Vanguards for people not in squadrons
- Thread starter Jaffz
- Start date
And, again, I think it's fair to say the same thing applies to the things FDev releases, right?
Sure does, and?
It's a perfectly legitimate game mechanic. It might not be what it was intended for but not everybody plays the same way. Some people like large multi-player gaming, some people like small groups of friends, some people prefer to game entirely on their own. For me, I'm somewhere between the last two.Oh, wow!
We're really gonna do this again?
It's about giving people the freedom and the flexibility to do what's best for them, rather than people being forced to do what's best for the bigger group. However it's also about respecting that not everybody else games the way you do. Some people are square pegs, and that's perfectly fine.
At some point, people need to accept that not everything in the game is for them.
Quite right. PowerPlay isn't for me, neither are combat zones or anything to do with pirating. I enjoy exploration and exobiology, but I know they would bore the pants of a lot of other people. That's why I like that the game is so varied. Sure, it could use a buff here and there (which in fairness it does occasionally receive) but it's good to have variety.
I don’t see the problem with me doing that. It breaks no rules and makes my experience better.Oh, wow!
We're really gonna do this again?
I just want the stuff.
And to some degree, a fair shake while not having the perks decided by some squadron boss who’s interests may not align with my own.
Trying to find a squadron where the perks line up with what I want, along with everything else that comes with a squad? Oof. Low likelihood.
Actually Fdev do a great job of making sure that if you want to do stuff you can, solo or otherwise.
Single squads have been a thing for ages, in fact there are probably more squadrons under 5 players than large ones.
O7
Come join my Vanguard of fellow misanthropes, once a member we will never contact you or engage with you... in fact its forbidden by our Vanguard charter.
We are at our core an association of individuals who hate to associate. Join us and be left alone.
Yes, but like Mobius you will probably have to split into 3 groups and have an admin nightmare because it will be the least popular mode.
Yes, certainly. But also more players in squadrons over 100 players than in smaller ones.
That is likely because there's not that many reasons to be in squadrons so far. The upcoming buffs will likley see a huge boost in solo/small squadrons and depending on how the squadron carriers work that will too. 10m for a bonus is a no brainer.
As I mentioned above, total squadron membership is probably about 300,000 accounts; active squadron membership still substantially exceeds participation in every other in-game activity with measurable participation. Some people just like being in a community.
(The main reason is that a squadron with 100 members by definition has the same number of players in it as 100 squadrons with one member, so you don't need very many of the big squadrons for them to have more members than all the small squadrons put together)
I'll re-do the size sampling once Vanguards has been out for a while and see if it makes a difference (it is equally possible that added benefits for being in a squadron - as well as what appears from the screenshots to be an increase in the size cap for squadrons - means that the big ones get even bigger)
I'd be surprised if there are that many people min-maxing to the degree of the perks being so useful that they get around to starting a squadron specifically for them if they haven't already.
Powerplay can give you +50% to +100% income on some of the better earning methods in the game, convenient access to lots of universal-outfitter stations ... and has fewer participants than the existing "you get some extra bookmarks" Squadrons feature.
That's 300k accounts out of an estimated 4.3 million accounts. it's still less than 10% of the player base ever signed up with anyone. I do suspect there's probably a bias towards people who are still active interacting with the community. The claim that it exceeds participation in all other activities. That's not my experience but either way there's a lot of room for growth which I suspect is why they're tweaking it.
If you do the maths that way you can also prove that Frontier should definitely not have bothered with Trailblazers (probably around 20k distinct architects, can't be more than 50k even if you assume no-one took more than a single system each), and most of their recent individual features have been way less popular than Trailblazers.
90% of the player base on that count are the people who bought the game, played it for 10-20 hours if that, and then moved on to something else because, even if they had fun, it didn't click with them as a game they were going to spend months playing. Obviously they didn't join/create a Squadron, they never got anywhere near that far.
(Should Frontier focus more on features for the 90% like "better intro experience and tutorials" or "cleaner Steam account integration" or "improved keybinding tools" or the various other things which seem to be early pain points judging by the "<10 hour negative" Steam reviews? Probably. Would the forums go absolutely berserk at a feature set which everyone here has literally no use for - because we're all past the first 20 hours - getting months of development time? Yep.)
Didn't Epic games give away 8 million copies of the game? Taking the total to something like 12 million at that time?
As it stands. I don't think they should have bothered with trailblazers. It's half baked. I suspect though you're taking my point backwards. Squadrons exist in game and are under utilised so them being improved is good. Colonies didn't exist in game and them being half baked is bad. That dev time should have been used to fix powerplay bugs, expand on foot integration or polish the UI they ruined with 4.0. Vanguards probably won't impact me but I'll change my opinion of that if it also leaks out and starts making the game harder to play even for people not participating. I don't need to enjoy all additions but it'd be nice if they stopped breaking other parts of the game.