The only changes I am really against, are any sort of open bonus or requirement, or solo pg nerfs. A lot of the rest is actually quite reasonable and may even help.
It's the open requirement, and the inevitable escalation that will be required when people serious about winning PP circumvent that requirement. Using router tricks and the block function to make open solo. Will lead to demands block be weakened or removed or that players with crap internet be shadow banned from having an effect on PP.
Yeah, I would want some of that, for competitive Powerplay. In Powerplay should be chat-only, it shouldn't affect instancing. Ideally instancing for players in Powerplay should be like Wing instancing: it should be prioritised.
Imo, the fix for router-fiddling in a hypothetical Open-Only Powerplay should be dummy connection requests from masked IPs, sent from frontier's own servers, with randomised connection characteristics. These should be indistinguishable from genuine connection requests, and a player's setup repeatedly refuses to connect to them, then that player should get automated help emails & then be subsequently barred from participating. Ive instanced adequately
with players on the other side of the planet, while both using 4G tethers (and mine was officially 'out of range'). What kind of connection type are you suggesting as a low-bar? dial-up?
I'm sorry, but this is a hilariously bad strawman. "The fact Open is only a choice is equivalent to slavery!"
Lmao
Youve created the only strawman yourself, right then. well done for knocking it down.
I was demonstrating how youre being so reductive as to lose all relevance & meaning. By substituting that one word, you could turn your sig into a defence of slavery. And it would have exactly as much weight of meaning, ie. none. If you want to turn that into a strawman and feel the need to defend slavery, thats on you, but I never suggested it.
The fact of the matter is, countless choices have no reward beyond the enjoyment of doing them. If I choose to do a CZ in an Eagle, I've made my life much more difficult, but that doesn't mean I deserve a greater reward for doing so.
That is a dev design choice, to encourage players to buy more powerful ships more fit for the purpose.
The devs do not intend for players to go through the same process in Powerplay with modes, and come to the logical conclusion that private modes are the only place to be to get merits moved.
That was an unintended consequence, hence why we're here, in this thread, proposing a fix, yet again.
And that is the fundamental nature of Open. In every respect, you are simply making your life more difficult for the enjoyment of doing so; there is no tangible benefit over that enjoyment. If you can argue that powerplay should have benefits for playing in open, you can make the exact same arguments about literally every competitive aspect of the game, which is very obviously nonsense.
And therefore making powerplay open only is equally nonsense.
You can make the same argument about anything. Everything is not equal as a consequence.
Every game feature has its own characteristics and is more or less suited to Open-only because of its nature. Powerplay is particularly well suited above every other feature for all the reasons listed endlessly in many threads on the topic.