Powerplay PowerPlay is a Niche Feature Because it Falls Far Behind What Most People Want!

[Cosmo]

During the 2.2.03 Q&A Livestream notes - Dec 6 the devs answered this question: More extensive Powerplay development? It's a niche feature, but they want to find time to work on it.

Powerplay became a niche feature because it's awful game-design like a dull board game. Players are just bricks in the wall doing repetitive mind-numbing tasks (peons of NPC Powers). We're never the architects or owners of the wall (guild founders, managers, leaders). Hire people who thoroughly understand sandbox games and emergent gameplay to fix Powerplay.

Elite's problem is that it doesn't have anything in the User Interface to support coordination beyond a friends list. Chat channel? Mail? Guild tags next to the pilot name? That would go a long way right there. You can add "guilds/corps" without turning ED into Eve, There's very few MMOs that give as much freedom as Eve and 95% of them still have guilds/social features.

CMDR_Tiigerstyle
Although I don't quite share the anger; I agree that PP is untapped potential

It's one of those features that I see many new players gravitate towards, only to promptly ditch when the realize its more hassle than it's worth.
It really is a great idea in theory, allow players to partake in the galaxy and help shape the game while still maintaining the feeling of being a small part of it. It's truly unfortunate that's its so poorly implemented,
I mean this the type of feature that so many players want, to participate in a more meaningful way

How they thought they could implement a multiplayer faction system (quasi-guild almost) without backing it up with the proper in-game tools (social tools, in-game BGS notifications), is beyond me. The fact that PP only weakly survives though outside forums in a big big mess up.

PP is only a "niche" activity because it's so cumbersome to become involved in.

edits: spelling, had a few space beers

Miraclefish
Powerplay is a niche feature because it falls so far behind what most people want out of the game. Flying spaceships first, then being rich, then being good at killing other players, then being engineered, then faction ships then, eventually, they may decide to enter Power Play. Improving it may get more people onboard but it's never going to be a major feature of the game.

Miraclefish
Right but look, I see that you love Power Play and that's great.

But the numbers of people taking part are minuscule.

Now the things you're suggesting, co-op mission, bigger and better rewards, scripted missions... they are things the entire game needs and will get, not a PP exclusive.

Also not everyone will want to tie themselves to a particular Power as it has both benefits and drawbacks. It will never be as popular as the simpler activities in game like community goals or missions because it is more complex, requires far more investment and, really, politics can be boring.

The point I made that you didn't quite get was that Elite players don't care about Power Play in the grand scheme of things, it will always be a secondary or tertiary activity because of the complexity and investment of time involved.

[video=youtube;YR5ApYxkU-U]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5ApYxkU-U[/video]

 

[Monk]

I have never so completely disliked a feature of a game, that I like overall, as much as I disliked Powerplay.

Honestly, I forget it exists most of the time...I only notice it when I see that tab for it on the Gal Map nav panel.

 

[Arka]

I like the idea of powerplay, I like the general idea of pp, but it is very badly designed

It demands lots of dedication from the players as well as the time, and for people like me who simply don't have that much time to dedicate would simply be overwhelmed by Merit that is decaying every cycle, turning whatever half you made it into dust. And all that sweat for what?

Special Modules, and increased trade/bounty/influence?
50 Millions? My trading could earn me more with less time and less mindbreaking.

And top of that, you will be marked as HOSTILE and bloated with dozens of NPCs from opposing faction interdicting you and you can't even fight them back most of the times and you'll even get bounty for doing that.

And we don't even get the POWERPLAY Decal that is being actively advertised on this trailer here https://youtu.be/CWPhk5Gclbo?t=45 I really want Hudson or Felicia winters Decal [ugh]

- I pledged for Aisling Duval
- Stop playing ED for 3 weeks
- Play again and grind 750 merits
- Buy all Prismatic Shields module from Class 1 to Class 8 after PP cycle calculated.
- UNPLEDGE

And be done with it.

 

[Infidel Deity]

PowerPlay, as an idea, to me, is great.
And it has the potential to be truly awesome.

Unfortunately, it was designed in a way that make watching paint dry exiting in comparison.
Most players soon learned to dread this monotonous part of the game.
Thus it was left to die in it's own faeces.
Awesome potential utterly wasted.

CMDR Ziljan - God bless him - posted a video where a player (don't remember his name) comes with ideas that look really nice.
Hope also FDEV has seen it and will take lots of notes.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...-to-this-guy?p=4856445&viewfull=1#post4856445

 

[Cosmo]

Yes the ideas in the video would make PP a lot better. I think Powerplay should also be opened up to let players create and manage their own powers (guilds).

Elite Dangerous: Fixing the Game Part 3 - PowerPlay

[video=youtube;xo-1M9fZirA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo-1M9fZirA[/video]

Amazing ideas. If Power Play looked like this, then it would be AMAZING. Would bind the community together in a way that makes sense, all the way up from the BGS to larger galactic politics. And turn Power Play from excel sheet checkers into a fully fleshed out and intuitive layer of the game.

A small sampler of the ideas in this video (much much more, and all of it is awesome):

-BGS organically integrated to PP
-Power competitions
-Roles for every type of gameplay
-Uses BGS style missions
-Scouting missions (scan enemy cargo, etc)
-Uses existing assets and mechanics, so fairly low dev overhead
-details galore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo-1M9fZirA

^Found the above while looking at joystick reviews. This guy is a very clear thinker. Extremely bright.

 

[lefty1117]

I like the concept of Powerplay because it gives purpose in an open world. If you want a more directed, social experience then it would seem that PP is ideal. it's just that they haven't implemented some of the features it needs to support the cohesive purposeful gameplay in a way that is meaningful to players. It feels too abstracted, and there's no sense that we're actually making an impact on how things unfold.

I think two things are needed that would drastically change the outlook for PP:

- Power-based chat
- Power-specific missions with rewards and payouts

Do those two things and players will come back in droves. Particularly the second item, but I think the first is very important too in order to build community and be able to coordinate in-game.

- - - Updated - - -

Just wanted to add something. powerplay could be a tool through which FD tells much more of the game's story. They've done all of this work on building up the lore, carving up the galaxy, etc. But it seems to be largely ignored in the context of galactic goings-on. I think that's a shame - it could be a great story-telling device. For example, why aren't there any PP-related community goals? So many opportunities. I'm a bit sad to hear that it's considered just a niche feature when it has so much potential to be a pillar of the game.

 

[Martin Schou]

What most people want are mind numbingly boring, simple and completely devoid of depth games. If you doubt this, realise that Kim Kardashian's mobile game "Kim Kardashian: Hollywood" generated about 72 million dollars in revenue in the six months after it was released in 2014. (source)

Players are just bricks in the wall doing repetitive mind-numbing tasks (peons of NPC Powers). We're never the architects or owners of the wall (guild founders, managers, leaders).

That's odd - I could have sworn that the organized players behind Mahon ARE the architects and owners of the wall. True - even though I'm one of the main organizers for the Mahon groups, I don't get to dictate exactly what happens, but then again, it takes more than a single brick layer to build something like the Hoover Dam.

The result of our choices, our actions and our determination can be seen by how we've managed to completely and utterly dominate PowerPlay.

The one thing we have absolutely no control over, however, is the stories told through PowerPlay. And in case you're wondering, throughout 80 weeks, I can think of only one story sort of told through PowerPlay, but that was player submitted and the only times we'd see either Mahon or the Alliance mentioned in any kind of PowerPlay related story, it was because someone had broken the rules and allowed players to speak on behalf of established lore characters (because, you know - who give a stiff about the Alliance anyway, right?)

Yes, there are lots of things broken in PowerPlay, there are a lot of things that could and should be significantly changed, including the mind numbingly boring and insanely expensive and thus time consuming tasks that are associated with it. But we are bricks of self determination, and we didn't just build a wall, we built a fortress. While some simply thought "I'm a brick, I'll go smash some windows" and others thought "I'm a brick, I can't do anything" we went the Douglas Adams route and hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.

 

[withnail]

Don't forget all those spreadsheets too.