I'm aware of the quote and I hold that they seem to have quietly changed their minds.
You may prefer that to be true but there is nothing to support it. Its a bit of a stretch to infer 3 years of Powerplay development not making the cut = a complete reversal of their stated opinion.
Folks imagining pvp for powerplay are delusional in my book. 1. It puts a significant advantage to folks with bad connection or who play at atypical hours for their region.
The worst connection in my playergroup is from an Aussie who lives in the Outback and plays on a mobile-tether. He is on my friends-list. That we can instance at all still boggles my mind. That we instance reliably is stupifying. Just goes to show that upping the instancing priority for Powerplay is an effective solution, and is something that can be tweaked.
2. While many want more pvp many more seem to want nothing to do with it.
whatever the proportions are, those that seem to want nothing to do with PvP have the whole rest of the game to play with, and an innate advantage in the BGS & Powerplay. I think, and last we heard the devs agreed, Powerplay should be the venue that provides an exception.
3. If the pvp community wants to get more pew nothing at all is preventing them from organizing and having at. Yet this doesn't happen. 4. Pre-built pvp like the Arena remain almost totally unused. So even when they get a tool it goes unused.
People who want arranged scrims and matches do this.
To me and many others, this seems pointless and artificial compared to a strategic conflict played out as a real-time/turn-based hybrid.
Its like a Total War game compared to deathmatch. You miss out on the whole campaign if u just pick your loadouts, loser is the first one to die.
Some people want that, but there is so much more nuance in a Powerplay conflict,
if its given a chance to develop.
However the ships that participate in powerplay are not set for meta pvp, in fact most are defenseless haulers.
So I'm left feeling like more people really wish they could gank haulers and are sad that the space truckers aren't willing to get yanked.
So take turns being the haulers. Set a ship type and a route and a reward for successfully getting from a to b in Open, hell that'd probably be awesome on Twitch.
Far more likely than game molded to push players into pvp ship combat.
This is the weird thing about forum Powerplay discussions. Most Powerplayers dont make that distinction. You get some fringe haulers, fringe explorers, fringe BGSers and fringe PvPers but most players do whats needed at the time.
You dont keep your rating bonuses via PvP, that takes hauling or undermining & either way youre spending a lot of time in non-PvP ships.
If im hauling dissidents & get jumped by a wing in my Power's HQ, why didnt we have a top-cover wing up to contest that space? I was doing my job foritifying, why wernt they doing theirs ? Besides which its just embarrassing having an enemy wing roaming at will all over our HQ.
That's the dynamic at play, not some 'haulers getting ganked' narrative.