EVE General Discussion

I have to admit, I've been wondering the same things as Hans. The silence from CCP is a bad sign.

It's frustrating because so many people in FW want nothing more than to help. When Soundwave dropped his one-line comment about removing NPCs, Shalee did a series of opinion polls where she asked practically everyone in the militias what they thought of it:

http://sovereigntywars.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/gallente-opinion-poll-removing-faction-npcs-in-enemy-highsec-2/
http://sovereigntywars.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/amarr-opinion-poll-removing-faction-npcs-in-enemy-highsec/
http://sovereigntywars.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/caldari-opinion-poll-removing-faction-npcs-in-enemy-highsec/
http://sovereigntywars.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/minmatar-opinion-poll-removing-faction-npcs-in-enemy-highsec/

There have been literally hundreds of posts from active FW players about how to improve FW. There's a fair amount of agreement among them too. Hans, Shalee, and a bunch of others are doing a huge amount of work on collecting feedback and presenting it so as to make it as easy as possible to pick out the important bits.

And CCP's response to all of this has been . . . nothing.

Do they think they can't do the changes? Do they not want to do the changes? Is it that they don't agree on what changes should be made? Are they actually planning some changes but aren't telling us? Have they decided that it's not worth the trouble and they're going to give up on it? Are they even reading these threads? We don't know.

Before Faction Warfare existed there was a thriving war going on between Minmatar and Amarr players. Oracle, minmatar liberation front, amarr will eat itself, eventually Ushrakhan fought PIE, imperial dreams (CVA), backed up by other fighters like blacksheep squadron and Aegis Militia etc.

There where internal politics, betrayals, dislikes, fall-outs and almost all out wars inside factions. The official wars fought between Amarr and Minmatar capsuleers was very high up to 28 or more for PIE alone. There was drama and the storyline progressed because of the players and their relationships toward eachother. This in cooperation with live events where CCP showed that it was interested in the dynamic that these players where developing made these wars the most interesting time I had in EVE.

Within that conflict other entities fought alongside one or more factions like the Jericho Faction or certain pirates. It had a thriving RP and it got people to experience action in empire in wars that raged from Pator to Hek and Amarr prime itself.

FW meddled with that conflict, it did so with the best intentions it wanted to provide a medium in which to poor all those actions could be poored and developed into something bigger. In doing so it also gave us a straightjacket. What is worse is they made something and then failed to provide the tools for the players so they could develop a framework. They gave us a pro-forma framework which received little or no development after. What the FW rethink should be doing is thinking on how to give more freedom and tools to the players.

I've written a letter to the CSM, providing them with links to these threads, and the Sov Wars blog where they can read up on the state of activities within the Faction Warfare scene. I encourage all of you to write them as well, the more voices they hear asking for a response on FW, the better. They may not see it as a signficant development issue, if no one is speaking up and asking for some love. Thanks for everyone's ongoing support! The FW has some of the classiest pilots around, I appreciate those on both sides of the war that have been advocates for improving the scene.

Until CCP returns the ability to publicly display your factional standing - factional warfare will remain a joke.

Your a little out of date, the last update (which i can't be arsed to quote) said that ONE thing will be getting a change in FW, but that change will be small and the details of which have yet to be revealed.

Furthermore, they are discussing the future of FW at the December CSM summit, as many of the suggestions for fw fixes would require more time than dev's have had.

Either way, the dessy buff will add some flavor to fw this winter.

he's taking a stroll

And so the deadline for the expansion has come and gone, and Factional Warfare remains ignored.

I am truly baffled how CCP can do such a great job at reconnecting with its audience, but at the same time ignore the repeated pleas from all FWers for something! There is even pretty good agreement on a core set of easy-to-fix features....

All we have had is a commitment for *one* (yes, just one!) FW feature from a CCP dev, and even that has now missed the shipment.

Given that Faction Warfare was one of the CEO's promises for this expansion, I am very disappointed indeed.

After the winter expansion is released CCP will pay attention to FW again, don't worry, they'll devote 10x the Fanfest resources from last year!

It really was embarrassing that 3 guys in Atlanta were able to pwn Iceland.

Let Atlanta fix FW!

I suggest you learn WTF you are talking about BEFORE you post... Concord currently lets us into enemy high sec - I can speed through gal/minnine high sec without getting concorded. It is the NAVY that chase me. See the difference. Evading the navy = legal. Evafing concord = exploit and bannable.

The reason we choked is that it broke RP since the empires SHOULD defend themselves from enemy combatants and that it would make the trade hubs a permanent station camp which would hurt the newer players. Currently the you CAN camp them, but have to tank the navy and the capsuleers...

Actually, if you go into FW and just X up, you probably won't even get to the pew part, unless you're comfortable soloing long enough to convince the established corps you're not a spai. With broken plexes, there is little incentive for new players to form up on their own in cheap stuff like people used to and seize the lower level plexes and make a difference. Now, general militia chat is basically the front doorstep in that house where they make soap in fight club. You gotta wait out there and be trolled long enough to show people you really want in. Sad, but true.

Most of the fixes that people are asking for DO revolve around the missions because, well, missions and plexes ARE FW. Thats the mechanics we got. Static wardec, and some plexes and missions, both of which are broken severely. So naturally, plexes and missions are the first place to work on fixes. Fix them, and you give people their PvP grounds again (instead of gates and stations and belts where they get hotdropped by bored nullsec alliances and pirate blobs).

Educate yourself - the reasons the missions are Pew Pew is because they show up on overview and beg the enemy to engage you there. Problem is, missions are easily farmable in bombers, so the "pew pew" you speak of boils down to interceptors chasing bombers, and blue balls all around.

It wasn't a GM, it was Soundwave, who is lead developer for all of EvE Online.

The FW community is based around PvP, but the mechanics CCP developed and never iterated upon, sadly do little to support this.