EVE General Discussion

There's not much to FW besides killmails and LP grinding. And even though those are very nice, there should be more to it as it is called "factional warfare" not LP/kill grinding. There's no real player made empire changes on a noticeable scale. Not to mention that FW is broken as it is. There should be some changes to make it much more appealing.

First of all, in FW space you can't dock in an enemy station. but in the enemy highsec areas, you can dock anywhere. This needs to change, as it doesn't make sense at all.

If a pirate fights for a faction, they should get a pardon from that faction and be able to go into highsec without being shot. This doesn't mean pirates won't be shot if they attack someone.

Faction standings should apply like security status. if I'm not in FW, but have -10 with Amarr, I shouldn't be able to travel through their highsec without being shot.

More LP for killing a WT, and less for plexing. PvP needs to be promoted not LP farmers.

Loyalty to a faction needs to be rewarded, ranks with benefits and consequences for switching sides is a must.

As I said below the faction is recruiting people to fight for their survival as a civilization. Pilots should be paid on a regular basis by the taxes gained from that factions trade. Therefore if a pirate fights for Caldari, but ganks miners in Caldari space. he lowers his, and the militias income.

All of this plays into the choice of where to live and where to trade. people who are loyal to Gallente but trade in Caldari space is illogical. And by trading in enemy space they supply the enemy faction.

It would then be important for militia fighters to keep lowsec industrialists safe, as they supply the war effort; at the same time, they are important targets for the enemy to destroy. Either way industrialists can choose risk or reward as it does play into the EVE way.

If a faction reaches 100% all but a few systems along the enemies highsec border can become temp-sec, lowsec temporarily made .5 with navy on gates and more sentry guns but no concord. the Temp zone can be the restoration of the warzone, but keep lowsec ores/rats etc there too. Make a chunk of the enemies highsec into a new FW warzone. If people in highsec are affected from the war, which they should be. It will drive more players to either fight in, or support the war.

We need everyone that actually cares about the state of FW to chime in here. Be it more ideas or good arguments for or against ideas. Constructive criticism and strong arguments for different ideas creates progression.


^EDIT^: This possible idea of an extended tug of war scenario is not to be put in place before potential fixes. We need FW fixes to balance it out way more than extended player made content. And to pursue this idea while FW is in its' state is just daft.

Perhaps before I threw these ideas out on here I should have asked what is FW to people besides kills and LP? is FW supposed to actually go somewhere in regard to player made content? Or is it supposed to be just this endless grind, this faction warzone control that never goes anywhere aside. Is the idea of pushing to the enemies capital not interesting even to the slightest?

Maybe I'm just thinking too realistic about war here. I guess people in highsec aren't supposed to hear or care about the war. Even if the enemy faction wins they still don't care because nothing comes of it!?

and then you could make PvP actually matter for warzone control and you'd never hear from the minmatar or caldari again!

Faction war is a pretty unbalanced system at the moment, players will fly gal/min because they yield a higher reward for the least time involved. What little amarr militia there are is because players played militia and beat the amarr, and some change over to their amarr toons to fight minmatar again. In essences, FW is so messed up atm that the same people are playing both sides out of shear boredom.

Doing what you propose does not fix the situation. The entire plexing system needs revamped and balanced, hopefully then players start picking a side because they want to fight for that militia, not because it pays better.

Having certain "advantages" based on your rank is definitely something going to make people stick with 1 militia (in a way that will do some positive balancing thing - for example, if I'm some sort of Divine General or whatever the rank is, then NO WAY for me to leave my militia and let go all the benefits I'm getting from my militia)
The biggest problem about FW as stated above is: people join a militia because they want ISK, not because they want to fight
I for myself, I don't care about ISK out from FW I joined for pure PVP, got 2 alts, I'm making money out of them
Many people around me in my corp left because of ISK issues, they DID NOT join another militia, they just went into WH or null to get their wallets back up again, then they will join us back after a while

People who come in for PVP are so much rare, if everyone in the 4 militias started looking at PVP side, then every problem will resolve itself automatically with no CCP intervention

Yes there are those PVPers on both sides, but look at their numbers! 90% farmers & spies for both sides, the remaining 10% are somehow trying to stand on their feet in this mess (specially in Amarr militia)

With pirates who are just stepping in every system for Amarr, camping its stations making half the Amarr militia bule, the other half red, ruining their fleets killing 70% of the militia fleet at station undock, this is just a mess, pirates who have firepower, who have caps & supercaps are picking on new people, and people who returned from null to try something new, to find out they are in a mess & chaotic abomination called "militia"

Too many problems, solutions need to be starting from the FW & plexing system itself

I general I agree with your overall concepts.

but.

I disagree with shifting LP more to taking a system - this would not be fair to some poor sap that spends hours contesting a system only for the actual capture to occur while he's asleep.

I have an idea that could be amusing instead of flipping all the FW systems if a nation gets full control of a warzone:
Change the architecture of one enemy FW system for every week a nation controls the warzone: stargates, home nation bases, everything except the background nebulae.
If it gets to the point that all the systems have been upgraded start replacing enemy FW stations in the warzone with stations from the controlling side once a month.
This way capsuleers get to change the universe, but it's slow and steady as the Empire work teams get things built rather than a quick flip and the universe changes drastically every couple of days.

Could even have some fun graphically with half-built stations and gates next to the currently active ones.

bump!

right because its all the mean ebil piwats fault, you do realise we shoot everyone not just you right?

In fact im pretty certain we've done way more damage to the minmatar than the amarr over recent weeks

IMO the whole plexing thing is kind of flawed.

I'd much rather have each faction send lightly guarded freighters to the hubs to deliver upkeep around systems, and have players defend / assault the freighters for control instead.

Also, this is a really really interesting idea. I'd be interested to see a little more expansion on this topic.

While I don't really care about the changes to how much LP plexes make or whatever, a lot of the other changes proposed are simply stupid, both from a game mechanic point of view, and a PvP point of view.

Making a large chunk of lowsec become highsec because a faction gains a large amount of control would simply not work. Plus, what difference would it even make to people in militia anyway, the other side is still going to be able to shoot you.

Having gate guns favour a militia over neutrals also wouldn't work. Gate guns shoot when a sec loss happens within their range. A militia member shooting a neutral isn't a "CONCORD sanctioned act" or whatever they call it, which is why gate guns will shoot them. Not to mention the whole argument about neutral gangs being able to shooting at milita pirates and therefore having an advantage is flawed, as it works the same going the other way. So there isn't really an advantage at all.

Plex spawns are probably the most important part of FW in terms of PvP, as they create a focus point for fights to happen, either inside the plex, or on the gate of it.



The one thing that I do agree with is that Militia Pirates should be given a "pass" in their factions highsec (but not the allied faction highsec). Never really made sense to me that a faction would try and hunt down people who were fighting for them.