Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I don't expect CCP to do this of course, because they're allergic to touching old stuff like the standings system. But here's my idea anyway. Eliminate the faction penalty for aggressing/killing a faction ship in FW plexes, missions, and pirate ships in asteroid belts or deadspace. Sounds crazy I know. But basically, these penalties aren't fun, they don't really make sense, and repairing them is an undue burden compared to how easy it is to tank them.

Effects of this potential change:

-If you join faction warfare, you can run plexes/shoot NPCs without tanking your empire standings. IMO if you leave FW you should be able to go to JITA/Dodixie again.

-If you run missions, you won't tank your empire standings for shooting empire ships. This means more variety for mission runners, higher availability of faction tags for LP store usage. Its also a minor buff to lvl 4 isk/hour because of less declined missions.

-Similar for pirate factions. Right now ratting anywhere tanks your standings for pirate factions. Ridiculously, if you live in pirate NPC space, you can't get access to missions or the benefits of reduced taxes unless you actually stop ratting.

Faction standings would continue to be affected by derived hits from storylines. They would also continue to be affected by contraband, aggressing sentry guns, aggressing non-mission faction police or faction navy in hisec.

To the counter-argument that it wouldn't make sense, I say that it already doesn't make sense. You can be -9.99 to every NPC faction in the game and still dock in every NPC station in the game. You can be under attack by the Caldari Navy or Caldari Police, and still fly directly to Jita 4-4 Caldari Navy Assembly plant to evade them. Let's stop pretending that NPC factions are active agents that actually care what the player does. Let's take away the long-term penalties for engaging in FW content, ratting, and missioning. Faction standings would still do everything they currently do, with the same benefits to having high standings and the same effort needed to get there.

If this is "too easy" at least make it so that ship aggression or ship kill cannot take you below 0.00 unmodified faction standing.

I dislike removing consequences. Let's not remove consequences. Let's add them instead. Let's add consequences that make sense and should've been there to start with but mysteriously aren't around outside of FW.

You're quite correct that it makes no sense for people to be able to dock at stations belonging to an empire that wants them dead. So let's remove that. If you're being shot at by the Caldari Navy, you can't dock at their stations anymore until you fix the problem. If you're in FW, then two factions' worth of stations are closed to you. We can sweeten the pot for FW pilots a little bit by giving them reduced clone fees and other smallish perks at the two factions they can still dock at.

I want to say "Fix the looming Jita problem in my suggestion by undoing the stargate changes that killed Yulai" but there's probably an issue there too.

Anyway, if someone's worried because (let's just say) Amarr and Caldari are both shooting at them because of standings, one of the following two solutions exist:

Solution 1: Make this change not apply to that faction's stations in enemy space. There are Caldari stations around in Gallente space and I'm fairly sure I've seen the rare Amarr station in the edges of Minmatar space. I know there are Amarr stations in Gallente and both Gallente/Minmatar stations in Amarr space. These places tend to have Lv1 agents who currently talk to you no matter how bad your standing is. This would facilitate repairing your standings if so desired.

Solution 2: I don't know why they would be there, but let there be Lv1 agents in enemy space. You can rebuild your standings without having to dock.

As far as stations who are friendly to you but located in space that isn't so friendly, they probably don't want any trouble from the local Empire government and would likely refuse you docking. Politics, you know. Or maybe they don't care, leaving their own government to protect them and they'd let you dock after all.

As far as "if you leave FW you should be able to go to Jita", you may not be part of the enemy's military anymore but you still commited crimes against that Empire. They may not be capsuleers but I doubt they forget that easily.

because they're not people and they don't have feelings. Except in storyline missions. They can still be pissed off if you run storylines for their enemies. Note, even if guristas love you long time (9.0 standings), they will never not attack you.

Its a consequence that serves entirely as a penalty, and does not lead to either interesting gameplay or interesting choices. Its a consequence that is unduly harsh. Furthermore, there is very very little reward for incurring this "consequence." Which is why I don't even like using that word. Consequences are good, stupid penalties that discourage players from content are bad. It is undeniable that the effect of these outdated standings mechanics discourage players from content. CCP wants consequences to be about training choices, gameplay choices, and most importantly, personal interaction with other players. The game is about players. NPC factions are window dressing and fodder for the economy. They don't have feelings, they don't have goals, and they shouldn't give two farts if you shoot their dudes in a mission or an asteroid belt. And if you grind standings for lower taxes or to anchor a pos, you shouldn't have to throw that away if you want to run missions, want to join FW for a month, or want to run missions in pirate NPC space. And if you live venal, whats the point of doing the epic guristas arc and raising your standings there, just to turn around and lose that standings because your buddy needs help running the Maze? CCP is not about to waste development time having NPC fleets roam around and shoot people, they want players to do that. My suggestion is very much in line with CCPs vision.

EDIT: I'm not making a value judgement of how CCP wants NPCs to be. I am merely stating the way it already is. The mechanics under discussion remain the way there are simply because they're old legacy stuff that CCP doesn't like to touch. I am confident that if CCP were to reexamine the issue at all, they would come to the same or a similar conclusion as I am.

Asteroids don't have feelings or hold grudges but the four empires do, always have and should until we supplant them. And the tme of our ascention is NOT here yet.

I'm mostly pissed by the fact that despite being a top ranking officer in the Amarr Milita (Divine Comodore), I get shot at in Amarr Space when my sec status is too low.

It would be a nice addition if - while enlisted in the milita - your standing with the milita corp was added to your sec status in the relevant factions space.

This way, someone with 10.00 flat standing with the milita corp like me, would be considered as having a neutral or positive sec status in the space of the faction he fights for.

I brought this up at the FW roundtable at Fanfest, and someone else suggested adding a suspect timer for activating a FW plex gate and being inside a FW plex (most of my sec status hits come from fighting neutrals in plexes). The idea was well received by CCP Fozzie and CCP Rise, so I'm still hoping that this might be implemented soon™... It would really make militia pilots' life easier.

Sorry OP, But I tend to agree more with Alvatore DiMarco, there should be more consequences, not less.

Both Solutions sound good, no reason to have one or the other, could have both.

This would be no different to having Embassies here on earth, I know that the embassies on earth are considered Sovereign soil as part of the country that own them, and quite often have a Military presence on them to defend themselves/their citizens.

I've already done the grind back from -7 to a faction, trust me that I know that the grind is a ***** of a thing to do, and frankly you SHOULD have to do it, if you have pissed them off that much. Standings is a very important part of this game, stop trying to down play it.