Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I do not believe FW corps and alliances are quitting or relocated in response to the mechanic of station locks. I believe they are moving or leaving because they can make isk easier elsewhere. I do think there should be station locks and if there are any changes to them they should be minor. Such as level one system locks the station.

I think diagonal plexing is good as well. Two factions are allies and should have an expanded role not less. I believe the allied factions should be able to take out IHUBS of both opposing factions not just one.

Station unlocks and not letting allies help each other propose to lessen the risk and reward portion of factional warfare in my opinion by making it less painful to a losing side. I would not like that as much. We all know the nerf is coming to LP payouts this winter. There will be less targets regardless as I believe most farmers will go to greener pastures. They did not fight anyways.

Side question.

Is anything being done about vulnerable systems being able to be farmed forever because they do not have to be flipped in a certain time frame? I thought I read something about it but can not find it. Thanks for all you work to make FW a better place Hans.

If I were king of the universe and took a system, I'd take every station and lock out any and all enemies. The enemy stations then become Hong Kong and neutral business continues under new masters.

Hmm... fw is looking more and more appealing to me.

I think the docking rights have negatively impacted small gang warfare. Where once corporations that wanted to spread out a little away from the main blob could, now you are pretty much forced to at least live with the big power blocs, which is pretty boring.

The biggest plus IMO for the docking rights thing was less station games - however with the neutral remote repping changes and the carrier ship swapping changes coming in the next patch, I don't think that's a good enough reason to continue to have the lock outs which promote blobbing together all in one system.

EDIT: Not to mention, I've stopped a lot of my casual playing because, well, it sucks when you can't go to the bathroom because you just happen to be in Caldari space and you can't dock up. I didn't go to nullsec to begin with largely because of the crappy "you deny docking to others, having to work to own space etc" in the first place.

Can't you just look at some killboard stats to see what the affect was?

A) it worked, here's proof:

- Prior to being locked out, 100 ships died in every system, every day
- After being locked out, 1000 ships died in every system, every day

B) It didn't work, people now only fight in a few places, here's proof:

- Prior to being locked out, 100 ships died in every system, every day
- After being locked out, 100 ships died in only a few system, every day

C) Had no affect:

- Prior to being locked out, 100 ships died in every system, every day
- After being locked out, 100 ships died in every system, every day

No skin in this game of faction warfare, but plenty of doubt locking people out of stations does anything to 'encourage' people to undock and move to the outer reaches.

The ONLY change the FW pilots were asking for to begin with was having the taking of systems having mreaningful consequences, i.e., being able to prevent the enemy militia from docking in systems we owned. Instead we got a whole host and slew of other changes dreamed up by the csm and ccp to try sov lite on us and use us as guinea pigs.

You post is an outright lie, sir. A bold faced lie. FW has NEVER had more participants than it does now.The ONLY real reason to wage FW against the other militia is to keep them out of our space, at least the ability to base out of it. it is NOT time to revisit this issue, it is the ONE thing that CCP did right with FW.

War has to have consequences.I have been in FW from it's inception, and your ideas do nothing but dumb it down and turned it into farmville.No more.You do more harm than good.

Thanks for all the feedback everyone, lots of helpful opinions in here. I wanted to run an idea past you all and see if what you think - and just to clarifiy, there isn't currently concrete plans to modify station docking at this time, but perhaps this is something we can look into for a post-december patch.

There is a few things that still bother me about the current station lockout mechanics:

1.) It's heavy handed in terms of locking the losing militia out of a gameplay option and source of income. I can't think of any other situation in the game where the consequences of your actions prevent you from participating in some form of game play outright, especially one that belongs to your militia with which you are in good standings for (obviously standings can lock you out of certain agents elsewhere in the game, but nothing in the game says "you can't do activity X at all" because you lost some systems.)

2.) It leaves us with a rather conceptually bizarre situation of us occupying enemy stations and controlling them, without the name of the station changing or anything to indicate that there is a handover of control. Now before anyone goes off about how this is more role play fluff than anything else (not that RP reasons aren't valid for some things) think of new players. I recently heard about a noob losing a Machariel because he was trying to dock his stuff at the 24th station in Huola. Just like Crimewatch is streamlining rules so that new players can be held responsible for understanding them, the current lockout mechanics are likewise counter-intuitive.

What would everyone think of this:

1.) You can always dock in any station in the systems you control.

2.) You can always dock in your own militia-owned stations.

3.) You'd only be blocked out of a militia station if it is their station and they own the system. (For example, the Amarr could dock at the 24th imperial crusade station in Huola even if the system is owned by the TLF, but they couldn't dock at the TLF-station in Auga if the TLF also has sovereignty there.

4.) You could not dock in neutral stations if the enemy has sovereignty.

And possibly this as well:

5.) System upgrades only apply to stations that are neutral or owned by your militia. (For example, upgrades in Huola would apply to the Ishukone station only, not the 24th imperial station if the system was under Minmatar soverignty).

The net result from all of this would be that some of the positive aspects of station lockout are preserved (limited access to docking systems you don't control or have a militia office in, it would be predictable where the enemy is holed up if they're docked in enemy sovereign space). Also, some of the negatives eliminated - it would be easier for the underdog to retake systems that were historically theirs, and they'd also have full access to missions as an income source regardless of sov changes.

Let me know what you guys think, I'm quite open-minded to tweaking this mechanic (provided CCP has time in their schedule as well) and would like to refine any ideas to take with me into the Winter summit so let me know if you think such an adjustment has some merit.

Works perfectly. Should be enabled also in highsec for people who sign up for faction warfare that peaople cant dock on stations that belong to different faction. What sense does it make that hostiles who fight against faction are chased by faction navy can dock at hostile faction stations.

What's the difference? If they want to participate in FW occupancy warfare they can fight for Huola. If they want to just pew, they can move to high sec (if they are not pirate), or to Egghelende (if they are pirate). Whatever they want to do is up to them.

So you think the people are sitting in a station docked but not doing anything, but now that they will be locked out they will undock?

You really think people are sitting at their computers docked and this is what will make them undock? I'm sorry that makes no sense.

Another problem with your theory is that most defensive plexing has nothing to do with pvp. The reason my corp bases outside of fw space is so that we don't have to take time away from pvp in order to defensive plex a system.

The problem now is if you want to have multiple bases thoughout the fw area (in order to get more fights) you will have to take on a huge grind of defensive plexing several systems, instead of looking for pvp.

Dock blocking does nothing but decrease the frequency of pvp for the reasons I gave and several more. Not a single explanation can be given as to how it would increase the frequency of pvp.

Easy enough to deduce, just use your own needs/wants: Are you more or less willing to commit to a fight you are not certain you will win if you have X+ jumps to nearest reship while enemy has it on-site?

The 'Lock-out' concentrated fighting even more into the pipes/home-bases than occurred naturally beforehand, it is quite normal and infinitely predictable behaviour.

Ideally we want a system that allows for fighting to flow back and forth, a constant bloodbath, made improbable/impossible when one side needs to travel 3-4 times as many jumps to get back in the fight.
Cut down on militia stations so that there is only one per constellation or so and allow docking in said for the 'owning' militia regardless of system occupancy. Gives you natural hotspots, forward bases even in occupied territory and should foster more intense fighting as over-shipping is no longer required to the same degree.
Or ... add dockblock to system upgrade paths so that a determined effort by an attacker becomes a credible threat to the incumbent.

By far the most interesting fights are the ones that are like chocolates and you never know what you are going to get .. reship capability in vicinity pushes the FC's engage decision down towards the magic 50/50 versus the current 90/10 (read: dockblocking hinders the 'GF')

NB: "Docking games" are an entirely unrelated issue so don't even go there and it was never the problem some people like to describe it as. That one should be sorted for all of Eve and not just low-sec/high-sec/null.