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That's my problem, there is no 'switch'. There is absolutely nothing to lose and tons to gain by joining an alliance up, the only sacrifice they might have to make is move high-sec alts into neutral corps and that is it.

It is indeed probably the oldest, came up during the discussion prior to Empyrean Age going live and all the RP entities saw great potential in FW as an RP vehicle .. been voted on 3-4 times in slightly different shades over the years I think.

Most definitely, alliances will be awesome to have involved .. but not with FW in its current state. If a ferry is taking on water you try to mend it before loading more passengers!
Note: Above analogy is not entirely accurate as a sinking ferry might be saved by a dead'ish person plugging the hole so more people onboard can be a good thing, whereas FW does not enjoy such luxury.

Yeah what?? I mean, don't get me wrong - we Minmatar definitely resort to creative measures to keep our ships intact (Duct tape, mainly) - but CORPSES?? Lets not give the Amarr any reason to look down their noses at us than they already have.

My people are still recovering from the negative stereotypes reinforced when everyone ended up spending too much time in our version of Captain Quarters.

We enjoy a "rustic lifestyle" but we're not that foul.

Never mentioned anything about the Matari peoples, you read that into it all on your own. Perhaps deep down, in your subconscious, you really believe that your people are "that foul".

Lay down your arms, come home and be cleansed by the divine light!

PS: Sorry couldn't resist

Searching Evelopedia for "FW alliances" and linking the ones where alliance participation is requested/queried:
Faction Warfare - Allied Forces
Alliances and FW Pt.1
Alliances and FW Pt.2
Fix FW
FW - Request for info

So yeah, it has been one of the bigger points for our lobby over the years, not as big as meaningful mechanics though

This is a dangerous path to take. Players may not agree, but they have put forth plenty of suggestions and concerns that should be taken into consideration.

Lest we forget what got us into Crucible to begin with - "making the call" to just keep releasing content package after content package, straying further away from the wishes of the players and not paying heed to the warnings that everyone gave them leading up to Incarna's arguably disasterous release.

Saying "Faction warfare pilots aren't going to agree anyways, just do SOMETHING, anything, than stick to it regardless of what they say...." will not bring about a better feature in the end.

CCP should not just throw blinders on and trudge forward. It is absolutely CCP's decision, but part of their new corp direction is to listen to developers and players alike rather than sticking to agendas arbitrarily.

The fact that we disagree is all the more reason to be cautious, and listen twice as hard, rather than simply running with something because they need to deliver on promised "FW changes".

Bottom line is we've been working hard the last year to reverse the trend of a FW community that was hopeless and feeling abandoned and ignored by CCP, left for dead and betrayed by the no-show at the Fanfest roundtable.

"making a decision and running with it" without being able communicate that they've addressed the very real problems with some proposals (previous suggestions like removing NPC's from highsec were even more disastrous potentially) is only going to rip open the old wounds and cause the FW community to feel like CCP doesn't care about their opinions or feedback once again.

We need to be working to improve the player / developer relationship, not strain it further by making arbitrary decisions because its more difficult to try to find a middle ground.

Unless a significant change is applied to basic FW mechanics (and even basic lowsec mechanics), I will continue to oppose alliance introduction into FW.

First, let's consider the goals. Keep in mind these are my percieved goals on what FW is meant to be; if I am differing from CCP, CCP feel free to correct me:

FW is intended to foment a sort of "educational PvP" environment:: With the addition of the free-join ticket from the advanced military tutorial, CCP seemed to be pushing the idea of FW as a ground for rookies to test their feet in the waters in an environtment where their contributions would make a difference and they could act without expecting to be shamelessly ganked by a several-hundred-man fleet.

FW is intended to reward living in lowsec, rather than the obvious immense wealth of nullsec: The LP store changes provided cheap rewards entirely unlike anywhere else in lowsec; for a long time, it was one of the few time-efficient ways of competing with the Sactum Grind or moon-mat gold mine.

FW is intended to be a small(er) gang environment: I honestly can't say why I feel this way, as I don't have CCP quotes or game changes specifially pointing to this; however, it has been my feeling for the longest time that Faction Warfare was intended to be a means in which players could engage in PvP without diving into the hundreds-of-men, lag-ridden, capital-spamming realm of nullsec. (Not to say that such a state in nullsec is inherently bad - that's another discussion. I'm just saying here that not all people are interested in that, and it seems to me FW was meant to provide an environment in which PvP could occur apeart from the great nullsec showdowns.)

FW was intended to be a mechanic linked to the storyline of the EVE universe: Simple enough. I mean, we had a whole expansion, many news articles, and a (IMO terribad) book involving the storyline ramifications of FW.


Now let's look at the issues:

Cynos. Cynos everywhere: We only just recently got out from "under the thumb" of the large nullsec alliances potentially dropping X dozen supercarriers into every FW engagement (or, in PL's case, camping our gates and stations with supercarriers for a couple of weeks). This, in turn, has encouraged smaller corps to bring in their assets, as suddenly throwing down a bunch of battleships or even a single capital is once more capable of turning the fight, rather than simply being supercarrier bait. Now you're proposing to bring the "big boys" back in again and once more marginalize the contributions of anyone who can't provide a batphone to their capital/supercapital fleet of choice.

Plexes and capturing: Sub-set of two different issues here - one, NPCs are still horribly imbalanced (Amarr plexes of any size can be solo'ed in a speedy frigate; Caldari plexes cause a missilespam only somewhat less painful than trying to kite a Drake gang). Two, there's no reward for taking part in the plexes. At all. Not for killing the NPCs, spending hours orbiting those little buttons, or for showing up for the often painfully-boring bunker bashes.

Greed drives activity: Only 1/3 of the activites in FW (missioning, plexing, roaming looking for a fight) have a significant monetary reward in them. The mechanic that FW was built around - system occupancy - has no reward whatsoever. Plexing comes down to being the job of a handful of roleplaying players, and the surpremely bored PvPers. That's right - the main mechanic of FW is viewed by most players involved as being on the same level as things like comedy fit roams, conga lines, and jetcan ASCII art - something to do when there literally is nothing else to do.

NPC imbalances: You're proposing that large numbers of persons should be able to join any one of four factions, and presumably acting on the belief that all four factions will have a roughly equal join rate. I say this won't happen. As discussed above, the ship requirements for completing different factions' plexes are VASTLY different, and unfortunately this extends to missions as well.

Missions again: While we're on this little rant, I'll touch on this as well. Missions were designed for fleet participation. But, nobody does them with significant fleets (and as far as I know, haven't from the beginning). The most you get is 4-5 guys going out to speed-run a bunch of missions together in long-range, high-speed ships (which are incidentally the preferred ship for running missions solo as well). To throw out a massive red herring (but one I think is accurate), FW missions were designed in the era of RR BS fleets and now exist in the nano-alpha era - an era they've proved totally unsuitable for.

Taking the faction out of faction warfare: Finally, a point that is of significantly less interest to most general PvPers, but an issue for me: System occupancy currently has serious roleplay ramifications for the factional parties involved. Unfortunately, in my opinion, CCP has made it clear that systems that are occupied by hostile powers may suffer ground invasions by said hostile forces. Now you are proposing to draw massive numbers of players into a heavily imbalanced system (see above) and asking the few remaining roleplayers to simply roll with the results when the ability to protect the systems they're interested in is essentially taken out of their hands by sheer force of numbers.



Deal with these issues. Figure out what you want FW to be.

Then we can talk about alliances again.

New Customizable Neocom

For me, the blink notifications for all icons on the customizable neocom on SISI is much harder to see than the "current" or "older" neocom. Perhaps make the color brighter or more white-ish with a frosty white background behind the icon that stays lite until the end-user clicks on it -- which will mimic what it does now on TQ. That way when the wallet "flashes" the background will stand out and be very easy to notice; something we're all used to now but slightly different too.

Another suggestion, let us rename user-created groups and put an icon to them from pre-loaded icons that the devs or someone with CCP will put together, something to the extent of an "icon gallery". That way we don't have to put up with the generic blue layer icon. Instead, have icons that are the redesigned to look like the icons or the same icons as on the neocom now, and maybe even new ones that help in organization and creativity that can be added in the future. I believe it'll give the end-user much more control and robustness to the user experience.


** Devs could even have contests or some kind of volunteer event to let the playerbase help design some useful and cool icons that the winners would have their icons uploaded to the icon gallery for all of us to use in our neocoms.


Also, I am unable to drag and drop items from the neocom Eve Menu to the neocom bar on SISI -- I hope this is being worked on and will be fixed before it goes live cause I think all of us would appreciate "creating shortcuts" or placing items from the neocom Eve Menu straight onto the neocom bar and in the neocom groups.I think the customizable neocom is a great idea as it will help organizing what we need without cluttering the screen but I must say it will take some time getting used to. I think with the ideas I've posted here, and above, will help make the neocom better than it is now.



In summary, please make all the customizable neocom background to a bright frosty white color in the background for all blink notifications and enable renaming of user-created groups on the neocom with the ability (in the future) to add the ability for the end-user to assign icons to each user-created group so we can really make our neocoms unique and creative. Also fix the current issues with the neocom and be able to drag and drop "shortcuts" from the Eve Menu to the neocom bar and user-created groups.



Source: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=54611&find=unread

I agree balance missions so they are all about as hard as the amarr missions - where there is missile spam and target painters.



Why do you think they were designed for fleets? If someone has time and ability to join a fleet they should be pvping. Missions should be for times when there are no fleets up or you don't have much time to commit to fleets. Missions should be doable solo. Just not soloable in a stealth bomber.

The source is those Alliance documents we talked about previously. CCP's clear intention for FW is as a "hybrid PvP / PvE gameplay environment" that serves to help pilots ease the transition from high sec missions to nullsec warfare.

Granted, this has little to do with what FW is today, and although you and I have somewhat differing views on exactly how to get FW to where it should be, CCP's original intention is pretty well documented. Only CCP can step forward and explain whether this is still their vision for FW or if that vision has changed. I certainly hope they do, and soon, since this is the primary reason that the FW community has so many different opinions on how to "fix FW". If CCP clued us in on how they viewed FW today, we could do a much better job of focusing our dialogue and feedback to help them achieve that goal.



I don't think someone is a carebear because they want to be paid to do what they do, as long as what they want to do is PvP. One of the most common suggestions over the years that has faded a bit from recent discussion is LP-for-kills. FW pilots DO want to be compensated in a greater way for kills, but that greed doesn't make them carebears.

I personally am dubious about paying for kills only because I have serious doubts that it can be done in a way that is fair and doesnt promote fraud or abuse. Paying for kills can also penalizes pilots like myself who fly Logistics and often aren't on killmails despite playing an integral part of an engagement.

Ultimately, I agree with you, there needs to be motivation to fight that supercedes raw isk-generation. But I think that Esna has a fair point in that isk incentives such as LP rewards for seizing plexes (as long as they are PvP-centric environments) still work just as good at motivating people to fight as any other reason.

You and I will seek out fights for fights sake - but this is not everyone, and the new players (who still are part of CCP's vision for FW unless they say otherwise, and regardless of what we think) will need some more base motivations for submitting themselves to such losses early in their careers, that go beyond pure PvP for the sake of PvP - they need to either see FW occupancy as something worth engaging in (which means more consequences, more significance to sov holding) or something that at least pays them on par with mission running so that they don't default to that in their early days.



Again, this is just a subjective opinion, that some of us disagree on. As cited in the Alliances in FW documents, CCP's intention and design philosophy for the FW missions was precisely to combine PvP, and PvE, and while you personally feel that they must be completely seperate, others here don't. And thats fine. Both are valid ways to shape the feature, if done with care. I've seen mission fleets used to bait for fights, and plenty of player-on-player action has certainly taken place inside missions before. They are certainly not IDEAL for this purpose, but the concept works. Missions that are on public overviews do attract PvP in a substantial way that private ones do not.

I completely respect that you feel that they SHOULD be designed as solo endeavors when there is not any PvP around, but many pilots do see them and try to use them as a PvP-driver, and there's nothing wrong with that mindset, despite the problems the missions currently have in practice.

And yes, even if seen as a PvP driver, missions SHOULD be soloable in *heavy* ships, just not in tiny bombers. We certainly agree on that!

Unless I am misunderstanding which "alliance documents" you are referring to, none of those documents were even written by ccp employees. Those were just comments by players.

I agree players often *claim* "fw was intended by ccp to help noobs get into pvp" But I just never actually saw anything from ccp saying that. Yet it gets repeated often.

Regardless of “CCP’s intent”. It’s may be better for new players who don’t want to learn on their own to join the null sec blobs and be told how to fit their ships and what to do before they try to do the smaller scale pvp of fw.



I agree some rewards for plexing are in order but I disagree with the idea that “Greed drives activity” should be the motto of fw plexes. To me people who sit and gate camp with scouts 2 systems out in every direction are just like carebears. They are so busy counting isk and isk efficiency that they fail to realize this is a game. Like carebears they do nothing that is fun or challenging they just think they are “winning” because their wallets are getting fat.

It is impossible to make FW such that there will be a big enough gain to an individual to justify risking your ship. People shouldn’t look to joining a war so they can make money.


The only reason I fight for the fights sake is because ccp offers nothing better. I want the fight to matter in a wider context. But my understanding of how it would mater and yours are different.
You keep saying fw occupancy meaning something = it must have more consequences and more significance to sov holding. And I keep disagreeing. Those two can be part of it. But the game itself will only be worthwhile if it is challenging and fun. I can’t stress how important this is enough.

Imagine you play a game that is like roulette where you can bet on black or red. But instead of playing with money you have to buy special credits called isk in order to play. Also when you win you don’t win money just more isk. You can never trade your isk for money. Now lets say people started complaining saying we don’t get enough isk. So the game makers painted half the red slots black. This way people could make allot of isk betting black. Who would play that?

That is essentially what people who are isk driven in this game are doing.

I'll use an example: Lost (Griffin) and I (Punisher) came across an open minor in Sifilar I think it was, we start timer just as three (3) Thrashers show on short range .. instinct says run, yes?
Due to an aborted speed tanking attempt by a minnie, there was an NPC group within 30k of entrance so we decide to stay with me on warp-in and Lost keeping timer running .. 2nd-3rd Thrasher are intermittently jammed by Lost while I work on the first who can't overcome my active tank thanks to NPC eWar .. End result: 3 Trash cans and the biggest damn adrenaline high I have ever experienced.
In short: They allow one to fight against superior numbers/ships .. sometimes.

Anecdotal evidence cannot, by its very nature, be overwhelming. Fact is that NPC both hurts and benefits PvP opportunities in roughly equal measure .. the current slant towards 'hurts' is due to differences in eWar (ie. NPC balance).

You mean WHEN Amarr wins. It is preordained! We will win because it is Right, Just and a Glory to God! ... Just sayin'

Being restricted to using Amarr hulls (RP for the win!), the minimum viable (ie. PvP ready) ship I have been able to find to solo FW Lvl4's is the Sacrilege. Missions were not easy and required a lot of manual piloting, but definitely doable.
Although I think that aiming for a PvP HAC/PvE BC is a near perfect difficulty level, I fear that the bombers will merely be replaced by swarms of Drakes as even a crap-fit Drake is better at PvE than an officer fit 'any other BC'.

In my perfect world the missions/plexes are mixed up with some requiring hacking/archaeology, killing a specific spawn group (ie. not single commander), fetching an item or all of the above.
The problem is that there has be some PvE element if they are not become entirely trivial .. imagine how stupid plexing would be if all sides could use crap-fit solo frigates .. PvP in plexes would cease to exist even if everyone knew where everyone else was at all times, plexes would essentially become WoW styled battlegrounds with most action being in hub-pipe systems.