Warfare & Tactics

Everybody is always being blobbed but no one blobs? You have no data to support your claims and the data that do exist suggest the opposite. All you have is a feeling that you are outnumbered - like everybody else. And how many SFIs do you really need to take out a few T1 fit thrashers?

What makes you think you need 5-1 advantage to keep 80% of space? War is not linear (and even if it was the correct numbers are 4-1). All I see is you trying to twist and create arguments that everything is fine and it should fix itself in time and if it doesn't it is because Minmatar is better than Amarr.

Enjoy your ego boost but don't try to argue that FW is not fundamentally broken and that you somehow have "earned" the position you have right now in a fair game. It is (has been since start) completely imbalanced in your favor and you are just taking advantage of that.

It is that simple.

Just so everyone's clear, I do NOT consider the forums to be the end-all source of feedback from the community. Forum consensus does NOT necessarily mean community consensus, I spend an enormous time reading all of your blogs, talking with Faction Warfare players in-game, via email, on various militia teamspeak servers, twitter (@hansshotfirst), and on Skype. (My Skype name, for those that want to hit me up 24/7 - is Hans.Jagerblitzen)

If I'm making the statement that the community at large is supporting an initiative, that its because that is the majority feedback I'm hearing from a variety of sources, not just the forums themselves. In this case, it has been quite clear that the majority of you have favored the idea of forcing players to shoot the rats to clear a plex. (not to be confused with the majority of you thinking Faction Warfare should be about PvE, however) There just isn't much debate over the fact that more of you would rather see the end of speed-farming of plexes by AFK non-combat frigs, even if it means the introduction of forced rat-shooting.

If you disagree with that, I'm simply asking players to speak up about it. Doesn't matter to me whether its on the forums, or via email, or on comms, or skype, or whatever. I just like having as clear a picture of the community's wishes as possible, and I can't incorporate feedback that people don't share. So in that sense, in the end it will be those that are vocal that make an impact. I simply can't make decisions if people keep their opinions to themselves.

You're absolutely right though Pinky, the community is much larger than the forums, and I will continue to stay in touch with all of you that wish to be part of this iteration process, regardless of how you grab my attention.

And you have no idea why players are so vocal about this do you? The truth is that FW is completely broken and the above suggestion was the easiest fix that we could think of that had the possibility to be implemented this summer. If you have a better idea that can make it quickly to TQ please go ahead and speak up!

The game is broken but there is a workaround for Amarr and it is to roll a Minmatar alt and farm Amarr plexes. Thus, to be able to support FW activity in Amarr we are supposed to help our enemy claim our own territory. Add to that the horde of carebear farmers drawn to Minmatar militia for easy plexing further helping Minmatar claim territory from Amarr. With these mechanisms in place it is impossible for Amarr to win the war or even make any reasonable ISK from our LP and FW as such becomes pointless. Yes, we can still use FW as an arena for PvP but we have to fund it with €€/GTC or grind ISK on an alt.

It is just sad that our CSM representative is so blind to this fact (or choose to ignore it). Maybe because the imbalance works differently for you?

I know exactly why the players are so vocal about this, which is why I've already been discussing it with CCP. Players brought this up as a band-aid until the major surgery could be done, and since the band-aid couldn't happen in time for June release, I'm just making sure everyone understands that they have the option of a more substantive fix. The goal here is to make plexing game play as interesting as possible since CCP is digging under the hood anyways, and not to just settle for one idea that was band-aid in response to another band-aid. It was not possible to implement this by summer time however, its a more complicated coding issue than everyone just assumes, and if everyone still wants it in the Winter Expansion (which is the earliest CCP has said they could implement this) than we could still do that.

I've spoken about this in other threads, it's a shame you're either not listening to me, or choosing to ignore the fact that I've already spoken to the developers about what it would take to make this happen.

I'm also absolutely sympathetic with the LP store situation, one of my biggest frustrations is that while we finally achieved a form of sustainable PvP in Faction Warfare, it's turning out to be sustainable for only one or two of the four factions. Just this weekend we recorded a round-table Podcast with leaders from all four militias, including Rina of Fweddit, and one of the popular ideas that has emerged is to flip the LP-store scaling so that prices in the store are fixed, but the payouts themselves end up scaling based on warzone control.

This would not only make the Amarrian LP much less worthless (prices would hold at pre-inferno levels), it would also put pressure on the Minmatar to defend their space and upgrade their systems, as we would be unable to "spike" the market. If you pushed us down into tier 4 or tier 3, it would hurt right away as we lost our mission payouts, rather than us ignoring it as we do right now until we coordinate a market drop and reap the full benefits all at once. Carebears couldn't just run missions all day and cash out at tier 5 no matter what the warzone did, if we were losing plexes, their mission payouts would drop by half each tier, forcing them to get involved in the war or to find other pastures to farm. I think its a fantastic idea,(though there's a few wrinkles to iron out with it) and I hope others take interest in it as well.

Actually, the last time you took the time to write me a detailed email (and were civil about it), I took the information straight to CCP and they were able to use it to fix the plex bug you've been trying to crush for years. I don't really care if you believe that I'm doing my job, it'll happen either way but its a lot easier whenever you curb the acid comments and actually discuss the issue itself.

So let's take this "Valsploit". Are you referring to the fact that standings can affect whether the rats shoot you, allowing a member with high standings to avoid rat aggro even from enemy NPC's? Or is this something different..... Whichever issue you are referring to, I need information more than just "turning npcs to fire on friendly militia" to do anything about it.

And on second thought, I don't even care if you choose to be a jerk about it or not. I'm used it at this point. Go ahead and call me names, make it real nasty email if you like, just make sure it has all the details about this "Valsploit" and how to recreate it I'll get to work on it right away. If its straightforward enough, maybe we can get it into the next release.

It's just that. Causing NPCs to fire on friendly militia members. Standings has nothing to do with it. The trick was invented by Val Erian and was repeatedly being used by gallente militia, Chatgris from Qcats especially. These days it's mainly used by minmatar farming alts (who are mostly gallente farming alts, go figure).

I sent evemail detailing all the sorry details how to recreate it and even history of "Nennamaila incident" and years of hatred and contempt which originated from it.

Because lets face it, having your 20 man gangs ass kicked by two caracals (7 kills, 0 losses) and then claiming victory after last minute "turn rats on defender" is something no respectable person would do but these are gallentes like Ammon Dei we are talking about so it's not a real surprise.

I absolutely agree, the reason this hasn't been done so far is that:

A.) the feature is barely a month old, and its hard to write about the big fixes needed when the feature is still in its infancy and the warzone is changing every day, and unexpected results continue to pop up as this plays itself out. None of us (that want to be considered fair and objective about this) could have a strong idea of what was working and what wasn't until SOME degree of time had been spent with the new mechanics, you can't just decide on week 2 that the feature blows and start changing up stuff that could break the system even more that it already it. I think we're at the point now where things are much more clear, and it is now the appropriate time to be drawing on the data presented and building consensus on how to improve things.

B) I've been knee deep in preparing the CSM minutes - that is prioirty #1. As long as CCP is on vacation, there isn't much for me to communicate with them right now, so its all about getting the minutes into your hand as quick as possible.

C) Without the minutes being released, I'm hesitant to just openly talk about everything covered at the summit, till the final approval has gone through. 99% of it will probably stay in the minutes anyways, but I'm being careful because, well, I don't want to lose my job and leave you all hanging with no support

I should have time this week to being outlining a blog post updating all my work to date - where the feature is at, what needs to be fixed, etc. But it's going to be primarily about what I'm hearing from YOU guys, just like it was last fall, not a list of Han's favorite FW ideas. Thats just never been how Ive rolled.