I understand this is an extraordinarily busy time at Frontier - E3, XB1, Powerplay, upcoming Gamescom and the big new announcement there... I, and I bet most commanders, am quite willing to be patient. What is a shame, though, is that while your community representatives here and on reddit are doing a great job of interacting with the community, we're yet to hear even an acknowledgement of some of the issues with PP that the community has pointed out. Without any deadlines or promises, could you kindly give us Frontier's take on these few points, and if you're planning to address them?
1. Power perks and bonuses. The controlled/exploited space effects have been a great addition, and they have made different regions of space feel truly, well, different from one another. Likewise, perks for hitting rank 2 with a Power are a nice idea. However, it's clear that some Powers are in a much, much better position than others. Perfect balance is impossible, and it's probably not even desirable, but it's not fair and not fun when some Powers (e.g. Arissa, Torval) get great, useful perks and controlled space bonuses while others (e.g. Antal, Winters, Archon) get "bonuses" that are somewhere between mildly interesting and completely useless. Additionally, at least in some cases the effects don't have a lot to do with a Power's lore. Can we expect a rebalancing or revamp of Powerplay perks and bonuses in the future?
2. Power ethos and tasks. Currently, Powers with a non-combat Expansion ethos are at considerable advantage over those with combat expansion tasks. A single player can deliver roughly as much Powerplay commodities as a combat player can earn in PP combat zones, but at a fraction of the risk, and with the option to increase his output several times if he's willing to spend some credits. With Expansion conflict zones only awarding 1 merit per kill, fighting there does not feel rewarding, especially compared to the considerable difficulty facing pilots (bravo on that, btw, the new AI is deadly). Additionally, Power actons often don't match the ethos displayed on their Powerplay page. For instance, Hudson's Fortification and Preparation is supposed to be "Combat", but his followers complete the exact same tasks as followers of non-combat Powers. Similarily, Antal's Expansion should be "Social", but it's exact same as for Combat Powers. Is this as intended, and ethos is meant to simply be RP "fluff", or can we expect a change to Powerplay tasks?
3. Undermining and Opposition. From a purely mercenary perspective, Opposing and Undermining other Powers is much more profitable, merit-wise, than actually supporting your own Power's fortifcation, preparation or expansion. This leads to a strange situation, where combat pilots pledged to Powers with combat Expansion tasks are given an incentive to not actually participate in that Power's expansion, but instead interfere with their neighbours. Is this as intended, or can we expect a change to incentives to make supporting your own Power as attractive as opposing others?
4. Powerplay weapons. This is a very new addition, so imbalance is very much expected, but it would still be nice to hear something from the devs. Player testing over the coming weeks may dig up some hidden gems amongst the new modules, but others are extremely unlikely to be useful (Cryotoscrambler, for example). It would be great to hear that these modules are working on and to hear the devs' thoughts behind the design of individual modules, so we can understand what sort of role they seem for them in the meta.
5. Lore. It has been a little while, and several Powers are still barely sketched out in the lore - we know little about them, their beliefs, their organisation or their long-term plan. At the same time, members of the FD team (whoever it is, kudos) have done a great job of monitoring the player activity in each Power and using player initiatives for GalNet posts, and even CGs (such as the recent one in HIP 116213). Should we take this to mean that you're expecting players to write up and create lore for the Powers, especially the fringe ones (Archon, Antal, Sirius), or can we expect more information and more delicious background bits in the future? There's a lot of very talented, very creative and very passionate people in this community, I am sure that if their efforts are needed, we'll see a lot out of them.
Well, that's it, really. I've made this post partly because I'm a little confused with the current situation, where on one hand we have awesome engagement with the community by several members of the team, but on the other hand some oft-repeated, important questions and concerns just aren't being answered. I understand you guys are working hard and may not be able to answer, but either way, thank you for your continued contributions - especially whichever one of you trudges through the forums and subreddits to find stuff to put on GalNet, you're a star o7
