game to earn credits, upgrade ships, explore, and so on - PP is kind of like a side game you drop in and out of at will when you fancy a bit of a change.

The reddits (see links at page top) and the discussion threads here should suffice to show you that a fair amount of thought goes into each 'team's' planning each week to try to optimise their approach to the current setup - get it right and your power climbs the greasy pole, mess up and you drop. To complicate matters many people seem oblivious of the forum, and go off doing their own mission stuff without having a clue that there's actually an organised group on the forum trying to coordinate things to best advantage....

Bad side to it all? Well, it IS hard to find out exactly how to do everything, the 'instructions' on this stuff are useless and woefully incomplete. You also find that the powerplay info in game (you know, down with the tabs for system and galaxy maps) doesn't gel with what you see on the reddits, which is where you really need to look for the thinking player's guide to which systems to by flying around doing whatever I.

As for the 'grind' - to quickly, and fairly accurately, summarise - whatever you earn in one week, you carry half those points forward as a starting amount the next week - I earned just over 1000 pts last week, this week I had 500 banked before I started playing. This helps you rank up of course. Also, as you rank up, those small parcels of cargo that get you points increase in size so you hang around less filling your cargo hold....everything accelerates so that although the rank grind DOES involve steadily increasing totals to achieve the next rank, the reward system makes it less painful than it might first appear.

Final tip - if you go for it, check the powerplay map display and pledge to a power from within that power's space - like an idiot I joined my power whilst sitting inside an enemy power's space, and got killed twice trying to 'get home'!

Dave
 

CATPAIN KIRK

CATPAIN KIRK
Made some cash from PP whilst merit decay wasn't working as intended during the first few weeks.

If you have big ships and cash reserves for storage ships, sign up for Aisling, keep playing as usual and do nothing special for 3 weeks. Then shoot 25 Fed/Alliance/Independent power ships in their control systems in week four and get shields somewhat useful on an Anaconda, Python or FAS. Buy a couple of Clippers to store some additional ones, just in case they might be useful on the Corvette.

Other than that, don't bother with it
 
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Krezan

Krezan
Bit of both really. Could be cool, just needs more to do. Ferry boxes, stop people ferrying boxes and shooting things so you can ferry boxes to them later. Stop me if I've left anything out.
 

Hurricane Moon

Banned
H
easy 50 mill a week thats it......the politics nonsence needs culling....this isnt yes prime minister on the zx spectrum.(even though that was great)

i bet some of the hardcore PP guys play Democracy game on pc?....surely?...lol


its meant to be a god dam space game.....we should be our own masters and not slaves to whatever faction.


it needs a big overhaul,maybey bring the mission structure into the current gen of gaming for a start,and not just walls of txt......a bit of npc dialogue mass effect style would be good,maybey some moral choices thrown in.
 

GNThrone

GNThrone
Ball.

Being dedicated to a competitive and persistent cause kept me playing the game even until now. It's a pain and horribly implemented but gameplay mechanics can be improved and developer attention increased.

If horizons pulls dev attention from every other problem in the game indefinitely then we can expect the same thing to happen to any new feature they work on down the road. To be honest the lack of spread in dev attention is bad for public image and it makes the entire game a half-decent investment.
 
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