EVE General Discussion

So it emerged from Zulu's "What would you want to try?" thread that so far no one has been clear on what's not working with the current iteration of Factional Warfare and only provide possible solutions. Seeing as CCP have so far been cooperative with their "refocusing" and forum activity let's help them by compiling a concise list of issues with FW.

Try to refrain from repeating the solutions and fixes you may have proposed before, just list what is broken, what frustrates you, and what is lacking from FW which would make you take part.

For me personally, the lack of PVP rewards, effects and bonuses from sov changes, general incentive to take sov, and lack of ongoing story line put me off of FW.

Your thoughts?

Militia stations should flip ownership and docking rights with occupancy - that would be enough of a reward for me to give it another try.

If I'm an 'evil slaver' I shouldn't be allowed to dock in a TLF station in a system they have occupied. How ******** is that?

It's like 'Hello - I'm Erwin Rommel - may I just quickly refuel and rep my tanks in your US army supply base?'

'Sure - enjoy your stay!'

FW missions should be nerfed - would keep out all the pve SB-flying freeloaders and there shouldn't be too many pvp rewards, as people would just form smurf-corps and farm each other all day.

Rat imbanlance, rats in plexes in the first place, cloaked plexing and all the broken stuff reported in numerous endlessly long threads during the past years aside...

CCP refusing to show up at their own meeting to discuss the topic indicates that it's not worth a forum thread.

All this "make people care about FW even if they do not directly participate" stuff is brilliant. I should WANT to check the status reports every day even though I'm not in it. The FW guys should be viewed as heroes, committing themselves to making the lives of people who live in their factions' highsec space better. (However, FW shouldn't be something that people feel like they *have* to do to get their space to function properly.) I should have a way (and a reason) to contribute to the war effort, even though I'm not an actual FW member (and not just throwing isk at the Faction Warriors.) The game mechanics around FW could keep on sucking ass (though it'd be better if they didn't) if the results of it affected every single Empire dweller.

I'd like it to become a bit more like 0.0 sov wars (hear me out)

OK first things first, I do not want it to BE 0.0 sov, there is a reason I chose FW over that. The reason the occupancy system is fail (as well as plex mechanics) is because there is no reason to flip occupancy. There is no real reward for doing so, so why do people bother in 0.0, well holding space has a number of advantages in null, so why not FW?


FW puts out a good amount of ISK already from L4s, but is has nothing to do with PVP superiority, so this should be largely nerfed and instead income should come from holding sov and somehow distributed through those who actually helped. I realise this is a massive request and I don't have a perfect solution but I can think of a few and I'm sure CCP could have a go. Some kind of passive-ish income akin to moonmining as well as a more active system like missions/anom in your home systems that take a bit more effort to complete so the enemy have time to react, with split rewards.


The other problem on the large scale is 0.0 (and when I say 0.0 I include the ones unable to actually hold sov) alliances presence often ruining FW combat. I would like to see FW occupied system to be supercap invulnerable, for simple RP reasons that there is no way these tools of SOV warfare would be allowed on the empire factions home turf. This would also largely reduce 0.0 alliances blobbing FW combat for cheap kills.

Why can we not upgrade occupied systems? Everything is equal, can there not be scales of occupancy, why can systems deep within our home territory be taken just as easily as those on the front line?


TL;DR - Too much L4 income, Not enough reasons to hold occupancy. Occupancy too different to sov.

The list is a very long one, but for starters...

Occupancy is meaningless. Make occupancy confer an advantage, and you'll see people plexing in small groups rather than blobbing.

But of course, for people to go plexing, there need to be plexes. At the moment, this is only the case after DT because the spawning mechanic is broken.

Perhaps to offset the carrot of an advantage given by occupancy, there should be a stick to punish its loss. Maybe a revocation of docking rights in affected systems?

NPCs from one faction should not be easier to evade than NPCs from another faction.

Please can we also have a return of the old bulletins from high command? Having the Grand Poobah of your faction order you to go and capture system X helped immersion and provided focus.

In short:

1) Missions, most boring missions ever made where you spend 99% of the time jumping through stargates and burning to the npc's. Remake them to reduce the travel time and increase the shooting time

2) Sovereignty which is totally useless. Add more incentives for people to actually bother => more battles in plexes => more fun. (stations flipping as mentioned before could be a nice thing)

3) More rewards for blowing up enemy militia members.

From this I KNOW you don't have a clue about FW - go comment on something you DO know about mmm?

Who do you think they blob otherwise if not easy kills?

Would it would be ok for you, for example: me and some of my pals to join npc FW corp, then make gang with open invite for "faction warfare", then gank those of my own faction who come to join the fleet for lulz?

Thats cool, Ive never tried FW. Thanks for the info :)