Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hi,

I am not looking for a flaming contest here if my ideas do not seem good enough, but would rather hope that the FW community would be willing to make this an open discussion aka. brainstorm - to see if our FW EVE experience could be enhanced/balanced/whatnot.
So, instead of flaming me and telling me that the following ideas are stupid - I'd rather get your input on how to fix the issues.


Ok, first of - THANK you CCP for having made an update to FW mechanics. I appreciated it a lot, because it tells me that we have not been forgotten.

However, there are new problems that have emerged from it, to the point that, I oftentimes am not sure if the old system was better than the new one.

I love the fact that cloaking within the plex is impossible within the 30km radius.

I do not love the fact that there are NPC rats that are hard to solo kill if I simply want to make a bit of LP (main income for most FW players), so that I can buy shiny things. I know, the idea was to combat farmers, but it hasn't really helped a lot because farmers just do defensive plexing instead with their stabs equipped.
Also, it has made it very hard for the lower tier militia to have a chance to regain territory.

This, is my primary problem. The resistance and speed of enemy faction NPC's. Not that they spawn around 6 times, but just the fact that I can barely solo a plex in a simple frig (let's think about new players). This has nothing to do with skill, because even in a normal t2 punisher fit I have trouble killing a novice rat - not in firepower, but with the extra time it adds to the plex. So, a novice plex takes 10 mins to close. Add 6 NPCs that I have to kill - which on average takes 1 min or so, and the plexing time went from 10 mins to 16 mins.
Not very entertaining.

So, the lower tier faction has to form medium sized fleets to plex - which means the LP gets divided by all inside the plex. People burn out, it is very boring, and even fun little fights do not occur very often between us and the enemy/neutral, mainly because there are 10 people huddled up in a plex.


I honestly do not know a solution for this and I want to open this up to the other pilots to see if there would be a working alternative that CCP might be willing to implement.

The only thing that I could come up with is not 100% relevant to the above mention problem, but would help immensely to regain some balance in case of extreme imbalance.

Let's assume that one Faction is stuck in tier 1, whereas the other is enjoying tier 4 and all the benefits.
Also, assume there are many systems that are nearly impossible to take unless there is great interest by many other pilots. At this point - the farmers won. They can solo deplex to keep their tier 4, whereas the tier 1 faction is biting its teeth out trying to regain some control.

Now, let us assume that in some FW systems very randomly there would be a tier 1 NPC milita force, similar to Incursion, to come in a system/region to assist the weaker tier faction. It would give the lower tier faction a chance to regain a system, because the NPC deployement would target enemies of their faction -eradicating farming players, and allowing smaller fleets, or solo pilots, to take some control back.
Instead of making the NPC deployement CONCORD style, it could be combated by the tier 4 faction but they'd have to deploy big shiny fleets (like in incursions) to fight off their enemy NPC fleets.

I firmly believe that this would bring some, not all, but some balance to the factional warfare systems that have been abused by farmers.

I firmly believe that it would allow factions that cannot produce the numbers to stand a chance in actually regaining systems.

I firmly believe that it would create content for the tier 4 faction as well, because sitting afk in a plex is just boring.


Again, these are my opinions and dreams for the future of FW in EVE. I would be happy to hear productive feedback and let's see if our FW community can come forth with a brainstormed solution, and hopefully CCP implements those.


If you find my suggestions flat out stupid, I invite you to voice your opinion in a friendly manner, but I also expect you to tell me your possible solution.

Thanks

its multiplayer content and the client, nor me for that matter, can distinguish between a farmer and a solo plexer. when ones nerfed, the others nerfed. stop solo'ing?

not sure what you mean by medium fleet, but two guys can clear rats quickly. The answers always been bring more deeps. your not really entitled to offensively solo plex, not without it taking ~six minutes longer (why's that a big problem anyway?)

if the ease of solo plexing defensively compared to solo plexing offensively is the issue then a simple solution might be making the plex rats pirates and/or drones that shoot everyone.

not keen on the incursions when your bad at FW idea. don;t want more NPC's in FW when its meant to be about the players, and if one side is winning in FW is because they are doing better than you are.

if you want to start winning, rely less on NPC help and look to recruiters or diplomats and build some bigger fleets.

Didnt it had one not that long ago.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=362679

Linked because 90% of them come from FW.

FW right now is the card game, 'ass-hole' . For those that don't know the game, it's one where the whole deck gets dealt out and the guy on the bottom gives all his good cards to the other player, they give him their trash in return. Once you are marked 'ass-hole' you pretty much play the rest of the game in that position because of the odds stacking system. The difference between here and the card game is, eventually the card game ends and the system resets to where everyone is on equal terms.

Short version: FW needs to be more than a one trick pony.

The answer to this is to give players tools to defend plexes to the point you can leave the npcs out of it entirely. CCP has been adding, subtracting, boosting, and nerfing npcs for years. It really doesn't change much as rabbit plexing will always remain king so long as ccp is relying on npcs instead of players. Its a wrong turn.

CCP has said they would do 2 things which will make plexing a pvp game.

1) have a plex timer start rolling back if you get chased out of a plex

2) give players intel about where plex timers are being run so the players can go defend them instead of relying on npcs.

If these 2 changes were implemented we wouldn't need npcs at all. Rabbit plexers would gain much less ground than people who would be willing to occasionally stay in the plex and fight it out. That would be the sea change fw needs and would lead to a situation where people who want to plex as efficiently as possible will fit their ships to fight in pvp and not just fight npcs and run from other players. The players would have the tools they need to fight the occupancy war on their own.

I do not do FW with this toon, but I am signed in with this so here goes.

This may be somewhat obvious, it may be a bad idea, you decide, but shouldn't faction warfare actually be about warfare between the two sides?

So the suggestion is have 1v1 2v2 ........etc plexes and the winner flips the plex.

No ganks, no OGB, no bullcrap, just simple combat.

Now I know that may not be fun for some, and we do not need to take their fun away let's leave the existing ones just as they are, but when we are trying to make a difference and drive the war we end up in the middle of all these games.
Then we can get on with the war and leave the others to get on with whatever "stuff" they want to.

I love you.

I am seeing some great ideas. Not sure which hold more merit etc, but at least we have people that agree about the fact that FW needs some sort of fixing.

Keep them ideas coming....