PP 2.0 Weekly Merits - How Much Can Regular Players Get?

[Greasetrap42]

Last week there was a big long thread about PP 2.0 merits, and how much normal regular players can reasonably gain per week. So being curious I decided to throttle my Powerplay activities to determine this.

I have pledged to Nakato Kaine. So I am using her power faction which I think is reasonably popular.

Originally I tried hovering at the 50% point. But that was too difficult. I think because maybe the 50% point dropped with lots of pledged players doing some but minimal PP activities. Anyway, I couldn't hover at the 50% point. So I went with the top 25%.

So late at night I just slightly bump myself into the top 25%.

Fri Night: - 4,000 merits
Sat Night: - 5,692 merits
Sun night: - 7,400 merits
Mon night: - 9,955 merits
Tue night: - 11,926 merits
Wed night:- 13,957 merits (10:00pm EST)

What does this mean? 25% of the cmdrs pledged to Nakato Kaine have gained more than 13,957 merits this week.

I expect Wed night this value will suddenly jump because some cmdrs are stockpiling stuff to turn in.

Edits: filled in data for Tues & Wed.

 

[Dragsham]

I expect Wed night this value will suddenly jump because some cmdrs are stockpiling stuff to turn in.

This yes

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

It's my fault, I only earned like 1300 merits or so this week because I didn't play a lot .

I think this is difficult to gauge, because nobody really knows what the average, regular player is, if they do PP at all and all that. Last cycle I found it realtively easy to stay in the top 25% despite playing rather casual, I earned 28k merits, but also played a lot more - probably around 25 hours. Does the average player do 25 hours per week? My gut says: Doubt it.

My limited testing says you can earn about 1k to maybe 2k merits by playing casually. Everything above that means gaming the systems, exploiting the meta and doing some grind to some extent.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

What does this mean? Currently 25% of the cmdrs pledged to Nakato Kaine have gained more than 10,000 merits this week.

And at the same sort of time, the top 10% threshold for Kaine was at about 30-35,000 merits, I think. I'm currently probably just out of it on about 40,000 merits though haven't checked this morning.

That's a wider ratio between "top 10%" and "top 25%" than most CGs get, but not unprecedented. Looking at where the actual top 10 ended up, "steep CG curve" seems about right as a model. (Which making a guess, would probably put "top 50%" at around 2500 merits?)

I expect Wed night this value will suddenly jump because some cmdrs are stockpiling stuff to turn in.

I doubt that'll have a measurable effect on any of the "top %" thresholds.

Dumping a substantial stockpile of rares from a carrier is going to give hundreds of thousands of merits and put someone comfortably into the top 10% region (and probably top 1% or better, looking at the actual "top 10" scores seen for some powers). That implies that not many people actually do that, so the top 25% or 50% threshold (where the steps between players and percentage points are much smaller!) won't move much at all.

 

[irondarren]

lots of issues with the merits. Trade 730 tonnes of high profit goods get 25 or so merits. trade 10/20 or so get 5 merits. so if you have plenty of time on your hands you can sell 730 tonnes of cargo in 10t lots and get way more points. obviously there are a few exploits that have allowed the top 10 from last week to gain over 500k merits (Aisling).
on a basic trade run its easy to gain 50 points, 25 or so from the trade and at least 25 from scanning every ship at the station prior to landing. if you are doing it this way 300 merits an hour. So a long grind
A high or hazard mining area while carrying 1 tonne of gold, tends to get the pirates rather excited. lots to scan for 3 points a go, and usually lots to kill, managed about 1000 an hour with a team mate, as you are sharing the kills and merits.

 

[Greasetrap42]

I expect Wed night this value will suddenly jump because some cmdrs are stockpiling stuff to turn in.

I doubt that'll have a measurable effect on any of the "top %" thresholds....

Ya, Agree. I forgot there isn't much advantage to dumping large amounts before the Thursday tick. Unlike CGs, powerplay continues on next week. Whether a cmdr dumps their stuff just before the weekly reset tick or friday or saturday or any other day doesn't make much difference. Only for cmdrs that really really really want to be in the top 10. Which doesn't matter because they will be in the top 25% anyway.

 

[Unknown Zombie]

Some more data for Kaine pledge ranks...

A little less than double the OP's merits and like 10 pixels (?) more of the bar is filled in:

 

[Greasetrap42]

It is interesting to note that the Leaderboard graph isn't quite correct.

I am at 25% but the graph should be higher. The scaling isn't correct.

 

[Greasetrap42]

By Wed 10:00pm EST - 3:00am UTC

25% of the cmdrs pledged to Nakato Kaine have gained more than 13,957 merits this week.

I'm not saying everybody can do this. But if 25% can, then it is reasonably possible.

 

[Jack Winter]

Ya, Agree. I forgot there isn't much advantage to dumping large amounts before the Thursday tick. Unlike CGs, powerplay continues on next week. Whether a cmdr dumps their stuff just before the weekly reset tick or friday or saturday or any other day doesn't make much difference. Only for cmdrs that really really really want to be in the top 10. Which doesn't matter because they will be in the top 25% anyway.

Sniping with a carrier could lead to surprise losses so probably should be nerfed in some way..

 

[Ian Doncaster]

25% of the cmdrs pledged to Nakato Kaine have gained more than 13,957 merits this week.

I'm not saying everybody can do this. But if 25% can, then it is reasonably possible.

10% threshold for Kaine was around 45-50,000 merits at around 2200 UTC Wednesday. (I won't know until this evening exactly which side of that it finally ended up, of course)

So assuming that's reasonably representative:
- 10% of players get at least 5-6 ranks a week, will be max rank in ~five months or less
- 25% of players get at least ~2 ranks a week, will be max rank in ~a year or less
- most players will be getting <1 rank a week, will be max rank in >2 years

That doesn't feel too far out of line with something like Elite Combat rank (and if anything is a bit quicker)

Sniping with a carrier could lead to surprise losses so probably should be nerfed in some way..

Rares aren't an undermining action and "low value goods" has terrible per-tonne efficiency even when done from a carrier, so I don't see a way to cause surprise losses that way. Surprise defences are possible, I expect, though how strategically useful that is remains to be seen.

Stockpiling Odyssey settlement data/commodities certainly could be used for an undermining snipe, but doesn't require a carrier and requires you to pick the system to snipe at the start of the week, so it'll be interesting to see how used that ends up in practice, too.

(With ten times as many systems in play, "hitting it openly and hoping no-one notices" is probably a pretty effective strategy too, especially if you're going for the less valuable Exploited systems - I think I got one last week that way)

 

[Elpapo]

10% threshold for Kaine was around 45-50,000 merits at around 2200 UTC Wednesday. (I won't know until this evening exactly which side of that it finally ended up, of course)

So assuming that's reasonably representative:
- 10% of players get at least 5-6 ranks a week, will be max rank in ~five months or less
- 25% of players get at least ~2 ranks a week, will be max rank in ~a year or less
- most players will be getting <1 rank a week, will be max rank in >2 years

Those who can manage be at top 10%, they should reach max rank bit faster I think...

For last cycle for Kaine's, not until I got more than 80-90k, I was not at top 10%, but given my credits balance went up by exacly 50m, it means it settled at top 10%.

I got over 150k last cycle by litte over 2,5 days(with SLF's), and probly would end up in top 10 if would not have to rest, doing my job, and live a life, and also being distracted by this forum, during my "Free" time, wich is quite limited to what it used to be.

The younger version of myself probly would manage, as I certainly was able to grind easly for 10-12h in average back in the day, when had a lot more free time than atm, well as mentality to non-stop sitting in front of PC for longer than few hours at time, doing nothing but one task, fast as I possible could.

But top 10% is not bad either, and I am overall happy with progress made in relative short amount of time. Compared to regular activites, getting this much would take weeks otherwise, and thats how it feels like for majority of cmdrs out there.

So it proves that there is quite huge contrast, in diffrences how fast cmdrs can earn merits, as small amount of them (those who know how to grind) is capable to reach colossal amounts gained per cycle, while majority of cmdrs, struggle a lot, and gain few levels only per cycle, by causal playing.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

Stockpiling Odyssey settlement data/commodities certainly could be used for an undermining snipe, but doesn't require a carrier and requires you to pick the system to snipe at the start of the week, so it'll be interesting to see how used that ends up in practice, too.

It could require a carrier to store more stuff (if transfers/bartender are every fixed).

 

[Karmix]

I was lucky to snag the last spot in the Top 10 with the help of our group, which is family and friends. PP 2.0 got several people interested in playing again (myself included), so we did a family gathering thing, which made it extremely fun. Solo, it gets old rather fast. We did the weekly quests first.

Total time played was about 30 hours to get the 422,246 merits, most of it on Saturday and Sunday. It was a minor grind, but 30 hours spread out over a week wasn’t so bad. Yes, rares seem overvalued, even after the Soontil Relic reduction from the change in state, but for a family thing where everyone was having a good time and being together it worked out really well.

For anyone curious, here is how we spent our time.

I had my Cutter collecting outside the station while the other three dropped off rares every 10 minutes. Once I had 720 or so, I headed out and sold them for roughly 20K merits per dropoff. When heading back to the rares station after selling, I stopped in the station myself with the Cutter and picked up a stack of rares. This worked out to filling the Cutter with about 720 rares approximately every 45 minutes. This included some rares blowing up, limpets freezing for minutes, numerous ships stuck in the slot and station and just general mishaps with three people trying to stop close to the Cutter and drop off rares.

We did the group thing for maybe 15 hours total over the course of the week. The rest I did solo, which can net almost 10K per hour in merits with no carrier. When doing it solo, if you use a Mandalay maxed out on jump distance with full engineering, it takes 3 trips to the station 160 LY away and 2 jumps back. You get 1,700+ per turn-in, or roughly 10k per hour. If someone wanted to do it solo and does not have a Fleet Carrier yet, you can still get to level 100 in 80 hours. If you spent 10 hours a week on it, you could max out in 2 months.

All that said, It would be way more fun if exploring, exo, trading, AX, bounty hunting, just killing pirates and everything else awarded more rares. I tired turning in a bunch of exploration data that was collected after the date they posted and got zilch for it. I also tried pirates and was getting zero, but I see now how to do it and will try that again.

Once they iron things out and balance the other rare gathering activities, it will be a great added feature to the game. The Care Packages are a nice bonus.

 

[galahad2069]

I was here during the first few days of the previous cycle, but then I reached rank 34 so I stopped farming merits. It's not particularly hard, it's just boring as hell.

 

[Kira Mikamy]

fonrtunally i dont care about wich rank i have, one day i reach rank 100.
i play this game from 2014 and theres no reason untill fdev decide to close it to not be still here in 2034.
my rank 100 can become a story to tell, hours spend douring the most various activities the game have to offer, not a week of rares hauling.

enjoy the game not the rank

 

[tomalus]

thank god for commanders being quick and smart to find ways to circumvent the grind.
I like power play I think its good, just the merits awarded for most things are super low.
I think weekly merit assigments should give you a levelup