Warfare & Tactics

From the outside, they both seem to share similar key aspects like providing easily accessible solo and small gang PvP, and good fights in cheap ships.

What do people view as the relative pros/cons between joining Faction Warfare and joining Red v Blue?
Any anecdotal reports from someone who definitely preferred one over the other?

If you have zero pvp experience, maybe join rvb for few days to learn basics. Tho if you have already some experience, might as well join fw straight away. Theres been ALOT of new players joining after patch... If you do join, recommend checking out basics from google first, like: http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Factional_Warfare

Theres been constant issues with new players shooting own militia members because their overviews are not set up correctly. You basically need to have "in your militia" above "outlaw" in overview settings so you don't accidentally shoot friendly pirates.

On another character, I left the Amarr FW NPC corp to join RvB for a while. I imagined it'd be a week or two, and then back to FW, but it ended up being less than twelve hours (and bear in mind that I joined, moved some ships, went to sleep, and then woke up during this time).

RvB space is

1. in highsec;
2. heavily polluted with neutrals, blinding your dscan;
3. very, very small.

And RvB combat consisted of

1. arranged 1v1 against enemy pilots who don't fit points,
2. enormous blobs at stations and gates against solo/small groups of enemy players.
(I didn't have an opportunity to engage in 3. arranged 'fair' fleet fights or 4. lemming incursions into nullsec.)

What struck me most heavily about RvB v. FW is that RvB has a total lack of what you might call a 'ready-in-space' posture. Where you're not actively fighting, hunting, scouting, running from someone -- but you're in space, in a PvP ship or close to one, and doing something that you have a reason to do. The enemy can find you doing this and engage you; you can find the enemy behaving similarly and engage them.

In RvB, if you're not actively looking for arranged 1v1s or sitting in a blob on a gate, then the expectation is that you've moved yourself outside of RvB space, are no longer a valid target and therefore back in the safety of highsec, and are running L4 missions in a battleship or something.

So I went back to FW right away. Although Azual Skoll gave RvB a positive review, Kil2 (in one of the Bringing Solo Back podcast) said that your experience in RvB very quickly reaches a steady state - i.e., it becomes boring as hell. I have not had much PvP experience, and had less when I tried RvB, but I just can't see its appeal to anyone who has engaged in anything else. Seriously, I'd pick my total newbie experience of flying a coercer into the closest lowsec that I found on a map and warping to belts until I died over RvB.

So, a little bit about Factional Warfare: it covers four regions in just Amarr/Minmatar space, plexing gives you an excellent 'ready-in-space' posture that escalates easily and that readily leads to your flying and cooperating with others of your militia, you tend to live 'on the battlefield' (and although station lockout interferes with this, it does make friendly space feel very much like friendly space as you but not your enemies can immediately reship and repair).

Most of all, RvB teaches you that PVP is consensual and fair, and when you go someplace else you're in for a shock and it will be hard to adapt. So in that regard, I'd reccomend FW if you want to learn to PVP.

If however you are looking for a casual arcade spaceship shooter, then RvB will be a lot of fun.

One thing that struck me about RvB is how much hatred exists in the organisation.

They say that they always try to maintain an equelibrium between the two sides, with people being asked to switch to even it up to ensure "good fights"

In reality they are so full of low opinion of the opposite colour that 'good fights' is very rare except in the case when they get together to fight a common foe.

I feel this stems from their refusel to employ a common voice comms medium like teamspeak. If they were all on one teamspeak, then they would talk to each other get to know each other and really organise proper fights, but they are more interested in throwing insults at each other.

I still reccomend it for young players wanting to learn pvp, but any player with some experience will find FW has more substance and more importantly, it has real meaning to it.

No.

RvB.

Even though there are tons of noobs in RvB, FW still has more idiots.

RvB is access to lots of easy fights, but for a new player I would argue it does more harm than good regarding picking up bad habits and false expectations out of EVE battles. While I know many vets who have alts in RvB and enjoy the vacation from the rest of EVE it provides, every player i've ever met who started out in RvB and learned to PVP there has always had the most mind numbingly awful and derpy habits that really never get broken and just make you continually facepalm.

I didn't enjoy RvB. I joined it on an alt to basically just have lots of targets and pvp as I chose to. But the rules, expected etiquette and just general attitude turned me off. I've had a lot more fun in FW. If you're strictly looking to learn, FW is also better. I just happened to find it more fun as well.

EUNI doesn't really teach pvp. Anything you might learn by joining you can learn by just reading their wiki. For the newest of new, EUNI is a good place to start. If you're familiar with the basics of weapon types, damage types, and the general purpose of each ship class, skip it. Though EUNI is good for building in game relationships and getting a glimpse of alliance life from guest speakers and field trips.