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

[aspiringexpatriate]

Favour

Such a system would mean however, that Commanders would not necessarily have to put large amounts of constant effort in to taste the benefits a power might offer, instead building up their rewards over time in a piecemeal fashion and choosing when to execute them.

With such a system, I believe we could also consider reverting the way merits rewards are calculated back to the more competitive allocation method we started with, where rating requirements are based on success versus one’s peers as opposed to an arbitrary threshold. I know that this proved less than popular in the first instance, but I’d be interested if folk might reconsider its value if coupled with a favour system for the less competitive power supporters. Don’t worry if you strongly disagree, just say so!

Fantastic! This would make the exploration bonus from Sirius worthwhile, as I find it hard to believe anyone could explore decently and reap the Ranking 5 rewards. I was one that supported the percentage based merit grading, especially after seeing what is apparently hundreds of players doing anything they can to get merits, whether it helps their Power or not. I much prefer a system that discourages anyone from attempting to "maintain" Ranking 5, except those most dedicated to contributing towards the Power. (It might also make supposed 5th column activity more apparent.) The favour system should encourage some level of participation, but no need to participate every single week. Additionally, have y'all thought about spending an amount of favour, rather than credits, to fast track your deliveries? Honestly, doing that might make Ranking 5 an endlessly maintainable cycle (which would be a bad thing), but it sounds like something that should be a possibility.

Additionally, connected to the rest of the thoughts further down, I believe a player should retain favour with the specific Power, even if they 'Leave Power'. Merits and benefits expire over time, and when you 'Leave', but favour stays throughout. However, maybe 'Defecting' could eliminate any favour earned with the Power, but the merits and Ranking still transfer to the new Power?

Power Play Flag

Interesting idea. We've already got evidence of players 'false-flagging' around the galaxy (which I think should be an optional tactic, provided the punishment fits the level of betrayal). With the flag inactive/hidden, you lose benefits and merits, but retain favour? It sounds like a great system to cater to players who want to spend a week or a month exploring or running medical supplies up to pandemics. Great idea, and it does gel well with the favor system. A player could earn enough favor to immediately reach the Ranking they left at.

On second thought, if favour is retained when you 'Leave Power', but lost when you 'Defect'; the Power Flag isn't really necessary–you would have already built it into the system with favour.

Up/Down Vote

This does sound effective, and it might effectively enable a Power to stop Expansion into a strategically poor system. I would prefer different sorting options for the Control System tab: possibly having Income, Distance, Fortification Status, Undermine Status, Upkeep, and Cost If Undermined as sorting options for the Control System list. As it is, we have to take all that information into spreadsheets in order to attempt to sort through them. While voting does sound like a great option, I would greatly appreciate also being able to sort the list myself. Personally, I think Voting would be most effective in prioritizing Expansion targets.

I would love if there was a Power-specific aspect to GalNet which functionally served as a NewsGroup for your Power. Possibly even granting the highest ranking members editing or publishing approval. This could become an In-Character user contribution and edited GalNet auxiliary source of information. The best stories could even be cross-posted to the public GalNet feed, as they currently are. Talk about telling your own story...

Freedom Fighters

One concept that’s currently acting as a chew toy for us is the idea that Commanders could pledge to a system under the yoke of a power’s control, becoming system “freedom fighters”, ready to push back against the invader.

Fantastic idea! This could be especially effective if the current Powers ever do collapse, you could still have hundreds of players still fighting for Antal in his home system.

I think that such a feature would require the use of Powerplay flags, discussed earlier, to prevent the role of freedom fighter being a permanent death sentence across massive swathes of human space.

I think if you re-examine how favour works in relation to 'Leave Power' and the proposed PP Flag system, you might not require the flag system. Minor Factions should also be able to bestow favour. The more I break-down favour, I'm seeing it as a permanent form of reputation, more than a reward for completing a task. Far more limited in its capable uses than reputation, but seeing it like this could allow for Minor Factions and Powers to equally award favour.

(and if you’ve been reading some of our other posts on Powerplay, you’ll note that we’re also considering allowing massive undermining to force a system into collapse, allowing it to shake of power control without the power being in a CC deficit – personally, I see possibilities...)

I cannot emphasize enough how much this idea terrifies me. Right now, we have a balance between Solo and Open activities during the Fortification stage. If overwhelming undermining can collapse system without requiring Turmoil, then there would also need to be a way to 'defeat' that undermining effort: a means to have effect player-run defensive patrols of Control Systems; not simply overwhelming fortification.

More Powerful Ethos versus Government Effect

The way this works is that if more than 50% of exploited systems are aligned (either for or against) then the threshold is raised or lowered by a set percentage, around 50%.

Exploited systems do factor into this! Ahah! Good to know...

With the 5x fortification trigger in the most recent patch, we're already seeing Ethos and local governments having more effect on Power Play mechanics.

Our proposal would be to have the benefits and penalties of ethos versus government scale per exploited system rather than at a set 50%. This more granular approach would mean that Commanders could affect change without having to commit to such a large amount of work as flipping half the systems. It would also allow us to increase the overall range of effect – so that Commanders who did manage to flip loads of exploited systems could impose a much larger benefit/penalty.

Oh, that's what you mean? Yes, please do that. Also, please have a thought about how local government affects Contested Systems.

Missions, Variety and Rewards

Yay!

There are also any number of smaller changes that could pop up as well, like offering sanctuary from opposing powers at home systems that we suspect might offer reasonable benefits

This is the single place where I would enjoy a decision to massively increase Authority Vessel response time. HQ systems should have stronger security of some sort.

Along this same train of thought, most Control Systems also have Power related ships patrolling in the 'Shift. Yet these ships never show up in response to interdictions of pledged players. That seems like a massive oversight to me.

 

[CMDR Darkler]

Not sure about the flag idea, I would have thought something along the lines of your rank determines change of being flagged as hostile. So for example at Rank 1 in a hostile system the commander has a 20% chance of being identified as belonging to the opposition, at rank 5 it is a 100%.

 

[daygobah]

Make it so i would want to play.

Right now its boring.

The rewards are not that great for the time you have to put into it.

Plus that stupid ranking what have you degrades over time also puts me off of doing it.


Plus i would rather see you focus on the actual game fix the known issues first then work on the PP stuff.

Fix the res sites spawns.
Fix the people ramming players with ships.
Fix the game mechanics.
Fix the system damage locations.
Fix reinforced hulls and such so they actually do something.

There are so many other things to fix instead of working on something no one even wanted in the first place.

 

[Sandro Sammarco]

Hello Commanders!

Thanks for all of the feedback so far. Keep it coming, please!

Some points for us all to chew on:

The favour system would be in addition to merits. The merit system would remain as it is now, if the general consensus was that reverting to rating allocation via performance relative to peers was too objectionable.

I understand two concerns with having a Powerplay flag: the worry that it could be exploited and the fear that it dilutes the meaning of pledging. Both valid points. I would hope that we could address exploitation issues by controlling when and where players were able to toggle the switch.

The second point, I'm not completely sure I agree with. My case would be that as long as all benefits were stopped whilst not visible for Powerplay, why should we dictate how a Commander wanted to spend their time? Especially if having this feature increases the likelihood of someone pledging to a power. I'm open to debate on this.

Also, I'll have a munch on the suggestions raised for this flag (attacking turning the flag on, etc.) I get the vibe of having the flag decrease the risk rather than eliminate it altogether.

Also, when toggling the Powerplay flag off, you would not get NPC Powerplay ships interacting with you, either. And you would not lose favour, though you would be prevented from spending it.

Over-fortification: this is an interesting issue. The reason that there is not anything in this post concerning this phenomena is because we're still looking to get targeted system collapse in soon. For clarity, this is the mechanic where massive undermining can lead to a system collapsing, throwing off power control even if the power is healthy.

With the threat of targeted collapse, it's plausible to suggest that folk have a greater responsibility to choose what to forty (as over-fortification can prevent targeted collapse). And we're very happy for powers to suffer serious losses from this system, as it is driven by enemy Commander activity.

That being said, if things don't pan out, we will come back to this.

The concept of Commanders pledging to a power contrary to their naval ranks: this is a great point. We want to buff gameplay with naval rank, and I think there's a very strong case to be made for making sure rank and pledge are forced to align to some degree.

Rewards: we do have ideas and plans to expand rewards for Powerplay, but I'm not ready to talk about them right now.

Adding character to the powers: I would hope that missions and activities can help here.

"Why are you wasting time with Powerplay?": simple, we believe in it and we want to improve it. I know that's not what everyone wants to hear, but it's just another facet of the game, like trading, or minor faction rep, or bounty hunting. It's not for everyone in the same way we would not expect everyone to trade, for example.

Right now more than enough Commanders are using it and it's doing its job of dynamically altering human space.We just think we could improve the experience.

Hope these comments fuel more debate and suggestions, thanks again for taking the time to join in (also apologies for any odd spelling or grammar - I'm writing this from an IPad and I don't think I'll ever get used to the touch keyboard!)

 

[teedle]

Also, I'll have a munch on the suggestions raised for this flag (attacking turning the flag on, etc.) I get the vibe of having the flag decrease the risk rather than eliminate it altogether.

Maybe it could be done with power decals. You have to have the decal on to benefit from all power play stuff and has the normal risk. But without it it decreases the risk a lot but doesn't allow you to do anything. (and maybe you could only get your decal from your systems). I only suggest decals cuz yet another random toggle would be just one more thing to be confusing to people haha

 

[Rubberboots]

Make it when you pledge loyalty to a Faction or Power leader you pledge loyalty to all the Commanders who also have taken the oath, yes an oath.
If you defect then you have betrayed all of your fellow Commanders and they should be given missions to hunt you down and kill you.

This is a fantastic idea!

 

[DJ]

Favour

In favour. On the proviso that favours are faction locked and not transferable - so you can't earn favours skipping between different factions each week doing the 'easier' merit earning tasks, then dumping all your cumulative favours en-masse into Winters' power tree a few months down the road.

"Competitive allocation method" - in favour too.


Powerplay Flag

Flag lowered. Nay. An additional layer of complexity that is not required or welcomed. You have solo play for this rationale. If you pledge, you pledge and face the consequences, if you don't, you don't face the same consequences. You introduced it - it's here - you'll have to stick with it now!


Up/Down Vote

Up voted. Yes. It will integrate non-forum/reddit Cmdrs better. It may help certain Cmdr's feel more 'valued and special.' It will likely anger the self-proclaimed Napoleon-complex strategist Cmdrs here, but not the masses. [*Not a dig at Cmdr Napoleon btw ]

Any in-game "clean, contextual communication of ideas" is very welcome and more timely than hours/days later reading the forums to find out your efforts are now deemed worthless by certain Cmdrs trying to influence others to their way of thinking.

A voice for honest-Joe.


Freedom Fighters

Power to the people! Many Cmdrs want a military career theme. Could this function as a miltary career - albeit not via the big-boy major three factions? Concept has potential for sure.


More Powerful Ethos versus Government Effect

Fence sitter. I'll be honest, i've read this twice and still have no idea what you're getting at, sorry Zac.


Missions, Variety and Rewards

Deep sigh.... Mmmm, heard all the platitudes before. Here's hoping multi-thread missions come to fruition some day.


Conclusion

Concluded. Thanks for the inclusion Zac.

 

[Corrigendum]

Both favour and Up/Downvote mechanics would be great additions to PowerPlay. I'm personally indifferent to the other proposals.

 

[Krieger]

I want to play Elite not Powerplay. If Powerplay would have been presented on Kickstarter back in 2012, I would have never supported it.

Powerplay seemed like a good idea to make the Elite Galaxy feel more alive by providing a dynamic backdrop for many new mission scenarios and careers for CMDRs. Instead -to me at least- it feels like Powerplay is set to absorb Elite. The thought makes my stomach turn.

Please drop Powerplay and lets go play and develop Elite again. I mean us, player community and dev team together.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

Zac / Sandro

Thanks for the posts.

Favour - You're introducing another currency into the pot when the most obvious solution is there in front of you : stop merit decay !

• Hardcore (time rich) players will accumulate merits quickly and be able to influence the power fairly easily and regularly
• Casual (time poor) players will gradually accumulate merits over a longer period of time but still affect the power infrequently
• Both will feel like their efforts in game helping their power meant something, rather than punishing the casual for lack of regular playing

Then give the commanders something to spend them on:

• Towards their chosen power in the normal manner
• Exchange it into credits (perhaps fluctuate the exchange rate depending upon how the power is doing)
• Introduce a power "shop" that allows you to purchase things with your merits (make them expensive perhaps)
  • The new powers unique item
  • Power skins / decals to display your allegiance
  • Allow merits to be used in your power controlled stations for things like repairs / refuelling

At least something like this allows the hardcore players to dominate control of the powers direction (like it is currently) and the casual can do their part towards the power and in return receive money / repairs / vanity items / etc with out fear that going on holiday will "cost" them (as that's bad game design IMO - if you're going to insist on merit / rep decay at least make the clock tick when you're logged in, not when you're logged out)

/2cs.

 

[DigitalMandalorian]

Make the PP modules (Cytoscrambler, Enforcer Cannon, Mining Lance) useful?

Maybe make HQ Permit only so AI/Players can't interdict you in your capital?

Make control systems not have enemy AI spawn? Not really a controlled system if enemies are constantly present.

 

[Muetdhiver]

Here is my feedback :

• Favor very good idea. I think it would make a lot people happy. An awsome possibility would be to add a variety of 'perks' that you can buy with it. My feeling with this idea is that you could just remove the merits entierly and be totally fine as long as there is too much ways to spend it on cool stuff Maybe provide 'ranks' based on the total number of favors, that only provide cosmetic stuff like decals. What would be awesome is ship paintjobs reflecting the Power color, to add to the immersion.
• Power Play Flag, again most excellent idea, so that people can go do stuff non-PP related without being attacked by 9/10th of the galaxy.
• Up/Down Vote, certainly a solid first step for PP coms. Why not extend its use for a diplomatic system ?. e.g. Power A upvote peace with Power B, if power B also does it, then both are at peace.
• Freedom Fighters really cool, lots of RP opportunities there, esp. if a power starts collapsing.
• More Powerful Ethos versus Government Effect that just makes sense, so yeah.
• Missions, Variety and Rewards that is just good news. Have you considered doing something in the lines of B&B missions from controled/exploited systems bringing merits for some activities, for example : hunting pirates down => contributes to fortification.

Now, a question : is it planed at some point to make the systems gov/eco/status/controling power more felt in the stations at least ? So that corporation controled stations feel/look different from feudal ones ?
IMO this would help a lot with the immersion.

Last : system security should mean something and be effective. Like, when I got > 500K bouty on my head, I would expect the cops to send in the SWAT team, vulture, FDL and so on. Not 2-3 soon to be dead vipers

 

[Leo Sagan]

Very happy to see that you guys are trying to improve these aspects of PP. I'm not entirely convinced by your ideas : they seem very complicated tbh, and don't address my number one concern about PP which is : why should I pledge. If the answer is the rewards, they need to be worked on. If it is RP (which is quite weak if you ask me), the different powers background / story need a serious development. Still, I don't see any thing I really disagree with in your proposal.

 

[Elementical]

In relation to the ethos versus government effect, the proposed change would be very good, as you could see a change in fortification values week after week instead of waiting to achieve a specific percentage of flipped systems to gain an advantage/disadvantage. It would add value to each exploited system and improve the link between powerplay and the background sim.

However, there is one major flaw, the existing system doesn't work consistently, or possible not correctly at all. A relevant bug report was created several weeks ago. This will also have a knock-on effect on the concept of "targeted system collapse". Without the ability to improve current fortification values the time spent on flipping systems becomes meaningless.

 

[ZoltanSnarf]

***sarcasm warning please dont ban me***

Not that FDev EVER listens to their user base, I'll bite and give feedback.

I'll even do it here on the forums and not just on Reddit where my sarcasm warning is not required for my safety.

P1 Favour

P2 Powerplay Flag

P3 Up/Down Vote

P4 Freedom Fighters

P5 More Powerful Ethos versus Government Effect

P6 Missions, Variety and Rewards

If I'm not banned yet here goes!

P1 That sounds pretty great, I personally pledged to the Goddess with the Blue Hair while on an exploring trip and only for like 100 merits total when I got back to the bubble because I learned about the Decay thing and was not interested in staying in the bubble forever just to progress. I am an explorer and I have no time for your silly merits. Favour however is something even I can take advantage of. Win for the casual player it seems, with the bonus for the players that love the grind. Effort = reward. Solid one

P2 See P1, this also helps the explorers and casual players.

P3 THIS IS CRAZY BRILLIANT (crud did I get banned for caps?) Language barrier HA! gone. No need to look at chatrooms with spam, ingame mail with spam, all info at a glance! Who thought of this? Give them a cookie STAT.

P4 I am so lost here, probably don't care either - but by the looks of the first three I'm guessing you nailed it here too.

P5 What? That seems like math or something, I refuse to even try reading it. see P4 and the bit about you probably nailed that too.

Conclusion, Keep up the great work and continue ignoring us players! It is working out very well for me.

o7

 

[Dejay]

The only feedback I'd like to add is that you should stop focusing so much on these galaxy wide simulation and community gameplay events. Imho what is lacking is the moment to moment gameplay to bring me back to the game. I'm waiting for intricate missions with twists and turns during the mission. Procedural generated story elements, crew members that have a history, friend and foe NPCs that create an interactive and dynamic narrative. A plausible simulation of the reactions of my local actions that give me agency. I kill a trader, his son hunts me down. I help a pirate I get an unlikely ally. My crew member spots an old enemy and wants to me to hunt him down. Local simulation instead of global simulation that gives me direct agency. Create my own story. Less epic but much more compelling.

That is all I have to say about powerplay: It's just not interesting to me. It's just another form of grinding with the same old mechanics for the same old rewards. I do not have agency: Whatever I do is just a drop in the bucket. Whatever I do nothing happens or changes as a result of it. It's like voting just more laborious.

 

[Wolf.K]

In reference to the ability to toggle Powerplay flagging, it's not so much that it's a bad idea, but I think having people make concrete decisions that affect them in the long term is perhaps more realistic and a better way to go about things. Sometimes you have to make choices you can't undo easily.

 

[Rubberboots]

The second point, I'm not completely sure I agree with. My case would be that as long as all benefits were stopped whilst not visible for Powerplay, why should we dictate how a Commander wanted to spend their time? Especially if having this feature increases the likelihood of someone pledging to a power. I'm open to debate on this.

I'm sorry, but I don't really see the benefits you mean. Most PP benefits (reduced cost of slaves, etc.) are open to players who aren't even pledged to the power (which really should change...). Of those benefits that you have to be active with the power to get, more than half only take place at stations, where there's no risk in having your flag on. (As an aside, these bonuses are not even close to being balanced. Patreus gets ammo cost reduction of 90%... which amounts to nothing, especially compared to doubling the amount you get for bounties. One saves you a few thousand credits over the course of a few hours. The other nets you a few *million* credits over that same amount of time. You guys defintiely need to rebalance these). I can see people flying around all day with the flag off, collecting their bounties, then heading back to the station, flicking on the flag to turn them in, or to re-arm at the reduced rate--getting all the benefit for none of the risk.

But even more fundamentally than at the level of the balance of risk and reward, I find the toggleable flag dillutes the very concept of being allied to a power. It changes it from a commitment, where you make new friends and enemies, to something you flip on and off at your convenience. As someone for whom player interaction is a major part of the power play experience, I've really enjoyed seeing space populated with identifiable friends and foes. Adding the ability to shut off the flags would fundamentally dillute this experience: most people you run into will appear unallied while not actively engaged in power play activities, so you'd be flying past a mortal enemy with no way of knowing. Whether this cost is worth it to you or not is a personal judgement call, but I don't know how you can say that it doesn't dillute the experience of power play.

 

[TomR]

Freedom Fighters
Some of the feedback we’ve collected has been from Commanders that do not wish to pledge support to any power (which is totally fine, of course!), instead wanting to remain as champions to minor factions/systems they have adopted.

In general the idea of having more dovetailing between minor factions and powers is something we’re interested in, beyond the government versus ethos effect that currently exists (and that we might consider buffing significantly).

One concept that’s currently acting as a chew toy for us is the idea that Commanders could pledge to a system under the yoke of a power’s control, becoming system “freedom fighters”, ready to push back against the invader.

As a freedom fighter, a Commander would be able to take part in undermining and opposition for the system they had pledged to, effectively working with opposing powers to weaken the controlling power’s presence (and if you’ve been reading some of our other posts on Powerplay, you’ll note that we’re also considering allowing massive undermining to force a system into collapse, allowing it to shake of power control without the power being in a CC deficit – personally, I see possibilities...)

Clearly, such courageous/dastardly behaviour would not be without *substantial* danger: we’d consider freedom fighters to possibly be valid targets in any system controlled or exploited by any power that shared a major faction with the one being attacked by the freedom fighter. We’d also likely want to limit Commanders to support one system at a time, with maybe a cool down before being able to pick a new one (or perhaps some mission to “wipe” their status clean?)

I think that such a feature would require the use of Powerplay flags, discussed earlier, to prevent the role of freedom fighter being a permanent death sentence across massive swathes of human space. I also think it offers a new way to enjoy Powerplay, without being beholden to organisations you might not approve of. What do you think?

I would like this very much, thank you for listening to the community.

 

[Viajero]

Hello Commanders!

I understand two concerns with having a Powerplay flag: the worry that it could be exploited and the fear that it dilutes the meaning of pledging. Both valid points. I would hope that we could address exploitation issues by controlling when and where players were able to toggle the switch.

The second point, I'm not completely sure I agree with. My case would be that as long as all benefits were stopped whilst not visible for Powerplay, why should we dictate how a Commander wanted to spend their time? Especially if having this feature increases the likelihood of someone pledging to a power. I'm open to debate on this.

Sandro,

On the second point, having a flag system would reduce barriers to entry to PP no doubt, so you could have more commanders playing PP. But I guess the decision comes down to how much more aggregated downtime can be expected from players switching off PP with the flag from time to time, compared to how much more aggregated uptime there will be due to the new added players.

If the aggregated downtime outstrips the aggregated uptime I d say the flag system would be counterproductive overall to the PP experience. If that was the case then no matter how many more additional commanders join in the eventually lower activity levels may also lead into a negative feedback loop.

Personally I dont think the flag will motivate many more additional players to join PP since there are already many ways a player can avoid or minimize PP conflict currently if he/she so wish. The galaxy is BIG, we have solo mode, leaving a power is very easy etc. There is no need to lower barriers to entry, the barriers are already super low. What I think we need is to up the incentives, and there are various ways for that:

- Direct rewards: At the moment most of the perks produced by powers apply to everyone in the bubbles, only a couple minor aspects of those are reserved for members. In some cases, certain ranks offer literally nothing new. Increase or expand rewards exclusive for members. And reward loyalty.

- Inherent gameplay rewards. Make the territorial gameplay more tangible/personal for players and linked to the background sim. There are a couple of main ways to do this which I think are key to motivate players:

1 - At the moment there is no real incentive for players to hold a certain real state or to decide to attack / defend a specific system other than CC yields (which lets be honest, its not the sexiest of concepts). At the moment all systems are pretty much the same for us as players in terms of Power role playing and powerplay.

Make instead that certain systems, spread around, stand out and be clearly special. Be it with above average trading profits for certain items, a couple certain ship types or module types exclusivity for a reasonably long LY radius (say, several hundreds LY at least), better than average mining grounds etc. The game has way too many concepts already that you can use to help differentiate and incentivize those special systems or hotspots a little more.

I believe the systems geography needs a bit more differentiation and impact to the player to make fighting for territory that much more meaningful. Players need to feel that they are winning or losing something more tangible and close to their hearts than just "CC".

In a territorial game you need to feel that you "own" or "lose" something tangible that you can touch.

2- Integration with the background sim: As mentioned above CC is still too abstract and too impersonal to feel really identified with the concept and fight for it instinctively. Make CC yields be linked to each system´s macro indicators: economy state, population, government type, security level, Major Faction allegiance of main minor faction. And make all those macro indicators susceptible to playing the background sim by players (missions, trading, bounty hunting, conflict zones etc), and you have a winner combo.