The Powerplay discussion thread.

[JesusOnEez]

This was akin to asking people in a pub "Who likes drinking?".

The only proper data really pertaining to any of this is held by FD. They have made a pretty good game so far.
Faith and patience required.

Slight alteration. This was akin to asking people in a pub "Who likes drinking?", and only 34% do.

 

[TheLoneTrucker]

I'm not even sure what the subject is anymore but the pony now has my support.

 

[kazana]

Over 700 responses is statistically relevant as it was freely available to most of the player base it is highly likely it was an accurate cross section of the community as a whole. It is not about the percentage of responses from the population as a whole, but about the number of responses compared to the amount of expected deviation in the responses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size_determination

It's not obtuse, it's maths.

I've got another article for you that make the "maths" (sic) you elude to in your post irrelevant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

I strongly expect the set up of the poll to cover a really good chunk of them.

 

[Hilight]

Right... because 18th century authors are known for their accuracy when judging mathematics in the 21st century.

LOL when it comes to statisitcs, what Twain had to say is as true now as when he said it--- perhaps more so, as people in our century so often accept the results of polls without question when the media throws them at the public. Many years ago I worked for a market research company and I'm here to tell ya, polling has got to be one of the bigger scams of our time. ...incidentally, Twain lived in the 19th century not the 18th.

 

[bamber]

So what I read is of the 57% who have actually played it only 40% actually dislike it

So around about 22% of the poll don't like power play having tried it

And 19% do like power play who have tried it so only a 3% difference - in a poll with a error margin of 4.75%

 

[Cotic]

At least the poll has results, your assumption of 0.1% is completely unsupported. The estimate of 500,000 backers is only a guess as FD haven't released the figures, and that doesn't include any estimation of the number of people who've lost interest completely. What sample size do you think they use for US federal elections vs the size of the population?

There's a thread maintained here that tracks the backer numbers.

Over 700 responses is statistically relevant as it was freely available to most of the player base it is highly likely it was an accurate cross section of the community as a whole. It is not about the percentage of responses from the population as a whole, but about the number of responses compared to the amount of expected deviation in the responses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size_determination

It's not obtuse, it's maths.

So perhaps now we should revisit the Star Citizen example, another poll which was freely available to most of the player base and highly likely to represent an accurate cross section of the community as a whole?

 

[LeetNoob]

I've got another article for you that make the "maths" (sic) you elude to in your post irrelevant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

I strongly expect the set up of the poll to cover a really good chunk of them.

Explain to my why you believe that those who do not like power play were subject to cognitive bias and those who said they do like it were not. You cannot just say because cognitive bias exists, it both affected this poll and affected it against power play specifically.

 

[NeilF]

You dont pay bounties off anymore m8. My galactic wide bounty is just over 300k. I havd nearly 3000 merits at least 2000 of which were done undermining.

I can see in the vid the agressor is either a Hudson or winters aligned as the hauler didnt come up as ENEMY. The same thing when i look at other imperials. Thats likely to have taken merits away.

How about peole understanding the game mechanics. .. you know read the manual. FEDS need to get out of their systems and head into empire space in open play. That certainly wouldnt be boring

I was in a Zachary Hudson Controlled system, undertaking the kill Federal Lgistics/Agents task... You get 15PP for each one, but of course a 6000+CR fine too (for murder)...

And from my very limited understanding, you're right that you do not have to pay off the hundreds of thousands of CR bounty you build up when after 7 days it turns into a fine, BUT, 1) it'll clog up your transaction list? 2) If you happen to die in the wrong situation you'll have to pay it.

 

[Nicodemus]

Your view/opinion is of course fine...

However, prior to PP's release I was concerned all it might introduce was an orchestrated grind. ie: Simply giving people the same grind mechanics as they used to do, simply rebadged to now add a bar graph to show their efforts. Was this concern founded? IMHO it was.

If we consider PP was the supposedly the biggest update to ED yet, I'd have to suggest that if that effort had instead been put into more general flight/exploration content/depth, and more importantly far more involved/tiered missions, IMHO the game would have been a far more interesting place to spend time in.

As it is, I've tried PP, got bored stiff basically doing the same grind mechanics that made me stop playing the game X weeks ago, so I'm actually going to stop playing PP.

The ONLY facet of the game I'm now enjoying is the fact you can go to Military Strike Zones and pretty much guarantee finding other CMDRs there for some PvP combat. But as far as I'm concerned this could have been introduced by any number of other methods without the need for the Powerplay.

So IMHO, I'm very frustrated so much time and effort has seemingly gone into a pseudo board game which really does nothing to really add better gameplay content, but just ingrains a grind mentality into the game even more firmly.


Where is all the interesting missions/content? Where is all the emergent gameplay?

Which are all valid points, which you have expressed well and politely and should be considered. It's posts like this that make discussion and ideas flow, not posts that just point blankly give a statement that all is doom and gloom and the game will end if x y z features aren't implemented immediately.

One thing I would have to say though is that there was a lot more to the PP update than just PP. When they said it was the biggest update, they weren't just talking about the PP aspect, they had spent a lot of time and effort on a lot of other things too, but people do tend to forget that.

 

[Sandmann]

Y'know, as entertaining as they are none of these attempts to pull apart statistics and polls has any relevance to the simple fact that there's a large percentage of players who don't enjoy powerplay - the poll was simply an attempt to quantify it. You can paint the statistics any colour you want, but the fact that it's not well accepted doesn't change. Who wants to go on arguing precision within statistics, and who'd prefer to move on and start trying to work out how to FIX the damn thing?

 

[LeetNoob]

There's a thread maintained here that tracks the backer numbers.



So perhaps now we should revisit the Star Citizen example, another poll which was freely available to most of the player base and highly likely to represent an accurate cross section of the community as a whole?

When something is 'highly likely', one example if where it wasn't does not change that it is still 'highly likely.

To OP, I think you need more pony's.

 

[Hilight]

If you have a reasonable reason to believe the demographics of the participants in the poll are significantly different to the demographics of the people on this forum or who play the game, then you could question the poll, but I can’ think of anything other than speculation.
And although you’re right in that the results are not a guarantee of the overall player base’ opinion, they are statistically extremely likely. People who find out their opinion is in the minority have a tendency to attack the validity of the data.
You see it all the time in referendums and elections. Those supporting a stance expected to lose claim polls are never accurate, and then when they do lose they start to attack the reasoning of those that voted the other way.
Of course you can find historic examples where polls were incorrect, but they almost always turned out to be a skewed sample group or over complication in the questioning, or the Bradley effect. None of which apply here.
The famous first poll by telephone in the US a prime example. They only polled those who had phones, which at the time meant they only polled the richer population. There are no ED players who don’t have internet or access to the forum.

The majority of the people who play Elite do not use the forums for the game. Since there must be a statistically significant reason for the disparity, it is reasonable to assume that there are differences between the participants of a poll in the forums and the overall user base

 

[xDreadnoughtx]

Y'know, as entertaining as they are none of these attempts to pull apart statistics and polls has any relevance to the simple fact that there's a large percentage of players who don't enjoy powerplay - the poll was simply an attempt to quantify it. You can paint the statistics any colour you want, but the fact that it's not well accepted doesn't change. Who wants to go on arguing precision within statistics, and who'd prefer to move on and start trying to work out how to FIX the damn thing?

I would.

 

[LeetNoob]

Since there must be a statistically significant reason for the disparitye

No there isn't, some people don't bother with forums, it doesn't put them in a different demographic for the purposes of this poll. Pure assumption because you don't like the results.

- - - Updated - - -

I would.

Me too

 

[Ervig]

I've not bothered to read all the discussion in this thread, but I have to say, that since you don't know the demographic of the users of this forum, or the participants of the poll compared to the demographic of the total number of Elite players, the results of the poll are pretty much useless for drawing any conclusions at all about Elite or power play.. As Mark Twain once said, "There's lies, damned lies, and statistics."

It really amazes me how many people think that poll results don't mean anything. You're also very wrong about what Mark Twain meant: he didn't mean that statistics are lies, he meant that statistics can often be interpreted very differently. This doesn't mean the numbers are wrong, it means they are often open to interpretation.

What this means for our current poll: mathematically and statistically this poll IS relevant. It says A LOT about what people think about Powerplay. However, the results are open to interpretation. For example you could say that 74% of the people who played Powerplay liked it or are at least indifferent about it. You could ALSO say: less than 75% of the people who voted didn't like powerplay or did not look forward to playing it (= 100 % - ((138 played and liked + 41 looked forward) / 735))). Both statements are correct (!) but say very different things.

TLDR:The poll says a lot about what the players think about Powerplay. How you interpret the results is up for grabs.

 

[RosaMaus]

Since there must be a statistically significant reason for the disparity, it is reasonable to assume that there are differences between the participants of a poll in the forums and the overall user base

You have not provided any evidence that there is a disparity.

 

[NeilF]

One thing I would have to say though is that there was a lot more to the PP update than just PP. When they said it was the biggest update, they weren't just talking about the PP aspect, they had spent a lot of time and effort on a lot of other things too, but people do tend to forget that.

True... There was also the re-write to the Mission System, which hopefully will bear fruits in the future, because from what I can gather it's not brought any deeper/more interesting missions or mechanics?

 

[Viajero]

The problem with ED as a sandbox is that there isn't enough to do. Minecraft effectively created infinite possibilities using generic building blocks (literally and figuratively). ED has no such flexibility. Mechanics like trading, piracy, bounty hunting, are very shallow. You have seen it all within a few hours. Where is the sense of experimentation?

And, while we're on the subject, who says ED is purely a sandbox game? Who decided that? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the DDA contained a lot of stuff which wasn't just sandbox oriented. The game has missions and instanced "scenario" areas (res, cz). These are not features of a sandbox game. PP is not a sandbox mechanic either. So, whilst elements of ED are sandboxy, others aren't. Thus, "it's a sandbox" is not an appropriate counterpoint to people who are bored because they don't feel they have enough interesting things to do. Indeed, this is yet another version of "you're doing it wrong".

I dont think anyone has tried to liken ED to minecraft in their respective ways of being a sandbox. A cockpit based, space sim game by definition will be a totally different kind of experience. You need to consider "sandbox" within that context. There is no "building" sandbox in Elite obviously. There is though a space sim activity sandbox. You may like or not the tools given to your disposal but there is plenty as we speak to generate tons of emergent gameplay only if you care to look, alone or in groups:

-Speed racing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIm3dfDH7Bs
-Improvised co-op bounty hunting / pirating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeAmpWRv3jw
(the whole sIsinona series is a great example of pure emergent gameplay in a space sim setting imho)
-Exploration rendez-vous thousands of LY away from civilization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvG_pQ0xwrM
-Powerplay group raids into enemy territory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDv03eNPn80
-Lending a hand to a stranded ship: http://www.fenris.co.uk/elite/project/a-tale-of-two-commanders/
-Blockading Khaka at CG: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mARBn2AXDao

I can go on.

I mean, I am sure someone, maybe yourself, are going to dismiss all these with some creative variant of "nah, that´s not it".

But the thing is it is. This is Elite. If you are not happy with this concept of a sandbox or emergent gameplay, a cockpit based space sim related one, then you may want to wait a bit to the future and see what else FDEV has in store for us. Elite has really been in development for barely 2.5 years, and it looks it is only getting started.

 

[Hilight]

You have not provided any evidence that there is a disparity.

Since we already know that the majority of Elite players don't use the forum, it follows that there must be a reason for the disparity between total game users and total forum users...it's self-evident. Now what that reason might be, I don't know-- do you?

 

[LeetNoob]

Since we already know that the majority of Elite players don't use the forum, it follows that there must be a reason for the disparity between total game users and total forum users...it's self-evident. Now what that reason might be, I don't know-- do you?

I am not arguing with that. I am am arguing that there is no evidence or reason to assume that the the reason for the disparity of forum and non forum users, is significant to the questions polled.