There's a ton of threads addressing specific ideas and fixes to PP. A lot of them are awesome. I won't try to make any recommendations here, because there's already a lot of ideas out there.
Instead, I going to post about my feedback and experiences around PP 2.0 as a returning player, following my journey from [anticipation] to [excitement and spending money] to [this feels bad].
Coming back, PP 2.0 Excitement
I came back to Elite after 4 years because I was looking for something "new" to play and had some fond memories, about 2 weeks before PP 2.0 released. It was awesome to come back to the game and start getting up to speed on Odyssey content, and PP 2.0 was sounding pretty exciting. No more decay? All modules available from one Power? Great!
I enjoyed PP 2.0 when it launched, it added another dimension of things to do and progression, and it brought me in touch with other CMDRs with shared goals. Great!
Early PP
PP 2.0 for me at launch was complicated and felt sub-optimal. If I want to bounty hunt in game I can find an appropriate system and start hunting. If I want to trade I can pull up any of the external tools to find a decent route and start trading. There's a setup time to these activities, but low enough to fit into a couple hours of gaming.
PP play on the other hand, requires me not just to find a place that has the activity I want, but also has to fit into the right Power control area. This means a lot more setup time, and it also means that I probably can't use the "best" place to do an activity because it'll be under the wrong Power's influence.
It's a lot of work.
Doing Powerplay is a decision: "You could go to X and mine and sell it at Y for Z credits / hour" or "You could go to system X and mine and sell it at PP-Y (that's further than your jump drive/fuel can go) for a fraction of Z credits / hour". You have to spend a bunch of extra time figuring out potential Powerplay sell systems are (PP-Y) which further limits the mining systems (X) you can go to.
All of that feels kind of "ok" as long as there's some notable progression in the PP system itself. I'm choosing to make fewer credits to "help my Power" narratively and make merits instead. Cool, not great, but there's probably a gameplay loop I can find and enjoy here.
Enjoying PP
I have ~2.5 billion credits, a sizable pile of engineering mats, and one of almost every ship. I have the resources to tool up to do almost anything I want to do in game that doesn't require a fleet carrier. I bought the Mandalay and Type-8 specifically because I was excited about playing PP 2.0 content and wanted to explore the build options they'd unlock.
It was pretty obvious very early on that certain Powerplay activities weren't worth doing (what are PP commodities supposed to be for?), but I found that PP conflict zones and rare trading were fun to play and had enough merit progression that it felt impactful.
Rare trading was the best merits / hour for me, a steady and noticeable flow of merits. The credits were terrible (a couple million / hour) of course, but like I said, "helping my Power, making merits".
It's kind of hard to just make merits in combat. With the right setup and in the right place, sure. Powerplay combat zones are, for me, the most reliable way to make merits when I want to do some combat.
I've been aware of the nerfs around PP activites, rare trading was the first to directly impact how I play. This was handled poorly.
I logged in the other morning to do a rare trade circuit before starting my workday, ran through my route, sold my rares, and got 0 merits. "Maybe I just missed the pop-up", did another circuit. After confirming my merits weren't changing on the second delivery I was able to find a thread on reddit that let me know what was going on.
Turning off parts of the game should be communicated better. I have a launcher a pull up everytime I play, why is there no pop-up "An issue has been identified with rare trading and merits have been disabled"? Why did I burn my entire morning play session doing nothing?
"Well...that's ok...I guess I can try out that missile-based Python II build I dropped a bunch of engineering mats on, that'll be cool because I can make some merits and I've never used missiles before!" I think. Spoiler: that got nerfed too.
To date I've bought two ships with real money and spent a large chunk of my engineering stockpile to engineer three ships for PP 2.0. All of the PP activities I setup these ships for is currently disabled or nerfed to the point of uselessness.
So PP 2.0 for me today is down to PPCZs. I can't farm PPCZs for hours a day, so even with my "head-start" on merits I'm probably looking at more than a month before I get the first module from my Power. This feels bad and I don't want to play the game now.
Instead, I going to post about my feedback and experiences around PP 2.0 as a returning player, following my journey from [anticipation] to [excitement and spending money] to [this feels bad].
Coming back, PP 2.0 Excitement
I came back to Elite after 4 years because I was looking for something "new" to play and had some fond memories, about 2 weeks before PP 2.0 released. It was awesome to come back to the game and start getting up to speed on Odyssey content, and PP 2.0 was sounding pretty exciting. No more decay? All modules available from one Power? Great!
I enjoyed PP 2.0 when it launched, it added another dimension of things to do and progression, and it brought me in touch with other CMDRs with shared goals. Great!
Early PP
PP 2.0 for me at launch was complicated and felt sub-optimal. If I want to bounty hunt in game I can find an appropriate system and start hunting. If I want to trade I can pull up any of the external tools to find a decent route and start trading. There's a setup time to these activities, but low enough to fit into a couple hours of gaming.
PP play on the other hand, requires me not just to find a place that has the activity I want, but also has to fit into the right Power control area. This means a lot more setup time, and it also means that I probably can't use the "best" place to do an activity because it'll be under the wrong Power's influence.
It's a lot of work.
Doing Powerplay is a decision: "You could go to X and mine and sell it at Y for Z credits / hour" or "You could go to system X and mine and sell it at PP-Y (that's further than your jump drive/fuel can go) for a fraction of Z credits / hour". You have to spend a bunch of extra time figuring out potential Powerplay sell systems are (PP-Y) which further limits the mining systems (X) you can go to.
All of that feels kind of "ok" as long as there's some notable progression in the PP system itself. I'm choosing to make fewer credits to "help my Power" narratively and make merits instead. Cool, not great, but there's probably a gameplay loop I can find and enjoy here.
Enjoying PP
I have ~2.5 billion credits, a sizable pile of engineering mats, and one of almost every ship. I have the resources to tool up to do almost anything I want to do in game that doesn't require a fleet carrier. I bought the Mandalay and Type-8 specifically because I was excited about playing PP 2.0 content and wanted to explore the build options they'd unlock.
It was pretty obvious very early on that certain Powerplay activities weren't worth doing (what are PP commodities supposed to be for?), but I found that PP conflict zones and rare trading were fun to play and had enough merit progression that it felt impactful.
Rare trading was the best merits / hour for me, a steady and noticeable flow of merits. The credits were terrible (a couple million / hour) of course, but like I said, "helping my Power, making merits".
It's kind of hard to just make merits in combat. With the right setup and in the right place, sure. Powerplay combat zones are, for me, the most reliable way to make merits when I want to do some combat.
- PP mining was too much setup effort and I gave up.
- PP trading was a lot to setup and the merits felt pathetic. Trading without a FC already feels bad, PP trading without a FC is in "why bother?" territory.
- PP weeklies don't seem worth doing unless it's something I was going to do anyways. I could make more merits killing a few ships in a PPCZ in the time it takes to setup and complete a PP weekly. These "120 merits" rewards are paltry.
I've been aware of the nerfs around PP activites, rare trading was the first to directly impact how I play. This was handled poorly.
I logged in the other morning to do a rare trade circuit before starting my workday, ran through my route, sold my rares, and got 0 merits. "Maybe I just missed the pop-up", did another circuit. After confirming my merits weren't changing on the second delivery I was able to find a thread on reddit that let me know what was going on.
Turning off parts of the game should be communicated better. I have a launcher a pull up everytime I play, why is there no pop-up "An issue has been identified with rare trading and merits have been disabled"? Why did I burn my entire morning play session doing nothing?
"Well...that's ok...I guess I can try out that missile-based Python II build I dropped a bunch of engineering mats on, that'll be cool because I can make some merits and I've never used missiles before!" I think. Spoiler: that got nerfed too.
To date I've bought two ships with real money and spent a large chunk of my engineering stockpile to engineer three ships for PP 2.0. All of the PP activities I setup these ships for is currently disabled or nerfed to the point of uselessness.
So PP 2.0 for me today is down to PPCZs. I can't farm PPCZs for hours a day, so even with my "head-start" on merits I'm probably looking at more than a month before I get the first module from my Power. This feels bad and I don't want to play the game now.