Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Heh.

On an unrelated note. Now that NPC destruction is a requirement for plexing, one of three things needs to happen to prevent an outcry (already building in case you were wondering):
1. Bring spawns closer to button. Currently long range ships are superior as they save several minutes per plex in travel time, but long range ships are severely restricted in the primarily close range fighting that FW is comprised which leads to faggotry and PvE fits.
2. Timers should be reduced across the board to compensate for the upto 50% increase a plexer experiences when killing spawns. Not much required, 10-20% reduction should be enough.
3. Timers should be changed to keep counting but not being able to complete with rats on grid. Serves same purpose in that destruction is mandatory but avoids most of the issues described above as rats close on button/orbiter and last spawn generally comes in a few minutes prior to completion.

True, 50% won't be valid come december, but if spawns still start off 20-30km (that's in minors!) from button the travel time alone will add the mentioned 10-20%.

Personally most partial to the last solution listed as it solves all related issues I can think of without sacrificing the desired outcome, ie. PvP fits capable, farmers hindered.

Will naturally depend on the stats of the new rats, they'll need enough EHP to be obstacles without being massive time-sinks/hindrances and have just enough applied dps to encourage getting rid of them pronto but not enough to be a credible threat if an actual enemy comes around.

Rookie plexes will be the only place to fly t1 hulls? I like the rookie plex but I would prefer they just add it to the current line up of plexes.

Sorry late to the party.

Have you guys considered looking at what other games did with their faction war systems?
Two come to mind for me:

In Ultima Online, there was a more direct ownership over the captured areas, linking them to guilds and even assigning players special roles for the captured area. Things like (Sheriff of Britain) - A commander which had special access and abilities to fortify the area with strong NPC guards. This could look like points that purchase turrets or upgraded npcs that take awhile to kill at the plex. Assigning player roles as the leadership of the faction really made it have more meaning. I remember being in awe just being around the commanding lord of my faction in UO.

The other game that did it right was Dark age of Camelot. They have a very similar system in that you capture objective castles for realm control. A difference is that the castle took a lot longer than a plex to capture, and it had warnings that allowed players to know that their castle was being attacked, giving them time to respond. A way to replicate this in Eve would be to force the people plexing to "defend" their plex. The timers could be increased slightly, and warnings sent to the corp controlling the area. If the defenders are pushed from the plex, the timer starts over. This encourages fights because the defenders want to hold the plex for the capture.

My main suggestion from other games would be making the faction zones controlled by corps and give them special controls over the system.


-one last thing, it would be REALLY cool, if plexing sites with a group of people increased the difficulty of the plex and gave better rewards and more sovereignty control. It's pointless to plex with other people as a team because the point split is so bad. OR just make plexes that are built for balanced groups (good idea with the new cheap logi ships)

Nah. they'd be vialbe still. You just couldn't sit your happy tush on the button and snipe away at anyone coming in. Watch the scanner, anyone comes on short scan, burn away. Easy as that.

So on Buckingham the new plex sizes seem to be in place and the warp in now seems to drop you 10km from the button, that is very close not really sure that is a good change. It is nice that you start right on top of the rats though.

I assume the NPC’s have not changed yet, the medium seems to have the rats from the old major, I hope this will change before the 4th.

Well now when you run a plex you will have to constantly spam your dscan. This combined with the changes to the size restrictions will mean less quality pvp fights and more ganks.

i don't like it very much that the flag moved that close to the warpin. This makes all kiting or sniping setups even more risky to use as they already are, since you will have to prepare to brawl if you want to fight inside a plex. Right now on TQ you still have the chance that the wt is at the flag and not at the warpin, this option won't be there anymore after the change.

I believe the reasoning behind this change was to create more fights and encourage pvp setups in plexes. But i am not sure if thats the right way to encourage those (people would just run earlier... close range dscan and warp). I posted somewhere some time ago that i would prefer to give the plexer a good reason why he should stay and fight. Easiest way i can imagine would be backwards running timers if you leave the plex. Dev response was "still in discussion" or something like that... Seems like CCP decided against it. :-(

Moving the button 25km from the warp-in sounds like a better idea than having it at 10km, to be honest.

its not on the testserver the last time i checked