Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Nerfing alpha plexing, as satisfying as it would be, is still missing the core of the problem: that the plexing mechanics treat it as zero-risk PvE farming where the incentive is to refuse combat if anything threatens to disrupt your farming. There needs to be more of an incentive to stand your ground and defend the plex you're in (which, coincidentally, alphas would be terrible at) instead of fitting as many WCS as possible and running away from every possible threat. For example, what if leaving a plex before the timer finishes resulted in a LP loss for all attacking players involved? Alpha farmers would quickly find themselves running a net loss in LP, and only players that are willing to engage in PvP would be able to profit from the system.

As for minimum ship sizes, it's a bad idea because it makes it a lot harder to get fights. Those big ships can't go into smaller sites, so you probably end up writing off the larger sites entirely due to the sheer inconvenience of having to swap ships every time you swap sites.

Lol nah and loyalty stores need to be overhauled anyway.
Faction mods should be cheaper than deadspace stuff. Especially guns
There's no faction guns in market because theyre so hard to get.

maybe being in FW plex should trigger weapon timer so anyone who is farming there without intentions of fighting cant immediately hide in station/citadel which would allow a chance to deal with them

i know they can run into safespot but safespots can be probed... it will definitely not fix anything but it might be interesting to make this happen

Here is an overly simplistic version of FW so you have an idea of how and where the problems arise.
FW is points, vulnerability and ultimately "capturing" a sytem
For each plex the attacking faction captures they get points, when they have enough points (relative to defenders) the system becomes "vulnerable" and the attackers can go after the hub directly, if they capture the hub they capture the system. Defenders prevent this by holding plexes they already control, or by re-taking plexes that were captured by the attackers. In theory the system is set up rather well and could be the source of some serious fights, however CCP screwed it all up with how and when you get paid for your involvement. Both attackers and defenders are paid LP / ISK for capturing a plex, they receive virtually nothing for defending a plex they already control so immediately the pay out process discourages fighting because it is more profitable to go capture a plex somewhere else than it is to try and defend one. Make it equally or perhaps even more profitable (LP / ISK) to defend a plex than it is to capture one and you may see a change in this FW farming.

What I find interesting is that many of the complaints here on these forums seem to come from neutrals not involved in the FW portion of the game and that seems simply crazy to me. The FW players are there to make LP / ISK or they are there because the actually want to try and capture or to defend a system. Either way they gain nothing by fighting with neutral characters so why is it a surprise to anyone that they will run away if possible?

That reinforces the notion that fw is the problem. Not alphas.

Alpha use of FW is a problem, as it's mainly free bot farmers.

Here, have some free isk !!

You're way off.

An alpha puts all the effort into farming that an omega does. The difference is an omega has a better skill set. That's all. It's no more free isk for the alpha as it is omega.

Nice knee jerk though

If it was a million omegas or a million alphas it makes no difference. You'd still have the same problem.

The issue is clearly with fw mechanics themselves.

You could just as easily say alphas are exploiting missions for 'free' isk, mining, explorations, even pvp for 'free' loot. You completely misunderstand what the difference between an alpha and omega is.

You're like the vendetta mercs complaining that alphas are ruining their wars because they can blob in shitfit cruisers.


You're problem is not alphas, its that the games population has gone up. It's how fw works.

The difference is that, in all other situations, there's a strict upper limit on how much alphas can do to exploit those PvE opportunities. An alpha will not be doing level 4 missions without a battleship or T2/T3 cruiser, won't be doing nullsec exploration effectively without a cloak or T2 analyzers, won't be mining effectively without a T2 barge, etc. But suddenly in FW the alpha is just as effective as the omega at farming, because there's no incentive to ever fly anything but a stabbed T1 frigate and run away to the next plex as soon as any enemy ship appears.