Powerplay: Ideas from the devs - Feedback wanted! #3

[Artie]

I like the rest, but some comments to Favour:

Merits is now some kind of "cloaked" reputation, right? So why establish reputation system (Favours) to support another reputation system? In czech language there is nice naming for it called "rovnak na ohejbak", which can be translated roughly as "applying straightening tool to bending tool". Why should player spend these Favours to get Merits/rank for any other reason than unlock Power-specific equipment?

Won't be better to simply overhaul merits to work like regular reputation? You will get it slower, decay will be also slower just on top tiers/ranks, simply as reputation works now. Also, weekly rewards can be lesser, there can be more ranks with another interesting benefits (small discounts, bonuses, power-related missions, decals, etc.). It's easy to understand and may fit both player "camps".

If do you want to have something more competitive, current merits may be transformed and named to reputation as described above and "new" merits can work similarly as is now and they will provide just additional temporal boosts to the base reputation bonuses and benefits.

 

[Quineloe]

Now, an ability as powerful as this would absolutely have to have some pretty iron-cast rules to prevent exploitation and to keep pledging as an important decision. We’re talking within the realms of having significant enforced cool downs when hiding your powerplay status before you get the benefits (e.g. when you switch to hidden you lose all Powerplay benefits and the ability to affect Powerplay immediately, but remain visible as a target for a significant amount of time. In addition, perhaps you can only cycle this flag when docked at a starport or outpost in one of your power’s control systems).

Here's an idea: Let us hide it whenever we want, unless we are actually doing power play, ie carrying power commodities, currently holding merit claims from undermining. This is actually a huge step in the right direction unless you overthink it. Only allow people to hide it while docked, and if they attack another ship aligned with a power, force it back on.

The way you're taking it it seems your main concern with this is "how to punish players for wanting to be left alone for a while". That is not important.


The upvoting and downvoting sound good.


Coming back to the part about competitive numbers rather than absolutes:
There's potential in this part to give an incentive to players to support low count powers. 30% for Hudson, 3% for Antal? Maybe if it were *considerably* easier to maintain rating 5 on Antal, that might change.

Finally, I said what needed saying regarding your lack of rewards in power play. Sandro tried brushing this off as a single player's opinion, but I'm pretty sure he can see just how many +reps that post received. It's not just my opinion, it's the opinion shared by the vast majority of the players I spoke with regarding PP.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

I like these ideas. Some more flesh to the PowerPlay foundations.

 

[Cody]

... a single player's opinion...

Not worth much these days, is that!

 

[{SAS}Stalker]

I need time to digest it and write something not from a pad. I'm dead against being vs my colleagues for every reason that was raised in beta but the best part of this is that changes for the better are being considered.

 

[Heavenly-Hammer]

I like all of those ideas. They're all worth a try.

I hope you all are considering increasing the merit value of combat kills. As has been stated many times, receiving 15 merits for killing helpless Adders when the underminer fighting in conflict zones with the rebels is only receiving 1 per kill doesn't sit right with me considering the level of danger he's putting himself in to do so. I'd like to see a balance there where the combat zone pilot can realistically make maybe 20% more merit points/hour on average than the person lazily sitting in SC waiting for Adders and T9's to spawn. Maybe 3-5 merits/kill. You all have the analytical data so I'm sure you know what that merit count would look like better than we could guess.

Also, I hope you all do indeed look at the prospects of leveraging your existing Bulletin Board mission system to provide high merit-gaining missions. Just as another split of bulletin board missions, have a section specifically for Power Play missions. Killing specific targets in enemy space, stealing a specific number of cargo in a specific system, scoring X number of kills against the enemy in a military strike in Y system, delivering Z tons of PP cargo to Q expansion system port. All feel like they would probably be relatively easy to implement since the system is already in place, localization notwithstanding. Some basic modifications and you suddenly have a much more satisfying and diverse experience for pledged players.

 

[DextersIndignation]

Here's an idea: Let us hide it whenever we want, unless we are actually doing power play, ie carrying power commodities, currently holding merit claims from undermining. This is actually a huge step in the right direction unless you overthink it. Only allow people to hide it while docked, and if they attack another ship aligned with a power, force it back on.

The way you're taking it it seems your main concern with this is "how to punish players for wanting to be left alone for a while". That is not important.


The upvoting and downvoting sound good.


Coming back to the part about competitive numbers rather than absolutes:
There's potential in this part to give an incentive to players to support low count powers. 30% for Hudson, 3% for Antal? Maybe if it were *considerably* easier to maintain rating 5 on Antal, that might change.

Finally, I said what needed saying regarding your lack of rewards in power play. Sandro tried brushing this off as a single player's opinion, but I'm pretty sure he can see just how many +reps that post received. It's not just my opinion, it's the opinion shared by the vast majority of the players I spoke with regarding PP.

Maybe if it were *considerably* easier to maintain rating 5 on Antal, that might change

Dude....

Ask anyone who plays this game...
The only side that matters is the IMPs....

Harsh but true.

I doubt there is one single person (Real person) that could argue that the insane imbalance is not intended!

The OP is not even allowed to mention balance in his post.

Though I would love it if there was balance (Woooo Hudson)... I and we all KNOW that is never gonna happen.

I admit The feds get shafted...
But those other guys? The "lessor" guys... (I spoke to a RP chap the other day, He tried to explain the benefits of his power. After much laughter he decided do leave power play)

You guys play the game the hard way!

 

[clavain]

Zac, this is exactly what I mean about PowerPlay being a separate game from Elite Dangerous. This is basically a toggle switch that turns PowerPlay on and off. It's a pause button. Don't want to face off with enemies of your faction so you can haul cargo or explore? Turn off the galactic struggle for power, and jump back in when you want to. It's convenient, but how can anyone take what's supposed to be a desperate, backstabbing, scheming struggle for power seriously when you can turn it off and on like the orbital lines?

Why should you have to choose between playing PowerPlay and playing Elite: Dangerous? Am I the only one who thinks this is crazy?

Can't rep you as I'm out, and yes, this idea is crazy, as is allowing player groups to become minor factions and possibly Powers (no guilds though, no sirree, not here). TBH, this all sounds a bit like rearranging deck chairs on the good ship Powerplay Titanic to me, particularly as many of these same suggestions (and some better ones) were all provided in the beta and ignored. If the basic structure of Powerplay is a) flawed and b) unpopular (running at 4:1 against in two current polls of users) , why continue to devote resources to trying to fix it? And how about fixing the BGS and other core gameplay first before trying to integrate Powerplay into it in any fashion? Build a solid game before adding any of this meta-game stuff to it.

Oh, and I don't need a magic flag to avoid playing it.

 

[Quineloe]

Dude....

Ask anyone who plays this game...
The only side that matters is the IMPs....

Harsh but true.

I doubt there is one single person (Real person) that could argue that the insane imbalance is not intended!

The OP is not even allowed to mention balance in his post.

Though I would love it if there was balance (Woooo Hudson)... I and we all KNOW that is never gonna happen.

I admit The feds get shafted...
But those other guys? The "lessor" guys... (I spoke to a RP chap the other day, He tried to explain the benefits of his power. After much laughter he decided do leave power play)

You guys play the game the hard way!

I'm not sure what you're on about. According to the Newsletter today, Hudson has the most followers of them all. I'm also not sure where this age old "omg empire bias" argument is supposed to take us.

 

[Toddo]

Re: PowerPlay Flags:

This sounds like a nice idea. I think it would be even better if the flag were attached to individual ships rather than commanders. I could dock at my "home base" in my Power's territory, drop off my flagged scout, and take my neutral Asp out for a mining run without having to toggle or put myself in harm's way. Activating or deactivating the ship's flags would still follow the same restrictions laid out in the OP.

 

[Mikalus]

I really like the idea of favour and the up down vote. Also the Freedom Fighter could make Power Play a lot more in depth with the potential to involve more Commanders.

 

[Mrpanicy]

Is there any consideration going towards fixing the undermining/reinforcing mechanic? The fact that you cannot keep reinforcing to counteract undermining is rediculous. It should either be a seesaw mechanic or both sides forever increase.

For the seesaw, you would just see if it's a - or a + number. If you are on the reinforcing side and you saw it was in the + side, you would pick another place to reinforce. If you saw a - you would go there to help out.

This way it would allow powers to dig themselves out of a deficit with sufficient effort. Even going so far as to plan for what systems to protect and which to sacrifice. Right now it's based entirely on hope since you can't stop players from undermining, nor do you get rewarded with merit points for all the effort it takes to stop one player.

Please put some thought towards this.

 

[CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE]

Very much liking the Freedom Fighter idea - that is something that could get me into Powerplay.

 

[clavain]

I _reallly_ don't like being Interdicted - can I get a flag put in to turn that on and off at will too?

 

[Legend]

Not sure how I feel about the magical flag idea - it feels like a bit of an immersion breaker, and far too convenient. I am really interested to see where the freedom fighter idea goes though, sounds promising. All in all though, nice to see FD are listening to the community regarding PP.

 

[Sitoutumaton]

The Powerplay flag sounds it is in the good direction regarding how to still influence the background without abandoning a pledge to a power.

Freedom fighting I can totally back up!

 

[JonMichael85]

As someone that quit this game because of powerplay, here are my thoughts:

1. Favor- PLEASE replace merits with Favor immediately. This alone would probably get me back playing the game again and buying those juicy skins.

2. PP Flag- While this sounds pretty exploitable, I'd favor it, especially if you can't complete powerplay objectives while having a PP flag up.

3. Up/Down Vote- I'd like this idea, it gives an ability for a common commander to have influence on what occurs in their power, while at the same time being able to see what the power in general wants to do.

4. Freedom Fighters- I think this misses the point of what people are really wanting out of independent factions, they want player controlled groups, not necessarily merely an independent system that they can support. What does it matter if rando-system kepler 22az becomes independent when those systems have zero distinct features about them anyways, with the lack of varied systems in this game so far? Since most systems are bland and the same anyways, players are looking for ways to get their creativity out by creating player controlled groups that can have influence on the game, not AI controlled groups that force you into some particular style of play. Powerplay savagely made this game 2D for me. I played this game because it seemed like I could fly around and do whatever I want, but with PP, I felt like I was pushed into a corner and was being influenced by Frontier to join certain groups, and honestly drove me towards another space sim. Freedom Fighters doesn't give any sort of freedom back to the game, I think it completely misses the point of what most players have been asking for.

5. Ethos vs. Government- First, and not trying to be a jerk, but check your grammar! This section was pretty bad. I think this would have such a small impact that it is trivial... there's other things to be worried about! How about replacing this with quitting the perceived bias towards the Empire and actually release some decent Federation ships?

6. Mission Variety- Then perhaps you should make it higher on the agenda if it's constantly an issue. This game was already a grindfest before Powerplay, but PP only made it worse. I had so much fun rising through the ranks of the Federation, but when you made it almost impossible for a casual player to ever gain rank by increasing the grinding to an extreme amount, I quit.

7. Conclusion- Again, not trying to be a jerk, but you guys seem like you are just trying to fix things by adding more features, not fixing already existing problems. If you don't fix the grind that this game has become and that everyone has been complaining about, I doubt that this game will be able to sustain itself long term.

 

[Vergil]

Short answer: None of this would make me come back to power play.

Point for point:

Favour:
Doesn't fix the actual problem. Commanders still need to waste time doing power play stuff and then different tasks to make the credits that allow them to do power play, before they can then start doing things that will actually earn them credits.

Competitive solution doesn't work either. CMDRs with less time will still always lose out to those with more.

The problem here is that the system has decay at all, and that the benefits are so drastic that decay is needed. Again, if a commander cannot put in a reasonable mount of time each week and see progress, favor doesn't fix that issue.

Powerplay Flag
As a Private Group/Solo player, Powerplay was more dangerous when I was systems controlled by my own power. Getting interdicted by NPC Anacondas that offer me no credit or merit compensation for destroying them is frustrating, pointless, and marks yet another reason why time spent earning cr and time spent earning merits conflict with each other and demand an absurd amount of time from a player to do both. Flagging Powerplay Off doesn't change the fact that when I am working on Power Play activities I have to deal with these dangerous situations wherein I earn nothing that may cover the risks and dangers, and yet am expected to deal with it. I'm sorry but minor powers asking me to clear their system of criminals pay me better than that.

Up/Down Vote
This ignores the fact that players are going to run power play items to systems in the most time efficient manor available to them. I do not see a system with expansion permission with a crap ton of down votes stopping a CMDR for whom grinding merits in that system is efficient and effective, wouldn't still do it for greedy means because again, earning merits is so thankless and time consuming. You need to get through it as quickly as possible so you can get back to doing what's important, which is earning CR to keep yourself running. It will help the situation, but it is far from a fix. At best it is a band-aid.

Freedom Fighters
I like this only as an opportunity to express my dislike of every power equally, though it still sounds ultimately not worth it.

Missions, Variety and Rewards
Good, the sooner the better.

Conclusion
So long as:

1. Time spent earning merits and time spent earning credits must be allocated separately because doing power play tasks do not compensate me for my expenses, let alone earn me more credits
2. Power Play rewards are so massive that they require such absurd levels of decay in order to stop it from destroying the entire game

I will not be participating in PP. I haven't been playing much E in the last two weeks after PP drove me off, and hearing that these are the kind of ideas that are being put forward to fix it is not encouraging. For what it's worth, still not interested.

 

[Asp Explorer]

As long as I can still have smooth peanut butter, the crunchy peanut butter peeps can spread it on anything they care to enjoy it on.

I'm still not eating it I find the whole notion revolting.

 

[zuark]

Thanks! Quick thoughts:

1) I like the idea of favour, but I still very strongly dislike the idea of competing against the people who are pledged to the same power as you are. Honestly, while the favour idea is okay, I would much prefer to see more varied ways for Commanders to earn higher numbers of merits. Merits for PvP kills is an idea that's been suggested a lot, and I think that's a great idea--but even if you don't want to go there, I think Commanders should definitely be able to earn merits for defending their Power's territory against agents of foreign Powers (even if it's only NPCs). The numbers of merits also definitely need to be tweaked: more merits for bigger enemy ships, and more merits for combat in general.

Another way to help more casual players would be to increase the rewards of the lower tiers. Most players right now don't consider any rank below 5 to be worth getting.

2) I LOVE the PowerPlay Flag idea! Please, please, please do this. Permanent visibility of one's faction standing is THE reason I have not pledged to a Power.

I don't have any comments on the other ideas except to say that I think they sound great and I would be happy to see them implemented.