Powerplay - Really? - aka: The Fascinating Quest for Prismatic Shields

[timbero]

LOL this is what I call a proper welcome back to the forums! I've missed you arrogant nerds sooooo much!

...btw, well done on not giving your full PC spec as a superfluous aside in this thread!




Whoa!!! This reminds me of the edge of the seat, adrenalin fuelled start to JJ's Star Trek movie & not at all of this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVyqVEYdwHM&t=23s

Good job Frontier...it must be really satisfying to realise such dream apex gameplay as envisaged in the concept/planning stages [blah]



Yeah!! That's right! <Checks own post history (the ones that haven't been removed, that is)> *cough*

I enjoyed that video quite a lot, repped. Is that from the Simpsons movie or an episode?

Right...one moment folks; CMDR StiTch! needs to put the protective hat on.

...

*clank*

...done.

Right, so let's get started. Why are you so bored, OP? Well your joy senses will be tingling like a gerbil in heat when you hear I have the answers for you! (and oh boy, I hope my helmet straps are done up tight).

...because you're playing a multiplayer activity as a solo player.

Yes, PG/solo players are equal and loved etc. - however no matter which way you shake your stick or which end of the brush you're grabbing, PP just does not work as a solo/soloable activity. The structure of the missions/merits, and the power rankings, and the expansion systems, and the interaction potential in general...are all very blatantly designed around a multi-player competition/paramilitary war.

With no further word on what went awry and why, simply bear that in mind. The potential of PP was the first real vector for emergent competitive play; its actual legacy is the removal of the only sense C&P had, a few module tourists, and a few PP grinders - most of even them treating it like a solo BGS grind.

And that is all it will ever be in this incarnation. A background simulator grind.

Hey, you forgot to take your helmet off!

 

[StiTch]

Hey, you forgot to take your helmet off!

After implying that PP isn't conducive to equal playability for solo players, standard protocol is to leave it on for a week.

 

[Rob At Work]

I don't like spaghetti hoops. I tried them once and I just don't see the point. Whoever designed them needs to remember that twizzling your fork around burnt calories and prolonged the enjoyment of the meal.

Conclusion: They should be banned!

 

[d8veh]

So don't?! It takes less than a minute to completely stock up on media materials in my Cutter (that's over 700 tons). I agree that the UI could be improved (e.g. an option to continue buying until your hold is full, without having to do it yourself). However, it is hardly a huge issue with how it works now.

Yes, show us how. When I load my Cutter with 700T, it takes forever doing all the clicking for 10T and a time - something like 10 minutes of continuous clicking. it drives me mad. That's got to be the most tedious thing you can do in the game. I've done it about 10 times altogether, and every time I wonder what was on the Dev's mind when he/she made it like that.

It's the same with delivering stuff. With cargo, it takes a couple of seconds to unload 700T, but when it's this wretched powerplay stuff, it takes forever. Why the difference?

 

[HeavyGroovez]

Right...one moment folks; CMDR StiTch! needs to put the protective hat on.

...

*clank*

...done.

Right, so let's get started. Why are you so bored, OP? Well your joy senses will be tingling like a gerbil in heat when you hear I have the answers for you! (and oh boy, I hope my helmet straps are done up tight).

...because you're playing a multiplayer activity as a solo player.

Yes, PG/solo players are equal and loved etc. - however no matter which way you shake your stick or which end of the brush you're grabbing, PP just does not work as a solo/soloable activity. The structure of the missions/merits, and the power rankings, and the expansion systems, and the interaction potential in general...are all very blatantly designed around a multi-player competition/paramilitary war.

With no further word on what went awry and why, simply bear that in mind. The potential of PP was the first real vector for emergent competitive play; its actual legacy is the removal of the only sense C&P had, a few module tourists, and a few PP grinders - most of even them treating it like a solo BGS grind.

And that is all it will ever be in this incarnation. A background simulator grind.

Yeah, regardless of effort nothing of any significant magnitude ever happens. A system gets flipped and...well nothing really.

I like the headquarters ganks when I'm collecting pamphlets, the toys and the power characters themselves but can't be bothered doing anything that requires real effort because you don't get any value from it.

 

[Darkfyre99]

Yea, I'm gonna need you to upload a video to prove that. No way you can do that in less than one minute, unless you're Leezar incognito. Is there some sort of glitch I don't know about?

I get you're trying to say the journey is more important than the goal. But that doesn't apply very well to tedious artificial time sinks in Elite, not in my mind anyways.

I suspect that that feat can be done rather easily with a macro. High end joysticks tend to be crazy customizable using their included software (ex: TARGET and CH Control Manager) and I'm sure there's 3rd party software out there that can do the same. I'm sure I can program my CH HOTAS to repeat the same sequence of key presses over and over, far quicker than I can do it manually, until I told it to stop.

Of course, any SANE programmer would've let us simply choose how much we wanted to fast track right off the bat, rather than what Frontier implemented.

 

[timbero]

I suspect that that feat can be done rather easily with a macro. High end joysticks tend to be crazy customizable using their included software (ex: TARGET and CH Control Manager) and I'm sure there's 3rd party software out there that can do the same. I'm sure I can program my CH HOTAS to repeat the same sequence of key presses over and over, far quicker than I can do it manually, until I told it to stop.

Of course, any SANE programmer would've let us simply choose how much we wanted to fast track right off the bat, rather than what Frontier implemented.

You would still have the problem of adding powerplay items which is far slower than adding regular old commodities.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

I power-played for Pack Hounds. It really wan't that big a deal.
Hauling stuff around is something I do regularly anyways, so this really wasn't any different, save paying to Fast Track my allotments of "stuff".

I don't see it being all that different for any other power.

Just watch the weight of those Prismatics though. A 6A Pris weighs the same as a 7A regular.

 

[Darkfyre99]

You would still have the problem of adding powerplay items which is far slower than adding regular old commodities.

Not sure if you're talking about the first part of my post (about using a macro) or the last part (on WTHWTT with fast tracking), but I assume it's the former. Based in the video you provided, I see six key presses required to make a macro, one of which requires a one second press, hold, release event. My CH HOTAS is typically set to one key press every 50 micromilliseconds (twenty key presses per second.). Given that, I would actually go with ten "right" presses, rather than a "hold right for a second" event. From everything I can see, I could probably set up a macro that would take less than a second to add PP materials in less than a second. Assuming minimal latency, that would be a rate of 600 pamphlets a minute.

Needless to say, paying 300 dollars for a high end joystick JUST to make buying pamphlets less painful really shouldn't be necessary, if Frontier had simply designed a more sane fast track interface.

edit: accidentially wrote micro instead of milli

 

[timbero]

Not sure if you're talking about the first part of my post (about using a macro) or the last part (on WTHWTT with fast tracking), but I assume it's the former. Based in the video you provided, I see six key presses required to make a macro, one of which requires a one second press, hold, release event. My CH HOTAS is typically set to one key press every 50 microseconds (twenty key presses per second.). Given that, I would actually go with ten "right" presses, rather than a "hold right for a second" event. From everything I can see, I could probably set up a macro that would take less than a second to add PP materials in less than a second. Assuming minimal latency, that would be a rate of 600 pamphlets a minute.

Needless to say, paying 300 dollars for a high end joystick JUST to make buying pamphlets less painful really shouldn't be necessary, if Frontier had simply designed a more sane fast track interface.

I was thinking of this annoying part, which takes 1.5 seconds with normal cargo.

https://youtu.be/YC9axIsAoVw?t=8m10s

Maybe it's less of an issue the less cargo you transfer.

 

[Cucco-Master]

My main issue with powerplay is the harsh merit decay or basically the whole merit system and the way powerplay cargo allocation is handled. Right now, you either have to do powerplay all the time or not at all. If you take a break, you'll be back at square one and this is quite a motivation-killer.
Personally I would like to see the current system changed in the following ways:
-Remove merits, ranks and weekly rewards.
-Base powerplay cargo allocation on "time pledged" only. Something like, 10t per 30min on the first week, 10 more for every week pledged - without a cap, so if you have been pledged for, say, one year, you could instantly fill an Anaconda.
-Remove fast-tracking. Using powerplay as the game's money sink was a horrible idea, gives an advantage to Quince etc. exploiters and even encourages this kind of behavior.
-Give the player some credits for delivering pp-cargo, undermining etc. (1 unit of powerplay points = fixed amount of credits - more than the symbolic amount we currently get) as a replacement of the weekly salery.
-Power-specific modules could become available after the player has earned a total of 750 "merits" (and 3 weeks of time pledged, as it is now), doesn't matter over which timespan they are collected.
(I won't comment on undermining, as that's something I don't really do.)

Personally this would be all that'd have to be changed so I'd be satisfied (<- opinion!). Yes, more varied tasks would be nice per se, but you can already help your power through playing the regular bgs which includes this type of variety. The only issue here is that playing the bgs doesn't reward any merits and thus doesn't give you voting rights regarding consolidation/preparation etc, but the removal of the merit system would already solve this issue.

 

[jasonbarron]

I have a confession to make, one that brings me great shame: I, Jason Barron, joined power play only to gain access to prismatics. I took the path of least resistance to getting the merits and quit the blue haired (I don't even remember her name, just that she was sort of hot) girl the very next day after purchasing about 500 million credits worth of them. I hardly even use them anymore.

Oh, and I joined somebody or other to gain access to Packhounds...and Imperial Hammers...and Enforcers...and, well, you get the picture. Please, for the love of God nobody rat me out to GG7, ok?

 

[CAPT. Ho Chi Minge]

I have a confession to make, one that brings me great shame: I, Jason Barron, joined power play only to gain access to prismatics. I took the path of least resistance to getting the merits and quit the blue haired (I don't even remember her name, just that she was sort of hot) girl the very next day after purchasing about 500 million credits worth of them. I hardly even use them anymore.

Oh, and I joined somebody or other to gain access to Packhounds...and Imperial Hammers...and Enforcers...and, well, you get the picture. Please, for the love of God nobody rat me out to GG7, ok?

so say we all

im working on either hammers or enforcers as i cant even remember who i pledged to about 2 weeks back.

 

[Rubbernuke]

I dare say that if the system allows for this, then it is a bad system.

Hate the game, not the player.

I could let a door hit an old lady in the face after I walk through it, but I don't.

The system does allow this, its true. But then we all take personal responsibility for not being antisocial to others.

 

[MottiKhan]

I have a confession to make, one that brings me great shame: I, Jason Barron, joined power play only to gain access to prismatics. I took the path of least resistance to getting the merits and quit the blue haired (I don't even remember her name, just that she was sort of hot) girl the very next day after purchasing about 500 million credits worth of them. I hardly even use them anymore.

Oh, and I joined somebody or other to gain access to Packhounds...and Imperial Hammers...and Enforcers...and, well, you get the picture. Please, for the love of God nobody rat me out to GG7, ok?

Nooooo! How can you live with yourself?

 

[CMDR Ellegon]

I have a confession to make, one that brings me great shame: I, Jason Barron, joined power play only to gain access to prismatics. I took the path of least resistance to getting the merits and quit the blue haired (I don't even remember her name, just that she was sort of hot) girl the very next day after purchasing about 500 million credits worth of them. I hardly even use them anymore.

Oh, and I joined somebody or other to gain access to Packhounds...and Imperial Hammers...and Enforcers...and, well, you get the picture. Please, for the love of God nobody rat me out to GG7, ok?

So you feel the same shame - of having fallen and moving over to the dark side (well, several dark sides for you!), just to get the shiny thingies? Well, as many other things, this too shell be lived down, eventually. However, the avenger of Aisling (GG7) will be there to hit you with the bad karma blaster at some moment when you least expect it. Be afraid.

I could let a door hit an old lady in the face after I walk through it, but I don't.

The system does allow this, its true. But then we all take personal responsibility for not being antisocial to others.

Read that again. If you cannot see where that comparison does not fit, nobody can help you.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

I dare say that if the system allows for this, then it is a bad system.

Hate the game, not the player.

It does, but it's never the fault of the game, it's always the fault of the player.
Do hate the player and don't play the game.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Read that again. If you cannot see where that comparison does not fit, nobody can help you.

The irony in all this is that when I was a senior member in Powerplay, the Diamond Frogs asked us not to expand into one of the systems they held. We could have simply ignored them and expanded it, greatly helping the Power. But we did not and bent backwards to accommodate them, because we recognised that other people played the game and that we could negatively impact on them. All that people who play PP want is the same respect when commanders simply want the modules and pledge. Its simple, common courtesy.