Okay so,
In my opinion as an open only powerplayer since 2020, farming player-kills themselves should not be an objective in the future iteration of Powerplay. Here's why:
- It would be difficult for Fdev to create a countermeasure to people farming their own alts/friends pledged to an enemy. Depending on the actual implementation of PP2.0, I feel like a system could be made to make kills on enemy pledges count for more depending on how much work they've done for their power in a given system, in order to make the aforementioned tactic a zero-sum game. However, I'm not sure if Fdev could do it.
(Back in the old days, you'd let your friends steal your powerplay cargo to farm merits until it was nerfed to the ground. Now stealing powerplay cargo is largely meaningless)
- Balancing how much PvP kills are worth for your war effort would be difficult, as PvP combat is usually pretty rare outside of a rare few occasions where we've hit a critical mass of players in an objective system to maintain near constant fights.
- In this game it's nearly impossible to die to a player/players if you don't want to, for example in a Cutter.
- Increasing the frequency of player kills that have a concrete value will exacerbate issues in PvP balance, such as healing beams, fighter lag, combat logging, blocking, bug abuse and cheating.
Instead, I believe the best way to approach Powerplay PvP is the same way Powerplay 1 did it, i.e. make a framework of gamesystems (fortification, undermining) which are barebones by themselves and add the ever-present threat of PvP as a way to spice it up and make each encounter dynamic and unique.
Depending on the traffic at the objective system, haulers and underminers have to take into account the threat of being attacked by an enemy player, build their ships accordingly and take enemy players into account in their methods. Having a PvP force of your own to call for backup helps.
Haulers sacrificing some cargo capacity to fit stronger shields and underminers having to decide whether to risk holding their merits for a snipe or play it safe and claim as you go adds a fun layer of decisionmaking and compromise.
Less PvP-friendly players are always needed to tend to backline objectives when a big clash happens in a key objective system. There's always multiple things to do, and not everyone has to be able to partake in everything.
In conclusion, I think Powerplay should include meaningful PvP via being able to disrupt or halt enemy PvE actions, as I believe was the original vision for Powerplay. To achieve this, Powerplay 2.0 should be made Open only.
Player-kill counting should be saved for a future rework of CQC (pls gib real ships, free engineering, dedicated servers with private lobbies)
In my opinion as an open only powerplayer since 2020, farming player-kills themselves should not be an objective in the future iteration of Powerplay. Here's why:
- It would be difficult for Fdev to create a countermeasure to people farming their own alts/friends pledged to an enemy. Depending on the actual implementation of PP2.0, I feel like a system could be made to make kills on enemy pledges count for more depending on how much work they've done for their power in a given system, in order to make the aforementioned tactic a zero-sum game. However, I'm not sure if Fdev could do it.
(Back in the old days, you'd let your friends steal your powerplay cargo to farm merits until it was nerfed to the ground. Now stealing powerplay cargo is largely meaningless)
- Balancing how much PvP kills are worth for your war effort would be difficult, as PvP combat is usually pretty rare outside of a rare few occasions where we've hit a critical mass of players in an objective system to maintain near constant fights.
- In this game it's nearly impossible to die to a player/players if you don't want to, for example in a Cutter.
- Increasing the frequency of player kills that have a concrete value will exacerbate issues in PvP balance, such as healing beams, fighter lag, combat logging, blocking, bug abuse and cheating.
Instead, I believe the best way to approach Powerplay PvP is the same way Powerplay 1 did it, i.e. make a framework of gamesystems (fortification, undermining) which are barebones by themselves and add the ever-present threat of PvP as a way to spice it up and make each encounter dynamic and unique.
Depending on the traffic at the objective system, haulers and underminers have to take into account the threat of being attacked by an enemy player, build their ships accordingly and take enemy players into account in their methods. Having a PvP force of your own to call for backup helps.
Haulers sacrificing some cargo capacity to fit stronger shields and underminers having to decide whether to risk holding their merits for a snipe or play it safe and claim as you go adds a fun layer of decisionmaking and compromise.
Less PvP-friendly players are always needed to tend to backline objectives when a big clash happens in a key objective system. There's always multiple things to do, and not everyone has to be able to partake in everything.
In conclusion, I think Powerplay should include meaningful PvP via being able to disrupt or halt enemy PvE actions, as I believe was the original vision for Powerplay. To achieve this, Powerplay 2.0 should be made Open only.
Player-kill counting should be saved for a future rework of CQC (pls gib real ships, free engineering, dedicated servers with private lobbies)
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