The 'endgame' features such as the BGS and Powerplay are frankly too slow now, to the point where progress is glacial making them a chore to play.
PP: billed as being something that was punchy and brutal is now the space equivalent of the Somme. Its static and has no point to it any more. No one can collapse, and mode equality just makes for a prolonged grind. For over 150 cycles its stopped being a functioning feature and simply punishes those who play it because they care about the Power. Powerplay began as a massive step up from the BGS, but now languishes with 'old' BGS hangovers (old style CZs), its full of redundant areas (nominations), a leaderboard where we don't know what makes you go up or down, the list goes on and on. With the new style BGS Powerplay looks very dated, with huge conceptual flaws that allow 5C and uneven gameplay.
Loads of people including myself have posted lovingly thought out ways to improve PP. The famous Sammarco proclamations over the years would have improved things beyond recognition if you acted on them. For the love of Pete please in 2019 actually do something about Powerplay. You have the feedback, actually act on it now everyone else has had the game improved for them (engineers done twice over! Exploration, mining, C+P, Thargoids, megaships, Squadrons). You want people to keep on enjoying the game past fixed content you need to give them features that bring together the skills they have learnt. So far Powerplay rewards the skill of truck driving and nothing else, and thats if you even care about the Power- some powers are crippled by unique module shoppers.
BGS: the 'old' BGS was not particularly realistic but it worked, with a multitude of negative and positive ways to hurt / promote a faction. It had few rules but plenty of scope and worked predictably.
This new system is frankly Powerplay Mk 2- frozen influence levels all over the shop, stupidly large durations (7 days for one war over 4%? 5 days for Retreat where you have 2.5% Influence margin and no guaranteed way to negatively affect the opposition?), obtuse reasons for why something failed (expansions, wars / CZs), removal of underhand ways to hurt factions (meaning that you can't bring a faction down directly and have to bring another faction up to compete), legacy / bugs from states such as Lockdown (is it a bug it does nothing? No-one will say because its 'black box' making qualified judgement impossible). Its simply another slog, an exercise in gardening to keep the expansions blooming- and what is its purpose in the end? Just like Powerplay nothing can be removed from the game, even though its supposedly competitive. You simply feed the faction and watch it grow (hopefully since thats not a given but we are not told why).
Personally, if you had introduced multiple states (and removed blocking), the improved CZs (but told us how each part influences the BGS), reduced war / election / retreat / expansion durations I'd be a lot happier, as it would combat Alan Titchmarsh Syndrome with the gardening. You have squadrons to organise players, if they want large empires they need to support them properly. And, to balance aggression why not actually make use of what you have? Make security actually work for once. If you want to balance murder, remove Eagles as sec ships, up AI to Elite and use chaff more often. Make it so you can't farm security easily so to attain the numbers you need to affect the BGS per tick is much more difficult, requiring a bigger ship that in turn acquires bigger and bigger fines (or use a smaller ship that is less effective but cheaper). Lockdown should be the reverse of civil unrest: with CU the factions NPCs gang up on the victim- in Lockdown the local sec forces should be everywhere and in large wings. In the old BGS a high sec lockdown system was like a fortress with sec response in seconds, with navy backing in SC. Unless what I've seen so far of 3.3 Lockdown is a bug, its frankly rather limp. I don't see a government fighting for order, its a normal day.
ATR is another wasted opportunity. I'm a bad person, when I see Ceremonial Comms POIs I'm not thinking 'yay! wedding!' I'm thinking '6 sitting targets excellent for harvest'. With escalating notoriety, why not make a rule where the higher the notoriety the higher the chance ATR will appear in SC as well as everywhere I go? Currently you can avoid them entirely if you know how, making them a total waste of your dev time. If you make them unpredictable you have to think twice about destroying ships.
PP: billed as being something that was punchy and brutal is now the space equivalent of the Somme. Its static and has no point to it any more. No one can collapse, and mode equality just makes for a prolonged grind. For over 150 cycles its stopped being a functioning feature and simply punishes those who play it because they care about the Power. Powerplay began as a massive step up from the BGS, but now languishes with 'old' BGS hangovers (old style CZs), its full of redundant areas (nominations), a leaderboard where we don't know what makes you go up or down, the list goes on and on. With the new style BGS Powerplay looks very dated, with huge conceptual flaws that allow 5C and uneven gameplay.
Loads of people including myself have posted lovingly thought out ways to improve PP. The famous Sammarco proclamations over the years would have improved things beyond recognition if you acted on them. For the love of Pete please in 2019 actually do something about Powerplay. You have the feedback, actually act on it now everyone else has had the game improved for them (engineers done twice over! Exploration, mining, C+P, Thargoids, megaships, Squadrons). You want people to keep on enjoying the game past fixed content you need to give them features that bring together the skills they have learnt. So far Powerplay rewards the skill of truck driving and nothing else, and thats if you even care about the Power- some powers are crippled by unique module shoppers.
BGS: the 'old' BGS was not particularly realistic but it worked, with a multitude of negative and positive ways to hurt / promote a faction. It had few rules but plenty of scope and worked predictably.
This new system is frankly Powerplay Mk 2- frozen influence levels all over the shop, stupidly large durations (7 days for one war over 4%? 5 days for Retreat where you have 2.5% Influence margin and no guaranteed way to negatively affect the opposition?), obtuse reasons for why something failed (expansions, wars / CZs), removal of underhand ways to hurt factions (meaning that you can't bring a faction down directly and have to bring another faction up to compete), legacy / bugs from states such as Lockdown (is it a bug it does nothing? No-one will say because its 'black box' making qualified judgement impossible). Its simply another slog, an exercise in gardening to keep the expansions blooming- and what is its purpose in the end? Just like Powerplay nothing can be removed from the game, even though its supposedly competitive. You simply feed the faction and watch it grow (hopefully since thats not a given but we are not told why).
Personally, if you had introduced multiple states (and removed blocking), the improved CZs (but told us how each part influences the BGS), reduced war / election / retreat / expansion durations I'd be a lot happier, as it would combat Alan Titchmarsh Syndrome with the gardening. You have squadrons to organise players, if they want large empires they need to support them properly. And, to balance aggression why not actually make use of what you have? Make security actually work for once. If you want to balance murder, remove Eagles as sec ships, up AI to Elite and use chaff more often. Make it so you can't farm security easily so to attain the numbers you need to affect the BGS per tick is much more difficult, requiring a bigger ship that in turn acquires bigger and bigger fines (or use a smaller ship that is less effective but cheaper). Lockdown should be the reverse of civil unrest: with CU the factions NPCs gang up on the victim- in Lockdown the local sec forces should be everywhere and in large wings. In the old BGS a high sec lockdown system was like a fortress with sec response in seconds, with navy backing in SC. Unless what I've seen so far of 3.3 Lockdown is a bug, its frankly rather limp. I don't see a government fighting for order, its a normal day.
ATR is another wasted opportunity. I'm a bad person, when I see Ceremonial Comms POIs I'm not thinking 'yay! wedding!' I'm thinking '6 sitting targets excellent for harvest'. With escalating notoriety, why not make a rule where the higher the notoriety the higher the chance ATR will appear in SC as well as everywhere I go? Currently you can avoid them entirely if you know how, making them a total waste of your dev time. If you make them unpredictable you have to think twice about destroying ships.
