Pull Your Fingers Out - Incrementally Improving PowerPlay

[Edmund Black]

Greetings CMDRs,

We in the Powerplay community want to try again to push for change. We are fed up with how Frontier have been ignoring us and punishing us for playing Powerplay - yes, that is how the majority of us feel - that we are being punished for trying to play what was supposed to be one of the most dynamic gameplay elements of Elite Dangerous. It is no longer acceptable to be ignored and neglected while we watch Frontier prioritize other things. It seems sometimes that they go out of their way to “fix” things that are not broken but only makes the game less grindy, while they totally ignore the simplest Powerplay requests and fixes - for example fixing some text in game! That is the extent to how much they do not listen to us. Will Frontier keep punishing the Powerplayers and treating us as second-class customers or will we start seeing some changes?

We are about to start a series of proposals to improve PowerPlay in various ways. These will be posted every Thursday after tick in the “Suggestions” section of this forum. The goal of these is to make PowerPlay a more interesting, dynamic, and rewarding experience, without needing to scrap the whole thing and rebuild from the ground up - evolution rather than revolution. Each proposal is intended to be relatively straightforward to implement (though of course we have no special insight into the specific of the Elite codebase), and most of them (except where mentioned) stand alone and do not need a lot of other changes to make them work.

Please limit discussions to the specific topic at hand - pros, cons, tweaks, etc. If you have alternative proposals, by all means make a separate topic! Although the authors are Winters/FLC commanders, these proposals have been made and discussed by pilots from many Powers.

UPDATE: 23 November 2020
Every now and then we bring one change suggestion to PowerPlay so we can focus on discussing it:
First suggestion: Change consolidation trigger levels
Second Suggestion: Remove module-shopping from PowerPlay activities
Third Suggestion: Turmoil ordering of systems is decided by difference between fort and UM levels, ignoring 100% cap
Forth Suggestion: Reduce ballot-stuffing by tying consolidation votes to activity
Fifth Suggestion: Overhead scales with number of (control+exploited+contested) systems, rather than number of control systems
Sixth Suggestion: Make weaponised systems easier to undermine
Seventh Suggestion: Make it treason to prep loss-making systems
Eightieth Suggestion: Remove commander from instance as soon as landed
Ninth Suggestion: Make PowerPlay Open-Only
Tenth Suggestion: Blocking PP players only blocks communications, not instancing
Eleventh Suggestion: All powers fortify, prepare and expand the same way

 

[Katie Byrne]

Personally I tihnk powerplay should be an 'open only' affair

 

[Strangepork]

I think FD have moved on to Odyssey.

I don't expect much will be done with the current game anymore, no more than the most basic of 'emergency' fixes.

 

[Banana's_Are_Good_For_You]

Has much changed regards pp with the introduction of fleet carriers?

 

[ebbrell]

I so wish the system reacted differently depending on your relationship with the super power of the system

Friendly and hostile should actually mean and do something

Even you fleet carrier should have something different when visiting a system when its superpower and faction are linked.

Even if it boosted the INF on mission in system if FC present. And maybe reduced none superpower supporting faction INF a little running missions

 

[Askin Fertrouble]

How many players only join Power Play to gain access to the specialist weapons available after 3-4 weeks with a power ? Beyond that, what percentage of the player base actually participate to engage in the back story ?

 

[Klarg]

How many players only join Power Play to gain access to the specialist weapons available after 3-4 weeks with a power ? Beyond that, what percentage of the player base actually participate to engage in the back story ?

What backstory? There is nothing in game to encourage participation. It wasn't so long ago I ran through the "new player experience" and I don't remember powerplay being mentioned anywhere, on top of that the death of Galnet means there won't be anything narrative-ey about any of the powerplay factions. There are literally zero reasons for me to engage with powerplay beyond a shield or a weapon or whatever and only if I go outwith the game to learn about it.

 

[Vetinari]

How many players only join Power Play to gain access to the specialist weapons available after 3-4 weeks with a power ? Beyond that, what percentage of the player base actually participate to engage in the back story ?

Well, me for one. I did try to engage in it as well but there was nothing to engage in or any reason to care. Last week with Hudson now and to be honest Im just gonna buy them and do it in one trip, havent even engaged with Hudson at all for 3 weeks really and hes the last. So goodbye PP, I hope never to be back but if something changes I will ofc try it.

but I dont know how to fix it so will watch these articles with interest..

 

[Banana's_Are_Good_For_You]

Well, back in the day there was quite a lot of interest but it became a mind numbing, uninteresting grind except for those who thought such things important.

I will digress to others but adding a pvp element, maybe thru pp/pvp carriers might be a good way forward.

The problem pp always had was it was introduced too soon when there was little else so all had to be catered for, which broke it, imo.
These days, not as big an issue.

 

[Banana's_Are_Good_For_You]

There is a backstory but maybe lost to the sands of time due to gajnet nerf but the basics are proxy war and things can be based on what is legal/illegal between powers, eg. slavery, booze and such. Imp/ fed infighting...reasons were easy. An emperor died, stabbed in the back, standard behaviour for imps...the cowards.
As for weapons, not great but not the main driver, for me anyways.

 

[TheSisko]

Even the rewards are out of date. 50M CR for maintaining top rank in Powerplay? Meh.

Frontier are serial feature daters and Powerplay is among the dumped girlfriends. Frontier have moved on the 'hawt' new thing (Odyssey) which has nice space legs. Powerplay is on the blocked numbers list.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Some fun reading: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/every-powerplay-related-proposal-until-now.527340/

I also tasked Arthur to ask the devs what exactly is going on with Powerplay- more specifically will we see any substantial development in Odyssey?

 

[Rubbernuke]

Even the rewards are out of date. 50M CR for maintaining top rank in Powerplay? Meh.

Frontier are serial feature daters and Powerplay is among the dumped girlfriends. Frontier have moved on the 'hawt' new thing (Odyssey) which has nice space legs. Powerplay is on the blocked numbers list.

"I'm not going to be ignored, Dan"

 

[Charlemagne42]

How many players only join Power Play to gain access to the specialist weapons available after 3-4 weeks with a power ? Beyond that, what percentage of the player base actually participate to engage in the back story ?

Inara keeps statistics on how many players are pledged, and actually clears statistics on inactive accounts, so you can get a good measure of how many are active in PowerPlay and even where they're pledged. "Module Shoppers" as we call them only stay pledged for a month, and since there are 11 Powers with maybe 7 worthwhile modules, most shoppers are completely done within 6 months or so, and only people who play long-term actually bother shopping. I haven't found a good way to gather data on how many players, or which ones, play long-term, but I'm sure Frontier have those data available to them.

Anyway, back on topic. According to Inara statistics - about 1/3 of players are actively involved in PowerPlay. Remember the simultaneous-players peak last month, at 21000? It's a safe bet that 7000 of those were PowerPlay pilots. We are a sizeable chunk of active players. And for many of us, it's the gameplay loop that keeps us playing a game we otherwise find of only passing interest.

Maybe if Frontier focused some attention on improving the experience of PowerPlay, and paid attention to the feedback of PowerPlay communities in doing so, they'd see a boost in player retention numbers. Because the people who play continuously over the space of months all tend to keep coming back because of PowerPlay.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Inara keeps statistics on how many players are pledged, and actually clears statistics on inactive accounts, so you can get a good measure of how many are active in PowerPlay and even where they're pledged. "Module Shoppers" as we call them only stay pledged for a month, and since there are 11 Powers with maybe 7 worthwhile modules, most shoppers are completely done within 6 months or so, and only people who play long-term actually bother shopping. I haven't found a good way to gather data on how many players, or which ones, play long-term, but I'm sure Frontier have those data available to them.

Anyway, back on topic. According to Inara statistics - about 1/3 of players are actively involved in PowerPlay. Remember the simultaneous-players peak last month, at 21000? It's a safe bet that 7000 of those were PowerPlay pilots. We are a sizeable chunk of active players. And for many of us, it's the gameplay loop that keeps us playing a game we otherwise find of only passing interest.

Maybe if Frontier focused some attention on improving the experience of PowerPlay, and paid attention to the feedback of PowerPlay communities in doing so, they'd see a boost in player retention numbers. Because the people who play continuously over the space of months all tend to keep coming back because of PowerPlay.

That high? I'm surprised. During the nadir it was estimated to be about 1000 or so going by how in game amounts shifted and knowing various groups.

But if FD are intent on making ED self contained with self generating content, Powerplay is one of the ways to achieve that (along with PMFs). I wait with interest what Arthur comes up with- five years of nothing and a two year wait after a flurry of dev interest is inexcusable really, especially since FD disowned the feature a few days after releasing it.

 

[Wendake]

The problem with FDev is that they added a lot of "barebone" features (Powerplay, CODEX, Muli-crew, CQC, etc.) - all of them had a lot of potential to bring life to the game and get the player base involved in different activities but those features are such in a "placeholder state" that they aren't attractive to players...

So, players don't interact with those features and FDev don't see any point in putting time / ressources in them since they aren't popular...because they didn't worked to flesh them out.

 

[Drelthar]

Powerplay needs to be removed, burned, wiped from the memory of all sentient beings in the universe, and then entirely re-imagined as something more than "do the same stuff you normally do, except yellow..."

It's ok that there is this background political struggle system going on, and a lot of what I see from people who play this... abomination... are complaints about -that- part, and I'm certain they are valid.

But please! can someone try to get them to make the actual things you DO to "powerPlay" around, to be something more than moving a different labelled item from one place, to another, or shooting the same ships as usual, with a different label on them.

Jeez, just putting "yellow" missions on the mission board if you're pledged, so you can choose to do more than one (ok 2...) crappy things would be one hell of a start.

 

[Deleted member 257907]

Im just a casual and don't do powerplay yet but to me all the factions feel lifeless there's no consquence to ranking up 1 or the other you can do both. i'd rather have a few less ships/modules available to unlock if i got some roleplay value in return but NO I can be allied and rank 1 with everybody at some point.

 

[DemiserofD]

The problem with Powerplay is pretty simple, when you get right down to it. There's nothing worth fighting for.

Why should I bother hauling hundreds of thousands of powerplay commodities to take over a random system? It doesn't make any difference!

 

[Rubbernuke]

Powerplay needs to be removed, burned, wiped from the memory of all sentient beings in the universe, and then entirely re-imagined as something more than "do the same stuff you normally do, except yellow..."

It's ok that there is this background political struggle system going on, and a lot of what I see from people who play this... abomination... are complaints about -that- part, and I'm certain they are valid.

But please! can someone try to get them to make the actual things you DO to "powerPlay" around, to be something more than moving a different labelled item from one place, to another, or shooting the same ships as usual, with a different label on them.

Jeez, just putting "yellow" missions on the mission board if you're pledged, so you can choose to do more than one (ok 2...) crappy things would be one hell of a start.

The problem being is that nearly all of what you do in ED is the same mechanic applied to different features. PP is identical to CGs/ IIs, and is at a basic level a proto- wing mission to either deliver things or massacre things.

Unless FD have a brand new gameplay feature, the only thing left that adds anything is Open Only in some form because it then sorts out one glaring flaw in Powerplay and that is of opposition: NPCs scale horrifically to Powerplay levels.