Assembly Hall

FW plexing can be the best way to get small scale pvp in the game. It can I believe be the absolute best thing this game has to offer.

1) Let players know when occupancy plexes are entered! So they know where to find pvp and plexes can't be won by hiding from pvp.

This could easilly be done by 2 dedicated channels. One for the Gallente Caldari front the other for the Minmatar Amarr front. This channel would just say "cearain minor auga destroyer" if I entered a minor plex in auga in a destroyer. It would be nice if players could then "set destination" for auga right from the message. No players would be able to post in these channels to screw them up.

2) Remove the npcs from plexes. PVE and pvp don't mix well, I won't go through all the reasons for this now, but its true. (If this is too much for for CCP or players i would be fine if the rats spawned as described in post 14 below.) The idea is npcs should not be detering pvp like they do now.


Here is the old thread that goes into this more in depth.
http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1329906

These changes would make FW the best place for small scale and solo pvp in the whole game. In doing so it would give eve something it sorely lacks.

You think it is small scale when all runs to plex to pvp after announcement.

And how do you prevent me and Damar for swarming alts to open lot of plexes around FW area giving 'false' alarms?

And it still does not remove basic problem. If there is plexing group of people who kick your ass everytime you meet them, you stop to care about plexing because it does not matter anything.

FW has lot of features that makes it good, but ccp balancing, couple bugs, and fact that it does not matter anything makes it unplayable as warfare on long term.

I agree with what you say. There should be some sort of reward for doing plexes.

However, nothing in a game "matters" except the game itself. What does winning at amateur baseball or chess matter? Yet people enjoy those games.

The thing is, in order to be good, a game needs to be fun and perhaps even require skills that people for whatever reason value. (athleticism, toughness, intelligence whatever)

The main problem with occupancy plexxing is currently the most effective way to run plexes is with pve alts. This tends to make people not value being good at running fw plexes.

If being good at running plexes was a better indicator of pvp skill then I think this goal of winning faction war would be more valued and, therefore sought after. People would want to win faction war if winning faction war was an indicator of pvp skill.

People who just say they want winning faction war to somehow give them isk or something miss the big picture. Isk can only be used in this game. If you have nothing to use the isk for, in game then there is no point in getting it. If you have something worth doing in the game like winning Faction war then you have a point to get isk. People who think the reason to win faction war is to get isk are mostly putting the cart before the horse.

People often miss this key point so I'll give an example:

Consider lotteries. Lotteries are stupid games. Winning requires no skill anyone values, and looking up numbers, in and of itself, is not fun. If the lottery only paid “game money” that could be used to buy more lottery tickets and never paid money that could be used for any other purpose no one(or very few) would play the lottery. The only reason people play the lottery is to win real money – not because it is fun or demonstrates any sort of skill that is valued in the community.

Well the same principals apply to faction war and EVE generally. If the only thing you get is isk that can be used in game but the game itself involves no skills the community values and is not much fun…I think you can see where this is going.

Giving people the ability to play a bad game longer will not make it a good game. CCP needs to change the bad game mechanics of fw occupancy to make it fun and involve skills people in this community value. If they just say “here is a bunch of isk for doing this thing we know is boring and meritless” they are not improving eve.

They need to figure out how to make fw plexxing fun and “winning fw” be something players think demonstrates meritorious skills. I think this proposal is a good way to accomplish that.

Alerting the other militia everytime a plex is being ran doesn't fix some of the core issues that makes plexing unappealing. Stabbed alts will still warp off and run a plex elsewhere and you can still chase them (it's not hard to find where certain people are plexing it's not rocket science). This mechanic will not induce more small scale pvp, infact it will diminish it.

We have to take into account population discrepencies that may occur over the course of time on daily basis and even the longterm. For instance, FW usually has times during the day where one side has a stronger presence than the other and it shifts from one side to the other as people log on/off, when the faction thats outnumbered is plexing, the other side should have to do some legwork to find them because, well they have the advantage and the side that's outnumbered has the chance to capture the plex before the full fury of the blob descends upon them (or at least they get to kill a few first responders before being forced out). When one side is outnumbered (in some instances, severely) they need to attack where the enemy isn't prepared. If the enemy is too lazy to hunt you down that their problem. It forces people to spread out because you have to be out there scouting, looking for the enemy. Listing where the enemy is, and what they're in with ZERO effort on behalf of a player is just a broken mechanic. I can envision it now, (assuming occupancy was the focus of FW) blobs sitting in station waiting for a notification of who, what, and where the enemy is and ships SPECIFICALLY to counter the enemy fleet/shiptype. "Oh they're in cynabals? Let's break out the TD arbys" comes to mind. This change would make plexing even more gay than it is now. Doing the legwork (ie, having pilots out there scouting systems to see who is plexing and where), actually helps a lot with creating small gang scenarios for PvP).

The whole NPC situation is tricky. Completely removing NPCs will give rise to just everyone and their mother making several trial (or non trial) accounts with recycleable, untrained, stabbed plexing alts in cheap little frigs. NPCs serve some purpose in this fashion. I believe that EWAR should be completely removed from all NPCs in FW plexes (or at the very least, have the number of EWAR NPCs severely reduced in a plex). Another Issue at least with major plexes is NPCs take too long to die if you're solo/in a small gang. I think the EHP of the NPC battleships/Elite EWAR boats should be reduced, making them easier to dispatch with a BC. A full spawn (at least in terms of missiles) is devastating and the DPS should be lowered (but increase explosion velocity to help with smaller targets, ie, kill afk speed tankers), maybe even nerf npc dps across the board some. The overall function of the NPCs should be to force players to at least bring an appropiately sized ship and to eliminate the "untrained alts" so people just can't afk cap plexes with them. There's a lot of tweaking to be done with the NPCs but I think this is a step in the right direction.

Here is last couple issues with FW plexing:

The first and most obvious one is there is no incentive to beyond initial standings increases. Occupancy isn't meaningful. It should be. I'm not going to divulge into this right now I'm just going to point it out.

Lastly, there's the nothing to do syndrome. After downtime most plexes are captured and there is very little left to do in some areas, which leads players having nothing to do for the rest of the day. (There is "shifting" a practice that involves plexing in other systems within the same region to get seemingly random respawns within the region. It's a lot of work and really boring, but it's the only way to hold your systems if you don't have the European timezone dominant presence. It's not even possible to hold occupancy in systems where the opposing faction holds sovreignty unless you have EU timezone dominance, as AFAIK, you cannot get respawns with shifting in these systems). When there are no plexes to take, people obviously aren't going to participate in this activity because they just can't. The "casual" nature of FW should allow people to log in and find something to do within a reasonably short amount of time, NOT wait one to two (or more) hours for a random respawn (that resulted from shifting) that may or may not occur. (Note: Shifting becomes less and less valid of a tactic the smaller the region is).

The obvious solution is to have periodic spawning of plexes at regular intervals (set a cap on the maximum amount of plexes in any given system though) so players actually have the opportunity to participate in this activity if they aren't on after downtime. An alternate method is to have there always be a plex spawned within a system/a certain number of plexes within a constellation (shifting on a smaller scale if its constellation), but this would obviously need to increase the number of plexes needed to be captured before a bunker becomes vulnerable.

Who do you think will become disillusioned/tire first, the responding PvP'er or the plexing alt?

What you say may well be how it is for a few weeks after such a change, but people will very quickly stop responding to reports of frigs since "they always run" -> frig plexing moves from being the norm to being 'why use anything else .. ever?'. Essentially decoupling plexing from PvP entirely thus exacerbating the problem you are trying to solve.
Changes to FW need to be extensive and all-inclusive for it to have any impact on the behaviour we can observe today. Plex reporting might be part of it but will not be what moves FW in the PvP direction (ex. rewards/carrots for 'staying the course' would have a significantly better effect).

Love your optimism, but we play to be entertained and hunting ****-fit frigs simply does not satisfy that need .. it is barely satisfied by hunting the mission bombers, but at least the payout from those can be quite high (best one yet was a 500M+ hound .. bling FTW!).

While you are sitting on that timer he is on his .. you may run the timer you just "won" but by the time you arrive at his new site he is ready to move .. I have been playing the 'seconds left on timer' too damn long to buy into that illusion.

And now you also want to reset timers every time it is taken over by the other side as well?

Your lack of understanding of the mental strain involved in "serious" plexing is shining through, you will never be able to sell that idea to any of the organized plexing crews.
One of the major parts of being able to hold the line against superior numbers (read: blobbers), is that every minute spent on a timer has to be matched by opponent .. cannot begin to count the number of times where extra seconds/minutes acquired by running a timer you know the enemy will take over Soon™ has been enough to gather the extra 2-3 hulls to beat them back.

Also, just what do you expect to give to the PvP pilot to encourage him to sit on his ass for 10-20 minutes at a time? Whenever some major plexing push is being planned we spend hours upon hours convincing the combat centric population that it is in their interest to assist (pretty sure this goes for plexers in all militias).
Orbiting a button has never been fun, so unless you introduce some golden carrot (which will be abused to hell and back) there is just no way to make people twiddle their thumbs for the amount of time that we are talking when they could be bonking heads at their usual gates/stations.

On timer mechanics: One of my former corp mates suggested that defensive plexes run themselves once started and only offensive plexes require someone on timer.
Puts the pressure on the attacking party who quite literally has to be there and thus expose themselves to response, effectively solves your problems in a much smoother fashion (provided spawn mechs. are not post-DT biased) without the use of plex-spam channels and what not.

In short: The idea will massively favour whomever has the most people/alts available and will not improve on either fight frequency or quality. "Numbers > All" paradigm has been tried and it has failed so miserably that even null is starting to ask for change.

PS: This is the last bump you get

Unlike now when the other militia doesn't even know you are running a plex so you end up sitting on your ass for 10-20 minutes the new system will notify the enemy so you will have to fight other players to capture the plex.

The main reason people like ank were able to capture hundreds of plexes with no pvp was becasue the other militia didn't even know she was there. In fact it was in that thread where she posted she made the highest rank in Amarr in under a week without a single pvp kill that someone proposed the idea that the militias should be notified. Its not my idea at all but it is an obvious solution to the problem.

Again you are failing to realize that plexing now – which often does involve orbiting a button because no one even knows your threre – will no longer be the norm. Once you attack that complex and your presence is announced to the entire enemy militia you will have more to do than orbit a button.

Moreover I am not saying these are the only things that should be done for fw. Yes people should get some sort of gain for capturing plexes. That is important as well. That is more or less a seperate issue.





I think all ideas should be considered. But won’t this particular proposal just lead to alts starting a bunch of defensive timers and leaving? I don’t see how it will yield any more pvp.


Having more numbers will always be an advantage all else being equal. We have to accept that. But this proposal does not help those with more numbers than the current system does. Plus there are other things ccp can do to help sides that are severely outnumbered.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=109489#post109489

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=105972#post105972

Go bump that thread if you don’t want to bump this one.

Hirana knows whats up


Cearen you need to read the last part of my post earlier, the "nothing to do" syndrome and the fact theres no incentive to hold occupancy. You seem to think that "not knowing where the enemy is" is the core issue behind the lack of "small scale" pvp in regards to FW. It's a really, really bad idea to have alerting mechanics in place and will just lead to blobbing, I already went into why its a bad idea. You don't seem to grasp the concept that the people who run alts aren't really after PvP. They're role players, they want systems and nothing more, they plex 16 hours a day without so much as a fight somedays.

Regarding your discussion between hirana and yourself about alts. Here's an example why running with alts still will work under a notification system:

Alt begins running a major plex, you get the notification and begin heading that way to respond, meanwhile the alt has been running the timer for 10 minutes before the time you arrive, you force alt out, and have to spend 30 minutes to close the plex, meanwhile alt opens another major elsewhere and has to spend only 20 minutes closing it compared to the 30 you have to spend to close the one from before. You have the option to chase said alt (hardcore plexers will run with multiple alts as well as a main) who will have stabs fitted and warp away, so someone "looking for pvp" doesn't get any, under the current system or the one you're proposing. Your other option is that you sit there and capture the plex they were running at first, theyll still get the other one, but at least you've removed a potential plex from threat of being captured, but then you've sat there, bored for thirty minutes, with no pew pew. It's a lose-lose for anyone looking after pew when it comes to alts.

This is why there should be an incentive for having occupancy (a meaningful reward at the end of a long term push to capture a system), it doesn't neccesarily have to be monetary but there needs to be an incentive beyond a little line at the top left corner of the screen. Players should say "I want to capture that system", right now its "what the **** would i do that for?". Again i'll reiterate, often times when a system becomes a focus there isn't anything to fight for for hours at a time, the "nothing to do syndrome" kicks in. People want to attack/defend the system but they spend countless hours waiting, bored, waiting for a plex to spawn. These issues need addressing more than "Oh i don't want to use one of the 20 locator agents within 5 jumps of me, there should be an automatic system telling me where to blob someone".

No doubt I agree with what you say. My second post in this thread was intended to address this. That is the new spawns of plexes shouldn't just happen after downtime or through shifting.

But again there are other ways to solve this problem. They could make the system of how occupancy is taken more dynamic than it is now. Systems could go in and out of being "contested" throughout the day. So there are several things ccp could do.

In short I totally agree that this will need to be addressed. Don't think that the op in this thread was intended as the only changes to fw plexxing. They are just improvements that would make plexing more pvp instead of pve.

They should also tweak how the timers work to encourage more pvp.

For example in a minor plex:
If you start a minor plex you need to run it for 10 minutes

If you kick an enemy out of a minor plex or enter a plex they started you need to run it for 8 minutes

If you are kicked out of a plex for more than 90 seconds the timer restarts.

These are just some ideas. They may not be the best. The intent is to discourage alt plexing and warping out and encourage people to stay and fight for plexes.