Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Two birds (they can be Booby's if you want) with one stone:

Make the individual system and/or constellation worth protecting by using both carrot and stick.

Possible carrots (make it constellation based so that if a single system is lost the whole she-bang is in turmoil.
- Free repairs.
- Enemy denied docking.
- Awesome rat spawns/Exploration spawns.
- Super charged industry.
- Plexes taking longer to complete for enemy depending on upgrade level.
- Etc.

Possible sticks:
- Plexes taking less and less time for enemy to capture the deeper into contested a system drops. Wait too long and you'll never save it.
- Enemy can dock!!!!! Oh Noes!!!!
- Services start closing up shop as the enemy nears (contested status). NB: Hurts both sides until matter is settled (ie. Da Flip) .... would personally love to see this in a system like Amamake
- Repairs becoming more and more expensive as the enemy nears (Fitting/Repair are the only services never to close, assumed to be part of the dock/hangar area).
- Etc.

That is the non-escalating-LP-faucet way of solving both the incentive to D.Plex and the willingness to engage hostile plexers.

Will require the entire system be redone from scratch though, so I bet we'll see the faucet opened wide for defensive work as well thus making the last 40-50 people (not counting the temporary alliances only there to farm) actually interested in PvP leave in disgust as so many before them.

But if rumour-mill is correct, then Winter will be the last "major" FW iteration for the time being so guess the cheap and dirty way is to just give LP for everything; consequences, fun and gameplay be damned

Nice upgrade ideas , though now we're getting a bit off topic and there's a whole nother thread for that stuff. Doesnt *really* matter though, CCP and I are monitoring both.

Ok I do not believe militias actually want to give systems to the enemy. If they do they do not want it to be widespread. There has been absolutely no evidence of this except on a very small scale. If they give their systems away they will not be able to hit tier 5. So while they may not mind if up to 10-15% of systems go to the enemy they generally don’t want to lose systems.

I do not think that is a substantial problem. If you think I am wrong on this let me know. Otherwise let’s assume that A) people like to cash out at tier 5 and further that B) they realize that in order to do that they need to hold the vast majority of systems. Most eve players will therefore see why it is in their interest to hold onto the vast majority of systems.

Right now there are 2 ways to hold onto your space in fw.

1) You can fight off people who try to capture an offensive plex before they capture it (always a pvp way)

or

2) You can run a defensive plex. (most often a pve method)

To the extent you reward the second way you are also effectively discouraging the first method of achieving their goal. The reverse is also true. To the extent the second method is undesirable the first option becomes the more common method.

This is why making defensive plexing undesirable is a good thing! It should be undesirable to defensive plex because it becomes your only option to keep your systems (and therefore tier benefits) if you do not fight people when they offensively plex your system.

If you want to make the occupancy plexing more of a pvp activity you should make the mostly pve options undesirable. If anything you should make it so that a player who runs a defensive plex must actually pay lp if they want that work to count to decontest the system. That is their tax for not defending their system in a pvp method. That will encourage people to choose the pvp method of defending systems.

There seems to be this assumption that every activity in eve should be rewarded and encouraged. I say reward the activities that make fw pvp, not the ones like defensive plexing which make it pve.



The above is pure theory that is no longer seen in practice. This may have happened earlier when amarr was gullible enough to immediately flip systems back to minmatar but now that no longer is the case. Minmatar was not just letting amarr get to tier 4. They were to some extent trying to fight in the plexes to prevent it. Kudos to qcats, em, and the minmatar in general.


I am all for giving incentives to encourage people to fight in plexes. However if you understand what I said above then it should be pretty clear that giving more rewards for them to wait till the enemy leaves and then open a defensive plex is not the answer.

If anything the opposite may be the answer. Make so that if you defensive plex a system it will not effect the level the system is contested unless the defensive plexer pays some lp. That way even more of the effort for keeping a system will be directed fighting in plexes instead of just running your own after the enemy leaves. We already have enough of that.

I can sit in busy minmatar systems running systems without anyone coming in. Then I come back the next day and someone dplexed it down again. I don’t know if they got some pvp in that plex but I know I don’t get any from that system.

It's also a leading question, much like "Hans, why do you want to kill all of lowsec PvP? Is that why you didn't cause a scene at the summit over Greyscale's proposed gate gun changes?" It contains a false premise, and is suggestive of the answer.

For the sake of clarity, I'll take the bait this once, but since this is a thread about NPC's lets try to stick to that discussion and move this elsewhere if it has to continue.



There is a 3rd option here that is taking place, its not like these are the only two scenarios. The third option is to just let the enemy take the system, neither defensive plexing nor PvPing, and purely offensively plexing in the same system once its been flipped. You already pointed out that this "rollover" is only happening maybe 10-15% of the time - but that is well within what the winning militia can afford to lose and still maintain tier 5.

If the winning militia can lose 10-15% of the systems at any given moment, and still cash out at tier 5 100% of the time, than those 10-15% of systems being flipped for profit end up being the de facto strategy for all systems, its justs that the dominant militia is going to keep a watchful eye to see that this practice is contained as much as possible. Whether you give up your system to farm it back (knowing full well that the temporary loss wont affect your WZC), or whether you farm your own space, its essentially the same practice - using the fact that you know you can flip a system with your available manpower to farm it, without having to move.

The root of this problem isn't in the reward for individual plexes, its in the WZC tiers - the fact that it is price that is modulated and not payouts is directly responsible for this controlled flipping of systems because all anyone really cares about right now is spiking the market periodically, not actually maintaining themselves at a given tier for the sake of keeping the bonus income flowing at all times. This lack of real-time reward is precisely why you see opposing militias live at tier 1 constantly - nothing motivates them to actually intercept the enemy from bleeding them down everyday (providing the pew you and I are both after) the only motivation comes when your magical number of systems is threatened, and even than its easier to let one system fall if another is easier to take unopposed instead.

All mechanics discussion aside, the fact remains that the Amarr lost their space before rewards were implemented, and began to take it all back once they increased their numbers, cooperation, and concentrated their timezone presence - with groups like Fweddit and Nulli playing a large part in this. One came for PvP, the other for isk (so lets shelve the argument over what actually motivates people to enlist for the underdog for another day) but both were crucial in helping the Amarr begin to take back space - not because CCP suddenly switched off defensive plex payouts post-inferno. What motivates a faction to take back space isn't the one-sided payouts, its having the active manpower to begin with.



I understand what you're trying to say - lets reward offensive plexing because it fosters PvP (another false premise - this guide explains why PvP actually impedes offensive plexing efforts and is a waste of time) and not reward defensive because its merely PvE.

But the truth is that neither of these plexing styles are a PvP activity, and that's where we should be changing the status quo. All Faction Warfare changes have to be implemented in tandem - this means changing the nature of plexing itself as well as the reward system. Since we're working on the plex content too, there's no reason to base future recommendations regarding the payout system on a current model of plexing that we're trying to transform anyways.

Hans anyone who followed what happens knows that no lp for defensive plexing was the key to our getting to tier four. To the extent you start rewarding defensive lp you erode that sole balancing factor. In practice this will just mean an even worse situation where everyone joins the winning side. Its already pretty bad.





Contained in the other 80-90% of plexes! Thats allot of plexes you are trying to hold. And no you can’t hold a system by letting an enemy take a system. That’s not holding a system. Your whole premise is based on the notion that flipping your own systems is smart. But this strategy is foolish here. It has never worked well yet and even if it we do start to see that strategy it is easily countered. Amarr could just keep plexing the least contested non home system. Then which system will you flip?

No you don’t understand. I am challenging your premise that miltias “don’t want those systems anyway.” Its false despite what susan says. And yes militias do want to hold onto systems because that allows them to hit tier 5. Even though they can lose up to 20% of their systems that does not mean they want to lose those systems.

Once you accept that militias really do want to hold systems there are only 2 ways to do it. Fight offensive plexers or defensive plex. Offensive plexing is mostly pvp I agree with that poster. But when you fight offensive plexers its always pvp. The problem is there is another way to hold a system other than that way which is always pvp. You can let the person capture the plex and then defensive plex after they leave system. That is a mostly pve way to hold onto systems. To the extent you reward people for that you can expect fewer to try to hold the system through the method that is always pvp.


The only thing ccp needs to do to fix this is let people know where others are running plexes and implement some sort of count down mechanic if you run when an enemy lands on grid.

If you start giving lp for defensive plexing though then this will really be broken.

People are still working out strategies for the tier and reward system. It’s not broken.


Edit: they do also need to adjust the npcs so they do not block pvp in plexes larger than a minor - like they do now.

To reiterate:



Changing the mechanic over like this would force PVP, because if you're defensive plexing operation is contingent around some target that your enemy can shoot at and blow up being left alone, then you can't exactly go hide and come back later to stop the enemy.

Also: the payouts in general needs to be modulated so that the slippery slope is not so much in effect. The more space a faction loses, the harder it should be to continue pressing forward, not easier. The enemy should be bonused towards the actions they do take when they are the underdogs. Yes, this really points out that there's no real way to win faction warfare, but there's never been a way to actually win faction warfare, so lets encourage the endless battles and give the underdog an easier time based on how badly they're doing.

Here are my 2ct to this topic:

1. Doing large plexes solo with a gun-less frigate should not be possible. Button should only count down if no NPC is on grid.
2. NPC should have WH-AI to make them more intelligent. They should not fire contiuosly at a target out range and ignore targets in range etc. With regards to DPS and tank, NPC are fine as they are.
3. Since the first change will have a massive impact on large plexes, reduce the timer. I propose make all plex timers 15 minutes at max.
4. Large plexes should context / decontext a system significantly more than small ones.
5. Stop LP payout for plexing if system is 100% contested / vulnerable.
6. It should be impossible to contest a system more than 100%. It should be indeed possible to make a vulnerable system unvulnerable by just defensive plexing one plex. This will cause fights and pressure for the offender to stay in control of all plexes until der bunker is down. This gives a small defender fleet at least a chance to disrupt the offender even if he has a much larger fleet.

The reason why I want an improved NPC AI is that it is simply stupid that people get a fast frigate into the large plex which recieves full aggro and move it 200 km of the rats. Then uncloak their StealthBomber and kill everything inside in AFK-mode without the rats being intelligent enough to switch the target. In addition to this they are at no risk, since they are not targeted in the StealthBomber and can therefore immediatelly cloak.

So with WH-AI the NPC rats will sooner or later switch their aggro to the SteathBomber which is from my point of view a reasonable behaviour. Then you have the choice to either speed tank the rats or warp of. Furthermore, this creates at least some risk to the plexer especially if he is playing the lazy AFK mode.

yeah, you're right saying this is a problem, but i still think that an enhanced AI is dangerous for pvp. Maybe there is another solution but i can't think of a simple one.




i also said that you should get rewards for protecting plexes, so you don't need to wait until they are gone, besides, killing guys gives reward too.
i also said that if you want people to fight over a plex, make system possession worth it on the long run.



You are exagerating this, in FW, it takes less than 15 min to find a WT, and the enemy fleets positions are updated on the militia chan, It doesn't mean that you have a fight, but knowing where the WT is doesn't guarantee it either.



That is why CCP should lower plex rewards below other farming activities