Powerplay Should we be Afraid of the prismatic princess?

[Rebel Yell]

There's only 12 Powers. There are far more than 12 communities in Elite Dangerous, never mind disorganised independents like me whose inclination to either take or give orders is minimal. It's not a bug that communities #13, #14, and #276 can also pledge to a Power and try to push their vision on it.

Nailed! Such "democraisation" process is exactly what we meant in our last-PP1 Kumo weekly updates... so we followed organising our community (which litterally quadrupled with PP2) with different activities, front-lines and reference systems. Priorities are picked up on the fly, but what we have noticed (and what makes the new framework most players' driven) is that small groups can organise by themselves to do things... and THEN they come back to share things done in the community.

 

[Tifu]

And Orrere, I strongly suspect, was something else yet again.

The controlling player minor faction, the Code, has a loooong history in the area around Leesti:

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/314u6a/the_war_in_leesti_a_retrospective_and_what_it

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/314u6a/the_war_in_leesti_a_retrospective_and_what_it/

 

[Unknown Zombie]

Yes, that certainly wasn't them. I don't even know if it was Kaine pledges looking for a convenient target close to Tionisla, or just a really big pile of attacks of opportunity around the rares trade coming from everyone non-local - probably a bit of both.

And Orrere, I strongly suspect, was something else yet again.

Like you, I was disappointed in how the Kaine pledges running the discord seem to be just old Mahon pledges who joined Kaine simply because they (I assume?) had ties to the systems she happened to inherit, and they are content to trade systems back and forth between themselves and Mahon, and play allies with Mahon (even though the description I read made it sound like Kaine was anti-corpo and has no love for Mahon and his Sirius-butt-kissing ways). They want to play the Alliance is a tight-knit family who never backstabs, but that's certainly not how I read the flavor text.

I did notice and wonder why you had departed the discord, because I always look forward to your thoughtful insights on how the game works... LOL.. Oh, well, I can't blame you. I stayed, but I don't really jive with the atmosphere in there. I take a glance at the "target objectives" if I log on for the night and don't have any ideas of my own.

Orrere was a coordinated hand-off.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Indeed. If PP2 had kept PP1's "you either follow the party line or you end up damaging your own power" design I'd have headed back to Colonia in July.

I joined the Kaine Discord to see what it was like.
After a couple of weeks it became very clear that the management had too much intent to be "diplomatic" and "sensible" and "not get us into wars we can't win" and "not give Mahon a well-deserved beating" and all that stuff.
So I left again - no hard feelings, I understand why they want to play it that way and I hope they have fun with it ... but it clearly wasn't the community for me.

But I'm still pledged to Kaine and happily reinforcing and acquiring and undermining systems on her behalf. Some of the time they might even be the same systems that the Kaine Discord is working on, for all I know.

There's only 12 Powers. There are far more than 12 communities in Elite Dangerous, never mind disorganised independents like me whose inclination to either take or give orders is minimal. It's not a bug that communities #13, #14, and #276 can also pledge to a Power and try to push their vision on it.

This is what will kill Powerplay and why we need more of this

"no-one....NO ONE....gets out alive!"

and less of this

"If we give Leesti to Mahon, we can have Kaine have a coffee morning at Lave"

 

[Screemonster]

For me the platonic ideal is one where the game doesn't need any self-appointed leaders and treaties. Just power supporters being given a clear UI that tells them what things would be good for their power.

If there's anything that will kill a community, it's the big-name members getting it into their heads that they get to tell the new blood what to do and how to play.

If I were in fdev's position I'd be doing everything I could to decentralise everything out of the scattered discord servers and subreddits and back into the game itself. The attitude that other players pledged to imperial powers are "disrespecting" anyone by just doing what they want to do without seeking the permission of the Super Special Self Appointed High Command is frankly one we could do without.