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Yeah except I was against a reset.


As far as a few days proving anything, I disagree.

That is why I won't say its proof of my prediction that most of the combat in fw will be much less spread out. We will have to wait before we claim proof about this system. But I will say my predictions are looking pretty spot on so far.

Are you saying its good that you have a limited number of systems you can plex in?

How are you running the majors? What sort of fit- active or buffer?

I looked at your killboard and saw mostly pve fits - not sure if this is an alt. If you use a pve fit to plex the no docking rule won't be an issue I agree.

Docking games and gate camping are the lowest form of pvp IMO. I rarely did either under the old system. Now with big consequences and limited ability to dock I have a hunch we will get more gate camps. But again we can just wait and see.

In addition to the sources for developers explaining that it was an explicit goal to make faction war a stepping stone to null sec I also responded to Soundwaves ?feigned? shock that players considered this null sec lite.






So not only are the mechanics bringing faction war much more in line with null sec play but the developers explicitly say that was the intent. Yet you continue to try to deny this.

Its no different than your claiming that station lockouts count as fulfilling the communities request that doing missions in stealth bombers be nerfed.

I am not misrepresenting anything. This is what you said Hans:



The exclamation marks were yours.

Your claim that the losing side will have to pvp to make money is a pretty odd claim to make. Currently the Amarr lp is worth about 1/8 the minmatar lp. So while the winning side can certainly make money from pvp I don't see how the losing side is going to do very well with that as their source of income.

If you mean the losing side will have to plex to make isk.

First we can still run missions from our various high sec agents.

Second it remains to be seen if this offensive plexing will really lead to more pvp. there is good reason to think that due to the lock out rule plexing will be even more of a pve activity than before. When we do plex we will need active reppers (becasue we can't dock and repair) and will likley need to gimp our ships with a cloak in the highs and always an mwd to avoid the inevitable gate camps. Both of these problems with how will need to fit our ships will make it less likely that plexing will be a pvp activity.

Fourth: you are forgetting the more numerous winning side and what a emphasis these changes place on missioning for them.

Fifth: the actual concern of missions being farmable by stealth bombers was not even addressed. If anythign the station lock out means you will need a ship that can get past gate camps since you can no longer dock. Accordinlgy stealth bombers just became even more desirable.

Sixth: No sensible person will try to earn a living from the methods offered to the losing side. The best option for isk is to join the winning side and farm those missions.

edit: never was good at counting

It may seem like that, but I'm not ignoring it. The bottom line is that the plexing is Faction Warfare. Its a unique mechanic for taking and holding territory that relies on small subcap fleets and not dreadnoughts blapping structures endlessly. Battles over plexes are considered pretty exciting by a lot of Faction Warfare pilots, and they were the basis for the PvP tournament at Fan Fest for this reason.

The Faction Warfare community's top request for 3 years has been "Give us a reason to go plex, its a good mechanism for getting fights, but only if people care enough to go there in the first place". There have been a few that want the plex system completely gutted, but most would agree that the mechanic itself isn't near as problematic as the lack of reason to engage in it in the first place.

Plexing may *seem* like a PvE activity, and is whenever its incredibly slow and there's little reason to engage the enemy inside one. When there's war targets that don't want you to take that plex, it becomes a PvP mechanic. Obviously there's work to do on the NPC's so that they don't discourage PvP, but in general plexing is what makes Faction Warfare unique from Red vs Blue, simple piracy, a static wardec, or any number of other types of PvP gameplay available elsewhere in EVE. (Inb4 station lockout = "gameplay" available elsewhere in EVE)

All that to say, when the community says for years "Give us a reason to care about doing this so we all do it and fight each other in the process again" and than all of a sudden we HAVE a reason to plex, the complaint that "why are you forcing us to plex" rings rather hollow.

Some will farm plexes for LP, or tags, or whatever, but that doesn't make plexing exclusively a PvE activity. The more motivation you give pilots to plex, the more you turn them into a PvP mechanic. There are a lot of us myself included who will be running a lot more plexes in the future, and very much want you to come PvP whenever we do. That's the point.

You can say that "all plex farmers will run from PvP" but these kind of speculative statements are functionally useless at this point in the development process, what is needed is real feedback based on activity that is actually occurring on the server - and right now that is a lot of PvP going on inside plexes, fighting over territory.

Hans
What you need to understand is that there is plexing for occupancy and plexing for pvp. When you plex with occupancy as your main goal you are better off running from fights. When you plex for pvp well you sacrifice at least some of your plexxing efficiency.

That is how it always has been (see anks post from way back about doing over 100 plexes in under a week with no pvp) and ccp really hasn't changed anything to make plexing itself more of a pvp activity. (although they have done things to increase pvp in general such as improving the lp per pvp kill pay out) They just added consequences to plexing which means more people are plexing in general. But its still most efficienly done in a pve fit running from combat.

Now people stopped doing that because it was boring and paid nothing so what is left in fw are mostly people who plex for pvp. So we are getting allot of fighting and players are saying "to hell with plex efficiency. Lets have 40 people sitting on a button in kamela instead of 40 people on 40 different buttons throughout the fw area because that way we will get more pvp." Which is and always has been my view. I like the pvp. But I at least am cognizant of the fact that if I really wanted to win the occupancy war it wouldn't be through pvp.

well the changes have been great if you're minmatar. Amarr down to 9 or 10 systems or something and there basically is no-one logging in to fight.

great changes!

i take argument that FW is (or always was) about plexing. That may be some people's interpretation of FW. For me and most of the guys that I fly with it was always about roaming PVP warfare the was a. not 0.0 alliance pos bashing and blob warfare b. allowed small corps to grow and prosper in a pvp environment without the burden of war deccs, alliances and try-before-you-buy recruitment c. an opportunity to introduce some role play into day to day activities (fight for a bigger cause).

none of this had or has anything to do with plexes apart from using them as fight magnets. it sure as %$^$ has nothing to do with plexing for sov like a grind-monkey.

the saddest thing about this is that ALL of the great PVP pilots that made Amarr FW what it was, have had their hearts cut out by this patch and that instead, FW has been replaced with mechanical and robotic plexing for sov and ship up, ship down blobbage.

this coupled with the oppressive new war decc fees that mean even corps like ours, who leave FW because it blows, are burdened with astronomical war decc fees just to take the fight to the enemy.

there is increasingly less and less skill and art about this game with every "feature packed" release.

the less people "talk up" bad patches and bad ideas, and point them out for what they are, the quicker CCP will one day, just one day, take on some feedback and incorporate it from people who are actually there. the funniest thing is, the only thing that probably stopped the cyno blocker was the fact that it would upset too many of the big guys out there.

Hans, you're losing credibility with every statement that you make about how awesome this patch is, and try to snuff out any criticism. You are supposed to represent all players, and were elected on the promise of representing everybody - not just the steam rolling machine. we sure as hell don't need you telling us how awesome CCP is, they like to tell us that themselves (yet cant even launch a balloon on time).

First day in FW (where I have actually the time to be online). I'm based out of a wormhole so I always have to look for the nearest FW war zone every day. As it happens, my exits today are very far away from my own Caldari/Gallente war zone but close to the Amarr/Minmatar war zones.

So why can I not see the Amarr/Minmatar systems in my FW tab? After all, Minmatar are war targets for me just as Gallente. There should be an option to view both wars, not only the one our own faction is directly participating.

Hans, what do you think about this:

Defensive plexing still doesn't net the pilots anything, but it replaces the lost LP that the plex would have taken from the system instead? So, offensive small plexes will take 5k from the bunker + 5k from space, but defensive will replenish the 5k to the bunker and v0v the pilots?

i plex in pvp fits. primary ships: slicer, retribution, pilgrim. I can use the same ships or other dedicated ships for solo pvp. Fleet pvp allows more fittings.

you can easily solo a major in a pilgrim. If you pay attention you can even do that in a retribution without a singly shot. We even did majors with a small slicer fleet... so as soon you have friends it is mostly irelevant what fitting/ship you have.

active/passive tank is ship dependent in my loadouts.

Is it bad that i can't reach all systems with my buffer fitted navy armageddon solo? Not at all. It would be stupid if i could. Docking rights allow strategical positioning and make things more interesting.

btw, killboards tell you only the ships you lose, not those you fly. When i undock in a slicer i know i will lose it this evening, do i fly only slicers? no.

docking rights is the best what could happen to FW