Powerplay v2 week 1 first impressions
- Thread starter Ian Doncaster
- Start date
It happened to us as well.. won some, totally unintended and lost others where we did put quite a relevant effort!
edited thanks @Mystler
Quoting myself from another thread since it's actually more relevant for feedback than it is there:
This goes with a general lack of info on the powers.
Which power should I join is a difficult question and it can be a total trap if you pick the wrong one with a built in sunk cost when switching.
What really matters on a gameplay level when picking a power is the ethos, which determines what activities you do for expanding/fortifying and undermining. The ethos obfuscates this and forces you to go more with vibes or what permanent rank bonus you like most. These activities should be listed when pledging and alongside the ethos for quick reference.
FDev UI designers really hate pages of lists now somehow - I feel like even the lists of systems with most progress in the thargoid war were reluctantly tacked on in a patch much later. I see why you would want to avoid pages of lists to make it feel less like a spreadsheet game, but the result is just plain bad.
Relying on the galaxy map as a central way to interact with the game is fine in theory, but what you have is an overwhelming mess that would benefit from having more focused dedicated views to reduce mental overhead.
On top of that much of the UI is jank and doesn't seem to maintain state or would need some sort of helper function to focus the galmap on an area that actually contains the systems you just selected to focus on.
Overall this feels like it needed more time, it's not as bad as the Odyssey launch, but it's worse than the thargoid war because that gets a huge pass for having more actual new gameplay and content rather than being only a systems rework. A lot of the new powerplay stuff might actually be relying on stuff designed for the thargoid war, which is fine to get more out of limited dev resources, but also means it gets less of a pass for still having issues.
On the positive side getting rid of any sort of decay is more player friendly.
My major criticism of the thargoid war system is how it fails to generate interesting narratives and events around the war, will the same system applied to powerplay better at it?
Can anything truly crazy and/or epic happen under the new system? 3-4-way wars or more with everyone showing up? Mining/trading booms/busts due to powerplay shenanigans (sorta happened with rares)? There's some added potential for interesting stratagems with collapsing many systems by backdooring stronghold systems deep in their territory (something which you couldn't really do with thargoids by cutting off systems iirc). If most of it boils down to who grinds more to fill a bar then that dulls a lot of the effect imo.
Having those generated galnet reports on power rankings and statuses kinda helped at least with the immersion for that.
This goes with a general lack of info on the powers.
Which power should I join is a difficult question and it can be a total trap if you pick the wrong one with a built in sunk cost when switching.
What really matters on a gameplay level when picking a power is the ethos, which determines what activities you do for expanding/fortifying and undermining. The ethos obfuscates this and forces you to go more with vibes or what permanent rank bonus you like most. These activities should be listed when pledging and alongside the ethos for quick reference.
FDev UI designers really hate pages of lists now somehow - I feel like even the lists of systems with most progress in the thargoid war were reluctantly tacked on in a patch much later. I see why you would want to avoid pages of lists to make it feel less like a spreadsheet game, but the result is just plain bad.
Relying on the galaxy map as a central way to interact with the game is fine in theory, but what you have is an overwhelming mess that would benefit from having more focused dedicated views to reduce mental overhead.
On top of that much of the UI is jank and doesn't seem to maintain state or would need some sort of helper function to focus the galmap on an area that actually contains the systems you just selected to focus on.
Overall this feels like it needed more time, it's not as bad as the Odyssey launch, but it's worse than the thargoid war because that gets a huge pass for having more actual new gameplay and content rather than being only a systems rework. A lot of the new powerplay stuff might actually be relying on stuff designed for the thargoid war, which is fine to get more out of limited dev resources, but also means it gets less of a pass for still having issues.
On the positive side getting rid of any sort of decay is more player friendly.
My major criticism of the thargoid war system is how it fails to generate interesting narratives and events around the war, will the same system applied to powerplay better at it?
Can anything truly crazy and/or epic happen under the new system? 3-4-way wars or more with everyone showing up? Mining/trading booms/busts due to powerplay shenanigans (sorta happened with rares)? There's some added potential for interesting stratagems with collapsing many systems by backdooring stronghold systems deep in their territory (something which you couldn't really do with thargoids by cutting off systems iirc). If most of it boils down to who grinds more to fill a bar then that dulls a lot of the effect imo.
Having those generated galnet reports on power rankings and statuses kinda helped at least with the immersion for that.
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So far:
- Bilskirnir should have been Aisling (more than 2 MILLION more merits) but went Winters
- Sirius should have been Archer but went Mahon
- Arangorii should have been Torval but went Aisling
As listed on the issues comment thread.
I added another one in a comment :
Another Archer system should have been captured by them. v640 Cassiopeia had Archer in first, Lui-Yung-Rui in 2nd, but LYR "won" the system.
Perhaps if people can list all examples of this happening, it will get Frontier's attention better with the mentioning of specific systems... the more the better
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I don't know if this is the appropriate place to say it, but I really do appreciate the progression the devs have built.
In the past, I tried hauling the mail and buying my way up the ladder to unlock prismatics, and it was so clunky and unpleasant with no investment in the power politics at all.
Now I can see a series of intermediate rewards as I literally build a deeper alliance with the selected power.
I learn which systems seem to matter by looking at the number of points others have devoted to reinforcing or undermining a given system. I feel more flexibility to do an activity I enjoy (bounty hunting for example), and still help the power make progress.
I did have to go to a youtube to see the specifics on each weekly task, but I now feel confident I can support the power.
I'm sure there will be optimization and goldrushes discovered by players that will require balancing, but overall I'd say this is a positive change.
In the past, I tried hauling the mail and buying my way up the ladder to unlock prismatics, and it was so clunky and unpleasant with no investment in the power politics at all.
Now I can see a series of intermediate rewards as I literally build a deeper alliance with the selected power.
I learn which systems seem to matter by looking at the number of points others have devoted to reinforcing or undermining a given system. I feel more flexibility to do an activity I enjoy (bounty hunting for example), and still help the power make progress.
I did have to go to a youtube to see the specifics on each weekly task, but I now feel confident I can support the power.
I'm sure there will be optimization and goldrushes discovered by players that will require balancing, but overall I'd say this is a positive change.
Overall, I like pp2.0. I like the idea behind it to have a Cmdr pick a power and just play the game to help out, and that most activities should be helpful to your chosen power.
However I think the balance of the activities and the merits/rewards will need to be roughly balanced out. I also think there are alot of bugs and issues and that overall pp2.0 is in rough shape at the moment.
For example Combat merits: How is it that trading a few tons of rares generates more merits than killing 1 enemy pledged NPC ship, or other Cmdr? Seems like combat will be slow, like the pp2 cz's, and generate tiny amounts of merits, compared to trading rares. And no, I do not think you should tank rare merit gains, just roughly balance the merit rewards, so in this example x2 to x4 the merits per enemy pledged ship kill
The information in the galaxy map is not easy to find or digest. Where is my nearest fortification system? Where is my nearest stronghold? Who and where are the opposing powers acquiring, undermining, etc systems near my current system?
And some simple things like the weekly assignments. I still have none after the tick today. I also do not think I got my weekly salary for my pp2.0 activities last week. I checked the codex and journal entries, no email, no power contact salary pickup? How is it supposed to work?
So overall good, but in need of polishing and balancing. Hopefully pp2.0 catches on (and that you can up the cloud server farms for the increasing amount of player activity).
However I think the balance of the activities and the merits/rewards will need to be roughly balanced out. I also think there are alot of bugs and issues and that overall pp2.0 is in rough shape at the moment.
For example Combat merits: How is it that trading a few tons of rares generates more merits than killing 1 enemy pledged NPC ship, or other Cmdr? Seems like combat will be slow, like the pp2 cz's, and generate tiny amounts of merits, compared to trading rares. And no, I do not think you should tank rare merit gains, just roughly balance the merit rewards, so in this example x2 to x4 the merits per enemy pledged ship kill
The information in the galaxy map is not easy to find or digest. Where is my nearest fortification system? Where is my nearest stronghold? Who and where are the opposing powers acquiring, undermining, etc systems near my current system?
And some simple things like the weekly assignments. I still have none after the tick today. I also do not think I got my weekly salary for my pp2.0 activities last week. I checked the codex and journal entries, no email, no power contact salary pickup? How is it supposed to work?
So overall good, but in need of polishing and balancing. Hopefully pp2.0 catches on (and that you can up the cloud server farms for the increasing amount of player activity).