Jita Park Speakers Corner

Herr Jagerblitzen! For too long CCP has enacted a harsh policy on not just hisecers, but all Eve Online players, a policy that makes a mockery of the sandbox theory, a policy that expects us to conform, without even raising our voices in protest.

I ask you, what will you do to ensure that we can all run around pantless? We are capsuleers! Living gods in this universe! Living gods with nice thighs! Won't you please do what you must to allow us to show off our smooth silky legs?

2 votes from me, Hans. Keep up the good work and try to get that Jack Dant Proposal pushed through!

I'll be voting for you Hans. Keep up the good work.

I fully support a no-clothes option for Avatars while lounging in our Captains Quarters. Since we can't have our friends over anyways, I see no reason we shouldn't be able to take advantage of the privacy!

You have all my votes.

bump for hans

bump.

I would argue that the current "consequences" to capturing a system are already cosmetic and meaningless, and since they haven't been enough to sustain activity levels over the years the next set of FW improvements must include rewards and punishment that actually impact gameplay.

There are lots of ways both large and small in which we can reward successful occupancy, but I think the first round of fixes must be tied to the existing core system. No sense in throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Did you know that you can actually get LP for player kills? Most militia pilots don't. That's because the amount rewarded for a kill is so negligible the average pilot doesn't even realize he's earning it. This is an easy problem to fix. And with most death payouts, as long as the LP kickout is a percentage of the ship value you can prevent kill-farming for profit quite easily.

Players have also long appreciated the idea of the plexing mechanics, though not found enough reasons to engage inside them as supposed to on a gate, station, or belt. One of the most common questions a new player asks when they join FW is "how many LP do I earn for capturing a plex"? Frustratingly, the answer is none. Players intuitively assume they are being rewarded for their efforts, and then get dismayed when they find out this isn't the case. LP for plexing is one of the most commonly demanded fixes, and is a no-brainer for discussing with CCP. I understand there are legitimate concerns about farming and isk faucets, but if we can successfully move the isk-generation from PvE (level 4 missions farmed by bombers) to PvP (plex seizure by small gangs) it will be a massive step in the right direction. Central to all of these adjustments will be tweaks to the AI for whatever NPC presence is needed, so that the plexes are not farmable the same way the missions are today.

Even in the most radical scenario where missions were dropped and equivalent LP was to be found in plexes, the amount of increased activity in the plexes would be plenty sufficient to create locations where players could almost be guaranteed a fight. I personally don't care how many alts come to farm LP if they're doing it by plexing in gangs of destroyers, cruisers, and battlecruisers. That would be much more fun to engage than chasing individual stealth bombers in distant mission locations.

Giving cookies is one way to encourage fights, but we can also include some punishments for losing system occupancy as well. While I'm hesitant to endorse 0.0-style full station lockouts, I think it just makes sense that a Tribal Liberation Force pilot hanging on the undock of a 24th Imperial Crusade station is going to get shot. We are at war, after all. Systems will change hands faster than architects can build new stations, so we might have a designation that says "TLF-occupied 24th IC Logistics Support" indicating the station is currently under control of enemy troops, and will fire upon its previous owners. Station fire cuts down on boring docking games, and provides a sense of "home turf" that is sorely missing fromt he battlefield right now.

The other major missing component from the Faction Warfare feature is reliable data regarding the state of the battlefield. We desperately need an updated UI window for the militia tab, containing the progress indicator for a system takeover attempt, and perhaps such as information as the location of all open plexes or possibly whether they are currently under attack. Players need to be able to know how to be useful, and where to head to get some action. It should be fairly difficult to "ninjaflip" a system without the enemy having a clue as to what you're up to.

Note that these are pretty simple changes and have nothing to do with null sec soverignty, and would still go light years towards promoting frequent of fights. They also don't involve throwing more isk at the players, but simply shifting its source from PvE to PvP where it belongs. I think CCP should start with these basics, and see what the impact is before gutting plexes and implementing something different that could somehow be used in 0.0 space. In the meantime, they should be soaking up the good ideas being tossed around by the players in threads like this one that are currently active with discussion.

I would definitely make an effort to log in more often if these changes where made.

You have one of my 3 votes for sure and positions like this make it more likely I will give you all my votes.

One thing I just thought of when reading this was what if CCP didn't make FW more like Sov is today but in the rewrite of SOV made the final take over of a system more like it is in FW.

My very basic and first thought on this is thus:
I like the idea of being able to get SOV for actually living in the system, or at least maintaining sov that way. But what if when sov got contested to a certain point instead of doing massive structure grinds on things what if a certain set of FW like plexs where spawned so that mixed fleets would have to be deployed to a system to take over. And say the outcome of the whole day's worth of activity would then determine who had SOV come downtime.

And if this went where with a system of maintaining sov based on activity if you later become inactive then the NPC pirates would then take it back. Since players are basically taking over what they consider there space anyway.

Good luck in the election

The point of taking 0.0 space is access to valuable resources that you can choose to exploit, not forcing people to meet ratting quotas to maintain infrastructure. Enforced PvE, which is what Kethry seem to suggest, is a poor way of determining ownership. Admittedly I guess that's not a million miles away from how it works in FW but as has already been discussed in this thread, the incentives for doing so are pretty much limited to bragging rights so its not as though anyone loses out all that badly.

I mean, the idea of invading a hostile system with hulks and out-mining the defenders to take their sov is amusingly surreal, but I don't think it would actually make for entertaining gameplay beyond the novelty value of doing it the first couple of times.