EVE General Discussion

Eve's red-headed stepchild needs some CCP love.

New players and people in Empire space could use a nice stepping stone out of the nest into lowsec and 0.0 life.

Faction Warfare can provide this and undergo a significant overhaul without CCP having to write -any- new gameplay code, using existing game mechanics. Easy to implement, and easy to add some dynamism to an abandoned part of this game.

Results would be 0.0-lite, essentially smaller stakes territorial pvp with added NPC content


Details:

Pilots needs something to fight -for- with tangible results, or the whole thing has no purpose. When nothing you do means anything and you have nothing to show for it except for some text next to 'sovereignty', faction warfare in current form is an exercise in futility.

Planting little flags and then making ISK as a result are what people do it in 0.0 for.

Planting smaller flags and somewhat restricted pvp-light seem like a reasonable goal for faction war. Adding dynamism is ridiculously easy with just a few extremely broad guiding principles. Work out the details later, but three steps below:

1. Claiming territory grants benefits to the owners.
As easy as docking rights for NPC stations, useful NPC assistance, global in-space combat bonuses, station discounts, whatever. Your faction owning a system should give you some bonuses. Easy, right?

2. Keep the 0.0ers out.
This is the kiddie pool after all, so it's as simple as not letting titans and supers inside, and restricting capitals to only the highest levels of escalation (when systems are vulnerable to capture for example). They do this with the complexes already, it should be region-wide ship restrictions for certain things.

3. Occasional NPC Objectives
"The Empress commands the crusade to retake huola within 7 days for the glory of Amarr" (with x bonus if done)
Tibus Heth calls on all patriots to defend X system from the Federation (with x bonus for resisting NPC (sansha incursion style) attack for 24 hours. The Incursion code is already there, just swap the NPC ship types and it's done.

Anyway just a few suggestions towards some gameplay improvements.

+++

LOLno.

Heh, its far more accurate to say that 0.0 is the stepping stone to the PVP paradise that is low sec. :)

-Liang

The problem is that you aren't actually limiting capital usage in any realistic way - you're just making the defenders with caps already in system be that much more powerful. If you are concerned that capital ships are ruining the mechanics of faction war, then limit the capitals from going into the places where those mechanics already happen.

Furthermore, there's no reason to assume that faction war is the place for the "kiddie pool" to exist, or that low sec is somehow the "minor leagues" as compared to null sec. The truth of the matter is that low sec sports much smaller gangs with a much smaller population and still absolutely destroys null sec in kills per capita. This may or may not have something to do with bitter null sec vets retiring to low sec where real PVP happens. Note that's as opposed to the getting 2000 players together who all know where their F1 button is that you null sec noobs call PVP.

-Liang

I at no point drew a distinction between null and lowsec pvp. I live in low and prefer it to 0.0 thank you very much. Not the point of the thread, and low vs null has nothing to do with this topic.

Getting into semantics with the capital ship thing, I don't care about the specific mechanisms or fine tuned balancing, it's a general topic thread for ways to improve faction warfare. The idea is to keep capitals out of facwar systems until 'sov' is contested. Right now they are a simple safety-valve for station fighting, and do nothing to encourage sub cap participation. They are big toys for older players and don't need to be involved with early to mid-experience pvpers in faction warfare.

So, I'd welcome your suggestions if you've got any thoughts on improving the current faction warfare gameplay.

You may want to let Hans know about this thread since he is trying to run for CSM and improve FW.

re: kiddie pool

FW is hardly the sort of pvp scrubs that alot of people think they are. There is solid talent in each militia as there are scrubs. And you'll find that in piracy, npc space, and null.

Otherwise, you have good ideas. It's just a wait and see attitude for this summer's expansion.

Null is the place for the big toys, FW is the place for the small toys. I daresay the kids with the cheaper toys and no playground to protect, due to the 'nothing to lose' nature of FW get a lot more practice in playing with their toys.

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FW with Incursion mechanics:


Perhaps CCP can use the Incursion mechanic for FW. A system becomes contested and is then likely crawling with FW fleets running around playing hide and seek. Then signatures pops up on the overview, same as in Incursion systems.

It are two separate entrances for a single deadspace pocket. You can't enter from the one of the opposing faction because it's guarded by a big NPC fleet. A fleet that will also keep the -5.0 pirates outside. Inside is a battle going on between NPC of both Factions and helping your side win earns you LP, depending on how many NPC ships survived

Different signatures for different sizes of ships

It's a bit similar to the Vanguard sites that are contested, only here the contestants are likely to shoot each other as well

The side that wins the most sites after a few days, wins the system, and loyalty points are rewarded. And the contest moves to the next system. The more systems are awarded to one Faction, the less the LP rewards become. Diminishing returns will help prevent one Faction curbstomping the other and then grinding the sites for easy LP

The system is cyno-jammed to keep the null-bullies out, and the deadspace pockets don't allow the local dreads and carriers to play in them. Some additional measures could be taken like having big NPC faction fleets of both sides guarding some of the stations to prevent one side stationcamping the other side so they can't participate. And whenever one side claims a site, then the NPC from the other side secure the gates for a few minutes so reinforcements can arrive.

Because this type of pitched confrontations leads to really devastating defeats and phyrric victories, the LP payout should be VERY generous. I always thought people joining the FW should get access to cheap personal Navy editions ships that they can't sell reprocess.

The good thing of this would be the fact it can probably recycle a ton of the code used for Incursions.

That's exactly right; the code is already there for the most part. The spawning, the NPC aggression mechanics, etc. Change the ship types, have them 'fly' for the various factions, and it could be a -lot- of fun.


I've thought it might be interesting if in certain situations with enough 'rep' or 'influence' gained for a system that -big ticket- NPCs could be spawned for fights, say a 'friendly' NPC carrier or mothership etc to help with a defense or offense transfer.

IE; X faction has earned enough points/whatever to make the system vulnerable, they've killed x threshold of opposing militia pilots so they get 'x' NPC spawns to help them take the system, and vice versa for the defenders

Supercap balance is a different topic but points #1 and #3 are excellent and should be in the game already.