Pull Your Fingers Out - Incrementally Improving PowerPlay

CMDR Foursyth

CMDR Foursyth
Although PP was designed to appeal to both PvP and PvE and... whatever hauling is... it is the perfect place to generate big PVP conflicts and long-term PVP strategies, rather than just little 4v4 skirmishes. And when it's good, it's really good. There's been some amazing memorable moments, and I'm not even any good at PVP. But the way PP is right now, the incentive for massed-group PVP is low - you're too vulnerable to exploits and shenanigans. It would be amazing to see that fixed, and I don't think it would take that much work to do so. Way less than what Sandro (RIP) was proposing.
 

CMDR Foursyth

CMDR Foursyth

CMDR Foursyth

CMDR Foursyth

CMDR Foursyth

CMDR Foursyth

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
CMDR Foursyth said:
Although PP was designed to appeal to both PvP and PvE and... whatever hauling is... it is the perfect place to generate big PVP conflicts and long-term PVP strategies, rather than just little 4v4 skirmishes. And when it's good, it's really good. There's been some amazing memorable moments, and I'm not even any good at PVP. But the way PP is right now, the incentive for massed-group PVP is low - you're too vulnerable to exploits and shenanigans. It would be amazing to see that fixed, and I don't think it would take that much work to do so. Way less than what Sandro (RIP) was proposing.
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Sandros proposed changes are really quite light when broken down which is the irony. Its only the Open part thats really radical in it.
 

Phoenix_Dfire

Phoenix_Dfire
Rubbernuke said:
Sandros proposed changes are really quite light when broken down which is the irony. Its only the Open part thats really radical in it.
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And did you feel that most of of the people who were upset about 'Open Only Power-play' didn't play power play but were really scared that it going to the Open Only slippery slope to Community Goals, the BSG and then the whole game?
 

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
Phoenix_Dfire said:
And did you feel that most of of the people who were upset about 'Open Only Power-play' didn't play power play but were really scared that it going to the Open Only slippery slope to Community Goals, the BSG and then the whole game?
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Yes- the super irony cake with ironic cherry topping was for some of those opposed (who never really were into Powerplay) actually backed my proposal which just padded out Sandros ( here it is in a polished format https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...ti-5c-mode-specific-plus-other-tweaks.552045/). In short, if Sandro went into more detail than he did, I'm sure those afraid of the world exploding would have been calmer.
 

Ignition

I
TheSisko said:
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.
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I came back to play the game after 1 or 2 years (I don't remember), I joined Archon Delaine to do something different. When I saw the minor factions around the region dominated by this power my hype went to the floor, and when I saw the 50M for level 5 I lef asap.

It's supposed to be a pirates heaven but it doesn't feel anything different from any other place. For example when I arrived a system controled by AD a passenger cruiser said they were the top 1% best, why a tourist cruiser would be flying around doing their normal business and chating in local. Its supposed to be a pirate heaven with murder, theft and slaves.
 

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
Ignition said:
I came back to play the game after 1 or 2 years (I don't remember), I joined Archon Delaine to do something different. When I saw the minor factions around the region dominated by this power my hype went to the floor, and when I saw the 50M for level 5 I lef asap.

It's supposed to be a pirates heaven but it doesn't feel anything different from any other place. For example when I arrived a system controled by AD a passenger cruiser said they were the top 1% best, why a tourist cruiser would be flying around doing their normal business and chating in local. Its supposed to be a pirate heaven with murder, theft and slaves.
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Archons Discord is where the real fun begins.
 

Ignition

I
Oh another thing, why AD is the only faction that needs to wait 30 minutes for only 10 units to do control? Every other Power has to destroy ships.
Its imposible to do a proper control when you can do 10 points every 30 minutes and everyone else can do much more in the same time.
 

CMDR Cknarf

CMDR Cknarf
Powerplay as it stands today is little more than a BGS/trade mechanic that pays awful. Many of us just do it for special space ship parts, and nothing more

I'd like to see open only, even if it is just temporary. A trial run of sorts.

Along with this, better rewards for participation, and harsher penalties for attacking your allies.

Right now, I'm aligned with Yuri Grom. Destroying an allied player presents me with nothing more than a little message that says 'oh no treachery, you lost merits you don't even have.' Maybe some power-specific consequences for traitors would make people more likely to side with their own, instead of ignoring it altogether.
 

CMDR Foursyth

CMDR Foursyth
Cknarf said:
Powerplay as it stands today is little more than a BGS/trade mechanic that pays awful.
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Here's the thing - it's a much deeper tactical game with a ton of subtlety. But only if you're hooked into the various communities on places like Discord. If you're just playing using the in-game comms and UI it's very hard to discover that depth. Grom is particularly challenging because their long-term leadership have semi-retired, and a new faction is on the ascent, but they seem a very private bunch. The language barrier doesn't help either. You may find you have more fun joining one of the other powers - honestly any of the other powers - though of course I would suggest the Federation.
 

Edmund Black

E
Ignition said:
Oh another thing, why AD is the only faction that needs to wait 30 minutes for only 10 units to do control? Every other Power has to destroy ships.
Its imposible to do a proper control when you can do 10 points every 30 minutes and everyone else can do much more in the same time.
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First AD is a power, many factions can belong to that power but that is not an in game thing but rather a community thing (some of these factions can be PMFs in the game but some are just squadrons of let's say combat pilots, or hauling pilots etc..)
AD is not the only power that haul packages to expand systems,we in Winters also do the same thing, there are 2 kinds of powers in Powerplay, the Hauling Powers such as AD, Winters, Torval, and you have the Combat Powers such as ALD, Hudson, Patreus etc..

Also what you are talking about is the free allocated packages you get: (first they are 10 per 30 minutes, then they go up until they reach 50 per 30 minutes depending on your rank with the power) but dedicated Powerplayers do not wait 30 minutes, they fast track which is expensive, and for that each power have a system to help haulers to compensate for the expensive work they do, in Winters we ask new CMDRs to not exhaust their bank account and thus we give them special routs that would help them backhaul (make money during a hauling loop so they don't deplete their bank account) or help them through wing missions, mining or even BGS that pays off, all according to a long term strategy put up by leadership who have extensive experience in Powerplay.


Note that the Hauling vs Combat powers only is relevant when a power is expanding and IT IS AN UNBALANCED mechanism one of those things we have been asking Fdev to change for years, all powers as far as I know Prepare and fortify systems through hauling,also and another reason for us being angry is that this is not clear in the powers Ethos, and it needs to be changed (simple text changes) and even that Fdev is not doing... talk about a bad quality product, no wonder Fdev has a bad reputation as developers amongst gamers.
 
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Danieros

D
This is a very nice initiative. PP is the most engaging feature for me along with the BGS and I don't think it needs an overhaul, just improvements. I was hoping we'd get a Beyond chapter dedicated to it since it was all about improving the core game systems, but apparently they dropped the plans to get Odyssey done asap.
 

Cmdr Jim S Walter

Cmdr Jim S Walter
Edmund Black said:
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.
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I agree with everything you said, but powerplay isn’t new , so it’s getting ignored like the rest of the abandoned features ined thedevs “ forgot “.
 

Mr T

Mr T
Ignition said:
Oh another thing, why AD is the only faction that needs to wait 30 minutes for only 10 units to do control? Every other Power has to destroy ships.
Its imposible to do a proper control when you can do 10 points every 30 minutes and everyone else can do much more in the same time.
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A few years ago I used to destroy ships for AD to get the amount required. I recall some changes being made since then so it might be totally different now. I would find a system in anarchy (so I didn't get fined) that was owned by another power and destroy any powerplay ships that weren't Empire aligned. It was a great way of getting more engineering materials as well especially seeing as there weren't any material traders back then.
 

Phoenix_Dfire

Phoenix_Dfire
Katie Byrne said:
Personally I tihnk powerplay should be an 'open only' affair
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There are a whole load of issues about excluding players who can only Powerplay in solo / private (i.e. xbox and playstation players who can't afford the multiplayer services) as well as the effects that some powers have on the BGS so I don't think Powerplay can be completely open only.

To balance this out, I would say that the Control and Expansion Actions for each power should be open only but the Preparation phase should remain available to everyone. Control and Expansion feel much more like the best place for PvP interaction and if they were able to implement the rest of Sandro's old changes, then that would greatly reduce the 5C influence.

I do feel that the modules should be moved out to the Tech Traders. The people who play powerplay just to 'Module Shop' don't really play the mode for their pledged power, so removing those players from the mode should work.

However, I'm not hopeful that we'll ever get any further changes to powerplay. I don't even know if there are any staff left on the project that know how the mechanics work.
 
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