This list digs into player behavior and try to list ten ways that the User Interface itself misleads, misdirects and misguides players in powerplay. We are looking at counter-intuitive presentation, wrong information and even cases of information missing alltogether.
The top-10 give misleading and wrong information...
The preparation top-10 give false impression of what's good, bad, what's going to be prepared and not and what's valuable and not.
* The prep scores are presented as red or orange if we have enough CC to afford it, but the colors ignore whether or not we are actually winning the top systems.
* The list itself do not display competition/opposition. We even experienced cases where you could only see other powers contributions if you traveled to the system itself, but in the "highest contributing power" or in the mapview!
* Even if the white value say "cost" it seems people see them as "value", because they promote the systems with the highest cost even if it have a negative value. The actual value is not presented in the top-10 list at all.
This is our top 10 list from cycle 6. We got the ones in the green box. Note what the list looks like and how the orange/red "prep" is misleading. HIP 23824 had a potential value of -9.
The button order confuse priority to new players
Fortifying players are great, even if they don't know what they are doing. Players who prepare incorrectly destroy their own power more than the opposition. But the button order (prepare, expand, control) will lead new and inexperienced players to prepare first, expand second and fortify third, when they should do the complete reverse; fortify first, expand second and prepare third. Preparing players destroy the top-10 list, pour in tens of thousands of commodities above the necessary "100" even when the system is not opposed and make even the 250 nominations from Rank 5 a drop in the ocean. They are also likely to prioritize their preparations based on what other players already done, causing them to further prepare bad systems other players already prepared. Players who grind preparations are particularly toxic. Experienced players fight a losing battle against their own team.
"LY" in lists means distance to you, not to HQ
LY to HQ is important. But the LY in the list lists distance to you, not the HQ. You can only see Distance to HQ if you view the system on the map. Distance to HQ is vastly more important than distance to you, in basically every tactical and strategic way. By displaying "distance to you" the list make new players use the list to find "nearby places to powerplay" and fool them into killing their own power more effectively than competing powers. While it's easy to prepare and even expand to a system 150LY away from HQ, such systems are pricy to expand to and a chore to fortify both due to the higher triggers and greater distances to deliver commodities from HQ. Since distance to HQ is important, showing "LY to HQ" would be nice, and perhaps even scrapping the "LY from you" alltogether considering how lethal bad preppers can be.
The waste vs value of overtriggering
Intuitively more is better right? Well, in powerplay overtriggering fortifications is a huge waste of effort, yet there are examples of people putting ten times more than required into systems... But the only way to know that triggered expansions may still fail is to read the manual carefully. Thus the trigger is the only important thing for fortifying, while the undermining score is important for expansions. And why even have a value for triggering a preparation?
The Control button is out of control!
"Control" actually means "Fortify"... You can fortify and you have controlled systems, but you cannot "control" in powerplay.
"Control system" don't mean "control this system" but "no fortification or undermining attempt was made to this system in this cycle".
"Fortifying" means "friendly players did positive things to this place" even if that's 10 out of 10000, or "this system is fortified already so stop fortifying this system you idiot!".
"Under threat" actually means "someone else put something into this system" even if that's 10 out of 25000.
"Succeeding" actually means "Succeeded" or "triggered" or again "stop fortifying this system you idiot!".
Eight ways to describe a system: Control/Fortify/Exploited/Contested, Undermine/Opposed, Prepare/Expand
There are eight ways a system can be described... Controlled, fortified, exploited, contested, undermined, opposed, preparing or expanding. This could benefit of streamlining. Preparation and Expansion are 2 steps in the same process. The control button could possibly renamed into Fortify and the word "Controlled" be used sparingly.
Almost no info on "exploited" and "contested"
The word "exploited" is barely described in the user interface at all. Showing the number of exploited and contested systems per system might reduce this confusion. There's no way to easily see what exploited systems are currently contested, you have to hover your mouse around. Actually being able to see what other powers systems contest you is important but there's no way to do so right now. Also "exploited" may sound bad, but "exploited" systems actually have benefits.
Lack of linebreaks cause hidden information
If you for example click Zemina Torval, Preparation and Overview and read under "How to prepare" the text doesn't linebreak, causing the text to be hidden. Another example is "How to undermine" under Zachary Hudson control.
Opposition/Undermining is presented from the OTHER powers perspective
Everything related to opposing/undermining is presented from your enemy's perspective rather than your own. How to oppose or undermine is presented under the other powers and its very hard to see if another power is close to your borders and there's no way to easily see what exploited systems are currently contested.
It's difficult to figure out how to actually oppose/undermine
Every power is also undermined/opposed differently. The info on how to "oppose expansion" for powers like Zachary Hudson try to blend fluff with information which makes it harder to read. What is the difference between Bond, Token and the 10 kinds of commodities to pirate? Is destroy or kill the same thing? Is steal, liberate or remove the same thing? And what merits do you gain for these?
The top-10 give misleading and wrong information...
The preparation top-10 give false impression of what's good, bad, what's going to be prepared and not and what's valuable and not.
* The prep scores are presented as red or orange if we have enough CC to afford it, but the colors ignore whether or not we are actually winning the top systems.
* The list itself do not display competition/opposition. We even experienced cases where you could only see other powers contributions if you traveled to the system itself, but in the "highest contributing power" or in the mapview!
* Even if the white value say "cost" it seems people see them as "value", because they promote the systems with the highest cost even if it have a negative value. The actual value is not presented in the top-10 list at all.
This is our top 10 list from cycle 6. We got the ones in the green box. Note what the list looks like and how the orange/red "prep" is misleading. HIP 23824 had a potential value of -9.
The button order confuse priority to new players
Fortifying players are great, even if they don't know what they are doing. Players who prepare incorrectly destroy their own power more than the opposition. But the button order (prepare, expand, control) will lead new and inexperienced players to prepare first, expand second and fortify third, when they should do the complete reverse; fortify first, expand second and prepare third. Preparing players destroy the top-10 list, pour in tens of thousands of commodities above the necessary "100" even when the system is not opposed and make even the 250 nominations from Rank 5 a drop in the ocean. They are also likely to prioritize their preparations based on what other players already done, causing them to further prepare bad systems other players already prepared. Players who grind preparations are particularly toxic. Experienced players fight a losing battle against their own team.
"LY" in lists means distance to you, not to HQ
LY to HQ is important. But the LY in the list lists distance to you, not the HQ. You can only see Distance to HQ if you view the system on the map. Distance to HQ is vastly more important than distance to you, in basically every tactical and strategic way. By displaying "distance to you" the list make new players use the list to find "nearby places to powerplay" and fool them into killing their own power more effectively than competing powers. While it's easy to prepare and even expand to a system 150LY away from HQ, such systems are pricy to expand to and a chore to fortify both due to the higher triggers and greater distances to deliver commodities from HQ. Since distance to HQ is important, showing "LY to HQ" would be nice, and perhaps even scrapping the "LY from you" alltogether considering how lethal bad preppers can be.
The waste vs value of overtriggering
Intuitively more is better right? Well, in powerplay overtriggering fortifications is a huge waste of effort, yet there are examples of people putting ten times more than required into systems... But the only way to know that triggered expansions may still fail is to read the manual carefully. Thus the trigger is the only important thing for fortifying, while the undermining score is important for expansions. And why even have a value for triggering a preparation?
The Control button is out of control!
"Control" actually means "Fortify"... You can fortify and you have controlled systems, but you cannot "control" in powerplay.
"Control system" don't mean "control this system" but "no fortification or undermining attempt was made to this system in this cycle".
"Fortifying" means "friendly players did positive things to this place" even if that's 10 out of 10000, or "this system is fortified already so stop fortifying this system you idiot!".
"Under threat" actually means "someone else put something into this system" even if that's 10 out of 25000.
"Succeeding" actually means "Succeeded" or "triggered" or again "stop fortifying this system you idiot!".
Eight ways to describe a system: Control/Fortify/Exploited/Contested, Undermine/Opposed, Prepare/Expand
There are eight ways a system can be described... Controlled, fortified, exploited, contested, undermined, opposed, preparing or expanding. This could benefit of streamlining. Preparation and Expansion are 2 steps in the same process. The control button could possibly renamed into Fortify and the word "Controlled" be used sparingly.
Almost no info on "exploited" and "contested"
The word "exploited" is barely described in the user interface at all. Showing the number of exploited and contested systems per system might reduce this confusion. There's no way to easily see what exploited systems are currently contested, you have to hover your mouse around. Actually being able to see what other powers systems contest you is important but there's no way to do so right now. Also "exploited" may sound bad, but "exploited" systems actually have benefits.
Lack of linebreaks cause hidden information
If you for example click Zemina Torval, Preparation and Overview and read under "How to prepare" the text doesn't linebreak, causing the text to be hidden. Another example is "How to undermine" under Zachary Hudson control.
Opposition/Undermining is presented from the OTHER powers perspective
Everything related to opposing/undermining is presented from your enemy's perspective rather than your own. How to oppose or undermine is presented under the other powers and its very hard to see if another power is close to your borders and there's no way to easily see what exploited systems are currently contested.
It's difficult to figure out how to actually oppose/undermine
Every power is also undermined/opposed differently. The info on how to "oppose expansion" for powers like Zachary Hudson try to blend fluff with information which makes it harder to read. What is the difference between Bond, Token and the 10 kinds of commodities to pirate? Is destroy or kill the same thing? Is steal, liberate or remove the same thing? And what merits do you gain for these?
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