Warfare & Tactics

I'll start with a few quick facts about yours truly. I plex all the time. I get the vast majority of my PvP from opening up a plex in a busy system and simply waiting to get noticed. The LP I get from plexing more then adequately supports myself. (I have 10 Navy Harbs rolling out of the oven soon and 20 Navy Omens waiting to go in.) To sum up - I have no problem plexing no matter what the tier level happens to be. This is not a personal gripe.

Amarr needs pilots - many, many pilots. It needs fresh FC's. It needs an influx in the worst possible way. Over the past year some PvP corps have joined. They get their kicks and they leave. Many corporations and alliances have gone on recruiting binges. Out of every person who joins though, even more quit or stop logging in. Over the last year Amarr has been predominantly at tier one and the burnout is ridiculous. Three months ago Amarr were actually ahead for once. For many it seemed like a great time to get off of the ride and many jumped at the opportunity. And thus we are here today. As Amarr has withdrawn so has Minmatar suffered. Those that like the fleet fights of old I'd bet have not been happy in quite some time.

Amarr needs to grow at the grassroots level - new, fresh pilots. FW in the form of the tier system has been out for a year. The arguments as to why people should join the losing team have never panned out. Love to PvP? The sad fact is people like to win more. It takes a brave soul to join a losing proposition. Those that join are fickle in their loyalty. This is a passing fancy. Economics? Some Amarr store items are twice the sales point of Minmatar items. As it takes 3x to 5x as long to earn them though that number is meaningless.

Any solution involving more complexity with either not work, or worse, backfire. The best solution is brutal simplicity -

System Upgrades:

Nobody cares at all about these. Get rid of them.

Consequences for sovereignty:

Docking rights. Bragging rights. That is all.

Rewards for Sov Pushes:

LP is earned equally by all at either Tier 2 levels or even Tier 1 levels. You are being paid to pew and push sov. That should be enough FFS. You have low risk pvp with it's own ship reimbursement program. If one side starts to walk over the other their store items saturate the market. A Navy Omen is going for 85m isk in Jita. An SFI is going for 47m isk. If things were equal in the LP department the Amarr side would be a hell of a lot more attractive.

TL;DR:

**** can the Tier System

+1... although I know CCP gives a f...

I kind of agree but I would go a step further, I would remove plex lp completely and only pay out on the bunker.

That way you only get paid if you finish the job!

As for the recruitment side, I would think there would be more people wanting to step up for the underdog (no disrespect meant, talking quantity).

If you want to farm lp, then do it in missions. You should not be influencing the warzone.

Pvp in low sec would dry up to pre-Inferno levels if you did this. LP in plexes allows pvp junkies to stay on station 23/7 and pew. Having these junkies out in space (and not docked up), leads to others undocking and pewing. Snowball.... Lots of pew.

Edit: Actually if this happened we'd get a bunch of players complaining about farmers in missions sucking up all the FW LP while the guys who are doing the dirty work of actually fighting the Occupancy War get no income at all.

I have supported timer rollbacks as a kind of system upgrade in the past. Trying to add complexity at this stage is a double edged sword however. You address symptoms rather then a cause and you probably won't get the results you are looking for. CCP also desperately needs to fix other areas of the game for the health of Eve. What I suggest is a very simple fix and it addresses a farm centric problem directly.

While I completely agree with the OP I doubt that a complete scrap of the Tier system is going to happen. However, I think we can bandaid fix the current system as follows:

• TIMER ROLLBACKS - This won't solve the farming problem, as is discussed above, but it will help to an extent
• Drop the -50% LP gain at Tier 1 - Simply make it so that if/when you get Tier 2+ you get bonuses to the base LP. That way the losing side isn't severely punished as is the case right now.
• More LP for killing ships - This would need to be fine-tuned to avoid pilots profiting from blowing up their own alts ad nauseum.

Like I said, these are bandaid fix proposals but I believe they'd be more likely to be implemented than a complete revamp of the LP/tier system.

Why would I bother to plex for no LP? Also why would I bother to flip a system that doesn't have a station, and even if it does what would be the point? I base all of my stuff mainly out of two stations that will never be taken. What you suggest would turn FW into a PVE mission runner crap.

Also, do you know how much work it is to flip a system from zero to 100% if you got not LP from the plexes?
No LP means no one is going to waste six days of time to flip a damn system for a reward that MIGHT not happen.

What you're suggesting is to take FW back to the bad old days when no one really gave a **** at all, with the exception of the whole docking rights thing. I can sympathize with the whole fighting the symptoms vs. the cause argument, but frankly mechanics are what drive player behavior in games like this. Implementing things like timer rollbacks make farming that much harder and less profitable, and consequently, that much less pervasive.

What we need to do, as a community, is come up with a way to keep the benefits for actual FW players, but make life extremely difficult for the no skill alts that are just farming easy isk. Doing away with the current system throws the baby out with the bathwater, since I know all of us like being able to actually fund our PVP, especially with the high loss rate that characterizes FW.

I think there are two things that would help combat the scourge of disinterested farming alts. Firstly, timer rollbacks. The harder we make it for you to avoid PVP entirely and still farm LP, the better. Secondly, and this may be more controversial, borrow one of the mechanics from incursions. Namely, you get no LP for the plexes you do until the system is flipped.

Perhaps that is a bit too draconian, and we could always make it some fraction of the LP, say half now, half when the system is flipped, but the whole point is that in order for you to reap the benefits of plexing LP, you have to actually be invested in the outcome of the warzone, instead of just running around empty systems that no one who really participates in FW actually gives a **** about.

FW for the FWers.

I've been there, done that. If I can't make enough isk from plexes, then I'm going to farm missions instead. Less pew for me, and less pew for you too since I won't be out there for you to kill.

it is, too bad stabs allow its abuse.