Player Features and Ideas Discussion

You enter an area (deadspace or not) and you see a small fleet of various sized NPC Minmatar ships fighting a fleet of NPC Amarr ships. They are both NPC factions going at it. You have to option to join the Minmatar or Amarr (you might be able to figure out who I would join) and participate in the PVE battle. But wait... there's more...

The same could be a Caldari Navy NPC fleet fighting a Gurista fleet.

Rational:
1) It would give new players an introduction to Faction Warfare.
2) It would make Eve seem more "habitated" than simply the presence of player characters.
3) It would allow for hi-sec human PVP as players "take sides".
4) It would match and enhance the lore of New Eden.
5) It would provide another avenue of FUN.

Take note of #3! Would require some crime and punishment changes that should now be possible with the new system.

Don't several missions already do this?

also a nice segway into why this is bad.....unless changed they dropped tag loot. Low grade stuff but still. Last I saw something like was level 2 I wanna say way way back and the blowed up ones were faction npc's of some kind.

With op's idea you'd get say 20 on 20 faction battles with "real" NPC boats like BS's and stuff. Me to save the faction standing a bit would watch the 2 fight it out and when the winner is declared, if 4 ships lived to win I'd wipe them and rake up the tags and the salvage of all 40 lol.

Yay for me but although the pve has gotten better for FW, I'd rather they keep the tag market since they do trash standings in the process tbh. Them and the empire bears who take the faction kill missions.

And the whole empire pvp aspect....RVB. drop in it, shoot stuff, drop out of it. Its non-commital pvp, be a weekend warrior and go back to the bearism on Monday if you want. next weekend....weekend warrior it up again.

I think it would be okay to have a mission environment which used NPC-vs-NPC as an "environment backdrop", but it wouldn't be any amazing game-changer.

It would probably work better if you were not there for direct combat, but for something else. Some covops role. Maybe using a ship scanner to find and target-paint a ship with specific stuff. Or using a stealth bomber to aoe some stuff. Something that was more of a training mission.

Another option would be to use the battle as a way to encourage you to learn to 'hide in the pack'. Go in as the only battleship and you get primaried / dogpiled, and killed. Go in with a frigate, and you are just another frigate with the pack.