Having only bought the game recently, I am very new to Powerplay. However, I am struck by the HUGE disparity between logistics-focused efforts and the rate at which combat merits are earned. Do a spreadsheet on that and participation in a logistics-based contribution to your Power seems futile. Each cycle is hard-coded at 30 minutes. I just reached rank 2 by spending 5 hours fortifying. Total contribution: 100. Total reward: 100 merits. Credits earned: 10,000. This is somewhat offset by the extra 20% earned at Rank 2 from bounties. However, I began Powerplay very recently to ameliorate potential boredom from hanging out at a RES point all the time.
Logistics efforts are not without risk, although minimal when compared to Combat efforts. Reduced to basics, however, enjoyment and immersion is what keeps players involved. The 30 minute hard limit and miniscule amount of merits involved need to be revisited. I belong to a guild with 25,000 active members. Normally, they would be all over this. We had a huge amount of interest in ED when it released, and a large number bought the game. That was months ago. Now, the dedicated forum for ED is a huge empty space with tumbleweeds blowing across the landscape.
Researching this with my guildmates, the common thread seems to be that there is nothing that our members find appealing in the long term. We are not primarily a PvP-oriented guild. Powerplay appears to be one of 2 long-term RP activities coded into this game. However, Powerplay is currently designed for combat/PvP oriented players. The other activity is Exploration. While you can explore in ships like the Cobra Mark III, very few do so. The Exploration activities within the community currently consist of advanced players in very expensive ships that are only available after you have spent the many required hours earning enough to afford fully-outfitted Anacondas, Asp and Diamondback Explorer models. Only these larger ships have the bays large enough for the long-range Frame Shift Drives.
At this point, my investigation into the reasons our guild has lost interest in ED is complete. Hundreds of mature players have abandoned this game because it simply doesn't offer enough RP incentives. Trading is tedious and not nearly as profitable as bounty hunting. Missions and mining, ditto. Exploration is only viable after grinding bounties for many, many hours. Frontier has made a statement on this, where the CEO actually admitted that they "did it wrong". Their statistics show that players are simply not running missions, trading, mining or exploring. They are bounty hunting. And that's pretty much *all* they are doing.
Horizons:
Drive around on a planet. Find resources. Blow them up with your SRV gun turret and drive over the pieces to pick them up. Craft buffed ammo that is only used (as a rule) in PvP. Craft Frame Shift Drive extender ammo that is only useful in very-long-distance exploration. Once you've driven around on one airless rock, why keep doing it?
Virtual Reality:
It would seem that many development man-hours are being invested in optimizing this game for devices like the Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive, and HOTAS equipment. "Wave of the future" or not, how many players are actually going to adopt a technology that requires a $900 investment in those devices and a substantial investment in the PC hardware required to run it? Enough to pay the bills and provide a profit to companies like Frontier?
This post is NOT an attempt to troll this forum. It is an explanation for Frontier on one group's reasons for not buying ED, not continuing to play the original game that they bought and also for not buying expansions going forward. Most of us in my guild have been gaming for 20+ years. I wonder if that's part of the problem. Has gaming actually changed that much? Are younger gamers now satisfied with less content in $60 games?
Hopefully, this feedback is useful. The idea behind this modern version of Elite is appealing. There are many who find the opportunity to immerse yourself in Mankind's path to the stars attractive, even if it is a fantasy at this point.
Logistics efforts are not without risk, although minimal when compared to Combat efforts. Reduced to basics, however, enjoyment and immersion is what keeps players involved. The 30 minute hard limit and miniscule amount of merits involved need to be revisited. I belong to a guild with 25,000 active members. Normally, they would be all over this. We had a huge amount of interest in ED when it released, and a large number bought the game. That was months ago. Now, the dedicated forum for ED is a huge empty space with tumbleweeds blowing across the landscape.
Researching this with my guildmates, the common thread seems to be that there is nothing that our members find appealing in the long term. We are not primarily a PvP-oriented guild. Powerplay appears to be one of 2 long-term RP activities coded into this game. However, Powerplay is currently designed for combat/PvP oriented players. The other activity is Exploration. While you can explore in ships like the Cobra Mark III, very few do so. The Exploration activities within the community currently consist of advanced players in very expensive ships that are only available after you have spent the many required hours earning enough to afford fully-outfitted Anacondas, Asp and Diamondback Explorer models. Only these larger ships have the bays large enough for the long-range Frame Shift Drives.
At this point, my investigation into the reasons our guild has lost interest in ED is complete. Hundreds of mature players have abandoned this game because it simply doesn't offer enough RP incentives. Trading is tedious and not nearly as profitable as bounty hunting. Missions and mining, ditto. Exploration is only viable after grinding bounties for many, many hours. Frontier has made a statement on this, where the CEO actually admitted that they "did it wrong". Their statistics show that players are simply not running missions, trading, mining or exploring. They are bounty hunting. And that's pretty much *all* they are doing.
Horizons:
Drive around on a planet. Find resources. Blow them up with your SRV gun turret and drive over the pieces to pick them up. Craft buffed ammo that is only used (as a rule) in PvP. Craft Frame Shift Drive extender ammo that is only useful in very-long-distance exploration. Once you've driven around on one airless rock, why keep doing it?
Virtual Reality:
It would seem that many development man-hours are being invested in optimizing this game for devices like the Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive, and HOTAS equipment. "Wave of the future" or not, how many players are actually going to adopt a technology that requires a $900 investment in those devices and a substantial investment in the PC hardware required to run it? Enough to pay the bills and provide a profit to companies like Frontier?
This post is NOT an attempt to troll this forum. It is an explanation for Frontier on one group's reasons for not buying ED, not continuing to play the original game that they bought and also for not buying expansions going forward. Most of us in my guild have been gaming for 20+ years. I wonder if that's part of the problem. Has gaming actually changed that much? Are younger gamers now satisfied with less content in $60 games?
Hopefully, this feedback is useful. The idea behind this modern version of Elite is appealing. There are many who find the opportunity to immerse yourself in Mankind's path to the stars attractive, even if it is a fantasy at this point.
