Player Features and Ideas Discussion

+1 to this. No sovereignty system you can imagine will be pvp-based if the other side is a no show. Drawing comparisons to running sanctums in a rival's nullsec is ridiculous.

However, you do need to deal with the issue of whether or not it is more efficient to contest a plex or wait and run one later/elsewhere. Under the current mechanics, it is easier for defenders to undo their opponents progress by running dplexes after they leave, and it is more efficient for attackers to leave for a bit and run plexes elsewhere, since it is unlikely a pvper will subject themselves to winding down a half-run plex.The easiest way to drive out the farmers is to make them realize that there is no easy money in FW - they will have to fight for every loyalty point.

Question for CCP Ytterbium about the system upgrades: Do the bonus slots only apply to facilities the station already possessed, or will it give slots where there are currently none? The former is somewhat anemic, as there are only a handful of systems with extensive enough services to merit maintaining upgrades. The later is actually pretty awesome, as it makes any system with a station potentially valuable. (I suspect it is the former). And is this the extent of system upgrade changes, or will there potentially be more?

So I give 7 pieces of solid evidence that players follow the isk. And your response is to make a technical complaint about one of them.

As I sit here I can name a few other pieces of evidence that should make it clear to anyone that isk talks louder than "pvp opportunities":

8) Nulli

9) Caldari miltiia bigger than gallente.

10) Not a single large minmatar entity left minmatar militia after inferno. Don't any of them want pvp??

Not to mention that you will likely still get the pvp opportunities if you say fly for caldari instead of amarr, or fly for minmatar instead of gallente.

So the argument that people will join the losing side for pvp opportunities is not only illogical the overwhelming evidence is against it.

I absolutely agree, within reasonable limits (both to avoid sending out garbage information/spam, to force people to be roaming space, and to prevent blobbery). I would wholeheartedly support a constellation intel channel for plex distress beacons (possibly with more detail information for upgraded systems).

False dichotomy, and a whole lot of confused thinking.

Having large economic swings does not mean less pvp. It just means all the militias get a payday instead of just one or 2.

Nor do the underdogs need anyone ot bail them out in the current mechanic. You keep saying that but right now amarr has over half the systems vulnerable or in our control. Who bailed us out? You never answer this question either. Why don't you ask susan because she is the one spouting this nonesense.

Giving people lp for defensive plexing does not mean you will have more conflict in defensive plexes. You will have less conflict because you are giving an economic incentive to let the offensive plexers finish their plex.

As far as making it pvp centered, you are the one who is diluting the message.

You are the one on csm letting ccp get diverted from this goal so your militia can farm defensive plexes.

You ran on the platform to make plexing a pvp mechanic. Yet somehow the 2 main proposals to accomplish that, get tabled, but your miltiias concern that they cant continue to farm systems after they capture them is getting addressed.

Many of us left QCATS because we wanted to fight under the Gallente banner. So, what this shows is that some players will do what they want, and others will do what they want as well.

BTW, most of the Gallente corporations and alliances have stayed with Gallente FW even though Caldari have the clear plexing advantage (even though it is more "efficient" to join Minmatar FW).

And to be fair to QCATS, they were a large contributor in griefing Nulli, and they are a large contributor to Gallente FW in the Gallente/Caldari theater. AND they aren't doing it with their alts. They are plexing with their mains killing more people than any other FW corp.

Yes, I'm aware. I wasn't referring to defensive plexing, I was referring to the payout scheme Cearain repeatedly defends.



Yeah, that's not what I said. See above.

I don't think I understand the maths they're proposing for LP for defensive plexing.





Tier 1 attacker, Tier5 defender. System X is 50% contested.

Attacker captures a plex that has a default value of 10,000 LP. because they are at tier 1, this makes that plex only worth 5000 LP to that attacker, is that right ?

Defender defends a plex, that also has a value of 10,000 LP. What amount of VP do they get ?
5000 LP since system is 50% contested ?
5000 LP +200% for being tier 5 = 15,000 LP ?


Tier 2 attacker, tier 4 defender, would get 10,000 lp for attacker, 12,500 for defender at 50% contested system. ?
Tier 3 attacker, tier 3 defender, would be 20,000 lp for attacker, 10,000 for defender. ?
Tier 4 attacker, tier 2 defender, would be 25,000 lp for attacker, 5000 for defender. ?
Tier 5 attacker, tier 1 defender, would be 30,000 lp for attacker, 2500 for defender. ?

On reflection, I can't say I'm a fan of LP for defensive plexing in its current state. I think everyone in this convo agrees that farmers are the enemy here, but there seems to be a misconception about what actually causes the farming.

People farm FW plexes (and they do farm them more than missions I can almost guarantee you) because it's 1) profitable and 2) horrifyingly easy, though that depends on which faction you join, admittedly. By giving as much as 75% of the possible LP gained from regular offensive plexing, we're just creating another isk source for farmers that is even easier than it is now, as you don't even need to worry about tanking npcs.

Now if we do what Hans suggests, and basically make it so you have to deal with NPCs whether it's a defensive or an offensive plex, that might solve our farming problem right there. No more 2 day old alts running unrestricted majors by themselves, assuming the NPC changes don't come out totally FUBAR.

Everyone needs to keep in mind that any solution has to take into account both micro and macro mechanics (plex mechanics and incentives). They both affect the problems we have in equal measure. Farmers farm because it's easy and profitable. People don't defend because it is not profitable and incredibly boring/time consuming. But that's not the whole story. People also don't defend because its ineffectual against the farming horde.

Case in point, back when Gallente had no systems, part of the reason so few plexed was that the system was stacked against us. A huge plex spawn would occur at downtime when we were hopelessly outnumbered, and you would sometimes get nothing in the system for the rest of the day. For those of us who couldn't be on at DT, it was impossible to affect the outcome, so many eventually just stopped doing it.

Likewise, people didn't defensive plex now because of the endless tide of farmers that could contest any type of plex without having to use ammo or change ships. Now incentives surely had something to do with the lack of people defensive plexing, and maybe more defensive plexers would have balanced out the farmers, but it still wouldn't have taken the farmers out of the picture, and that's really what the goal is here.

By shifting farmers over to defensive plexing, there's a very likely danger that the meta will swing all the way from one extreme to the other. The front will be so stagnant that no one will want to offensive plex in any meaningful way, and system occupancy will grind to a halt. If people can't win, they won't want to play, and we'll be back to the bad old days when no one cared about plexing or system occupancy.

Nice words, Julius.

While I agree we need to have the rats shoot you in a defensive plex if at all plausible from the programming end, I still maintain that the absolute priority is making sure the proper PvP incentives are in place. Making plexing dangerous because of the likelihood of PvP will do far more to cut down on farming than any NPC-based solution.

NPC's are only part of the equation, all they do is guarantee that your victim is in something other than a gunless, warp stabbed, nano-frigate. They dont make it more likely that the victim will stick around in the first place.

If we can get CCP to implement the timer rollback and institute some kind of alert system to bring PvPers out to the plexing (offensive and defensive alike), the PvP risk inside plexes will dwarf the risk caused by rats. Once farmers realized there is no hiding their plexing efforts, they'll cease to become risk-averse farmers and become consensual PvPers whenever they enter the plex.

So yes - rat aggro for both types of plexing is great, the PvP incentives are better and I hope others keep speaking up in support of this. Otherwise all we'll be left with is farmers using new ships and still running constantly to plex wherever they can hide from the PvP crowd, little will have changed. PvP incentives are king this winter - they are the most badly needed fixes.

CCP hasn't ruled these out, they're still discussing this internally, so I could use your support in bringing plexing to the place we've wanted it to be all along - the premiere venue for guaranteed sub-cap PvP.

I think its even easier than that - we already have militia channel, which can and is used to relay intel about enemy movement.

What we need is a more useful minimap - the current map only shows contested systems as flashy, which is redundant as we already have that information listed in a column to the right. Instead I think it would be so much more useful to just have the minimap flash whenever a plex is being taken in that system.

It doesnt dumb things down, you still need scouts to determine what plex they are in and who's inside, it just makes it impossible to sneak around and hide your plexing efforts. Plexing becomes instant bait for PvP, as its intended to be.

This is a simple, elegant, spam free and channel-free method of accomplishing the same thing. It allows new players to find meaningful action whether or not they've made it through the hazing into a player group and participate in the war.

The more PvP-supporting features we can implement like this, the less players will be wandering around aimlessly or sitting in stations while farmers plex right under the enemy's nose. It'll do far more to encourage conflict than simply forcing players to shoot an NPC.

This is by no means the only type of alert we could have, I'm just in favor of simple, powerful changes rather than more complicated and explicit text alerts that most players are getting tired of anyways. I've already been speaking to CCP about this, but I could always use some support from others here that likewise want plexing to get back to being a PvP activity, not a place to do sneaky PvE with little risk for huge payouts. Let your voices be heard!