The State of Power Play 2.0 is extremely frustrating

[JoeShmo33]

Basically the title , it is extremely frustrating and downright insulting to have POWERPLAY 2.0 at the state it is right now. I will just summarize my experience so far as a returning player to elite after 4 years. I am sorry if it sounds extremely negative or disjointed. But it has to be said in hope for a swift and positive change.

1. Navigate the pointlessly convoluted new powerplay 2.0 system not due to mechanics but due to the EXCESSIVE redundant or out right WRONG terms used to describe power play star systems.
2. Form a basic understanding not thanks to any in-game resource but due to joining a powerplay discord and youtube videos.
3. Try activities for my power (LYR) Start with trading,
4. Trading rare commodities disabled.
5. Selling goods to reinforcement systems ... quickly finding out commodities HAS TO BE SOLD 1T AT A TIME to actually make any merits, other players using Autohotkey scripts (bordering on breaking ToS) to actually get it done Vs SPENDING HOURS SELLING AT 1T.
6. Selling goods in undermining systems ( flooding markets) not even worth it.
7. ALL OF THE ON FOOT MISSIONS is just a form of exploiting Dataports which gets old fast.
8. Holo screen hacking / scanning ships / power commodoties / Transfering power association data/ salvaging escape pods/ megaship assualts or hacking... not even worth mentioning regarding merit gain.
9. Try bounty hunting but for my power it doesn't award merits , unless it's very specific situations in specific systems and the merit gain is iffy at best. (Power CZ is actually the only decent thing to do in a wing to earn some merits)
10. EXPLORATION GIVES NOTHING / EXOBIOLOGY GIVES ALMOST NOTHING.
11. so what other activities are realisticly left in game to gain merits at a decent rate that doesn't involve any sort of breaking ToS or using exploits.
12........ MINING ahh back to shooting rocks ... I see nothing really changed in 4+ years ... Fine let me do it .
13. Dust off the old mining conda , navigate the NEEDLESSLY POINTLESSLY ARBITRARY mining "rules" to figure out correct system/station.
14. go to laser mine platinum , get platinum start selling and comparing numbers with teammates on discord .
15. oh people getting 50k/60k per hour for the exact same amount cargo/ time . I am getting half that ...what/ WHY?
to keep things short basically it's this issue:
https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/71064

After chatting to some people on discord we could confirm it's happeing to a few people , me included but not to others. To say I am extremely frustrated is an understatment , I hope this post gets to the eyeballs of anyone at frontiers and that issue gets to the top of their list and maybe fingers crossed PP 2.0 gets refined a bit more.
I am really enjoying the game and all the updates and the renewed attitude Fdev has towards this game and I hope they continue to grow and improve. But Powerplay 2.0 is so undercooked and messy.

 

[zimms]

What are the excessively redundant and wrong terms you speak of? That sounds like lack of knowledge on your part. To be fair, the game could/should do a better job of teaching us about it in certain areas.

Yes, the disabled activities are unfortunate and I hope we'll hear from Frontier soon about how they are going to address this. The fact that the game tells you nowhere that these things are disabled is indeed a big problem, especially since it's been quite a while now.

Some fine tuning about merit rewards across different types of activities could still be done, but I think overall it's quite good for now (obviously excluding the disabled activities). I don't agree at all with us "having to" sell 1t at a time, but I too would like to see that mechanic removed. It's silly imho.

I don't think the current merit rewards are "insulting", people are earning the equivalent of rank 100 (and even more) every single week.

In my opinion, personal merit rewards are fine at the moment. Looking at the balance of undermining vs fortifying and criminal activities in general would be a better use of developer/designer time.

 

[JoeShmo33]

https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/71064
read the codex

What are the excessively redundant and wrong terms you speak of? That sounds like lack of knowledge on your part. To be fair, the game could/should do a better job of teaching us about it in certain areas.

Yes, the disabled activities are unfortunate and I hope we'll hear from Frontier soon about how they are going to address this. The fact that the game tells you nowhere that these things are disabled is indeed a big problem, especially since it's been quite a while now.

Some fine tuning about merit rewards across different types of activities could still be done, but I think overall it's quite good for now (obviously excluding the disabled activities). I don't agree at all with us "having to" sell 1t at a time, but I too would like to see that mechanic removed. It's silly imho.

I don't think the current merit rewards are "insulting", people are earning the equivalent of rank 100 (and even more) every single week.

In my opinion, personal merit rewards are fine at the moment. Looking at the balance of undermining vs fortifying and criminal activities in general would be a better use of developer/designer time.

 

[Rebel Yell]

Powerplay 2.0 came out with many bugs/issues + unbalanced activities, that's a fact and powerplay communities have not been involved in the game framework design. That's also resulting in some perks assigned to powers which lacks coherence with lore and/or are clearly unbalanced given the current state of the game.

Excluding the data-port exploit, which was solved after a couple of Cycles (without reverting the consequences in game, like "illegal" acquisitions, extremely high merit gains for players, etc), many activities resulted in unbalanced merit gains (exploration / exo-biology, rare commodity trading and, due to the presence of exploits, the escape pods). Bugs affecting gameplay are still in the game, as well as exploits... and this makes the game a real struggle (not a fair challenge) leaving the doors open to suspects and accusations.

Not good.

The nerf hammer hit some of these activities, which are back in the game, but others have yet to be rebalanced / restored. Personal merit gains has been raised to accelerate rank progression, but system CPs were not. Some activities favour certain powers and behaviour to the point that there's no way to counter them.

Powerplay 2.0 is hence a broken feature, where powerplay groups are holding up in the hope that FDEV comes out with rebalance and fixes.

Single players' experience can be abysmally frustrating... considering the poor UI (most is based on the GalMap), the broken weeklies and a general "try this or that" experience which shouldn't be happening for a 10+ years game. But as said before, I repeat this is the state of the game... take it, or leave it (at least it is not mandatory to pledge).

Hope.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

What are the excessively redundant and wrong terms you speak of

I have seen quite a lot of people get confused between the two different axes - system states can be neutral, acquiring, contested, exploited, fortified and stronghold while system actions are acquisition, reinforcement, undermining and (implicitly) "no action possible" and the documentation and map doesn't necessarily give the clearest idea of how the two relate. Lots of players reporting "bugs" of the sort "I did this Acquisition action in exploited system X and it didn't progress the weekly task", etc.

I don't think it's so much redundancy as it is the interface not having a simple way to highlight all Acquisition/Reinforcement/Undermining systems for your power.

(Some of the documentation is also wrong or makes crucial omissions about what you need to do to qualify for merits - mining, exploration/exobio, undermining salvage and most acquisition actions being the worst - but I wouldn't call that a terminology problem.)

Looking at the balance of undermining vs fortifying

This, certainly. The current balance is so strongly in favour of reinforcement that non-Winters powers losing systems is rare enough to be newsworthy.

Issue Tracker

issues.frontierstore.net

My suspicion for what's causing this one: extra ore stored in your Refinery, which then refines at the station when you get spare cargo space, does not count as "mined" (it should, but it doesn't) so if you've mined 500t of a mix of three mineral types, say, and have 6t of one of those types stored in your refinery, the following happens:

- you sell your Monazite, this counts for merits, no problem
- the Grandidierite in your refinery now has space to be refined
- you sell your Low Temp Diamonds, this counts for merits
- you sell your Grandidierite ... and this cargo has lost the mined flag because you added some "non-mined" cargo to it, so this gives no merits

If that's the case, you should be able to avoid it by clearing your refinery before docking.

(As an aside, mined goods do not have any requirement to be sold above galactic average. Higher prices will give more merits per tonne, but any mined good at any price will give something if the location requirements are met)

 

[Cmdr Alison]

People are selling stuff 1 by 1, let's say 400 cheap Bertrandite or relog over and over to get data. This is about competition, it is a computer game. No one wants to invest hours for some "single" merits which are the result of normal gameplay .... while your teammates are making millions. And then comes Zimms with: What are the excessively redundant and wrong terms you speak of?

 

[zimms]

Go on then, give me an example of a "wrong term used to describe PP stat systems".

I agree that the distinction of acquisition/reinforcement/undermining vs contested/exploited/fortified/etc is confusing for new players and not explained enough. But is it "wrong"?

 

[Markov Chaney]

Can we please not take the thread in this direction? The in-game documentation is appalling. Don't start dancing around pedantic points on whether it is "technically correct", that just gives FDev an excuse to write this off as "whining" and stops people engaging with PP as a whole.

 

[JoeShmo33]

I have seen quite a lot of people get confused between the two different axes - system states can be neutral, acquiring, contested, exploited, fortified and stronghold while system actions are acquisition, reinforcement, undermining and (implicitly) "no action possible" and the documentation and map doesn't necessarily give the clearest idea of how the two relate. Lots of players reporting "bugs" of the sort "I did this Acquisition action in exploited system X and it didn't progress the weekly task", etc.

I don't think it's so much redundancy as it is the interface not having a simple way to highlight all Acquisition/Reinforcement/Undermining systems for your power.

(Some of the documentation is also wrong or makes crucial omissions about what you need to do to qualify for merits - mining, exploration/exobio, undermining salvage and most acquisition actions being the worst - but I wouldn't call that a terminology problem.)


This, certainly. The current balance is so strongly in favour of reinforcement that non-Winters powers losing systems is rare enough to be newsworthy.


My suspicion for what's causing this one: extra ore stored in your Refinery, which then refines at the station when you get spare cargo space, does not count as "mined" (it should, but it doesn't) so if you've mined 500t of a mix of three mineral types, say, and have 6t of one of those types stored in your refinery, the following happens:

- you sell your Monazite, this counts for merits, no problem
- the Grandidierite in your refinery now has space to be refined
- you sell your Low Temp Diamonds, this counts for merits
- you sell your Grandidierite ... and this cargo has lost the mined flag because you added some "non-mined" cargo to it, so this gives no merits

If that's the case, you should be able to avoid it by clearing your refinery before docking.

(As an aside, mined goods do not have any requirement to be sold above galactic average. Higher prices will give more merits per tonne, but any mined good at any price will give something if the location requirements are met)

Thanks for actually reading through the post and being on point . funny enough I tried with full (330t platinum) in refinery vs no platinum in refinery when selling. and it made no difference. it reaches a point of around 74-64 tons and it doesn't give merits anymore. I suspect it's got something to do with netcode for some people but I am not an expert on that.

And as for the naming it sure was confusing learning all the different system states and all at the start but even once it cleared up, I just found myself asking why?? like gameplay wise why?? why not have just one universally distinct identifiable system with all it's filters. just seems rushed that's all.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Powerplay 2.0 has layers, like an ogre, and like an ogre it's also poorly documented and smells a bit like swamp. (I think the analogy may have escaped at some point).

The layers are: What you should do, where you should do it, and where it's useful to do it based on what others in your power and its opponents are doing.

The game only really explains the first one, and doesn't explain what counts as having done the thing you should do. That's step one, make sure it's clear in the in-game description of the activities both where you have to do the activity and where you have to hand in the progress, using the terms the galaxy map uses.

In theory the galaxy map can assist with the second but because nothing in the game relates the terms to describe the different activities (Acquisition, Undermining, Reinforcement) to the system states the map displays, nor does it filter for validity for Acquisition.

And in theory it could show the third as well except there are no map filters for things like "show systems with undermining progress".


That's really the thing, the ability to show:

Systems valid for Acquisition (Unacquirable systems due to distance will currently highlight).
Systems with current Acquisition progress.
Opponent systems with current Undermining progress.
Owned systems with current Undermining progress.

That would let you go to the galmap and filter it to direct where you actually put your progress in order to advance your power.

(If you wanted to be spicy, also put a bonus on merits earned if they're done in a system close to one of the thresholds so that the zerg get directed to useful activities to push power conflicts).

 

[Screemonster]

Excluding the data-port exploit, which was solved after a couple of Cycles (without reverting the consequences in game, like "illegal" acquisitions, extremely high merit gains for players, etc), many activities resulted in unbalanced merit gains (exploration / exo-biology, rare commodity trading and, due to the presence of exploits, the escape pods). Bugs affecting gameplay are still in the game, as well as exploits... and this makes the game a real struggle (not a fair challenge) leaving the doors open to suspects and accusations.

And that's before you go into technically-permitted-but-extremely-cringe activities like AFK turretboating to bounty hunt, which can be countered with active playing but you have to eat and sleep sometimes while the person doing it can just leave their computer running while they go to work.

Not sure what the counter would be on a game design level besides "maybe npc pirates should pack phasing sometimes" or (in archon's case) "power security should occasionally spawn alongside regular security to chase off people hunting in the wrong fishery".

 

[Rebel Yell]

And that's before you go into technically-permitted-but-extremely-cringe activities like AFK turretboating to bounty hunt, which can be countered with active playing but you have to eat and sleep sometimes while the person doing it can just leave their computer running while they go to work.

Not sure what the counter would be on a game design level besides "maybe npc pirates should pack phasing sometimes" or (in archon's case) "power security should occasionally spawn alongside regular security to chase off people hunting in the wrong fishery".

I really don't know what they did at Powerplay-NPCs... looks like they put lobotomized lemmings in the cockpits.

 

[JoeShmo33]

Powerplay 2.0 has layers, like an ogre, and like an ogre it's also poorly documented and smells a bit like swamp. (I think the analogy may have escaped at some point).

The layers are: What you should do, where you should do it, and where it's useful to do it based on what others in your power and its opponents are doing.

The game only really explains the first one, and doesn't explain what counts as having done the thing you should do. That's step one, make sure it's clear in the in-game description of the activities both where you have to do the activity and where you have to hand in the progress, using the terms the galaxy map uses.

In theory the galaxy map can assist with the second but because nothing in the game relates the terms to describe the different activities (Acquisition, Undermining, Reinforcement) to the system states the map displays, nor does it filter for validity for Acquisition.

And in theory it could show the third as well except there are no map filters for things like "show systems with undermining progress".


That's really the thing, the ability to show:

Systems valid for Acquisition (Unacquirable systems due to distance will currently highlight).
Systems with current Acquisition progress.
Opponent systems with current Undermining progress.
Owned systems with current Undermining progress.

That would let you go to the galmap and filter it to direct where you actually put your progress in order to advance your power.

(If you wanted to be spicy, also put a bonus on merits earned if they're done in a system close to one of the thresholds so that the zerg get directed to useful activities to push power conflicts).

It's needlessly convoluted to give the illusion of depth and sophistication .. but truth be told coupled with the bugs the old leftover systems that haven't been revamped to accommodate the release of pp2. it becomes an exercise in patience rather than a satisfying addictive game play loop.
I started pledging to LYR and wanted to do combat to gain some merits so according to the codex I could just go kill wanted ships in acquisition systems but it doesn't work as described in the codex. so many little things that just add it to deliver a really bad experience and give a bad image to the game. Most of the people who benefited from the early exploits or ranked up to a 100 already won't really care. but people dipping their toes to engage with the new system will be lost confused and frustrated by the bugs and lack of clarity. I know I was.
please upvote this issue for visibility https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/71064

 

[Ian Doncaster]

it reaches a point of around 74-64 tons and it doesn't give merits anymore.

Any particular reason you aren't just selling the whole lot at once? So far as I know there's no advantage to breaking the transaction down into smaller units, so if there's a risk of transaction splits causing the mining flag to be lost, a single big sale would avoid that.

(I did do some tests a while back involving selling mined goods in small batches across several acquisition systems, and that all worked fine - though this was with a smaller ship, so only about 100t total. That said, that was a few versions back so it may be a new bug.)

I started pledging to LYR and wanted to do combat to gain some merits so according to the codex I could just go kill wanted ships in acquisition systems but it doesn't work as described in the codex.

It's always worked fine for me as described if I've been in an Acquisition system for my power - which is certainly not the easiest thing to figure out from the map.

Not sure what the counter would be on a game design level besides "maybe npc pirates should pack phasing sometimes"

I think that's probably a reasonable counter for AFK farming for the actual bounties, but not actually all that good for Powerplay
- you get rebuys fully covered in friendly space at a fairly low rank
- you don't need to hand the bounties in to get merits (sensible to stop laundering, of course)
So even if an AFK farmer gets destroyed after a few hours (and a big ship will have plenty of space to stack HRPs), it still achieves quite a lot.

Some sort of reverb cascade pirate weapon might be more workable? Though setting that up so it's not a sudden and unexpected spike in the threat level for regular players could be tricky.

Making every combat scenario have a maximum number of enemies like a CZ that requires an instance hop to reset could work. It's mainly only RES and nav beacons that still don't.

 

[Screemonster]

I think that's probably a reasonable counter for AFK farming for the actual bounties, but not actually all that good for Powerplay

• you get rebuys fully covered in friendly space at a fairly low rank
• you don't need to hand the bounties in to get merits (sensible to stop laundering, of course)

So even if an AFK farmer gets destroyed after a few hours (and a big ship will have plenty of space to stack HRPs), it still achieves quite a lot.

Some sort of reverb cascade pirate weapon might be more workable? Though setting that up so it's not a sudden and unexpected spike in the threat level for regular players could be tricky.

I was mainly going off how AX solved the issue - pointing a pair of healbeams at each other and setting the rest to turrets isn't a viable way to do AXCZs because (nearly?) all thargoid weapons are phasing or apply caustic stacks, and it's not long before interceptors show up and start throwing shutdown fields around which require active use of a neutraliser to counter.

(Personally I think all weapons having a small chance of penetrating shields - I'm talking single-digit-percentages - would be a good shakeup to the current shield meta. It wouldn't be so huge that someone actively flying their ship wouldn't be able to go "right, time to dock and patch up" but it'd make it risky to literally leave your ship unattended)

 

[Rat Catcher]

Any particular reason you aren't just selling the whole lot at once?

As a test I sold 100t of Tritium and got XXX merits
I sold 10t and received XXX/ 6 merits
Sold 6t and recieved 80% of the 10t merits.

I didn't go down the road of selling 1t at a time, I'm patient, but not a saint!

It doesn't scale correctly currently, otherwise I'd have got 10% of the 100t merits for 10t, it wasn't so.

I'll point out that the Tritium was '2nd owner' and the buying market thought I'd paid 5k / t so profits were very good.

 

[Cmdr Alison]

Go on then, give me an example of a "wrong term used to describe PP stat systems".

An example is sell for large profits: buy commodities in supporting System and sell in acquisition system with at least 40% profit, trade commodities making at least 40% profit in reinforcement systems; what is 40% in the FDEV world?

 

[GloatingSwine]

It's needlessly convoluted to give the illusion of depth and sophistication .. but truth be told coupled with the bugs the old leftover systems that haven't been revamped to accommodate the release of pp2. it becomes an exercise in patience rather than a satisfying addictive game play loop.

It's not really convoluted it's just an understatement to call it poorly documented.

I started pledging to LYR and wanted to do combat to gain some merits so according to the codex I could just go kill wanted ships in acquisition systems but it doesn't work as described in the codex.

The breakdown here is that you probably weren't in an Acquisition system. An Acquisition system is a system currently owned by no power that is within either 20Ly of a Fortified or 30Ly of a Stronghold system. The galaxy map has a filter to show Unoccupied systems but this will include ones too far away from your power to be Acquisition systems and so actions there won't count.

That's the real flaw, the galaxy map's information is misleading and poorly explained.

 

[JoeShmo33]

Any particular reason you aren't just selling the whole lot at once? So far as I know there's no advantage to breaking the transaction down into smaller units, so if there's a risk of transaction splits causing the mining flag to be lost, a single big sale would avoid that.

(I did do some tests a while back involving selling mined goods in small batches across several acquisition systems, and that all worked fine - though this was with a smaller ship, so only about 100t total. That said, that was a few versions back so it may be a new bug.)


It's always worked fine for me as described if I've been in an Acquisition system for my power - which is certainly not the easiest thing to figure out from the map.


I think that's probably a reasonable counter for AFK farming for the actual bounties, but not actually all that good for Powerplay
- you get rebuys fully covered in friendly space at a fairly low rank
- you don't need to hand the bounties in to get merits (sensible to stop laundering, of course)
So even if an AFK farmer gets destroyed after a few hours (and a big ship will have plenty of space to stack HRPs), it still achieves quite a lot.

Some sort of reverb cascade pirate weapon might be more workable? Though setting that up so it's not a sudden and unexpected spike in the threat level for regular players could be tricky.

Making every combat scenario have a maximum number of enemies like a CZ that requires an instance hop to reset could work. It's mainly only RES and nav beacons that still don't.

The 1t sale is for trading goods not mining , The issue I am referring to is for some people after mining and trying to sell to the correct station they notice a huge difference in merits vs other commanders doing the same thing doesn't matter if it's in 1t/10t/all at once after a certain point it stops rewarding merits. Turns out it's this https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/71064
For the bounty hunting for powers like LYR it needs specific conditions to make it worth while , a pet peeve really why not have all activities reward a base amount of merits and just modify it using the ethos bonus. selling cryptographic data rewards nothing in LYR for example and exobiology not worth doing.

 

[JoeShmo33]

It's not really convoluted it's just an understatement to call it poorly documented.



The breakdown here is that you probably weren't in an Acquisition system. An Acquisition system is a system currently owned by no power that is within either 20Ly of a Fortified or 30Ly of a Stronghold system. The galaxy map has a filter to show Unoccupied systems but this will include ones too far away from your power to be Acquisition systems and so actions there won't count.

That's the real flaw, the galaxy map's information is misleading and poorly explained.

The actual issues here are the frustrating game breaking bugs / almost half my mined goods don't count in merits . https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/71064 the other issues are more of the flavoring.