Warfare & Tactics

I want to put forward an idea to CCP to improve FW for the PvPer, but I would like broader community support for the idea before I propose it. I appreciate there will be trolls, but hopefully a few good suggestions might actually surface.

TLDR: The idea is simple, allow farmers to opt out of the system contestation mechanism in exchanged for a small increased LP payout when plexing.

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Station lock out and the plexing system in FW has lead to some great fights. However, increasingly regular FW pilots are leaving FW because the deplexing burden is becoming too much. Whilst they're willing to fight in the plexes, having to orbit a button constantly to undo the work of farmers in other timezones is no fun for anyone. Farmers of course don't deplex, they go where the money or LP is and that is offensive plexing. Thus the deplexing burden falls onto a decreasing number of PvPers who want to do anything but orbit a button in an empty plex, but the consequences of not doing this chore is severe.

Currently, when a player completes a plex, whether offensive or defensive, he gets two payouts. The first is LP, directly into his account. The second is a change to the System contestation level, typically in the region of 0.7%

I wish to propose a simple change to the payout mechanism for plexing and one that can be incrementally adjusted in the future by CCP as time and experience show the best balance.I propose that each player gets a flag to set, which allows him to take LP in place of the System contestation benefit. Thus a Farmer running a novice plex at Tier 2 would currently get 10000 LP and 0.7% change to the contestation level. However, by setting the flag he can choose to take a 30% increase in the LP payout at the expense of the contestation change ie. 13000 LP only.

A possible enhancement would be to adjust the percentage based on the Tier level - +40% at Tier 1, +30% at Tier 2, +20% at Tier 3, +10% at Tier 2, nothing extra at Tier 5.

This will allow the farmers to farm to their little heart's content in the farming systems without f*cking over the PvPers.

Let's be honest most of us are greedy, self centred, b*stards. Even those of us that call ourselves PvPers will run with this flag set when solo. At least when offensive plexing. But when a sustained push for a system is underway, both attackers and defenders can unset the flag, forcing people to engage and get some serious fights.

Sure there are plenty of suggestion knocking around how to deal with farmers. But realistically the only way to stop farmers, is to stop paying them. However, even the PvPers farm, we don't want a return to the no payout days and having to farm somewhere else on an alt. Nor do we want to empty the plexes. But we can't have our cake and eat it, the better solution is to marginalise the effect pure farmers have on the warzone.

That is a natural progression. I did consider this but felt that I'd get enough objection from the anti-farming lobby who might read this as a stealth buff to farming. I didn't want to complicate the proposal with arguments about making it too easy to flip a system.

Unsandboxy? How does going from 'no choice' to 'a choice' make it unsandboxy?

I've heard many proposals about ways to improve FW, most are offered with a blinkered view of what the problem is without considering other effects. For example 'make it more PvP based' was one. Except CCP did exactly that 18 months ago and the Goons milked the system, suiciding Freighters because they made more money in LP than the cost of the Freighter.

'Add more NPCs'. Well CCP did that as well and I for one, didn't like the initial change to a single/pair of NPCs in a Plex. Then I started soloing more and having 25 NPCs in a plex kills solo PvP, which is the exact reason why CCP watered it down.

But you're viewing a plex as a PvE mechanic. It is a brilliant place to get PvP. In the last 6 months I've made 138 solo kills, nearly all of them in plexes. Probably another 300 kills where I got +95% of the damage and the remainder was done by the NPC rat in a defensive plex which could be 'safely' ignored by my opponent.

As a soloist or even small gang, it is not feasible to take on another solist or small gang, where there is significant NPC opposition. I could never attack an offensive plex if another player was already in there and I had to deal with him and 25 NPCs at the same time.

Farming is a problem in FW, it is not the one overriding consideration. Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.

I don't like the idea of giving even more LP to the farmers to fix problems made by farmers. You shouldn't reward stabbed farmers even more.

I think the idea of Zarnak to get rid of tier based LP payouts is better. Give tier 2 payouts at all tiers and link the tier system to actual warzone/system benefits. This way the pendulum wouldn't swing like it does today when the farmers switch sides and it would make holding/defending systems more important.

Very interesting idea. However, I still like the idea of farmers being able to swing systems that nobody cares about back and forth, as it keeps either side from ever winning and I like the pendulum aspect of FW.

You post got me thinking though. What if CCP added a modifier to the defensive plexing LP that raised defense plexing LP based on system tier, how long the system was held, how many totaly systems are held (no bonus at 50/50 split, lots of bonus if its the last held system), etc. This would have to be controled to ensure that should one side start to dominate this bonus defensive LP would approach 0 quickly for almost all systems. I'm thinking something like defensive LP formula as following as the first swag

LP Gain = Base value of plex * MAX(1,(Contested percentage of the system/100) * 0.75+ MAX(0,(System Upgrade Level/ MAX(Average System Upgrade Level,0.1) / 10 - 0.1))

This formula obviously needs work, but the idea would be reward defense plexing for systems that have a high tier relative to other systems. In other words, reward militia for defensive plexing the systems deemed important.

People are not entitled to any mechanic they can think of just because "sandbox". Some mechanics are bad and should be removed.


FW farming is a problem because, as a PVE mechanism, it's just a terrible mechanic. No one would ever come to a design meeting and say "Hey guys, you know what'd be awesome? If people could earn ISK by AFK-orbitting buttons. It'd be like missions, except way easier!"

The plexing system exists to encourage PVP between members of FW by putting yourself at risk of attack and rewarding you for defending your plex. It's an interesting mechanic (though flawed in implementation, of course).

If the plexing system is to be its own PVE mechanic then it needs such a ridiculous overhaul so as to not resemble the current system.

I generally agree with all you have wrote. But solutions to the 'farming' problem have been proposed and implemented before and all that happened was that the farmers changed their methods.

So we get back to the question what is the problem? I maintain it isn't that the farmers are earning LP. Let's not get distracted by jealousy. Fix the real problem. I don't give a f*ck that someone has earned 100,000 LP running plexes in my system, what I care about is that I've got to sit in a defensive plex for the next 2 hours to undo what they did, when there is no Amarr offensive against my system and I can't get to PvP while doing it.

posting in a timer rollback thread

You are getting confused with the needs of a Militia against the needs of good gameplay.

Whilst an individual militia/corp/player will want to upgrade their system to make it more formidable to take. It is against the interests of good game play to grant the already dominant side advantages that will keep them in that dominate position.

Making it easier, faster, more profitable to deplex, will also impact a 'real' campaign to take a system. It is hard enough to take a 'home' system, but it shouldn't be impossible.

More agents are not needed, more HP for I-Hub, dear God NO! More belt rats, meh! But how does all that address the problem of having to deplex the farmers work?

Timer rollback, ah yes the latest holy grail! I've never got this myself, the timer runs both ways! This is just like the speed tanking gunless frigate debate all over again. Make it so that you have to kill the plex rats and that will END farming. I never understood that argument either, to me as long as FW remained significantly more profitable for effort/risk than other farming choices, the farmers would keep coming. Tell me how this is different this time around.

The ONLY way to stop farmers plexing, is to stop paying them for it! Do we want to halt the gravy train? Do we want to stop PvP in the Plexes? Hell No! People need to get off their high horse and admit that. Not beat around the bush, while postulating how tough a PvPer they are. We all want to PvP and we all need to farm at some point. So we need a system where we can live with pure farmers, at least until we get them in our gunsights.