UI must show MERITs and CONTROL POINTs not the x% multipliers

[Rebel Yell]

As subject says, with the new Trailblazers 3.4 and the CPs decay with the additional penalties there's no way to determine the current MERIT/CP ratios with accuracy.

Thus:

- THE % MULTIPLIERS (REINFORCEMENT/UNDERMINE and ACQUISITION) SHOULD BE MOVED TO THE GALMAP (SYSTEM SHEET)
- PLAYER'S UI SHOULD SHOW MERITs AND CONTROL POINTs EARNED WHILE PERFORMING EVERY ACTIVITY IN SYSTEM

Additionally

- THE CONTROL POINTs LOST DUE TO DECAY ON NEXT POWERPLAY TICK SHOULD BE SHOWN ON THE SYSTEM SHEET

Thanks.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

One thing I've noted already is that the -35% merit effect for Reinforcement is shown, but the more variable effect for Reinforcing at various levels of Undermining is not.

There also appears to be an undocumented even greater merit penalty on Reinforcment in maxed Strongholds, which is a nice idea but again needs to be clearer.

 

[PilotB]

They don't want you to see control points because they likely don't want you having that information. You want to use it to optimise the process and they don't want to make it easy for players to optimise powerplay down to 1 or 2 activities. They consistently obfuscate their knobs and dials and will silently change them on the backend to nudge things in the direction they want. If they tell you the values and then mess with them the illusion is broken. I suspect you're going to have to just live with the frustration or do what everyone has had to do every other time reverse engineer it as best we can and figure out the values are a big it depends.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

You want to use it to optimise the process and they don't want to make it easy for players to optimise powerplay down to 1 or 2 activities.

Soontill Relics for Acquisition, Soontill Relics for Reinforcement, going home and thinking about why you're a bad person for Undermining. You're welcome.


More seriously, Powerplay started out with a perfectly simple 1-1 correspondence between merits and control points. It then moved to a still fairly simple 4-1 ratio because they decided that they wanted people to rank up faster (but not to change systems faster). The obfuscation I very much doubt is intentional - a simpler explanation is that the changes they're making on the scoring are outpacing/ahead of the necessarily client UI changes.

Especially since the most recent set of changes - you get even fewer merits for reinforcing a system no-one is attacking - aren't shown in the UI, and therefore can't succeed at modifying behaviour away from Reinforcement as they claim to want.

(And on the other side, with most systems receiving no Powerplay control points at all, and updates being hourly and shown on the in-game map with precise values, it's way easier to do controlled experiments on how many CP something gives than it is on the BGS or was on the Thargoid war. Again, no sign that Frontier have wanted to obfuscate anything there deliberately)

 

[Rebel Yell]

Soontill Relics for Acquisition, Soontill Relics for Reinforcement, going home and thinking about why you're a bad person for Undermining. You're welcome.


More seriously, Powerplay started out with a perfectly simple 1-1 correspondence between merits and control points. It then moved to a still fairly simple 4-1 ratio because they decided that they wanted people to rank up faster (but not to change systems faster). The obfuscation I very much doubt is intentional - a simpler explanation is that the changes they're making on the scoring are outpacing/ahead of the necessarily client UI changes.

Especially since the most recent set of changes - you get even fewer merits for reinforcing a system no-one is attacking - aren't shown in the UI, and therefore can't succeed at modifying behaviour away from Reinforcement as they claim to want.

(And on the other side, with most systems receiving no Powerplay control points at all, and updates being hourly and shown on the in-game map with precise values, it's way easier to do controlled experiments on how many CP something gives than it is on the BGS or was on the Thargoid war. Again, no sign that Frontier have wanted to obfuscate anything there deliberately)

Exactly! More over (1) not all the activities have 4-1 ratio and (2) they also had to introduce the delay in GalMap updates, and they also modified the way the server/client handles the powerplay data, because that was responsible for the stuttering while playing (this was also aggravated by the release of Trailblazers)... that means a player can do 1hr+ of grinding without having a precise idea of her/his effective CPs contribution.

The other way, for who has to set/share objectives for powerplay communities, the task becomes significantly more complex because it is not possible to determine which one of the available resources/activities offers best results over a given timeframe.

 

[Rubbernuke]

If FD want to unconsciously guide players to the places that reward the most, then players need to see ALL these values.