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[TL, DR: Plexing needs to be refocused on PvP. Plexers need to grow some balls, bring a real ship, learn to fight, or bring friends that can fight with you. It's time to end FW as a PvE race where evading the enemy results in faster takeover and increase profits.]


Great question, happy to shed some light on the context behind this change.

Look, the bottom line is that we ALL know how boring plexing is, in a vacuum. With no other players around, its akin to watching paint dry. There's no need to sugar coat this fact of life.

Where plexing gets really interesting however, is when two groups care about it enough to fight over it. This really isn't any different than a tech moon, or a POCO, or a POS, an asteroid belt, or a mission site. Really boring stuff - until two people on opposing sides want it. Plexing is just the simplest, distilled mechanic that you need to bait a fight.

In the end - whether you have Incursion-style uber NPC's, or whether you remove them from plexes completely - there is literally NOTHING about altering the NPC content that will directly drive PvP in and of itself. I understand that speed tanking is bad, and buttoning it up with an NPC overhaul and forced elimination will work to that effect, but that alone doesn't fix the "sucking chest wound" of FW - the need for plexing to be a nearly guaranteed way to find yourself being shot up by someone that wants you dead.

In my opinion, there should only be three types of players inside the plexes for Faction Warfare to be a healthy, engaging system.

1.) Players that may be after the LP or WZC, but that embrace the possibility of PvP, and fit their ship to win against aggressors. (warp-stabbed gunless atrons fail this criteria)

2.) Players that may or may not care about the LP, but go into a plex specifically to bait someone for the sake of a fun PvP fight.

3.) Players that just want to murder whoever is in the plex, for whatever reason. These players don't give a flying cluck whether you are the first or second type, they want to see you dead. No questions asked.

Players in categories (2) and (3) need no mechanical adjustment. They'll get into pew on their own. For those in category (1) to provide pew, they must be able to bring a real PvP ship. This is why I've fought so hard to get an NPC overhaul pushed through, the current content favors typical PvE tanking over PvP capability.

Additionally, they must be penalized for evasion. Plain and simple. This is an absolute conviction of mine. The ONLY justification for the existence of such high payouts in plexing is that players must risk their ships in (Im)mortal Kombat to earn it.

This leads us to the timer rollback. The huge win here is that if you run at the first sign of danger, you're not going to be able to double back later and pick up where you left off. Want that 30,000 LP? Than be willing to do whatever it takes to stay alive for 15 minutes in one place at one time.

The last way we penalize evasion of PvP is by making it difficult for players to hide the fact that they are plexing. Tragically, under current mechanics pew pew only slows down the pursuit of WZC. You're better off skipping the fight, splitting up, and grinding more plexes if you want to minmax.

POS and POCO attacks bait fights because they not only light up system wide with their exact location, they also put their time of vulnerability on a calendar for everyone to see. And it works. I encouraged Fozzie and the team to put at least that level of visibility (for which there is existing, proven precedent) onto plexes, so they behave similarly as a beacon for PvP activity.

I completely understand not wanting to "dumb the game down", and not wanting to kill scouting as a necessary fleet role, and having a plex timer visible on overview doesn't remove the need to have players seeing where the enemy is and in what ships. What a visible timer DOES do, however, is eliminate the obfuscation that can occur when there's multiple plexes and missions open at once. For players in category (1), if they're only in a plex as long as they have to be till they move - that minute or two needed to scan them out may be the window they need to escape.

Any word on this?

I tried a plex today, just to see the changes. I did not notice a perceived "lack of dps" on the part of the rats. Stated another way (I was in a minor in a dessie), the DPS I noticed would be more than enough to convince me that a fight, which would otherwise be even, would not be in my best interest to take assuming I had these rats hitting me.

Can you please clarify if this has already been changed, or if this is a delay to winter?

Thanks for the clarification Ranger1

A timer tells you very little about the situation, just as it doesn't tell the tale when mustering to defend a POS coming out of reinforced.

While it is true that you will know which plex (or plexes) are being attacked, you will not know crucial information such as "Are the enemy ships all on the button, or are most of them at range from the beacon?" "Are they all in this system, or are there more of them next door?"

It's those little, important details that can get you killed.

More importantly, it makes it more likely that an attempt will be made to stop the count down with force, which is rather the whole point.

I agree with Yuri Intaki on the fact that it does give too precise intel to the defender. With the beacons spawning and d-scan, it is easy enough to spot enemy plexers and there is no reason for the timer to be broadcasted accross system.

Intel should cost something.

D-scanning the plexes costs putting yourself at d-scan range of the plexer.

Checking the timer costs putting yourself on grid with the plexer.

This is not especially difficult or time-consuming. Removing those costs would just be an unfair advantage for the defenders (or pirates, or grievers, or ninjas).

So the plan is to remove one of the most intense fighting experiences in Eve when d-plexing can no longer be used to stop a bunker-bust fleet?
It should be 100%, no overflow .. nothing .. just straight up 100%. Defender has docking privileges so easy as hell to grab a shiptype and head to a plex where the 'normally' upshipped bunker fleet can't bring the blob to bear .. but then that whole argument will be moot if the plans to 'simplify' plex restrictions go through.

How do you reckon it will benefit PvP in near vulnerable systems, has the embrace of the farming life that everyone made themselves guilty off the past 9 months not taught you anything?
The defender wants to have an enemy plexing a highly contested system as it means he gets more LP/hr, just as the enemy wants the defender to plex in same system to keep the LP flowing .. if both parties have an interest in the other doing their thing then the end result is less PvP.

Not that it will happen of course, because we human players all act 100% in accordance with CCPs models and we'd never think of having both the defender and the attacker be controlled by the same person to maximize profit .. we also would never set aside an area to be farmed in such a way in perpetuity by eliminating anyone entering that might be a threat to the bottomline (most likely allies responding to map flare).

The mere fact that the farm lobby managed to convince CCP that incentives were needed for fighting the actual war is what hurt FW the most. Low enough and you might as well not have bothered, high enough and all fighting ceases as guns are made into plowshares.
We already had our danger pay with massively discounted navy hulls, all they needed to do was add more monopolies to the FW store and perhaps tweak some other LP requirements. Most mission farmers would not survive the coming NPC changes which will eventually be applied to all FW rats

I see that fullblown plausible-denial politicians syndrome has set in.
- How do you explain the fact that Shakorites have had tier4 with easy tier5 spikes practically from beginning .. only hiccup the rust worshippers experienced was the massive blob that temporarily joined Amarr .. or in other words EXACTLY AS PREDICTED BY ME AND MINE PRIOR TO RELEASE.
Connecting dots and predicting human responses when massed is not strenuous in the slightest. Try it, start with the connecting bit .. sure you can borrow a smaller siblings coloring book

The changes in Inferno should not have been made without the 99% other changes, you know the ones that will actually impact the way the war is fought in ways other than to dictate the wallet expectations .. had NPCs, Plexes, Geography and worthwhile upgrade paths been in place before FarmVille was released .. but too many forces with agendas and CCP too damn eager to please someone, anyone, out of shame and guilt from their failed WiS launch.


Holy Al Gore gaffe, Batman! You did NOT suggest it .. you supported it. The idea of a FW specific rat subset predates your time in pod .. picked up steam when me and mine necroed it seeing that CCP were willing to put in some actual work to sort it.

The only people getting hit hard by CCP are LP farmers and frankly I don't think they add anything to the game other then messing up the market.

So basically it wouldn't bother me if they left. Of course they wont as the vast majority are just alts of regular players who will go back top making "normal" incomes.

After reading what goons pulled off in FW and all the lp gained that's what help mess up the market big time.

You ccp are more then a little late fix one problem with every high pay outs for fw wtich what ment to be more pvp then pve.

Any fix is welcome to get the market back to were it should be now if you could just fix the other stuff.

You need to think more like the players do when you build thing or goons Raping Fw lp stiff will happen again.

System Capture Status percentages still have a problem post-patch. At today's downtime, the primary system I am defensively plexing in was at 83.8% and the secondary system was Stable. Immediately after downtime (as soon as TQ came back up) the primary system showed 85.2% and secondary showed 2.7%.

Petition was put in two days ago (pre-patch) regarding similar behavior, which hasn't been looked at yet: System Capture Status in primary system was at 65.8% contested at downtime, logging in immediately after downtime showed 71.2% contested. That was at least two hours of work by a fleet deplexing against heavy opposition, that just disappeared.

I thank the Empress that all of the Minmatar-held systems that were flipped from Vulnerable to Lost prior to yesterday's downtime (through the heroic efforts of the combined Amarr militia forces) showed as properly conquered after the downtime patch.