Warfare & Tactics

Geography is not really an issue. The goon boost was not the issue.

The main problem is that it is a pve/farm mechanic. Where you win by hiding from the enemy while you do plexes. This is 90% of the problem.

Secondary problems that take up the other 10% of the problem were:

1) The imbalance in rats especially before the ewar removal. Minmatar was always the race with the easiest rats for missions and plexes. This helped them get more players and helped the plex directly. amarr was fw on hard mode Minmatar was easy mode. Don't believe just trying each sides missions (the main source of fw income before inferno) solo in a stealth bomber. They had a huge lead going into inferno. This was in part due to the extreme rat imbalance. Do you want to make easy isk doing missions or do you want it to be hard? If you wanted it easy then you joined minmatar and many people did. They would either leave amarr for minmatar or go over to caldari. Amarr has always been the the miltiia with the fewest numbers and its no mystery why.

2) It was also just more or less arbitrary luck. There were probably about 10 players total who were really plexing for the year before inferno was announced because it was meant nothing. A single minmatar player had more vp than any minmatar corp or alliance going into inferno. No one really cared about it. The product of a system no one cares about is random.

3) In combination with the above Amarr took the biggest hit it ever took, due to the station lock outs. Basically vets had to spend all of our time leading up to inferno moving our stuff out of the warzone. Inferno brought on a change that meant it took 5xs as much plexing to flip a system. So this lead up time was important. Most of the fw vets like myself had billions in assets thoughout the metro and we had to spend what ever eve time we had moving it. In combination with 1 and 2 the lockouts was the biggest difficulty the amarr ever had to deal with.

Once everyone saw Minmatar could hit tier 5 well everyone started getting alts to run the plexes. The sheer volume of alts is not something amarr can touch.

This is ******* stupid. You know, at one point i was one of 4 gallente pilots who were considering upgrading our entire battlefield to level 5's with a portion of our own LP to hit tier 3 (a similar amount of LP that matar need to hit tier 5).
Upgrading to the maximum available tier requires very few LP in the grand scheme of things, so yes, goon input was negligible. Minmatar would have happily and easily upgraded those systems on a whim had they wanted to.

Goons still had tons of LP left over from their exploit that they slowly got rid of. If it is so easy to do, then why did it take 13 hours to hit your last T5? You should hit T5 pretty easy this time however since it's been weeks since your last push but we'll see how easy it is after that

The problem is was that there was always tons of interlinking factors that you can't really simplify into a single issue. For example, Metro's geography is terrible, leading to to multiple issues being that historically most fighting has taken place in Amarr/Minmatar so any reason to base out of there would purely end up in PVE with little PVP in addition to it being extremely easily defensible and cut off from the warzone with multiple dead end pipes.

The problem is, prior to Inferno, many things in FW that had an impact on the ability to push warzone control post-Inferno were never really destruction tested in any meaningful way since no one cared. I would argue that there are probably certain situations that could end up be potentially morale crushing for the Minmatar in the same way that the Amarr are facing now, but whether or not we'll ever experience those to identify them as being an issue is something to be seen.

People need to get over themselves and focus on the future rather than focus on the past and current state of things. The Minmatar need to realize that among the Amarr's complaints there are many valid points and the Amarr need to get over the fact that the Minmatar put themselves in a great position pre-Inferno that they've done an excellent job of maintaining.

We've got little time left before the Winter expansion hits, which will probably be our last iteration regarding FW mechanics. I think we have enough historical data and have spent enough time discussion whats wrong. Its time to move the conversation onto how to fix things.

"My flanks are turned; my center is crushed. The conditions are perfect. I shall attack."

- General Foch at the Battle of the Marne

The fleet that performed the heavy lifting of offensive plexing Kour and Kam varied between 20 and 55 for the 12+ hours each day it was going. At this time we could have been forced out, or combated at any time. But for almost the entirety of the weekend we were unopposed, and were able to create a large time zone coverage of the 'front'. I assure you we were not gunless AFK plexing alts that 'took' your stations.

I understand some of you don't like orbiting buttons. I don't blame you, its not particularity satisfying. But I think some/many of the Amarrian side forgot one simple thing. For a long time, even before their was a LP reward for doing so, many minmatar plexed and desired to 'capture' systems. Those guys never left minmatar militia. I understand Amarr have had or still has some competent PvP'ers (Maud taught me to make a BM RIGHT on top of auga 3rd and bunches of insta-undock BMs) that use the FW wardec as a means to PvP with, not as a basis or reason to fight other players.

The issue came when the 'sov' that really had no impact before, started having an impact. Objectives few cared about before, started to matter. If you agree with the changes, does not matter. Both sides were subject to the same restrictions. The end result came about because minmatar kept caring about the 'sov', and only received more support once it actually mattered.


When you subject yourself to a game mechanic where their are consequences to not 'playing the objective', you either play to the new objective, or you go find a new mechanic to play with. You can downplay it, ignore it, or belittle those that play to it, all you want. In the end, it will have its consequences.


The ending bellows came when Amarrians proudly declared how they were still winning because they had decided to enumerate themselves with the number of 'gunless plex alts' that they so vehemently blamed for their initial downturn. Hastening their own 'defeat' and setting the Minmatar 'victory' on the backs of the very alts they endorsed and created. Still others decided to take the 'high' ground of belittling those that played the game mechanic, or did that and meta-gamed it.


I have made perhaps 300mil isk prior to the changes from FW. Since I've made perhaps about 700mil. But I've made billions from non-FW sources prior. So I have no pity for "I have no isk faucet, how can i beat you!" excuses. The only excuse I can see is perhaps the FW map being favorable for minmatar, but I never saw a "300" situation at Eszure/Hof. Only fleets that wanted the 'good ol days' of PvP for PvP's sake after changes made objective PvP the new game. PvP for PvP's sake is fine. But if the mechanic changes, you should as well.


The Amarirans defeated themselves.

No no, I'm pretty sure Lost Obsession and TMFED undock all the time.

Well, no one is forcing them to fleet with others and fight for objectives, but I'm sure they were at a pos somewhere.

What difference does holding these 2 or 3 systems make? The entire war front of the 67 other systems was going down in flames like dry grass due to farming alts. It's silly to defend this mechanic where alts hide in systems and run plex timers when no wartargets are around.



If you consider 10 players "many" ok. One player had more vp than any of your minmatar corporations. Plexing was always done most efficiently with armies of alts that avoided pvp. This has been why fw is broken since the beginning and its still why its broken. CCP missed the main problem completely with inferno.

"It took less than a week to achieve the maximum faction warfare rank (Divine Commodore), ….111 faction warfare complexes were captured … I did not kill anyone in the process..” Ankhesentapemkah Posted - 2008.06.18 02:29:00

That would be part of the 'map' problem would it not?

Yes Amarr did have some solid plexers. But they left for w/e reason. I play in USTZ. I never particularly 'felt' like we outnumbered anyone. But what I 'feel' does not make it true or false i suppose. The 'alts' did not spring into being the weeks prior to the change went live. It was a concentrated effort to get a 'head start' by the minmatar miltia under the old system of plex spawning.

Prior to the changes their was FA to do already. If we didn't have a counter to your gang, (or your to ours) we/you either ignored it or went around it. Because their was nothing worth fighting over (fighting to keep docking rights has provided some awesome fights), if I didn't like my odds, I re-shiped (GG reshipping wars) or went elsewhere. And we can always blot out the sun i CVA. Because I'm here for 'lol RP' reason not just for GF's. You make your own content.

I agree something needs to be done. I think something needs to be done to drive gunless alts plexing solo an afk out of the warzone. It dilutes the rewards, dilutes the excitement, and bring the wrong people into FW. As to how to fix it, CCP can't MAKE people desire to orbit buttons to defend their space. So lets start there.