Powerplay Solo/Group and Powerplay

[SamSlade]

It would seem that Frontier have already made that call - the freedom of players to avoid forced interaction by other players has been part of the game design from the outset.

This is a logical fallacy and a huge double standard: to be effective in PP one must min/max as per the Group environment; failure to do so will result in defeat and as such is effectively a forced interaction. The freedom so often touted as an argument against staggered returns in PP is also the best argument for staggered returns in PP. Most of the keen PPers I know have either gone full Group mode or quit PP altogether as it is simply a matter of spreadsheets; in its current iteration PP has more in common with exploring and trade then with any real geopolitical power projection exercise.

Some folks can't exist without their STRAW MEN.

The PvP crowd has Solo and Private Groups as their hands down favorites here in ED. Despite the fact that they have absolutely ZERO telemetry to back up their claims about the effects Solo and Groups bring to PP and other aspects of Elite Dangerous, that has never stopped them from continuing to raise this false flag every chance they get.

The same goes for their equally misguided opinion that PvP rules PP's outcomes every cycle. A more self important group you will never find around here.

The smug irony is your comment is almost laughable, though it does encapsulate the quintessential passive-aggressive mindset that mars this community. Although a new mechanic would make things better you firmly oppose it because you want PvP players out of the game.

 

[Arkadi]

Instead of getting salty here I have to ask:

Some folks can't exist without their STRAW MEN.

The PvP crowd has Solo and Private Groups as their hands down favorites here in ED. Despite the fact that they have absolutely ZERO telemetry to back up their claims about the effects Solo and Groups bring to PP and other aspects of Elite Dangerous, that has never stopped them from continuing to raise this false flag every chance they get.

The same goes for their equally misguided opinion that PvP rules PP's outcomes every cycle. A more self important group you will never find around here.

Becouse I don't really get your intetnions here? What is your goal in powerplay? How do you play it? Do you play it? What is it you enjoy about it? I am really not sure where you are going with this post...

I was thinking this thread is about how to improve powerplay for those who actively want to participate in powerplay. And there a several players who thought powerplay is something like endgame contet or a frame-set for meaningfull pvp-combat in a political struggle of powers. But clearly in current state it is not, becouse the moste efficient way to go about powerplay is to "pay for goods" and then play "mass-delivery in private groups/solo". I mean this is nothing new for the game. We already have trading or delivery missions in the game. This does not add any new or fresh gamplay. I am not sure what powerplay is meant to be in the current state. No one really seems to like it much in its current iteration. Since powerplay is content for a fringe-group anyway as it seems it could as well be changed to fit better for the most neglected group - the open pvp-combat folks. And low and behold, I don't want it to be "open" only or such... I only want to stress that powerplay, and only powerplay - no other part of the game - could use some incentives to play it in open becouse it's fundamental layout is really suggesting that it is menat to be played in open... But I am sure I will be proven very wrong soon. So you have your salt. Cheers.

edit: also I know that there are differen platforms and there is instancing - and we will never be able to see "all" players participating. For me this is no argument becouse: an incentive to play powerplay in open would bring more people into open powerplay and would make a meaningful pvp-confrontation in open more likely, possible and also - most importantly - worth it!
Becouse to just play pvp in open for the fun of it is nice - but this has nothing to do with powrplay. We already have pvp-groups meeting for fun. It's good but that has nothing to do with a competitve powerplay gameplay, becouse if you fly in open and fight littel battles with other commanders there you are aware that you are wasting ressources in reality in exchange for some fun. This has a bitter taste to the fun - and this would not be necessary with a bonus to open play for power-play only of course.

 

[Robert Maynard]

For me this is no argument becouse: an incentive to play powerplay in open would bring more people into open powerplay and would make a meaningful pvp-confrontation in open more likely, possible and also - most importantly - worth it!

.... or maybe PvE players who engage in PowerPlay, in Solo and Private groups, who have no interest whatsoever in PvP, would just quit PowerPlay - which would give PowerPlay an even bigger problem in relation to justifying development time as it would (probably) have an even smaller population. Sandro has already mentioned that getting development time for PowerPlay is a challenge due to the lack of players engaging in it.

No features in this game require PvP (unless CQC/Arena is counted - and that's not in-game) - it remains optional but is not required at all.

 

[Arkadi]

Do you really think PvE players would quit powerplay only becouse players in open would have a slight numbers-boost to theire actions? I would not think so. If someone still plays powerplay I don't think those will get offset such easyly.

I am aware this is all a highly hypothetical discussion and it is a bit sad that powrplay is left lying in the sand to rot... but alas. No one is forced to play it anyway. So we can just leave it lying there rotting.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Do you really think PvE players would quit powerplay only becouse players in open would have a slight nubers-boost to theire actions? I would not think so. If someone still plays powerplay I don't think those will get offset such easyly.

That rather depends on the level of any possible bonus. If a bonus were to be so large as to favour players in Open (rather than just offset their merit losses due to interaction with other PowerPlayers in Open) then I would expect that the existence of a bonus only available in a mode where PvP is enabled would be a sufficient disincentive for some players (who do not tolerate direct PvP) to stop them engaging in PowerPlay.

The fact that the modes treat every player equally with the only difference being the interaction with other players in the multi-player modes is consistent with the design philosophy that Frontier set out over four years ago. Sandro mused regarding a possible change to that, for PowerPlay only, early last year and confirmed late last year that there are no plans to introduce it (although nothing is completely ruled out, of course).

I am aware this is all a highly hypothetical discussion and it is a bit sad that powrplay is left lying in the sand to rot... but alas. No one is forced to play it anyway. So we can just leave it lying there rotting.

Improving PowerPlay is not contingent on shoe-horning in a requirement for direct PvP or a bonus for playing in a particular mode, in my opinion.

 

[Martin Schou]

Since powerplay is content for a fringe-group anyway as it seems it could as well be changed to fit better for the most neglected group - the open pvp-combat folks.

Bwahahaha. Did you go to Trump University or something? PvP gets way more attention than PowerPlay does, both from players and FDev themselves. Hell, every single time Ed holds one of his live events, there's guaranteed to be PvP action and call-outs to whomever kills people.

PowerPlay in its current incarnation doesn't work as a PvP only exercise, as that would move it entirely from being a borderline cold-war political simulation to an open warfare simulation. It'd also completely neglect the very notion of support and logistics - extremely boring and tedious things to do, but without which no kind of territorial warfare would ever survive.

PowerPlay in its current incarnation doesn't even work as an open only exercise, as the current mechanics for PowerPlay massively favour certain powers, as they have no expensive logistics bottlenecks.

It might work with bonuses for open participation, but given how often stuff breaks in PowerPlay and how it tends to break in irreversible ways, experimenting with bonuses for open participation on PowerPlay is a bit like experimenting cyanide in the middle of a kindergarten. You can't even beta-test PowerPlay stuff properly - every time something is introduced or changed in PowerPlay, we basically have to keep our fingers crossed that it doesn't break anything when it moves to live.

Test open participation bonuses on CGs. They are perfect for testing this kind of thing, because they're popular, they change every week and people are very eager to break them in all kinds of interesting ways. Breaking CGs is also far more likely to get attention and fixes than PowerPlay. It's easy to poopoo PowerPlay, but keep in mind that every single Thursday morning (game time) you have a community of players waiting to see the outcome of their combined labour while at the same time hoping that nothing broke this time around - throwing more stuff on top of something that's already horribly broken in a multitude of ways in an attempt to make it more popular isn't going to work.

To my mind, the reason that PowerPlay is unpopular, is that the vast majority of people who try it do it for what I consider the wrong reasons - selfishness. They see the payout and want that or they see the modules and want that. Get rid of the payout, modules and cost of merit hauling, and you will get rid of a huge amount of the complaints with PowerPlay, because suddenly all those players will stop participating. PowerPlay doesn't work as a selfish endeavour - if you try it, you'll end up hating everything it touches.

PowerPlay is like trying to herd bullet ants while naked and covered in honey. Doing it on your own makes you question your sanity and reason for living while cursing the very idea of doing it - rather than looking yourself in the mirror and wondering why you signed up for it in the first place. Doing it with others is where it gets fun - you get to compete with other groups, laugh at how stupid they look, while you congratulate your fellow ant herders for not looking stupid and having managed to find a way to do it without feeling silly.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Test open participation bonuses on CGs. They are perfect for testing this kind of thing, because they're popular, they change every week and people are very eager to break them in all kinds of interesting ways. Breaking CGs is also far more likely to get attention and fixes than PowerPlay.

How any results of such a test be judged to consider a CG to have been "broken"?

CGs are even less oriented towards potential conflict than PowerPlay - they just seem to attract a particular type of player that likes to pop trading ships for specious reasons (if it doesn't take too much effort to get there, of course) - and, like all permanent content, have been implemented for all players in all modes and do not favour those who choose to play in a game mode where direct player interaction is possible.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Sandro has already mentioned that getting development time for PowerPlay is a challenge due to the lack of players engaging in it.

This is probably a major factor and a bit of a chicken and the egg. The powers that be won't want to risk putting effort into improving PP unless they are sure its going to be a winner. Theoretically, making PP Open only might improve participation, but my money would be on reducing it. The PvP population is relatively low and how many of those are actually interested in PvP, or more to the point, would become interested if it became Open only? Would they be interested if a majority of the PvEers just shrugged and dropped PP because they don't want to play in Open?

It would be a gamble on FD's part, and considering how many other areas of the game still are in high demand for improvements, PP is probably waaay down the list.

They gambled on PP being a success once, and dedicated a who major patch to it. The gamble didn't pay off. They gambled with CQC, again, another flop. PP was designed to be engaging for PvPers, and so was CQC. Then they release Horizons 2.0 - pleases the PvE crowd a lot. 2.1, Engineers, a lot of controversy, but over time (especially with removal of commodities) welcome i think now in general by PvEers, but as far as i can see, the PvPers are still in disagreement about it. 2.2 with SLFs - again, PvEers pretty good. I think the general consensus from the PvP community is don't bother for PvP.

In short, it seems like when FD do something, its usually good for PvEers, but not always good for PvPers, even if they design it with PvPers in mind. Maybe they just don't understand the PvP mentality. Maybe they do but development realities stop them doing what they really want to do. Either way, trying to make Powerplay more favourable to the PvPers is going to be a risk.

 

[Robert Maynard]

In short, it seems like when FD do something, its usually good for PvEers, but not always good for PvPers, even if they design it with PvPers in mind. Maybe they just don't understand the PvP mentality. Maybe they do but development realities stop them doing what they really want to do. Either way, trying to make Powerplay more favourable to the PvPers is going to be a risk.

While particular features may have been designed with PvP in mind, it remains completely optional in all permanent in-game content. This means that features that offer the possibility of PvP for players that want to engage in it do not stop players who are PvP intolerant from playing the features in another game mode (or even, carefully, in Open) - which is consistent with DBOBE's statement in response with the stream question/statement that "ED was not sold as a PvP game" - rather a game where PvP is possible.

 

[withnail]

At this point you may as well close the thread.

 

[Robert Maynard]

At this point you may as well close the thread.

I can't - I'm (obviously) participating in it and can't Moderate it. The OP can ask for it to be closed, of course, and another Moderator will deal with it.

 

[Parmo]

... Sandro has already mentioned that getting development time for PowerPlay is a challenge due to the lack of players engaging in it.

Now why does that not surprise me.

A feature of a game is always intended to attract people to play that game: stating the blooming obvious.
If Sandro did say that I'll take it as an admission that Powerplay has failed in attracting the number of players in participating in PP to deem it a success and therefore not given an acceptable return on the investment of development time and money.

Somebody in FD, apparently, has to be persuaded that investing more time and money on it is a good bet.

 

[Martin Schou]

How any results of such a test be judged to consider a CG to have been "broken"?

If you can get the open bonus with the risks of playing in open, then you've broken whatever it was you wanted to achieve with the open bonus. That's what needs serious and extensive testing, and to do that you need far more data and willingness to admit to do it than you get in PowerPlay. You'd not get many in PowerPlay to admit to it, because doing so would negate any advantage they gain over the other groups - admitting it with CGs is far easier, because that only compromises your own rewards - not those of the group you're playing with.

Similarly, if the open bonus ends up being broken and somehow giving less reward than you're supposed to get, you'd see an almost immediate fix - with PowerPlay ... well, it took more than a year to get Mahon's cooking laser to even work, and it was immediately outclassed by everything introduced by Engineers. It took more than half a year to get a bug fixed for something that quite literally made expansions impossible for some powers.

This is why I don't want these things tested on PowerPlay - when things break it doesn't get fixed in a timely or even reasonable manner. Absolute best case scenario is that it works as expected - and so what? It's not going to magically make more people participate, because PowerPlay is still going to be incredibly tedious and unrewarding. It'd take more than a simple open bonus (especially when it's already been made clear that it's not going to be a bonus for the commander but for the power) or open only mode to make it popular. To a large extent to make it palatable you need to get rid of the rewards it offers, because that's the main culprit in terms of making it so hated.

 

[Arkadi]

Bwahahaha. Did you go to Trump University or something? PvP gets way more attention than PowerPlay does, both from players and FDev themselves. Hell, every single time Ed holds one of his live events, there's guaranteed to be PvP action and call-outs to whomever kills people.

hehe. no no. I think you are right Frontier does indeed spend quite some time and energy into tweaking combat mechanics - basically this is interesting for PvP - but there is not much regarding c o n t e n t for pvp (except ganking and organized wing-fights). This is what I am refering to.

PowerPlay in its current incarnation doesn't work as a PvP only exercise, as that would move it entirely from being a borderline cold-war political simulation to an open warfare simulation. It'd also completely neglect the very notion of support and logistics - extremely boring and tedious things to do, but without which no kind of territorial warfare would ever survive.

PowerPlay in its current incarnation doesn't even work as an open only exercise, as the current mechanics for PowerPlay massively favour certain powers, as they have no expensive logistics bottlenecks.

It might work with bonuses for open participation, but given how often stuff breaks in PowerPlay and how it tends to break in irreversible ways, experimenting with bonuses for open participation on PowerPlay is a bit like experimenting cyanide in the middle of a kindergarten. You can't even beta-test PowerPlay stuff properly - every time something is introduced or changed in PowerPlay, we basically have to keep our fingers crossed that it doesn't break anything when it moves to live.

Test open participation bonuses on CGs. They are perfect for testing this kind of thing, because they're popular, they change every week and people are very eager to break them in all kinds of interesting ways. Breaking CGs is also far more likely to get attention and fixes than PowerPlay. It's easy to poopoo PowerPlay, but keep in mind that every single Thursday morning (game time) you have a community of players waiting to see the outcome of their combined labour while at the same time hoping that nothing broke this time around - throwing more stuff on top of something that's already horribly broken in a multitude of ways in an attempt to make it more popular isn't going to work.

Respect to those who actually still play the powerplay game and still get the thrills at cycle end on Thursday. I can not deny that every attempt of change would most certainly interfer with the ongoing game. But recently the implementation of the "consolidation" option did go without any bugs and went really smooth. Seems Frontier did it right this time!

To my mind, the reason that PowerPlay is unpopular, is that the vast majority of people who try it do it for what I consider the wrong reasons - selfishness. They see the payout and want that or they see the modules and want that. Get rid of the payout, modules and cost of merit hauling, and you will get rid of a huge amount of the complaints with PowerPlay, because suddenly all those players will stop participating. PowerPlay doesn't work as a selfish endeavour - if you try it, you'll end up hating everything it touches.

I am not sure if the removal of modul-shoppers and rank5 grinders will change much for powerplay. Maybe the balance of power would shift in favor of the powers without good boni and gadgets. But those "grinders" don't add much usefull input mostly anyway - or do I err?? (oops I myself have become one of those grinders - I only play for the modules these times. But I was a honest follower of Hudson for over six months and pledged to Archon two more months, and I think I know the ropes. I am here to discuss what I would like in powerplay to get involved again... )

PowerPlay is like trying to herd bullet ants while naked and covered in honey. Doing it on your own makes you question your sanity and reason for living while cursing the very idea of doing it - rather than looking yourself in the mirror and wondering why you signed up for it in the first place. Doing it with others is where it gets fun - you get to compete with other groups, laugh at how stupid they look, while you congratulate your fellow ant herders for not looking stupid and having managed to find a way to do it without feeling silly.

crazy people , you crazy powerplay lovers

 

[Martin Schou]

This is probably a major factor and a bit of a chicken and the egg. The powers that be won't want to risk putting effort into improving PP unless they are sure its going to be a winner.

I wish I had access to the statistics that Dav can pull on, because then I'm fairly certain I could make a good case for a recasting of PowerPlay altogether. Not based on number of participants, merits carried, open, private, solo etc., but by getting rid of that entirely and score powers on their ethos' popularity. It'd be a BGS based PowerPlay and thus everything you do is based off of the same thing as you do to affect the BGS - missions, combat, mining, exploration, trade.

No more footing around and staying out of PowerPlay - if your faction has a government type that is supported by a power, your faction has skin in the game. It instantly opens up for up to 39 (I think) different power characters and would make a lot of the silly things that PowerPlay shows go away. For example, why is Mahon (Prime Minister of the Alliance) such a powerful influence in the Federation (look at the amount of systems and population he exploits).

Yes, it means that Mahon (my power of choice) would drop like a rock in the galactic ratings, but I honestly don't mind that. I want PowerPlay to make sense, I want it to tell more of a story, I want it to be far more inclusive than it is at the moment, and it annoys me that whenever I run across a new Mahon pledge that I have to tell them that they should not really participate in PowerPlay until far later, because otherwise they'll end up hating it and everything to do with the game.

 

[Martin Schou]

I am not sure if the removal of modul-shoppers and rank5 grinders will change much for powerplay. Maybe the balance of power would shift in favor of the powers without good boni and gadgets. But those "grinders" don't add much usefull input mostly anyway

That really depends on where you look. The reason that Aisling ended up with an enormous deficit is that they are cursed by good passive bonuses. This sounds really weird, but here's how it works: Aisling increases the prices of high value stuff in her control systems, so you find a palladium source near a control system (as close to 15 light years as possible) and buy a full cargo load. You bring that to Aisling's control system and sell it with a good profit (pretty much guaranteed, as even palladium source control systems end up paying more than non-control systems). Pick up a free allotment of preparation merits and head back to the source. Repeat ad nauseum.

Next week you do the same, but you pick up expansion merits and repeat ad nauseum.

After two weeks you've earned yourself rating five, a boat load of palladium trade profits (typically on the order of 2k to 3k per ton) and 50 million a week on top of that.

If Aisling's loyal supporters manages to outprep your system, great - you get to do it all over again and you don't have to look for a new trade route. If they fail, well, you just need to find another nice palladium source, and you can continue unabated. Those grinders have a massive influence on some powers.

They don't affect Mahon, because even though Mahon offers trade dividends (20% for the majority of PowerPlay), there are no trade routes in Mahon space that are worth it - you can always find better places to sell stuff in other systems. I used to think that mining might be the one trade where Mahon offers better results (if you're pledged and rating 2), but I'm honestly not sure there are any places in Mahon space where you can sell Panite at a higher price than you can find in Aisling space, even if you include the 20% profit bonus Mahon grants.

Other powers have combat grinders, which then results in them being pretty much guaranteed to win any and all crappy expansion they have close to home (lots of overlap means it's a crappy system), and barely any support for the expansions that are worth something because the combat grinders don't want to travel.

Again - people who are pledged for purely selfish economical reasons.

People who pledge for the modules ... well, you guys and moan about PowerPlay, and a lot even argue that it should be gotten rid of entirely (except for the things that benefit them directly, like bounty hunting bonuses in ALD and Hudson space and discounts in Li Yong-Rui's space), but at least you don't end up sabotaging stuff out of malice, greed or ignorance.

 

[Robert Maynard]

If you can get the open bonus with the risks of playing in open, then you've broken whatever it was you wanted to achieve with the open bonus. That's what needs serious and extensive testing, and to do that you need far more data and willingness to admit to do it than you get in PowerPlay. You'd not get many in PowerPlay to admit to it, because doing so would negate any advantage they gain over the other groups - admitting it with CGs is far easier, because that only compromises your own rewards - not those of the group you're playing with.

Similarly, if the open bonus ends up being broken and somehow giving less reward than you're supposed to get, you'd see an almost immediate fix - with PowerPlay ... well, it took more than a year to get Mahon's cooking laser to even work, and it was immediately outclassed by everything introduced by Engineers. It took more than half a year to get a bug fixed for something that quite literally made expansions impossible for some powers.

This is why I don't want these things tested on PowerPlay - when things break it doesn't get fixed in a timely or even reasonable manner. Absolute best case scenario is that it works as expected - and so what? It's not going to magically make more people participate, because PowerPlay is still going to be incredibly tedious and unrewarding. It'd take more than a simple open bonus (especially when it's already been made clear that it's not going to be a bonus for the commander but for the power) or open only mode to make it popular. To a large extent to make it palatable you need to get rid of the rewards it offers, because that's the main culprit in terms of making it so hated.

Still not sure what you mean - it is, I expect, rather difficult to determine whether players in Open are actually being significantly less effective in CGs compared to those in the other two modes - especially as there can be collusion in both of the multi-player modes to affect the average efficiency of players in both.

The "risk" of playing in Open is variable, not just in relation to location in the galaxy but also depending on where one connects to the game from and what time of day one plays - it is certainly not a constant, nor, on average, particularly significant.

If an Open Bonus is not to be tested on PowerPlay (and I don't expect that it will be, given Sandro's response in the stream) then I don't expect it will be tested at all - as Sandro was clear that his musing only related to PowerPlay and even then only to the merits for the Power in question, not to the rewards for individual players.

As I said earlier, improving PowerPlay does not need to involve an Open Bonus nor making it lean towards PvP, in my opinion.

 

[bigity]

All modes are equal - except PvP apparently.

At this point I wish PP would go away or become more BGS based, and we get some kind of PvP PP added to the game.

The best moments for me in Elite have come with other CMDRs around. Wings vs wings, running interference while fortifiers haul in merits to Harma while Imps were hot on their heels, coming across an opposing CMDR in an expansion zone.


Nobody spreads word of mouth about Elite with phrases like 'I totally loaded up 720 tons of power play resources (50 every half hour) and hauled them to HQ in solo with no danger'. CQC is a joke, we need a real PvP-centric activity in the game that is just as legitimate as trading. I would be thrilled if it was related to criminal organizations in the game world and people opposing them.

 

[ever]

I wonder if there are 100 players across all Powers, who still really do PP. The most fun in PP was to oppose other Powers and fight against other Commanders. If the game could be like that, it would be a blast. To have to fight for a system against human players with ships built for pvp and pve at the same time. The CG PvP is a joke. Most times, people fighting there don't even know what it's about. They just fight, because it's a very cool game feature. If you had a reason for it, it would be a great feature. Power Play is as boring as the Alliance.

 

[Rubbernuke]

'I totally loaded up 720 tons of power play resources (50 every half hour) and hauled them to HQ in solo with no danger

Stop it, I'm tingling!