Player Features and Ideas Discussion

You do realize that there was no isk related to plexing until the last 3 months right? I think the last three months should provide a bit more important data to how people react to isk for plexing. But even before then people would leave amarr for caldari and minmatar due to easier mission rats. Inferno just expanded that reason.




I'm not saying its non-existant. It was a very good change. It is just that it won't be enough. As long as plexing is most efficiently done in pve ships it will remain pve. The change made it so you can pvp in some plexes. But it didn't make it so plexing is best done as a pvp activity.


LOL 2 out of 3 have already left amarr for the more lucrative caldari militia.

Did they do that for pvp? I doubt it, but lets assume they did. Well they are leaving the smallest militia for the largest militia. So much for your theory people will join the smaller militia for the pew.



Your first and second paragraphs seem to contradict.

But yes history tells the story. Isk and pvp are important factors. Before the inferno isk was generally balanced. Although caldari and minmatar had a very slight edge it mostly didn't matter what faction you were in. After inferno they added huge isk consequences and we saw a huge exodus from the militia that seemed to get the short end of that stick.

Yet we see that even amarr can start working slowly toward an equivalant payday. Look at how more and more systems become vulnerable. This is because minmatar don't get lp for defensive plexing. So the minmatar whine that the farming stopped and soon that last bit of balance will be gone thanks to thier having a member on csm.

FW provides pvp for all militias but under your new system the winning side gets most of the isk and the losing side has no hope of getting equivalant gains ever.

Hey I don't care. I and most every amarr I know already has alts in minmatar miltiia. So if you want to remove the only isk balance thats fine. Plexing will be even more of a joke than it is now.

I don't understand what you mean by this at all. What extreme, imaginary level of defensive plexing would keep you from wanting to offensively plex? And how would this extreme level interfere with your desire to take systems, gain WZC points, so that you can multiply your income once you raise a tier? Even if it may not *seem* like good sense to offensive plex from behind, it is. If someone doesn't want to bump their faction up a tier for double rewards, I don't even know what to say....



Why in the world would I thank a pilot for bringing me that much closer to losing a handful of WZC points (possibly threatening my tier level and income in real-time) and handing me an activity that is still boring, and pays only a fraction of what two other activities in FW payout much better in terms of isk / hour?

If you're in my system, taking my plexes, and you're no longer flying a warp-stabbed inty, I'm going to undock and kill you for the fun of it. And if I'm hard up for isk, I'm going to go take one of yours, or run missions. What I'm not going to do is sit around and ignore a kill opportunity only to undock later and make less income than I could elsewhere.

I'm not trying to be combative, perhaps there's something I'm misunderstanding about your point here.

OK. "The enemy gets a billion LP for taking any defensive plex." You can struggle to take space from what will rapidly become the entire EVE community's combined alts, heavy with supercaps and deadspace everything.



If you take one step to the east, you don't circumnavigate the globe. You need a lot of steps. If it's generally shameful to take every one of those steps, if your enemy celebrates every step you make and is rewarded by every step even more than you are, then there's no longer a marginal path to victory, and yeah, giving up has a lot to recommend it vs. maybe possibly getting double rewards if only you'd commit to helping your enemy for a long time.



Even if that becomes an objectively foolish thing to do? Even when people say, no, hold up, let's get the system up to 75% contested first?

Look, if incentives so don't matter to you that you won't ever be influenced by them and can't even imagine them influencing anyone else, why do you want defensive LP?

Hans please answer this question. Its a fair question, and I think it will help you start to understand "the underdog" perspective on this.

Once more for the hell of it:
Defensive LP is an atrocious idea that will inevitably exasperate the farming issues as the one Aspect of FW that is even easier than the current speed-tanking frigate is defensive plexing.
While it might help if the rules are bent (read: contorted) by having enemy NPC suddenly appear in friendly plexes, it raises the question of whether a mechanic that requires that amount of trickery to even be palpable should be considered at all.

Suggested changes (ihub+plexes) almost "fixes" the offensive part of the equation; decent enough potential payout, semi-relevant upgrade options (still want docking somewhere in the there ), challenging underlying mechanics .. all in all, looking pretty good.

Defensive fix however is the basest of the base and amounts to throwing ISK/LP at the problem and even delaying any required action for exorbitant amount of time (almost as if designed to allow one TZ really), hasn't worked in any other circumstance that I can recall be it virtual or real.
Defending ones space should be reward in and of itself, make the upgrades worth protecting rather than handing out LP willy-nilly.

This is two-fold:
-+- Immediate benefits acquired by expensing the LP, well over hal-way there with much better effects in the upgrade paths but still need MOAR!
* Increase slots, speed, efficiency etc. even more .. within reason of course, but barring using Titan's to export the ability to mass produce effectively in low-sec makes little sense, which bring me to ..
* Make repair and taxes cost 0 (zero) ISK ..
What is the worst that can happen, pirates move in, a low-sec trade-hub comes into being or freighters start selling/moving again?

-+- Introduce a sense of urgency to defending and wanting to die/kill for ones space. This isn't and shouldn't be like null where you have hours/days to get your act together.
* Either decrease the upgrade levels again (bad idea, need to dump LP from system somehow) or increase the bleed significantly compared to proposed levels.
* Double, triple, quadruple or however high one can go without breakage, LP-for-Kills within defensive plexes. Do NOT payout this LP but rather use it to top up the system LP pool, any overflow is lost or perhaps paid out as normal.
* Add the ability for the enemy to dock should he have ~8 hours uninterrupted plexing, ought to be around level 3-4 upgrade or so as originally suggested by CCP.

Damn, now my beer is gone .. grrrrrrrrr.

Edit: Forgot the underdog fail-safe. Can be anything that facilitates a come back without needing a massive influx of players (ie. Da Blob) .. personally partial to reducing all involved timers the deeper one is in the hole. Down to 1-3 systems and you can take any plex, defensive and offensive, in say half the time

I'm still waiting for hans to give an answer. Although I am not optimistic.

But your answer is pretty weak. Yes "it could be" plexing for the enemy. We know that plexing for the enemy will pay over 2xs as much as plexing for our own side.

If they want to make isk from faction war then they should plex the winning side.

If they otherwise care about faction war occupancy outside of isk then they should orbit a button for half the value the enemy militia gets. I think I already know how well this argument will work.

Like I said Han's system has no balance.

Yeah, there's not really much point in these wild "what if" scenarios. No one is seriously proposing giving billions of LP for a defensive plex. When thats being discussed, we can talk about why it will cause everyone to snowball into the same militia, and in the meantime lets stick to the proposal at hand.



That's just it, you don't have to "help the enemy" for a long time, and much less so before you start reaping rewards under the proposed system. After Inferno, the only way the underdog will reap rewards us in the extreme case of a large nullsec entitiy joining with the specific purpose of farming isk, and assisting the faction to reaching a teir 4-5 spike. This is not only an unsustainable method of recovery (such saviors will leave after accomplishing their goals), its also not one the rank-and-file members can achieve themselves. On the other hand, modulating payouts means that the underdog will reap rewards much much sooner, the minute they hit tier 2. This is much more achievable, and allows the underdog to stay in the game financially and not get washed out when he hits bottom and Nulli Secunda isn't around to help.

Which do you think is more demoralizing, slaving away to earn tier 2 only to find that you're still not going to be able to cash out your LP until you've slaved through 3 more tiers before cashout (and fighting for that long without any isk income because you're sitting on your LP)? Or making twice as much as you do now, and making twice as much more LP once you rise from tier 1 to tier 2, and being able to fund that war effort the whole way because you can cash out anytime without penalty?



It's not objectively foolish. Preventing the enemy from taking the plex is still the most efficient way to deal with an enemy offensives. Defensive plexing is still the least efficient use of a pilot's time. It makes more sense to kill the enemy, than go into his system and plex there for moree income, than it does to ignore the enemy and just undo his work later for a fraction of pay for the same time orbiting a button.



Faction Warfare right now doesn't encourage direct conflict - it encourages equal efforts in separate locations, not a competitive environment in a single location. When any militia has to defensive plex for any extended period of time (and this has identical effect on both militias, regardless of those that say this is all about the winner), it washing them out of the militia completely. It makes them not want to do FW at all, not just make them not want to do defensive plexing. Burnout is bad game play design. Some envision a system where this burnout and member depletion help the underdog recover, but I think its asinine to have a balancing system that depends on solely on recruitment for the underdog, or burnout of the winners.

I want all faction warfare participants to stick around and fight for a long time, win or lose - and I want underdogs to be able to fund their own recovery along the way without relying on outside saviours that don't really have their back to begin with.

We have 4 years of history to show that players will sign up for the underdog in Faction Warfare regardless of wherever the seasonable isk-making activity, and its always been for the PvP opportunities. There is simply no reason to throw out that fact and intentionally build a system that relies solely on economic incentives to join.

Defensive plexing rewards encourage pilots to stick around in the area where the fighting is occuring, and to support their FC's in the war effort without fear of losing the income they need to participate in FW at the same time. It's a small stipend, not a substitute for their main paycheck, and it has far more to do with keeping FW pilots in FW, and not using burnout and boredom as a crude balancing measure.

Lastly, LP-for defensive plexing is something that many, many pilots have suggested across these various threads, from all four militias, regardless of those that want to politicize this issue. Burnout and boredom affects everyone, not just the winners, and I think we all want a system that retains good pilots in the long run.

On a side note: Would you undermine your faction for:
1. 1% increase in rewards
2. 10% increase in rewards
3. 50% increase
4. 100% increase
5. 200% increase
6. 1000% increase?

This reminds me of: "We've already established that you're an isk whore, we're just trying to set the price". Your price is apparently at most 2x (100% increase).

I see people who want can count are "isk whores." Terrible people right? How dare they choose a economically smart approach to this game?


But to answer your question the current tier system allows people to make just as much isk by plexing for their own militia. Han's proposal forces underdogs to always take less isk if they want to plex for their own militia.

I like the overall set of changes proposed, with maybe a couple of concerns.

When changes were made to Incursion rewards awhile back, a set of nerfs were put together to curb the excessive rewards that could be farmed from blitzing Vanguard sites. While it did (IMO) need doing, the changes all taken together proved to be far too big a nerf. I'm worried the reverse might happen to defensive plexing.

Under the new system, WZC tiers 3-5 will boost LP payouts. That means players should want to defend their space more in order to maintain higher control tiers, rather than just spike the tier up to 5 for a brief period as we do in Inferno. Instead, we need to keep the tier high in order to earn more LP. That means it should be in our interest to defensive plex more - the reward is keeping your WZC up.

If you also add an LP reward for defensive plexing on top of this, then defensive plexing becomes the new semi-afk earning method of choice. Even with a diminishing returns mechanic, I think this is heading towards being a farmable mechanic. Change the control tier system, but think twice before adding 'active rewards' for defensive plexing. If it is done, then make sure the numbers stay small.

Second point; mission payouts need to be cut back. Missions were originally intended to promote PVP by sending players towards enemy space, but in reality it doesn't really happen. What does happen is that huge amounts of LP can be made for a relatively low risk activity (stealth bombers...) that does little to nothing to promote FW's primary purpose; PVP.

Reduce the rewards for missions sooner rather than later, doing so will increase the relative value of offensive plexing and PVP kills (less LP in circulation), encouraging more players to get stuck into the war effort proper.