Powerplay "freezes" on merit earning

[Dwolite]

Ok, so why does Frontier keep freezing good merit earning methods? First they froze exploration data and genetic research data, now rare good tradings and escape pod rescues. Why??? I am bloody TRYING to do powerplay stuff and they freeze my ability to do so? This is getting very frustrating...

[XOLiD]

I'm still earning ~2000 a day from powerplay conflict zones.

Just sucks that I have to switch to solo mode because they aren't working in open mode for some reason.

[loandreu]

Originally posted by Dwolite:

Ok, so why does Frontier keep freezing good merit earning methods? First they froze exploration data and genetic research data, now rare good tradings and escape pod rescues. Why??? I am bloody TRYING to do powerplay stuff and they freeze my ability to do so? This is getting very frustrating...

My guess is they did not do enough beta testing on this new Power Play 2, so they were not expecting people to go full throttle on those activities, which must have led to some type of imbalance, which I guess is a no-no according to somebody at Frontier. Just a guess. BTW, getting killed by a griefer in Open is also imbalance, I believe.

[spam]

Originally posted by loandreu:

My guess is they did not do enough beta testing on this new Power Play 2, so they were not expecting people to go full throttle on those activities, which must have led to some type of imbalance, which I guess is a no-no according to somebody at Frontier. Just a guess.

It's not like this is their first Rodeo, they probably expected players to go HAM, but just didn't know where.

Originally posted by loandreu:

BTW, getting killed by a griefer in Open is also imbalance, I believe.

Obviously FDev believes that to be balanced. After all they have been perpetually gung ho about setting up new players to be ganked when they get out of the tutorial system or first go to engineer their ships.

[Vevvev]

Originally posted by loandreu:

]Just a guess. BTW, getting killed by a griefer in Open is also imbalance, I believe.

Powerplay is intrinsically PvP whether you like it or not. If I see someone actively undermining or contesting a system of mine I will not hesitate to destroy their ship however many times it takes till they get the memo to leave.

The rewards for loyalty even reduce your rebuy costs for dying in friendly territory, and dying outside of it to another pledged ship. It's there to incentivize conflict and make you want to get involved in more battles as it doesn't hurt as badly if you lose.

[Tervuren]

This is why I'm glad legacy is still around as a steady thing to play with and no toys getting taken away.(Well, aside from not telling us the store was changing and jacking us all with a price increase cutting the purchasing power of already purchased currency and removing options.)

[XOLiD]

Originally posted by Tervuren:

This is why I'm glad legacy is still around as a steady thing to play with and no toys getting taken away.(Well, aside from not telling us the store was changing and jacking us all with a price increase cutting the purchasing power of already purchased currency and removing options.)

Does Legacy not even have engineering so the best jump range you can get on a Corvette is only like 10LY? Man I do not miss those days.

[spam]

On the one hand I'm glad FDev is actually paying attention to the game, however, their post (see below) makes participating in PP 2.0 somewhat unappealing.

Reading between the lines it looks like we can expect more whack-a-mole halts/nerfs to PP merit payouts, to eventually be followed by buffs once they feel they have things in order. To date they are only revealing these halts/nerfs via social media, rather than letting the players know in game that a change has occured. I waited a week and a half before jumping in, clearly I should have waited longer, this is getting old pretty fast.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/elite-dangerous-ascendancy-update-1-thursday-21st-november.630523/

Greetings Commanders,

Powerplay 2.0 has been out for a few weeks now and we are really grateful for all the feedback and reported issues you have shared.

Our intent with our balancing is to ensure a diversity of gameplay activities are viable within Powerplay 2.0, and that no activity feels significantly weaker than any other. We are continually closely monitoring for any activities which could be disproportionally more advantageous to undertake than any other, potentially creating a meta that players feel forced to play in order to rank up or participate in the conflict.

Following prevention of several exploits we will now be in a position to improve balance on the overall experience of Powerplay 2.0. We will be closely looking into:

Significantly reducing the amount of time/effort required to earn early modules
Significantly reducing the amount of time/effort required to increase ranks

In the meantime we are releasing Ascendancy Update 1 (19.01) on Thursday 21 November.

Release Schedule (All times in UTC)​

07:00 - Servers offline for maintenance
11:00 Servers back online and Update available

Please note these are approximate times and are subject to change.

Update Notes​
Powerplay 2.0

Fixed an exploit where Powerplay Data could be downloaded multiple times from the same Data Port (Issue ID: 67329)
Aisling Duval's Powerplay systems now correctly flag Imperial Slaves & Narcotics as illegal. Crime does not pay.
Archon Delain Powerplay systems now correctly open Black Markets if they are not already present. OK...here crime might pay.
Pranav Antal now closes Black Markets in Fortified/Stronghold systems.
Merit awards for destroying Ship Launched Fighters have been reduced.

Ships

Adjustments made to Flight Tutorial combat drones reducing their damage output.
Type-8's collision has been adjusted so that the "arms" now have correct collision.

Thank you for all your continued feedback and reports!

[Sam Willet]

Originally posted by Dwolite:

Ok, so why does Frontier keep freezing good merit earning methods? First they froze exploration data and genetic research data, now rare good tradings and escape pod rescues. Why??? I am bloody TRYING to do powerplay stuff and they freeze my ability to do so? This is getting very frustrating...

You call it 'freezing good merit earning methods', I call it putting a stop to exploits that unbalance the game.

When a player using an exploit dumps 50,000 merits into a powerplay system that was previously in the balance, they're destroying hours of legitimate gameplay (not using exploits) that one or more people have been doing for the opposing side.

So then those people are forced to use the same exploit to counter, and Powerplay 2.0 becomes a stale game of grinding the same thing over and over on both sides of each conflict.

[Lupinus Rictus]

Cause all the wierdos who's idea of a good time is doing really unchallenging, boring and repetitive tasks were crying about it being " too easy ", no other reason

[spam]

Originally posted by Lupinus Rictus:

Cause all the wierdos who's idea of a good time is doing really unchallenging, boring and repetitive tasks were crying about it being " too easy ", no other reason

In fairness to the people that actually like PP, the settlement data exploit sounded pretty bad. Can you point to any examples where people were complaining about it being too easy to generate merits? I only saw bragging about making yyyyy amount of merits per hour doing this!

[Mazzle Dazzle]

No one said it was too easy, it was the only way to even get reasonable rewards. Fdev made it way easier for every activity to get merits, roughly 4x in many cases. This puts everything in line with optimal rare deliveries.

[Sam Willet]

Originally posted by spam:

Originally posted by Lupinus Rictus:

Cause all the wierdos who's idea of a good time is doing really unchallenging, boring and repetitive tasks were crying about it being " too easy ", no other reason

In fairness to the people that actually like PP, the settlement data exploit sounded pretty bad. Can you point to any examples where people were complaining about it being too easy to generate merits? I only saw bragging about making yyyyy amount of merits per hour doing this!

There are two groups of people doing powerplay:

a) grind merits and rush the levels and rewards, not caring where the merits go or how they affect systems.

b) working to help their power.

Type (A) are the ones looking for exploits and unbalanced gameplay.

Type (B) want to do all the different powerplay stuff, but are limited to doing the exact same grind as type (A) to counter negative (or positive) effects.


Type (B) will complain if one task generates way too many merits, as it ruins the whole idea of powerplay (excluding ranking up fast)

Type (A) will complain every time merits are rebalanced.

[Mazzle Dazzle]

Originally posted by Sam Willet:

Originally posted by spam:

In fairness to the people that actually like PP, the settlement data exploit sounded pretty bad. Can you point to any examples where people were complaining about it being too easy to generate merits? I only saw bragging about making yyyyy amount of merits per hour doing this!

There are two groups of people doing powerplay:

a) grind merits and rush the levels and rewards, not caring where the merits go or how they affect systems.

b) working to help their power.

Type (A) are the ones looking for exploits and unbalanced gameplay.

Type (B) want to do all the different powerplay stuff, but are limited to doing the exact same grind as type (A) to counter negative (or positive) effects.


Type (B) will complain if one task generates way too many merits, as it ruins the whole idea of powerplay (excluding ranking up fast)

Type (A) will complain every time merits are rebalanced.

Except they multiplied them by 4 and brought the top ones down in line with that. No one is complaining about that as it makes everything viable and still is very fast merits. Roughly 63 hours to max doing pretty much any activity now as opposed to 250 hours for most activity and 70 for others.

[Sam Willet]

Originally posted by Mazzle Dazzle:

Except they multiplied them by 4 and brought the top ones down in line with that. No one is complaining about that as it makes everything viable and still is very fast merits. Roughly 63 hours to max doing pretty much any activity now as opposed to 250 hours for most activity and 70 for others.

And that's fine. If players can do a variety of tasks powerplay will have much better legs than if it's all about mindlessly hauling rares or shooting SLFs.

[Mazzle Dazzle]

Originally posted by Sam Willet:

Originally posted by Mazzle Dazzle:

Except they multiplied them by 4 and brought the top ones down in line with that. No one is complaining about that as it makes everything viable and still is very fast merits. Roughly 63 hours to max doing pretty much any activity now as opposed to 250 hours for most activity and 70 for others.

And that's fine. If players can do a variety of tasks powerplay will have much better legs than if it's all about mindlessly hauling rares or shooting SLFs.

Yea, I'm mostly just saying you can make both groups happy. Its only if you nerf that you upset them.