PP 2.0 has sent BGS into crisis

[rootsrat]

Exactamundo.

Dealing with PMFs in the past was like dealing with a neighbour who twitches curtains when you put the bins out.

We were getting along pretty good with Mr Antal for a long time on our end of his territory!

(Still are tbh).

 

[Rubbernuke]

Yup. Was so bizarre.

And for some bizarre reason FD are repeating some mistakes from that era again.

 

[Jmanis]

But does it have to "step back" by becoming unplayable? That's the direction it's headed. Seems it would be more useful to cheer another feature getting better rather than BGS getting worse.

It really wasnt meant to be "played" in the first place, frankly.

To @Rubbernuke 's point, when players started playing the BGS as the political, group vs group territorial layer, FD realised they had a problem. So they introduced OG Powerplay as that mechanic. Groups supporting factions everywhere were excited... and it flopped, because it failed to capture what made the BGS enjoyable; the dynamism and freedom of activity that created situations, which was instead boiled down to rinse-and-repeat singular activities for singular objectives.

FD never anticipated players would get passionate about the minor factions. They were meant to get passionate about the Superpowers (i.e the Empire, Federation, Alliance and independents), and the minor factions were meant to just go by unnoticed[1]. When PMFs were introduced too, it wasn't intended as a flag for player groups to rally around.. it was just to let players add a bit of flair to the universe... not dissimilar to player- submitted galnet articles and CGs. In a similar vein, they too became vectors players tried to use to control the narrative and the shape of the galaxy.... and so FD shut those down.

The BGS was always meant to be "the living, breathing background that responds to player touch in a realistic way"... and the first video about the BGS said as much... words to the effect of "if players are deliberately doing things to shape the BGS, we've done the BGS wrong.. it's actually a foreground sim at that point".

The BGS has never been balanced because it doesn't need to balanced... it just needs to react, and that's always been the case. Balancing the BGS is like asking someone to balance the weather, or complaining that a dice roll doesn't return a six every six rolls, It's meant to be dynamic and unstable, because that instability was meant to create opportunity. A war was meant to create opportunities for bonds where they may not have existed by default... famine would create a state where shipping food for profit was worthwhile, or medicines to an outbreak... things that were short- lived and brought opportunity to your door.


But after PP1, FD made the strange move of embracing that player- controlled idea more... they formalised the pmf process with rules, added squadrons with pledging... but still never balanced the BGS.

This also grated with the idea of factions. They're meant to be NPCs. Influence of 20% in a system of 1000 meant literally 200 people supported that faction. But instead, these changes continued the idea that players controlled them, and to could see that in the registration process; three fields... group name, faction name and squadron name... all are three very different things, but many players made all three the same, ignorant to the nuance of them. That's not players fault... that's on FD for failing to manage expectations.

Then things got worse. States stagnated as PMFs homogenised the galaxy and controlled the bgs, the economy became unbalanced[2] as subsequent changes fended off the next FOTM thing poorly. The system is still unbalanced like its meant to be, but the underlying systems FD used have been overengineered to be complexity for complexity's sake.

Gold is a hot trading commodity. Oh look, there's a famine... we could trade food? No, gold pays better. Outbreak? No, gold. It's entirely homogenised. Things like Robigo, HGE farming, insert your FOTM mechanic here... they're all completely unbalanced and fixed in time. They never change except when FD wills it... and that's where its all gone wrong for the BGS.

FD shouldn't control it. Players shouldn't govern it. It should be unstable in a time- bound manner, with PP having sweeping impact to large swaths of the galaxy, with local faction states creating pockets of, sometimes unreasonably so, time- bound lucrative gameplay for those who can identify the right conditions.

That creates a dynamic and interesting universe... and a necessary part of that is relinquishing the BGS back to what it should be; the malleable background that isn't at the forefront of players minds. I may be somewhat unimpressed with PP2, but if it's destabilised the bgs through activity, this is only a good thing.

[1] the problem being, Superpowers were virtually unrepresented; everything you did was for the factions.

[2] it's funny... everyone now complains about balance issues in PP2 like they're something new. They aren't... it's been like this, and I've been arguing for economic balance forever... "But Jmanis! FD can't make money off a balance pass! We need ship interiors and base building!"... Odyssey, The Thargoid War and now PP2 have all been plagued by balance issues... and none of them are new... it's just FD's wanton neglect for its core mechanics that get put under the spotlight as every new release is built on a foundation of trash.

 

[Donald Duck]

That creates a dynamic and interesting universe... and a necessary part of that is relinquishing the BGS back to what it should be; the malleable background that isn't at the forefront of players minds. I may be somewhat unimpressed with PP2, but if it's destabilised the bgs through activity, this is only a good thing.

I get your point and I agree to a certain extend, although I have my doubts if this can be achieved by just creating chaos, which it seems to be atm. With hardly any alternative solutions for bgs visible for most and a beta-like PP2.0 that is nerfed and changed, as something in the maths doesn't seem to be right?

If bgs is supposed to loose weight in the complicated overall galactic equation, why did nobody explain that before, so that pmf could have prepared and are not unnecessarily wasting time in maintaining their 'sandcastles' now?

[Especially large] pmf have stabilzed their systems over years, running them like machines, with - admittedly - repeating (and maybe for others) boring gameplay. 'Dear fellow Cmdr, please trade 20m Cr in system A to keep us at X % there', could be a typical order issued. Whatever one thinks about this in terms of excitment, it seems to have worked pretty well, hasn't it?

Presently the problem is, imho, that one could execute thousands of such orders with no effect and is NOT being presented with any real alternative, except probably forgetting about pmf and bgs, and unconditionally support a power of one's choice (or actually the one that has been given the area one is in) instead for the time being?

Understandably, there are doubts about that as it feels like building a beautiful sandcastle for years, which is then suddenly bulldozed with a friendly advise 'to build another castle in another place' without any guarantee that it will not be flattened again anytime?

Players tend not to be dogs that chase a thrown stick over and over again; they might rethink what they are actually doing after some times getting that stick, wouldn't they? I see that happening now, with the smoke of the 'Hurrah, new Power Play' fireworks clearing - or in other words:

We are beta-testing again.

 

[Dxxdavid]

Sounds like BGS is stepping back from its role as the foreground sim, with PP2 becoming the mainstay for group vs group activity.

Good

.. ya but grinding mertis all day long is totally fun. its much better.. truh

 

[Jmanis]

I get your point and I agree to a certain extend, although I have my doubts if this can be achieved by just creating chaos, which it seems to be atm. With hardly any alternative solutions for bgs visible for most and a beta-like PP2.0 that is nerfed and changed, as something in the maths doesn't seem to be right?

If bgs is supposed to loose weight in the complicated overall galactic equation, why did nobody explain that before, so that pmf could have prepared and are not unnecessarily wasting time in maintaining their 'sandcastles' now?

[Especially large] pmf have stabilzed their systems over years, running them like machines, with - admittedly - repeating (and maybe for others) boring gameplay. 'Dear fellow Cmdr, please trade 20m Cr in system A to keep us at X % there', could be a typical order issued. Whatever one thinks about this in terms of excitment, it seems to have worked pretty well, hasn't it?

Presently the problem is, imho, that one could execute thousands of such orders with no effect and is NOT being presented with any real alternative, except probably forgetting about pmf and bgs, and unconditionally support a power of one's choice (or actually the one that has been given the area one is in) instead for the time being?

Understandably, there are doubts about that as it feels like building a beautiful sandcastle for years, which is then suddenly bulldozed with a friendly advise 'to build another castle in another place' without any guarantee that it will not be flattened again anytime?

Players tend not to be dogs that chase a thrown stick over and over again; they might rethink what they are actually doing after some times getting that stick, wouldn't they? I see that happening now, with the smoke of the 'Hurrah, new Power Play' fireworks clearing - or in other words:

We are beta-testing again.

This also grated with the idea of factions. They're meant to be NPCs. Influence of 20% in a system of 1000 meant literally 200 people supported that faction. But instead, these changes continued the idea that players controlled them, and to could see that in the registration process; three fields... group name, faction name and squadron name... all are three very different things, but many players made all three the same, ignorant to the nuance of them. That's not players fault... that's on FD for failing to manage expectations.

This.

It's the accumulation of years of FD failing to manage the core of their game, while continuing to work towards that core vision, despite their own efforts... and with that, failure to manage the expectations of players.

They should've clamped this down years ago.... but this is also not dissimilar to issues of economic balance. As an example, when Nu-mining and the whole Borann thing went up, it should've been nipped in the bud early. Instead, it persisted for two years... so when FD finally (rightly) nerfed it, it was met with harsh negativity... because it had existed long enough for players to go "well, it's been around this long like this, it must be the status quo".

If Borann got nipped in the bud quickly, players would've gone "Ah, well yeah, I guess it did pay out too much"... this was evidenced in a different context when we got the revamped mineral prices, which caused many missions to start paying out 50m due to the vastly increased mineral prices. Players latched onto that fast, but then FD nerfed it fast. Sure there were a couple grumbles, but by and large people went "Yeah that was fair".... if that had taken two years to get fixed, it would've been a whole different story.

It's the same with nigh on everything; every FOTM grind out there, the BGS and factions, you name it.

Bad news doesn't get better with age... make no mistake, these are the correct decisions... but they should've been done years ago. Before the Thargoid War, before Odyssey, before Fleet Carriers, before PP1. Arguably, and to your point, this should've been done in beta-testing.

It never should've taken this long... this is just the consequence of that inaction coming out.

.. ya but grinding mertis all day long is totally fun. its much better.. truh

Never said it was.

 

[Walter2]

It really wasnt meant to be "played" in the first place, frankly.

To @Rubbernuke 's point, when players started playing the BGS as the political, group vs group territorial layer, FD realised they had a problem. So they introduced OG Powerplay as that mechanic. Groups supporting factions everywhere were excited... and it flopped, because it failed to capture what made the BGS enjoyable; the dynamism and freedom of activity that created situations, which was instead boiled down to rinse-and-repeat singular activities for singular objectives.

FD never anticipated players would get passionate about the minor factions. They were meant to get passionate about the Superpowers (i.e the Empire, Federation, Alliance and independents), and the minor factions were meant to just go by unnoticed[1]. When PMFs were introduced too, it wasn't intended as a flag for player groups to rally around.. it was just to let players add a bit of flair to the universe... not dissimilar to player- submitted galnet articles and CGs. In a similar vein, they too became vectors players tried to use to control the narrative and the shape of the galaxy.... and so FD shut those down.

The BGS was always meant to be "the living, breathing background that responds to player touch in a realistic way"... and the first video about the BGS said as much... words to the effect of "if players are deliberately doing things to shape the BGS, we've done the BGS wrong.. it's actually a foreground sim at that point".

The BGS has never been balanced because it doesn't need to balanced... it just needs to react, and that's always been the case. Balancing the BGS is like asking someone to balance the weather, or complaining that a dice roll doesn't return a six every six rolls, It's meant to be dynamic and unstable, because that instability was meant to create opportunity. A war was meant to create opportunities for bonds where they may not have existed by default... famine would create a state where shipping food for profit was worthwhile, or medicines to an outbreak... things that were short- lived and brought opportunity to your door.


But after PP1, FD made the strange move of embracing that player- controlled idea more... they formalised the pmf process with rules, added squadrons with pledging... but still never balanced the BGS.

This also grated with the idea of factions. They're meant to be NPCs. Influence of 20% in a system of 1000 meant literally 200 people supported that faction. But instead, these changes continued the idea that players controlled them, and to could see that in the registration process; three fields... group name, faction name and squadron name... all are three very different things, but many players made all three the same, ignorant to the nuance of them. That's not players fault... that's on FD for failing to manage expectations.

Then things got worse. States stagnated as PMFs homogenised the galaxy and controlled the bgs, the economy became unbalanced[2] as subsequent changes fended off the next FOTM thing poorly. The system is still unbalanced like its meant to be, but the underlying systems FD used have been overengineered to be complexity for complexity's sake.

Gold is a hot trading commodity. Oh look, there's a famine... we could trade food? No, gold pays better. Outbreak? No, gold. It's entirely homogenised. Things like Robigo, HGE farming, insert your FOTM mechanic here... they're all completely unbalanced and fixed in time. They never change except when FD wills it... and that's where its all gone wrong for the BGS.

FD shouldn't control it. Players shouldn't govern it. It should be unstable in a time- bound manner, with PP having sweeping impact to large swaths of the galaxy, with local faction states creating pockets of, sometimes unreasonably so, time- bound lucrative gameplay for those who can identify the right conditions.

That creates a dynamic and interesting universe... and a necessary part of that is relinquishing the BGS back to what it should be; the malleable background that isn't at the forefront of players minds. I may be somewhat unimpressed with PP2, but if it's destabilised the bgs through activity, this is only a good thing.

[1] the problem being, Superpowers were virtually unrepresented; everything you did was for the factions.

[2] it's funny... everyone now complains about balance issues in PP2 like they're something new. They aren't... it's been like this, and I've been arguing for economic balance forever... "But Jmanis! FD can't make money off a balance pass! We need ship interiors and base building!"... Odyssey, The Thargoid War and now PP2 have all been plagued by balance issues... and none of them are new... it's just FD's wanton neglect for its core mechanics that get put under the spotlight as every new release is built on a foundation of trash.

The one thing the BGS has over other mechanisms in the game is a sense of immediacy - or as close as ED gets to it. It's far easier for players to support a faction with an identifiable (if coarsely defined) political/social ideology than a more remote superpower with a "philosophy" that's painted with a far broader brush. And the results of any support actions can be seen the next day (for the most part), enhancing the feeling that the player has made a difference. Growing "your" faction can give a sense of achievement. If you get fed up with fellow players in your group, it's relatively easy to break off and find/found another group of similar persuasion, develop a different faction and develop relations with other players so sort out actions and reactions.

With PP, what's the long-term motivation for continued support of any superpower once all the toys have been acquired? A player is just another anonymous foot soldier, carrying out orders from a game-master controlled by the game. Once the initial interest has burnt out, won't one form of stagnation be replaced by another?

I would have preferred FD to have diverted effort into making the economy/mission systems into something more believable and more related to the situations created by player-instigated manipulation of the BGS. This might not break the slow churn of the current BGS, it might make things more challenging.

 

[Jmanis]

The one thing the BGS has over other mechanisms in the game is a sense of immediacy - or as close as ED gets to it. It's far easier for players to support a faction with an identifiable (if coarsely defined) political/social ideology than a more remote superpower with a "philosophy" that's painted with a far broader brush. And the results of any support actions can be seen the next day (for the most part), enhancing the feeling that the player has made a difference. Growing "your" faction can give a sense of achievement. If you get fed up with fellow players in your group, it's relatively easy to break off and find/found another group of similar persuasion, develop a different faction and develop relations with other players so sort out actions and reactions.

With PP, what's the long-term motivation for continued support of any superpower once all the toys have been acquired? A player is just another anonymous foot soldier, carrying out orders from a game-master controlled by the game. Once the initial interest has burnt out, won't one form of stagnation be replaced by another?

I would have preferred FD to have diverted effort into making the economy/mission systems into something more believable and more related to the situations created by player-instigated manipulation of the BGS. This might not break the slow churn of the current BGS, it might make things more challenging.

I somewhat agree. I think there's a massive missed opportunity in the core of the BGS which, with some careful investment in that, PP, the Superpowers.... and embrace that somewhat more with Odyssey and Tier 2 NPCs and the Reputation system... and for the love of all that's holy stop making negative states/hostile rep "punitive" outcomes. At the heart of the game is a good procedural system screaming for exploitation.

In that context... PP sets the broad context over the (populated) galaxy. It's the "biomes" of the universe, if you will. Those biomes fit a flavour profile within the superpower they belong to. Within those "biomes" you then have the factions, who behave in quite drastically different ways within each "biome" and with each other, but is common behaviour when compared to like-for-like configurations... that is... an imperial and a federal faction should behave roughly the same with each other if within an Imperial domain... but will have slight differences depending on which Imperial Power exerts that force... while if those two factions were in a Federal or Alliance power domain, the dynamics would be incredibly different.

Now... maybe you're hated in Federal space and Allied in the Empire. You should be able to influence some states here and there... strike up a war through weapons shipments or bounty hunting, induce a boom through trade... cause a famine through malicious actions... all to create opportunities. Within the Empire, you work factions and come to have somewhat meaningful interactions with a local Federal faction within the Imperial domain. You specifically work a lot for a specific federal agent (On foot odyssey contact) who gives you low access to Federal info sources, and helps you clear your name when you can. Then when the Feds overthrow the resident Imperial Power, you're now KOS everywhere... but old Fed mate will still have your back and have a place to take refuge. That's the sort of procedural nuance that should exist.

But nah. Colonisation. Fleet Carriers. SCO and ships for Arx. PP with a lick of paint. It's lipstick on a pig really. The BGS stuff is just another item in that list.

[1] Noting Independents are true to their word; there are no overarching superpower politics at play, only the PP aspects... as such you wouldn't get universally hated across the Independents

 

[Decandently]

.

 

[-EJ-]

In theory, any trade, exploration or non-combat mission action. The "election" branding on the courier missions was always just flavour and didn't affect that.

There does seem to have been some recent problem where conflicts specifically would sometimes just get stuck and not accept any sort of influence - the one I saw an example of elsewhere does seem to have got moving again (and it certainly wasn't "all conflicts" by a long way), so maybe that's been fixed.


I can think of a few, but the catch is most of them aren't ones PMF-supporting player groups would particularly care about having fixed:
1) Super-expanded minor factions can cause a bit of Powerplay weirdness by their sharing of bounties faction-wide. So you undermine system A and get a (perfectly fair) bounty for it, then return to your own power's space which turns out to be controlled by the same minor faction so you have to find an IF somewhere. There are probably more proportionate fixes to this than "retreat every minor faction back to its home system" (and it's really a C&P issue more than it is a BGS one)
2) The "high profit trade" action in Powerplay (and to extent a few others) is made way more interesting with a diversity of BGS states, and I do think that the state sliders could use a bit of loosening up in lower-traffic systems in that regard, especially for non-controlling factions. But most PMF supporters aren't that picky about what state they're in to start with, since they're more about the influence.
3) BGS wars can take Odyssey settlements out of scope for Powerplay use temporarily, which matters for several action types. The apparent issue of conflicts occasionally getting "stuck" means that this isn't just a "well, now you have to think a bit more" situation. This is certainly one where there's a bit of common ground ... though I don't see any formal attempts to report it yet.
4) Lockdowns would be a really interesting state - closing markets - and deliberately causing one might be used by Power supporters to shut down a rare producer they can't use but their enemies can, or as part of an undermining attack to stop enemies reinforcing a system. If Lockdowns are too hard to do this can't happen. Similarly other states can introduce extra POIs to a system or change the distribution of USSes, which might make certain Powerplay actions easier or harder.

Broadly the issue is that Powerplay likes state effects (though I doubt there's much deliberate attempt to manipulate them) so the BGS needs to be tuned to keep the states moving. PMF supporters mainly care about influence and often ignore most states, but Powerplay doesn't really care about influence levels or which specific faction runs the system at all.


It's worked fine for most of a decade in Colonia (where there's not much but PMFs and plenty of systems which are solely full of PMFs); provided everyone agrees not to care what happens to their influence in the other system, the PMF "owning" the system can just treat the second PMF like any other NPC faction, and the PMF accidentally getting into the system can completely ignore their presence there and not care about it either.

(There are still some actual fights too, of course, but they're the ones people deliberately and knowingly start)

ignoring influence movements etc is amateur, might as well say those factions have given up

 

[-EJ-]

The systems and factions were never "yours" and allowing people to just full out a web form to get their Gamer Clan canonised in the game was a mistake.

The only toxic thing here is the attitudes that some PMFs have of being entitled to complete ownership of sections of the sandbox.

that's where you're wrong, pmfs expand in and take the system, they run maintenance and deal with any trouble makers. If you don't like a pmf controlling a system go and take it from them

 

[-EJ-]

It really wasnt meant to be "played" in the first place, frankly.

To @Rubbernuke 's point, when players started playing the BGS as the political, group vs group territorial layer, FD realised they had a problem. So they introduced OG Powerplay as that mechanic. Groups supporting factions everywhere were excited... and it flopped, because it failed to capture what made the BGS enjoyable; the dynamism and freedom of activity that created situations, which was instead boiled down to rinse-and-repeat singular activities for singular objectives.

FD never anticipated players would get passionate about the minor factions. They were meant to get passionate about the Superpowers (i.e the Empire, Federation, Alliance and independents), and the minor factions were meant to just go by unnoticed[1]. When PMFs were introduced too, it wasn't intended as a flag for player groups to rally around.. it was just to let players add a bit of flair to the universe... not dissimilar to player- submitted galnet articles and CGs. In a similar vein, they too became vectors players tried to use to control the narrative and the shape of the galaxy.... and so FD shut those down.

The BGS was always meant to be "the living, breathing background that responds to player touch in a realistic way"... and the first video about the BGS said as much... words to the effect of "if players are deliberately doing things to shape the BGS, we've done the BGS wrong.. it's actually a foreground sim at that point".

The BGS has never been balanced because it doesn't need to balanced... it just needs to react, and that's always been the case. Balancing the BGS is like asking someone to balance the weather, or complaining that a dice roll doesn't return a six every six rolls, It's meant to be dynamic and unstable, because that instability was meant to create opportunity. A war was meant to create opportunities for bonds where they may not have existed by default... famine would create a state where shipping food for profit was worthwhile, or medicines to an outbreak... things that were short- lived and brought opportunity to your door.


But after PP1, FD made the strange move of embracing that player- controlled idea more... they formalised the pmf process with rules, added squadrons with pledging... but still never balanced the BGS.

This also grated with the idea of factions. They're meant to be NPCs. Influence of 20% in a system of 1000 meant literally 200 people supported that faction. But instead, these changes continued the idea that players controlled them, and to could see that in the registration process; three fields... group name, faction name and squadron name... all are three very different things, but many players made all three the same, ignorant to the nuance of them. That's not players fault... that's on FD for failing to manage expectations.

Then things got worse. States stagnated as PMFs homogenised the galaxy and controlled the bgs, the economy became unbalanced[2] as subsequent changes fended off the next FOTM thing poorly. The system is still unbalanced like its meant to be, but the underlying systems FD used have been overengineered to be complexity for complexity's sake.

Gold is a hot trading commodity. Oh look, there's a famine... we could trade food? No, gold pays better. Outbreak? No, gold. It's entirely homogenised. Things like Robigo, HGE farming, insert your FOTM mechanic here... they're all completely unbalanced and fixed in time. They never change except when FD wills it... and that's where its all gone wrong for the BGS.

FD shouldn't control it. Players shouldn't govern it. It should be unstable in a time- bound manner, with PP having sweeping impact to large swaths of the galaxy, with local faction states creating pockets of, sometimes unreasonably so, time- bound lucrative gameplay for those who can identify the right conditions.

That creates a dynamic and interesting universe... and a necessary part of that is relinquishing the BGS back to what it should be; the malleable background that isn't at the forefront of players minds. I may be somewhat unimpressed with PP2, but if it's destabilised the bgs through activity, this is only a good thing.

[1] the problem being, Superpowers were virtually unrepresented; everything you did was for the factions.

[2] it's funny... everyone now complains about balance issues in PP2 like they're something new. They aren't... it's been like this, and I've been arguing for economic balance forever... "But Jmanis! FD can't make money off a balance pass! We need ship interiors and base building!"... Odyssey, The Thargoid War and now PP2 have all been plagued by balance issues... and none of them are new... it's just FD's wanton neglect for its core mechanics that get put under the spotlight as every new release is built on a foundation of trash.

so now most of the game will walk away for bad decisions. RIP elite

 

[-EJ-]

I get your point and I agree to a certain extend, although I have my doubts if this can be achieved by just creating chaos, which it seems to be atm. With hardly any alternative solutions for bgs visible for most and a beta-like PP2.0 that is nerfed and changed, as something in the maths doesn't seem to be right?

If bgs is supposed to loose weight in the complicated overall galactic equation, why did nobody explain that before, so that pmf could have prepared and are not unnecessarily wasting time in maintaining their 'sandcastles' now?

[Especially large] pmf have stabilzed their systems over years, running them like machines, with - admittedly - repeating (and maybe for others) boring gameplay. 'Dear fellow Cmdr, please trade 20m Cr in system A to keep us at X % there', could be a typical order issued. Whatever one thinks about this in terms of excitment, it seems to have worked pretty well, hasn't it?

Presently the problem is, imho, that one could execute thousands of such orders with no effect and is NOT being presented with any real alternative, except probably forgetting about pmf and bgs, and unconditionally support a power of one's choice (or actually the one that has been given the area one is in) instead for the time being?

Understandably, there are doubts about that as it feels like building a beautiful sandcastle for years, which is then suddenly bulldozed with a friendly advise 'to build another castle in another place' without any guarantee that it will not be flattened again anytime?

Players tend not to be dogs that chase a thrown stick over and over again; they might rethink what they are actually doing after some times getting that stick, wouldn't they? I see that happening now, with the smoke of the 'Hurrah, new Power Play' fireworks clearing - or in other words:

We are beta-testing again.

I just want to point out that you're highlighting typical maintenance tasks which aren't all that entertaining admittedly.
However when you get into the expansion mechanics and start working other systems for whatever reasons (a pmf conflict is a good one) it does get much more exciting

 

[-EJ-]

again imo the issue isn't powerplay activity affecting the bgs, it's the fact bgs mechanics are completely bugged out right now.
activity from randoms is very easily handled

 

[Jmanis]

so now most of the game will walk away for bad decisions. RIP elite

Yes, they will, though i suspect we're talking about different bad decisions.

 

[Screemonster]

that's where you're wrong, pmfs expand in and take the system, they run maintenance and deal with any trouble makers. If you don't like a pmf controlling a system go and take it from them

I can, will, and have done that to people repeatedly. As for "dealing with any trouble makers" I can't remember the last time a BGS group actually tried to actually fight me head-on. I have the run of the system right under their damn noses and they don't, and can't, do jack.

Just because you graffiti'd your name over it doesn't make it yours.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

so now most of the game will walk away for bad decisions. RIP elite

Is this the time of year where the game is dead again?

 

[Mike Reacher]

Agree with some of you. Disagree with some of you.
BGS was the best background for me with My squadron working it.
I love to mine and sell to the highest price. Not to gain credits, but to help noobs to get a decent ship. Why you might ask? Because it took me four bloody years to get past the AspX.
When BGS gets twitchy I try to help the squadron do stuff. You Know, Play Your Own Way
So all our systems suddenly went up to 90 plus percent in a couple days. I don't really care about the BGS except when we go head to head with other factions. PP2 does not take into account the we already had head to head squadrons, and I think that will now be a must. Squadron against Squadron. Not the way for me to "Play it My Way".
Before you judge what I said, please think of a trader heading across a couple of hostile factions to sell stuff. Gonna be dakka dakka, which is okay. But fighting constantly becomes boring. Also I'm at combat. So trading and mining was my forte. To finish? When 'goids were mentioned, I ran for the hills.

 

[Mike Reacher]

Is this the time of year where the game is dead again?

Well, my update is only half way through, so yeah. It is dead. LOL.
I would like to know how many players were in game before PP2 and how many after PP2. Some of you commented, but can you prove it please?

 

[IstvaanDCIV]

Well, my update is only half way through, so yeah. It is dead. LOL.
I would like to know how many players were in game before PP2 and how many after PP2. Some of you commented, but can you prove it please?

Proving player numbers with any certainty is not possible, since FDev doesn't publicly share that data. The Steam charts arguably provide a reasonable sample size of the player population, but there have been many arguments put forward on this forum about why those numbers can't be relied upon or taken as representative. But it's the best data we have as ordinary punters, so it gets used the most often.

Going by the Steam figures, there was definitely a spike of player activity following the launch of the Ascendancy update. Some degree of regression towards the mean was always going to happen, even if the update had been absolutely flawless in its execution, since personal taste in gameplay mechanics is indeed a thing. We could argue endlessly about how much of that regression can be attributed to the hiccups in rolling out PP2.0. Only FDev have access to the data required to really settle the question, and they're not sharing.

Anecdotally, the Yuri Grom group on Discord I'm part of has seen a steady stream of newcomers since I joined, and the higher-ups there have been talking about the organisational challenges involved with a larger group than they had previously been used to managing. I think if FDev keep up with fixes and updates, then PP2.0 will definitely be more of a thing than PP1.0 was.