Assembly Hall

Stabbed ships should not be permitted in Offensive Plexing or Defensive Plexing.

Thread has been moved to Assembly Hall.

I have revised the post I made after the csm x minutes on faction war. Here it is again, bringing up the forgotten promises ccp made for faction war:


In the end it is about fun wars.

What do I consider fun? Frequent, quality, pvp engagements. How frequent? I think a faction war players who are fully engaged in sov warfare should be able to get about 10 decent fights in 3 hours of play. It is very disheartening to spend the time to get the isk, spend the time to figure out your fits and and fleet comps, and then you just spend another 2 hours online with few decent fights. Good fights happen. But they are not frequent enough, and they often are just random with no context of achieving any sov war aims.

What do I think is boring? Having several alts orbit buttons ready to flee at the first sign of trouble. Yet this is the best way to gain vp in faction war. And vp is the best metric to see who is winning the sov war. So currently, if you really want to win sov for your faction, then get alts out there.

What can ccp do to make faction war sov more fun and exciting? They already said they would do it!

1) Timer rollbacks:

October 22nd 2012 CCP Fozzie said:
CCP Fozzie wrote:

“The Rest of the Plan
There are some other changes to the rest of our original roadmap that we are making after consultation with the community:

...

We will be attempting to release two new features to the FW complexes that have been suggested many times by the FW community to increase PVP opportunities in complexes:

Have plex capture timers count backwards to the default state when no players are contesting them.”


http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/73491?_ga=1.227194526.2033440685.1432326094

Yes that was almost 4 years ago. In the meantime players asked again what is happening with this mechanic and we got the response:
CCP Fozzie wrote:
CCP Fozzie wrote:

“Our position on timer rollbacks has not changed. We'd like to do them at some point, but they will not be coming in Kronos.”


The last csm summit meetings had no mention of it. Yet we see they implemented something similar in null sec within a few months of the issue coming to a head. This again shows that ccp does not realize the potential that faction war has to be a very fun and exciting form of pvp warfare. It has potential even beyond that of null sec for numerous reasons.

2) real time intel tools on plexes being run

Players have been asking for better real time intel tools to know when complexes are being attacked so that they can fight for the plex in pvp. This would allow fast paced/frequent pvp. No more joining a war and wasting your time “roaming” around looking for a random fight. We should be able to go right to the place we need to defend/attack.
Again ccp had said they are onboard with this.

CCP Yitterbium said:
CCP Yitterbium wrote:

"Q: LET'S GET BETTER NOTIFICATION/INTEL TOOLS WITH SYSTEM UPGRADES MR. HOLMES!
A: Interesting argument Dr. Watson. More water Sir? We definitely agree having better notification tools should be part of the whole package, but it should maybe be independent of Factional Warfare and something you need in all cases. After all, Starbase, corporation, war declaration notifications also need love too, let's not be selfish here. Such revamp is in the pipeline, even not for immediate release. Better intel tools for system upgrades however is definitely something we are thinking about."
CCP Ytterbium
http://www.eve-search.com/thread/107405-1/page/6#176
That was August of 2012.

So CCP has already said they are onboard. They clearly realize eve needs more fun engaging pvp warfare. CCP has said they would do the things that need to be done to make fw a fun pvp war to fight in. Yet years go by and we end up with recent summit minutes that do not even mention the mechanics that would make fw a fun war to fight.

Instead half the session they talk about adding some new rats and nerfing missions. Both of these can be good but they really have very little to do with the actual sov war. Some changes are actually problematic.

The changes regarding standing are perhaps not so awful in themselves but it suggests ccp is looking in the wrong direction. Why would they do this? Is it so that alts can easily switch sides when one faction gains a higher tier? Is that really the vision for faction war?

CCP needs to keep their eye on the ball. The players have told ccp that their vision for faction sov warfare is fast paced quality pvp. How is allowing alts, ahem I mean players, to easily switch factions going to accomplish that? How is adding rat patrols going to accomplish that? How is fiddling with missions going to accomplish that?

There are already allot of pve mechanics. Sleepers, incursions, belt ratting, incurstions, missions in high low and null sec, Faction war missions, cosmos missions, epic arc missions etc etc. We don’t need to make faction war sov plexing yet another pve farm. EVE needs fun pvp wars not more pve.

List of faction warfare change suggestions and notes I have collected. Trying remain a little impartial. This thread will probably fade away like all the others.

Timer rollbacks - timer is reset after a period where no offensive ships have used the timer.

• Saves defensive ships having to sit in space undoing large timers.


• Harsh punishment, may encourage over blobbing just to chase people away, may making defending too easy.

Dual timers - race to complete your factions timer.

• Could make defensive plexing more like offensive if npc's spawn for each timer. Could be scaled to four empire warfare. Reduces gunless stabbed def plexing.


• Defenders can no longer run up extra time. Makes offensive plexing easier and defensive more time consuming due to npc's.

Increase PVP LP payout to max tier payout level.

PVP LP rewards are low, system is not defraud-able at max level so setting to max will only improve PVP sustainability.

Concerns over insurance ratings and whether system is not game-able. Reduces impact of tier level, could make FW tier mechanics feel pointless.

Make all timers spawn rates and rewards for plexes the same as novices.

This may seem counter intuitive to make plexes the same but the key here is that in plexes are used for fighting, players that roam in larger ships have simply made a choice to do this in larger ship types and they are likely to rack up some lp sooner to put towards ship costs and are not stuck in one place for extended periods of time if nothing is happening. Here down shipping to farm gains very little as the rewards are the same but the DPS entry is higher.

Reduces rewards for larger plexes as scaling means larger plexes pay more for the time currently and proposal would require more travel for the same reward.

Warpcore stabs go offline on gate activation or ships with warpcore stabs cannot activate timers.

Less farming in non PVP combat ships.

May affect overall war zone LP levels. May make warzone more static.

Entering complexes gives suspect flag To non militia pilots.

• Allows FW members to keep positive security status when plexing.


• Completely innocent bystanders in faction fit pirate frigates may get ganked on the warp in when accidentally wandering into faction warfare complexes.

Corp LP tax rates.

• Allows corps to recover income from members.


• May require significant overhaul of LP store mechanics.

Part of defensive plexing LP returns to ihub.

Reduces defensive plexing reward, may make systems easier to take.

Gated large complexes

Allow for greater use of battlecruiser and battleship class ships.

Starter complexes. T1 frigates only.

• Shorter timer, easier plex may appeal to new players.


• May fragment small ship plexing players further actually reducing PVP opportunities. Players may still be prey to players with high sp and significant isk invested in faction mods.

Roaming NPC combat patrols

• Adds extra immersion to warzone


• May disrupt fights on gates.

Remove high sec npc's

• Highsec mechanics would require complete overhaul. Stations and gates could have beefed up npc's to reduce camping.


• May encourage Highsec gate and station camping. Less safe Highsec May really only affect newer more vulnerable players. May put players off being in faction warfare. Highsec may need some form of plex target or landmarks.

Faction warfare missions - overhaul

• Could be Linked to occupancy, formats could be changed to allow more pvp focused fits.


• May affect certain levels of income and therefore affect pvp at other opportunities.