Assembly Hall

First off I want to say that I was against the station lock outs and the new plexing system because I thought it would stagnate the battlefront and turn FW into a bigger farm-fest than it was with just missions. In some regard it has, as I've run across many plex farmers that run at first sign of combat, even still the plex farmers are now at the very least helping the war effort.

At this point I think CCP should hold off on any major changes for at least 6 months and see where things stand as it progresses a bit further because we are seeing a big increase in fighting & activity. Perhaps a wait and see approach may be best option for the short term.

I do however want to share a few Ideas/Proposals on what I think could fine tune the current system.



System Upgrades, Plex Tax & Defensive Plexing Rewards


Right now system upgrades are far too hard to keep and CCP needs to remember that FW has Militias that are made up of many random individuals, corps & now alliances, however there is no ability or system that allows anyone to have authority over them. Aside from making Space Hitlers with power to control each Militia (which I'm against) CCP should just work this into the System Upgrades game mechanics and understand it's just impossible for us to get everyone to work together, much less spend their LP's willingly on system upgrades.

I would like to suggest adding a Plexing Tax, that automatically takes a small percentage of the LP's rewarded for offensive plexing and puts that LP into a random system's control bunker for upgrading it. Optional set up could take the LP's and automatically put them into the system with the lowest upgrade level.

Defending Plexes should also have some sort of reward but perhaps not a direct LP to pilot reward. Right now everyone is just hitting offensive plexes, because they are the only ones that pay and it's leaves the defense grinding of plexes to those few hardcore's that take the hit for the team.

These guys defending should get some reward or they will burn out. At the very least know that what they are doing is helping their Militia, more than just de-contesting a system so some farmer can go contest it again. My suggestion is to reward a small amount of LP to defense perhaps 50% of that given to offensive but then place the other 50% toward upgrading that system's control bunker.

There should be a built in cap, that limits the amount the Plexing Tax can upgrade each system to stop each Militia from having level 4's & V and extremely cheap ships in the LP store.. I would suggest capping the upgrades at level 2 or 3 from taxes and in order to move to level 4 or 5 should require investment by the players using their LP's.



Bugs & Abuse of Bad Game Mechanics

There are various plexing bugs that can be deliberately recreated in order to cause plexes to not spawn. These bugs HAVE to be fixed. end of story. I know they have been reported to CCP but you must act on them because it creates a unfair playing field for those of us that don't stoop down to that level.

I'm not a expert on plexing, but I know there is 1 bug that is triggered by combat on the plex button and I believe there is also a way to stop the spawning by staying slightly off grid and or cloaking. The combat bug must be fixed & the others ruled an exploit.

Once a plex has been completed, the fight for that plex should be considered over and it should ALWAYS despawn allowing a new one to spawn. Any sort of triggering to stop this basic "intended" game mechanic, should be petition-able and ruled a exploit resulting in a ban for those caught abusing the bugs.



I have other thoughts & ideas, but this is already getting to long so I will leave it at these for now.

The problem is that no reward for defensive plexing was ccp's way to ensure that the winning side cannot totally win. Maybe something like you only get 50% of the ops for defending your factions original space but no LP for defending conquered space. Either way they will have to add something else to make sure FW remains a fairly even fight as long as both sides are trying.

The lack of lp for defensive plexing is basically the only thing that might actually balance this system and allow a war that starts as lopsided as the minmatar amarr war to actually turn around. (short of some large alliance joining)

With the 16x multiplier the winning sides lp is going to be worth much more than losing sides. If defensive plexing were paid even 25% what offensive plexing paid then the defensive plexing would probably in effect pay more than offensive.