Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I think you're missing the economic aspect of it.


The "flips" usually generate a LOT of interest for some reason. Maybe because people expect a lot of opposition and a big fight (like you expect) or just prestige.


What generally happens in these situations is that it is VERY easy to SEE the opposition and how many they have (unless they have caps ready for hot drop, but if so usually a spy will inform the opposing militia, etc.)


So, let's say we get 50 Attack militia to shoot the structure. Then the other side gets 75+ Defense militia.


The bigger fleet will form up to attack, either the 50 militia is aware of this due to good intel or is totally oblivious. Either way, the decision will be made if the 50 man can take on the 75 man. Generally, just the fact they have bigger numbers will mean that they will have to run. So, the Attack fleet leaves, and then the Defense is generally unable to stop their escape and either waits for them to come back with more people for the fight or until the system stops being vulnerable. The Attack fleet will now know the Defense has 75 members, and will try and get 100 before they attack. So, then they all come back and it goes to be a 75 v 100, and then the 75 man fleet runs.

Rinse repeat until one side is unable to stop it.


These fights dont turn into small skirmishes happening all over the place. They turn into big blob-fests. This is why the constellation plex idea helps break fights down into smaller groups. Being in a big blob doesn't help you complete objectives faster, it slows you down. Forcing people into smaller objective groups will accomplish this better than having one MASSIVE target that takes 5 hours to shoot and take down. It just becomes a numbers game then not tactics.


Intel, Spies and everything else contribute to making it a more difficult situation to manage as well and no FC wants to lose a 10 Billion ISK fleet under their command for reputation purposes, not only for the ISK loss.

Ever been in a blob?


It doesn't sound like you have. They're rarely as fun as you think. Not the way they happen now-adays at least.


Do you know how long it takes to organize 500 people? Usually you're sitting around for about 1-2 hours waiting for totally unprepared people to prepare something that they should have prepared months ago. Fit this, blah that, "HEY FC DO YOU NEED THIS EJ#JASIOEUOI!!@!" blah blah.


No, sorry, blobs aren't fun. An unorganized militia group of 100 or 200 is going to be even worse to organize, and keep in line and sort out management. On top of it all, the other guy only needs to bring 10% more guys than you for your fleet to run. So, uh no. Not as fun as you think. Can they be exciting? Sure, until you do about 2 of them. Then the excitement wears off, and the realization that it has taken you 3 hours to get anywhere and do anything. And then when you get there, everyone runs. Like they always do.

I don't have a problem with massive fights. Freaking awesome stuff can happen.


The issue is that the militia is already pretty unorganized as a rule, and more so when you get more people into them. Producing single target objectives will create blob-tastic-ness.


The fact is there are few FC's that will be on the militia level that can successfully organize your expectations. If they do show some amazing promise, I know that some null sec alliance will look to pick them up. The dilemma is more importantly that economically, people don't want to lose their ships. So, telling people, "hey suck it up, lose your ships" isn't really a convincing argument in favor for them to do it.

Add some tangible rewards, and then maybe they will be much more inclined to do so.

I think that is pretty much it. I know newbies to eve have a little harder time replacing the hardware, but I think most of the militia folks have been around the block once or twice to compensate their losses.

I used to be that guy that was afraid to lose ships, rage-quit every wardec while I was in highsec... I'm ok with it now and have fun playing Eve. Which is really why everyone should be here. If you're worried about losing your ship, quit militia, go back to high-sec and farm some more level 4's until you feel comfortable that you're in the right place.



Yes, that is true. Unfortunately real life does happen to creep in on individuals. By the time I get to hop onto Eve, and after Gallentius pops my Manti in Vlill, I usually head into a fleet and am then ready set to hit the sack. =D

Yeah I definitely understand that. Though this is/was a thread about issues with faction warfare mechanics and the way I'm understanding your most recent responses, it sounds like you're more tired of the escalations/blobbery?

Blobs even happen in high sec when there's a decent war dec between particularly active corps going on. I don't think there'll ever be a way blobs will go away. Plus, what would you expect...? That's real life we're talking about:

1. guy A wants to fight other guy B in school yard.
2. B gets his butt kicked, brings group of friends.
3. Group B kicks the crap out of guy A.
4. Guy A brings group of friends.
5. Group B brings knives.
6. Group A brings guns.
7. B does drive by's at night.
8. A takes your family hostage........ ahem.... i mean...

You get the gist... it's just the natural order of things.

Maybe I'm not understanding your motivation/issue with FW mechanics? Sorry...

I mean... Blobs are blobs and they'll happen. The fact that no one wants to stand up to them, or that people can't field enough ships... phone calling trees? Text your mates to get on Eve... I mean... we're talking about something that people don't have control over.

I think fw should offer somthing different than what can already be found in eve. Offering the same style of play that already exists in eve will not really boost their sub numbers.

If someone wants to blob or just gank people with superior numbers there are lots of ways to do that. There is null sec warfare. There is also just gate camping. So I don't think making fw yet another way to win by numbers wll add anything to the game.

The same can be said for the various forms of shooting rats. We have incursions, sleepers, rats in belts missions low sec high sec and null sec etc. etc. So I don't think turning fw into yet another opportunity to shoot rats will add anything new to eve.

The thing eve completely lacks is a mechanism that brings about frequent, quality, small scale, pvp. The plexing mechanics with the ship size restrictions is almost there. But because of a few flaws it's broken. But once they fix it and it starts bringing about that frequent quality small scale pvp - eve will really have something new.

Lots of activity in this thread... have a few comments after catching up:

Blobs:
I agree that one objective promotes blobs with all the back-and-forth shipping up that goes on, and it's bad. You join a fleet for a fight, the fleet get's involved in this kind of blobbing, and you end up sitting around for hours itching to actually shoot at something and to have it shoot back.

If occupancy is changed to be constellation-wide, there may be no need for a bunker-bash. It would be pretty disappointing to have a great campaign over days or even a week+ just to be out-blobbed at the "bunker" and lose the fight for the constellation. Honestly I would prefer to have the bunker completely axed. There are plenty of opportunities to engage in blobby fights just for the hell of it or because you want to camp a certain that has juicy plexes, or whatever the reason may be.

Spreading out over a constellation:
I really like this idea. You know what cluster of systems to fight in, but it's not confined to one at a time (blobbiness). A large force that scares off the enemy might decide to break into a few pieces and take on plexes in neighbouring systems, which may not guarantee better small fights, but it certainly promotes it, and that's the right direction... plus it's more effective for achieving occupancy.

Plexes themselves:
Reiteration: objective based sounds good to me... timers are generally boring.

Some tweaks like fixing faction-frig dominance in smalls would be great.

What about implementing number restrictions (in addition to the size restrictions) to some plexes. Since a huge problem in getting a good fight is being outnumbered, if the accel gates were smart enough to only allow 5 (or whatever) members from each militia to be inside simultaneously, you could force a maximum size to the fights. Sure reinforcements could be waiting, but it would still be much much better than having all of those enemies spanking you at once. Plus it could start fights on the accel gates themselves since people might get stuck on them if the plex is full when they try to enter it.

Keeping with the idea of various styles of plex, what about a variation of plex that has an AOE warp-disruption inside it? This style might even give the timer new life. If you are close to the timer, you can't warp, so if someone comes in after you, you either fight to the death (maybe not affect pods :P) or you have to burn off the button to warp. This could affect how you fit your ships as well. If you intend to do this variation of plex, you have an extra mid to play with.

In certain combinations, these plex mechanics could result in something that looks a bit like an alliance tournament fight, which looks like a hell of a lot of fun to me.

Got a little deeper than I intended to on this, but what do you guys think, in general, of expanding the types of plexes? Right now the only different is ship-type restriction, and it certainly doesn't work well enough in creating even fights.

Shooting objects:
Sounds boring. I don't want to spend what little time I have to play EVE counting down hitpoints on a bunker or station. Like I said above, I'd be happy to see any form of "the bunker" get removed. I'd be open to it being another style of plex, so there is the option to bring out your big guns and sieging an enemy objective, but it certainly should be optional, not required.

Safe Stations:
There are some good motives here in terms of thinking up a benefit to owning a system (or constellation), but I fear anything that adds even MORE safety to a PvP landscape. Hiding in a regular station is safe enough and station games are terrible. Having sentries to protect you is overkill imo. Having one station per system that the enemy can't dock in sounds pretty good, since it will create an intel hole, and as long as they change station games (undock timer based on ship size or something... seen some discussion about it) and remote-rep agro (also anticipated to get a change) there is no need to go any further favours the owners.

NPCs:
However plexes end up looking or how well they produce PvP, NPC combat should be entirely optional. Shooting some haulers sounds really good because they shouldn't cause any problems if you get player engagement right beside them. But there will be times where no enemy players show up and it would be nice to be able to choose if you want some extra combat NPCs to spawn for something extra to do, and I said earlier, maybe you can get a little extra reward for killing them... but my biggest concern is that they be optional.

w.r.t NPCS: There are many current ways to keep the NPCs out of fights.
1. Warp to plex, don't go in. If you want decent fight, then burn off gate and wait. Opponent will have to burn at you and when he calls in for warp in they will warp to plex gate, not to opponent.

2. When you enter plex, don't fire on and don't go within 30km (or some varying distance based on plex size) of the plex button. In many plexes the timer won't start and the NPCs will remain in sleep mode. Perhaps this feature should apply to all plexes.

So there are some current options, but they are not universally applied across all plexes.

Not disagreeing with you, just providing some info on current mechanics. CCP envisioned that plexes could be run for isk by providing tags and loot for NPCs. However, the time associated with clearing out the plexes is proportional to time spent in plex and not number of players in the plex, so it's not worth it for a large number of players to band together and farm them. FYI: A large, unrestricted plex was worth 20-25 million isk when my group was looting and salvaging them two years ago. They are likely worth a bit more now that admiral tag prices have increased. The isk available from other plexes decreases exponentially.

You could potentially increase the rewards, make them effort based and not time based, or give LP for killing NPC rats if your team actually wins the plex (like incursions, or finishing a mission), to hopefully make them want to fight for a plex.

But in the end, if isk is more easily obtained by running high sec L4 missions, then that's what people are going to do.

I wasn't aware that works. Are you sure fleet warps don't work if you are near a plex accelleration gate but don't go in it?





This is what I do. But I do not actually capture a plex.

If you want to actually capture an offensive plex you have to fight with the npcs. That means if you want to actually capture offensive plexes effeciently you need to fit for the npcs. That means that if someone comes in with a pure pvp fit (not to mention if they come in with a fit against your pve fit) they will have an advantage. Which means most people who want to effectively do offensive plexes will not want to pvp. Not only will they have unkown amounts of dps from rats but they will also likely have a slightly gimped ship. This equates to no pvp.

Over time people began to realize that fw plexxers will just warp away. (and as we can see from above, the rats basically create a situation where they are better off warping.) Now many people don't even bother to enter the plexes because they anticipate anyone in there running the plex will just warp off.