Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I guess I don't really see any "problem" with the tier spikes.

It adds some marketing strategy to the cash out. You need to try to predict what will be needed in the future.

Why is this a problem. The more lp the losing side gains the more they have an interest in achieving tier 5. So if one side is losing for a long time like amarr there will be more and more people who have an interest in helping amarr.

I missed the 30 second tier 4 cashout. I am sure many other amarr have as well. We will hit tier five as long as lp is not given for defensive plexing.

I like this alot more then the current system. You addressed many of the issues others have brought up against the above proposal. The one thing I would have liked to hear that I didn't was the current spread on WZC tiers. At tier one Amarr would get 2500 LP per minor? 4375 per medium? 6250 per major? To put it in perspective - I've made 1.8 million Amarr LP since the T4 cashout. I would have an above average cashout should the system change. Then it would be painful and slowgoing to earn more LP. The people who currently complain would continue to do so.

There are also other issues. Level 4 missions give the best LP - and really the missions serve no purpose anymore. And you can get all the LP you want by plexing in Caldari systems even if you own all the Amarr systems. LP is not finite in that sense. You can always get more easily.

Cearain: In a general sense I agree with you that PvP should be emphasized. Heck, I just spent entirely too much isk on a frigate specialist that I hope to get to PvP on in FW, so I'm definitely there with you. Your suggestion for an alert system is really good (of course a war installation would issue a distress call if attacked). I've also seen a suggestion to move the beacon that you orbit to capture closer to the warpin, and that capture progress on a beacon reset to the neutral state if you leave the complex - either you stand and fight when attacked, or you have to start over. Implement both of those and some other sweeping changes, and I think removing NPCs would be okay.

I take some issue with some of your other points though.


To the first point - there's incentive to hold systems so that you have things to upgrade for a coordinated cashout. There is zero incentive to actually maintain higher levels of WZC though.

To the second point - the system allows for defense of sorts by defensive plexing, which serves to deny attackers who may show up later use of the plex to attack the system. In other words, its proactive defense - attacking them while they're in the plex is reactive defense. Both should be viable, but the lack of reward, either to the player or in the form of bolstering the upgrade level of the hub, means no one bothers, which contributes to the near impossibility of maintaining high WZC...which in turn makes coordinated cashouts the only way to cash out.


As it stands now though, the lack of reward for defensive plexing means that no one does it, which in turn means that coordinated cashouts are the name of the game. It should be difficult, and you should have to work for it, but I do think there need to be other options for defending a system beyond "kill the attackers".



"Make it a pvp system" is an interesting line in the context because you're talking about Amarrian lack of progress. To progress they'd have to attack - are you saying that attacking systems should be based on PvP too? Because, that won't work - any method of capturing systems that is based on PvP can be defeated by simply not providing the PvP. For better or for worse it has to be a PvE solution - you press the button, and if the defenders avoid PvP, they lose the system.


I'm not sure I agree with this. If the balancing system worked as intended, with prices fluctuating as they should in response to control (look at Amarr Navy Slicers for an example), yes, prices items from a dominant faction would drop. However, they're not going to go to zero value. Just look at L4 mission stores - they're just about as saturated as you can get, and you can still fetch ~500 isk/LP for implants (which are very easy to sell, thus the popularity), more for other items such as mods. With it's relatively lower population, I think that FW items could quite possibly stay at a higher level still, especially with a diverse store to choose from. So, a player willing to stay with his faction could still earn a healthy income to keep himself in ships - especially since frigates and destroyers are overwhelmingly the popular choice, even amongst those actually playing and not merely farming. Meanwhile, someone who feels a bit more mercenary can swap sides, fight to get them winning, and cash in on the (temporary) payday if he succeeds while their items are still high in price. For what it's worth, this was CCP's original intent with the system, which is part of why I'm trying to restore it.



I'm not sure about BIGGEST priority but I do agree - see the ideas people sent me at the start of the post for that.

ugh factionwarfare will never be what i want it to be. :P

I want it to be a system that requires ownership of all surrounded systems before it can be cliamed. I want combat to be focused into the border systems. That is where every factional warfare mission should spawn. Any system that is not conected to nothing but friendly owned systems should be considered a battleground. If a sysem is surrounded by all owned system then FW missions would not spawn there.

But CCP will never listen to this direction of focused pvp gameplay, designing FW to work more like a well design board game.

As we clearly have very differing visions I don't see the need to debate the merits of our respective solutions, so I'll bow out on that front. However, I do want to ask - I also don't see how your system, on its own, would do anything to mitigate permanent Minmatar dominance as a farmfest. Sure, people would join Amarr for the notional ~gudfites~, but without some serious revamps (and honestly, probably even with them), people would still be able to make grotesque amounts of isk without risking very much to do it. Let's face it - chasing down frigate farmers that run at the first sign of trouble gets boring, even if the beacon is closer and the capture point resets if they leave and so on. It'd probably get old, farming would flourish. The way that you eliminate coordinated cashouts makes the farming even easier. Do you consider that, the idea of being able to make dozens or hundreds of millions of isk an hour, forever, in a frigate, to be okay?



Note on the VP numbers - as the author there notes, VP are gained by capturing plexes. The fact that Minmatar WZC drops very rapidly proves that someone on the Amarrian side is plexing to some end. Maybe it's die hards who are trying to genuinely participate and win, but are doing **** all in the face of the farming engine. Maybe it's amarr alts of minmatar farmers flipping systems back over to amarrian control so they can farm them - defensive plexing offers no reward, after all. Regardless, it's plainly obvious from warzone control that it doesn't matter, and that Minmatar are the chosen to win. The equal VP is pretty meaningless.

I understand your concern here, but I'd argue that the coordinated cash outs are actually causing dedicated Faction Warfare pilots to suffer the worst of the market crashes, but sending them all to the market at the same time to collect on their LP gains. There isn't much question that having hundreds of pilots try to sell their Fleet Stabbers in bulk during a 24 hour period isn't causing many to settle for lower buy order prices than they might otherwise face on a day-to-day basis if the sales were distributed much more evenly. Having all of us career FW pilots go to the market on the same day pits us directly against each other.

But this is all assuming, of course, that the only people cashing out during coordinated spikes are the dedicated Faction Warfare pilots who are in the loop at the time. Whenever the Minmatar begin working up a level 5 spike, there's plenty of warning in general militia chat for everyone not involved in the core PvP war to still get in on the action, and if you really run the numbers, its not unfeasible that a single individual can bankroll his own Tier 5 spike if he dedicates a weekend earning the few million LP necessary to pull this off. Again, the spiking encourages the most intense market competition and doesn't pit us against the casual farmer near as much as it pits us against the other pilots who are out fighting the real war. I predict that a smooth supply to the market over time would result in higher average sales prices than pilots are currently achieving during the Tier 5 spike stampedes. Economists, prove me wrong and I'll happily concede this last point.



Order of priority aside, this is another critical issue in my opinion, and needs to be addressed in conjunction with other core feature fixes. Right now plexing is a giant game that is optimized for evasion. The fact that only one party in a plex conflict gets paid for their work encourages simultaneous unopposed farming in seperate locations rather than adversarial combat, and its no surprise that this is what we're seeing in practice. The fact that you can just run from one plex to the next and continually make progress on a system takeover also contributes to plexing being an evasion game. This second issue is something we can certainly address pretty easily - for example I'd love to see a steady timer rollback when no players occupy a plex, so that pilots that simply want to run away to a new plex (sometimes circling back to one they've already made progress in) can't use this evasion method to rack up any meaningful progress. By forcing a pilot to stick around and hold their ground if they want to win victory points, they'll be that much more likely to fit themselves for PvP rather than to just slap on the traditional 10mn AB and warp stabs.

Yeah, I simply don't share your fear that CCP isn't going to do the "serious revamps" to control the expansion of low-risk isk farming and the predominance of speed-tanking frigs. These are precisely the kind of problems they've been seeking out feedback on, and putting together some concrete plans to address. It's great stuff for the community to continue discussing, because CCP has said all along a plex content overhaul would included in Winter expansion, and I've seen them continue to make progress on this commitment first-hand. There's no reason to assume at this point that any element of the Faction Warfare system will be remaining static, especially the core risk / reward issues.

There's no magic bullet here - we have to simultaneous tackle the payout scheme, the plexing content, the incentives for PvP, and the way that upgraded Faction Warfare systems shape the low sec landscape through their bonuses and effects. It's all necessary, and all interconnected, and all has to happen at the same time for maximum effectiveness. CCP will be finished with their initial release planning fairly soon here, and should be able to post up their initial stab at tackling these various problems so players can begin finessing the details. Note that release planning won't dictate the final specific solutions to be implemented, but it will at least help players understand which elements of this feature will be going under the knife and the degree to which they're likely to change.

That is correct. But I don't really see that as a problem. The warzone will start to take much longer to flip from one side to the next once ccp eliminates the whole farmville mechanic. That will be eliminated when they do the timer countdown and the start letting militias know where plexes are attacked. I think it will take about about 4 months for amarr to get to tier 5 from the time minmatar cashout out at tier 5. Perhaps longer.

This will give the appearance of a campaign. Someone might want to join fw on the losing side and help them through a campaign cash out and then do something else in eve. Or like me they may want to stick around and just keep fighting for that faction and try to stall the other side from hitting tier 5.

Yes I did say "stall" the other side from hitting tier 5. Because I think its important that all sides be able to eventually hit this. because if one can't we will just have everyone joining the sides that can.

I think for war that is like fw this is really the best we can hope for. The fortunes maiking big swings from one side to the other over time.

Hans's proposal where they give more lp instead of making things cheaper, I think will just make the warzone stagnant. Very little will change over or a month and the war will just becomes so entrenched people wont care much.






The reactive defense always involves pvp so that should be the one strongly favored. The proactive one will often involve pve so it should not be favored over the other.

But again the main reason for keeping it so that there is no lp for defensive plexing is because this is the only tru balancing mechanic that gives someone a reason to fight for the losing side. Because the side with fewer systems held and a lower tier will be able to tell new pilots that they will be able to make lp. This will discourage people from piling on the winning team because they will have fewer opportunities to make lp.

I really can't emphasize how important this is. If anything I think the defending side should have to pay lp to make the defensive plex count toward decontesting the system.

In the blog you linked there are some other good ideas to help balance such as more unique items and buffing the current unique items. I think this is good and should be done. But really the market won't be enough. At low tiers pirate faction ships are cheaper than the navy faction ships. There needs to be a way that narurally allows the side with fewer systems to start to climb back in the game. No lp for defensive plexing is a great way to do it. its actually the only thning that allows it now.

Hans if you make it a pvp mechanic all the people who are cashing out will be dedicated faction war pilots for that campaing. There won't be any farmers screwing up the market. People who earn lp in plexes will all be pvpers who helped actually fight the war.

Tthe only exception to this will be the mission runners. And I think level 4 missions could stand a bit of a nerf.

Now the career fw pilots will have better understand of the market for the main faction war goods so they will still be able to make the most bank from these cashouts.

When people are cashing out all the time, knowledge doesn't really help. Just look at the current prices and buy whats best. It dumbs this aspect of fw down. Dumbing it down will hurt the career fw players more than the players new to fw.

I think if they did what is suggested in the first paragraph they would make it a pvp system.

They wouldn't need to make the beacon reset to zero on warp outs just count back down a few minutes or to zero so the people who constantly run will make no progress. They will soon realize that this is not going to be profitable. Thus the only people who are left plexing will be those willing to fight for plexes. And fights there would be. Huge numbers of fights.

The rewards wouldn't need to be tied directly to pvp deaths. It would just happen due to the other mechanics such as players immediately knowing which plexes are under attack and the timer counting down if you get chased out.


They also need to adjust the damage the rats do in the larger plexes because they do way too much damage know for anyone but a fleet to be sticking around and fighting in those.