EVE General Discussion

Words duly marked. And my "egghead" comment was really only referring to Bengal Bob, since, well, he has an egghead :)

Also, I wish everyone would stop saying that the FW fix will be to remove NPC's from highsec.....that was only one suggestion, it was never confirmed, and the resulting discussion has been quite divisive, with great arguments on both sides.

Removing NPC's would enable FW to happen anywhere, eliminating safe zones for milita pilots (especially those that cling to higsec and only come to lowsec to farm missions) and expanding the areas where fighting can occur. However, many have also rightfully pointed out that highsec ganks are totally possible under existing mechanics, so there isn't a dire need for this, and it opens up higsec for huge amounts of griefing and station camping of trade hubs, which is not the kind of dynamic, challenging PvP most of us enjoy. Also, there isn't much point in expanding where we can fight, if there isn't anything being done to attract more FW pilots to begin with.

CCP should instead be looking at the items that are much less controversial, and are (almost) universally desired:

1.) Add rewards to plexing. Make it a desireable activity, with a distinct PvP focus and less NPC shooting and button orbiting.
2.) Fix the spawning of plexes to not only occur at downtime. Make them spawn more often, and round the clock.
3.) Remove pirate ships from any othe plexes that restrict tech 2 ships. The militia would still fight in their faction ships, of course.
4.) Make docking at an enemy station hazardous to your health - either deny access completely, or if that is too extreme/imbalanced at very least cause gate guns to fire if your enemy has Sov.
5.) Fix GCC/standing for repping friendly militia members. Most of us who PvP to shoot neutrals from time to time, whenever there is "suspected enemy collaboration".
6.) Fix missions so they aren't farmable in bombers. If rewards can't be shifted to PvP or plexing (where they belong), than at least change the missions so that GROUPS are the most efficient way to complete them. Gang missioning = more opportunities for fleet on fleet combat. FW should not be about missioning, but we still need a decent income to support the stuff we lose. The missions were designed to invite PvP, but currently that simply means interceptors chasing bombers. Fun for a few, not for most.

The order isn't signficant, but these are what I have seen popping up over and over and over again for years now, the developers would be foolish to scrap these long-demanded fixes in favor of a random one of their own (the removal of higsec NPC's).

I am sorry if some of these Idea's are redundant and have been posted several times before in this thread, reading the whole Thread was taking to long so i just skipped to the end. I am a member of a Corp in Caldari Faction Warfare and have been for about 8 months. I am 9 months old so that should say something about the attraction of FW to new players.

The one thing that people in FW don't seem to understand is that FW really only applies to a certain amount of people. A significant amount but significantly less then the whole of EVE. Obviously CCP should take steps to balance and bring things to the entire EVE community before a relatively small amount of it. But then again FW has gone a long time without attention and needs some love. Here are some of my opinions on the subject.

The Main goal for FW is and always should be the encouragement of small gang PvP. small meaning 20-80 man gangs. As well as teaching new players the mechanics of PvP and giving them a welcoming and easier way to start EVE(This is especially important to me because that's EXACTLY how my EVE life has gone) . A secondary goal would be to encourage small gang PvP and a larger amount of it by providing FW members with a relatively reliable way to make ISK to support loss of ships.

Missions are NOT broken in the sense that they should be removed entirely. The Main problem is that a large amount of the numbers in FW (usually in general militia) are alts made specifically to farm missions for ISK and do not PvP at all. Except for some balancing issues with Gallente missions that is THE problem with missions. I personally think that to be able to mission you have to have been involved in PvP. Perhaps by that FW Agent standings degrade over time and must be kept high by PvP action. Mostly because it is my main source of Income to support my PvP addiction.

I do support a change in FW Sov mechanics purely because if plexes are made valuable for something other than EPEEN, it will encourage more small gang PvP. Also adding LP bounties to NPC's in plexes as well as capture bounties would increase the amount of fights just because there WORTH something.

I however do NOT support LP bounties for PvP kills mainly because this would lead to people who are well accomplished in PvP earning more money than new players and the new players would not be able to gain experience because they would be less able to replace their ships. A mild increase in the current bounty would be nice mainly so that we have to Carebear less and could PvP more.

I made sure to make all of this general as the exact methods are myriad and several could work but my points are:
1. Everything in Faction Warfare and any changes should encourage small gang PvP and the encouragement of New players to join in PvP.
2. Faction Warfare missions(after some balancing) should stay relatively the same, but with a direct link to PvP to get rid of all the missioning alts.
3. Plexing and Sov Mechanics should be changed to make them worth something and therefore encourage people to fight over them
4. PvP LP Bounties would discourage New Player involvement and therefore should not be a primary source of LP Income. However a mild increase in these bounties would encourage PvP and decrease the need to carebear.
5. Missions and/or Plexes/Sov should be the primary source of Income for FW Pilots and therefore Directly linked to PvP either directly through fighting over a Plex or indirectly through PvP significantly affecting FW Agent standing.
6. Those who say FW is for noobs, come down with your own 20 man gang to our space without cap support and see what happens. Otherwise go back to you blobfests and pos bashes and leave the fun PvP to us.
7. Please CCP FW members have been begging for a change ever since I joined. Please at least do SOMETHING.
EDIT: Just saw the Above Post. Yes Please make it so that friendly Militia Can see each other, It's annoying shooting a Pirate only to have him saw that hes Amarr(Predator Elite :P)

Thanks for Reading
See You Starside
~Simyaldee

Welcome to the discussion, Sim!! I wanted to take a moment and point out to yourself and others that repeating ideas is just fine. The stronger message we send that there is a concrete and generally agreed-upon list of fixes that are doable for Winter Expansion, the better. I'd be more than happy if another dozen FW pilots all jumped on and spoke their minds too, the fixes that keep overlapping should be the ones CCP is taking notes on and hopefully implementing in some fashion.

The more we argue back and forth endlessly, or daydream about sweeping overhauls, the less material CCP has to deal with, and than they'll end up proposing random stuff that no one else is talking about.

As others have stated, it would be a shame for CCP to simply yank highsec NPC's without considering the consequences, and call it a FW fix. There are numerous, easily implemented, concrete solutions to FW's mechanics issues, players have been providing years of feedback now.

All we can do is keep speaking our minds, especially if our ideas overlap. Hopefully a CCP representative can confirm or deny soon whether FW iterations are indeed in the pipeline for FW. All we've heard so far is "we're listening", We need to hear "we're acting upon this". (or acting upon SOMETHING.)

One last thing Sim - the percentage of players that FW comprises has nothing to do with the issue at hand. It's not whether or not FW deserves any of CCP's time compared to other more "important" areas, this is about the fact they they said FW was going to be iterated on. It was they who promised to meet players at fanfest than disappeared. It was they who have now promised FW fixes for Winter Expansion. If FW affects too few players to be worth messing with, CCP should never have made it a public part of their plans going forward, nor should they have made those promises in the past. This is not about a bunch of whiny niche players fighting for a pet cause. This is a sizeable portion of the playerbase that is simply asking for CCP to elaborate on the plans they themselves made, confirming whether or not this is actually being coded (even if the details are still to come), or to at least do what they've historically done and say "sorry guys, next time" yet again.

While I appreciate your response Spitfire, please allow me to explain that the very fact that you referenced that thread as if we were all missing something, is part of the whole problem here.

You're absolutely right, that thread is about focused discussion on fixes, and lots of suggestions have spilled over into threads like this one I'm typing in now, but there is a very good reason for that.

Let us be very frank, and very specific - The "suggestions" you referred the community are two in number:

1) CCP Soundwave acknowledged that the long term plan would be to overhaul the mechanics with an Incursion-like system. While that's an excellent idea, it is nothing new - we've all been saying that for some time now.

2) Soundwave suggested removal of highsec NPC's, acknowledging this would be "very easy" to do. However, the community has very swiftly pointed out a whole host of problems with this scenario, and begged the developers to acknowledge instead ANY of the fixes the players themselves have repeated over and over ad nauseum (there's about 6 of em by now, they should be quite apparent. If they are not, please ask us to clarify, believe me, we will!)

My initial thread starter acknowledged that we're not going to get around to incursion-style fixes, so really Soundwave is only offering one suggestion (not plural).

I'm writing this not to rehash the mechanics debate in this thread all over again, but to point out a communication problem we're all having right now. I'm only being critical because you, the community leaders, have promised to step up your game in terms of responding to us, so I'm trying to share why your referencing of Soundwave's comments is so frustrating. I know you guys are trying to do better, we're trying to help you out.

The community is quite sharp, and quite observant - If CCP wants to kill the criticism the way to do that is to respond to the items that are on the table - not jump intoa conversation thats more or less been happening for years, offer a single problematic idea, and than reference that post as if its proof you're hearing us out.

Otherwise, this whole exercise is useless. We understand deadlines, and dont have grandiose expectations about what can be done in time for Winter. But I can't even tell at this point whether our suggestions are too far-reaching, or within the scope of what's doable, because we aren't getting enough feedback from CCP. If Soundwave could respond to the main points (even really simple responses like this are appreciated), and let us know if our expectations are too high, than we can certainly shift the conversation to more focused fixes. But with nothing except Soundwave's one idea being offered up, the faction warfare has no choice but to assume that CCP is out of touch with the FW community, even right now.

/Me stands behind Hans with arms crossed and a scowl on her face.

"Yeah, what he said!"

Fair enough, not going to argue with that. I'll ask the development team to post some more information (if they are ready to share it at this point, of course); but in the meantime it would be great if the bulk of the discussion could be kept in one thread -- if only for the sake of convenience.

Regarding Cal/amarr & gal/minnies - Fine - don't make them show up the same as your alliance. But at least give them a seperate colour tag so that people can see that the gang of "neutrals" are actually "potential" FW allies...

Hey - my thread is still here...

Sure - but I just this bumped so it reminded CCP (again...)