Warfare & Tactics

I'll let everyone decide for themselves whether I've had an impact or not.

Just for a fun little review of the timeline here - this is what I was specifically asking CCP to address back before the Retribution release planning was completed: Thirteen items in particular.

Of those, 9 are now in the game.

Two of the remaining items were items that CCP wavered on initially, eventually agreed they were important and added them to their backlog, but ran out of time. Had they not run out of time, we'd see 11/13 of my priority requests implemented as part of Retribution.

The only items I've pushed for that no longer appear to be on CCP's immediate radar, sadly, are the minimap alerts and improved industrial system upgrades. I brought this up again at the summit, but it remains to be seen what kind of effort CCP plans to invest into Faction Warfare beyond Retribution. Release planning for the next expansion will occur in January.

And now back to our regularly scheduled Amarr-Minmatar hug-fest. Love you all, friends. Hope you're all coming to FanFest!

If the number value was too high, that's understandable, they could have done 10% or 20% and it still would be meaningful for those that manufacture in lowsec. The issue is that there is a lack of a spectrum from highsec out to 0.0 with increased benefits going to those that place their operations at higher levels of risk.

I'm not giving up on the issue at all, there was a lot of talk about 0.0 stuff at this summit in particular, including plenty of discussion focused on re-balancing science and industry. They suffer the same affliction that we do, that is near-perfect refines in highsec space and the inability to compete given the extra logistical challenges we face outside of the safe zone.

Since it needs to be done anyways, lets say -hypothetically- that CCP decides to focus Team Game of Drones onto 0.0 for the summer expansion, instead of Faction Warfare. The income spectrum would have to be addressed either way, and just as 0.0 folks rightfully argued that they deserve industrial upgrades once they heard of rumor of it happening in FW, if they were to ever implement them in 0.0 I'd be demanding they put into FW just as loudly.

What matters to me most is that CCP solves the problem of the risk / reward spectrum in the coming year. Whether they address low sec's needs first, or whether they decide what the value needs to be in 0.0 and work backwards to arrive at a middle ground for low sec, is less important than committing resources to the issue in the first place.

It would be pretty awesome if the Faction Warfare community ends up showing as much patience and understanding as you're demonstrating here.... The 0.0 crowd has certainly been pretty cool all year while CCP's taken care of us.

It is my hope that any potential changes to make null occupancy more appealing still churn out plenty of alliances failing to take sovereignty during the upheaval, retreating to lowsec and providing much hilarity for those of us shamelessly willing to kick them while they're down (and teach them how PvP is done.) I hear the Amarr militia is a GREAT place to restock Navy Armageddon's!

I think this is as close to a confession that you're a shameless drama-llama as I'm gonna get*. I'll take it!

In all seriousness though, thanks for your enthusiasm over the years with regards to keeping the conversation going about Faction Warfare. Someone had to step up and play the part of the angry-belligerent know-it-all, I suppose! Now, if only you'd come -participate- once in a while you might discover that the pew in space is more satisfying than the spew on the forums! (But what do I know, I'm just a filthy Shakorite.)



I'm still amused at your stubborn adherence to the ZOMGCCPYUSOSTUPID meme despite it being pretty clear from the beginning that Inferno was a job half-done, and that more time was needed in the next expansion to shore up the loose ends. It was never sold as a complete FW revamp (if it had been, I would have joined you in calling them incompetent). Granted, there were some pretty hilarious fallout from exactly what got left to work on in the second half of the year, and we called them on it. But I also know you well enough to know there is some part of you (whether you'll admit it or not) that derives deep satisfaction from knowing that EVE players will be talking about the forex manipulation and the summer of farmville for years to come.

In celebration of 2012, "The Year of Faction Warfare" Let's take a journey back in time: its fun to reflect on how far we've come. ....And to put this into context everyone, while you see me and Veshta rattle sabers on the forums all the time, the bottom line is we've always shared a lot of ideals in common, and her work predates mine. In fact, if Veshta had any sort of bedside manner at all, she might have beat me to where I sit today. (People skills pay off.) Here are some of the things she wrote during the first few months I was learning to play EVE:

- Territory: Losing a system to an occupying force should have consequences, if system has a Militia station it will be under new management allowing enemies to dock but denying them access to services, NPC corp stations are unaffected.

- There has been numerous calls for docking rights based on occupancy, it will never happen, too harsh if you ask me .. people have lives and those pesky things sometimes call people away in a hurry.

- Complexes spawn throughout occupied space, they spawn throughout the day. Spawns (locations) based on occupancy rather than sovereignty (removes the DT shuffle in occupied hostile space).

- NPCs need to be destroyed to take a plex. NPCs should be strong enough to be able to defeat a PvP ship thus requiring either sacrifice by fitting for PvE or team-work. War is not a solo endeavour.

- NPCs have a variety of weapons at their disposal; missiles, short/long range guns and neutralisers (no webs/points though). Racial eWar is removed completely and AI will not be suckered into hunting a target they are unable to reach.

- NPCs prioritise enemies in range of timer over others. They will switch to next viable target if they do less than 5-10% of their damage over a period of time (pure speed tank not possible).

- NPC's are necessary if the current timer based system is maintained. Otherwise all we need is a frigate with propulsion mod to cap anything we like .. makes for crappy gameplay, zero fights and boredom.

- The more systems a militia holds above the starting point the harder (more VP needed) future conquests become.

- Agents allow two declines before standings hits are applied. Missions can go to any hostile occupied system, with an significantly increased chance of it being in the border-zone.

- LP for kills is doubled compared to present. LP for kills on grid in border-zone plexes doubled (or more) again on top of that.

- Map shows blob (perhaps with more intervals) as now but hover shows percentage contested state in 10% increments.

- Militia office interface revamped to show contested status of border-zone systems instead of the useless "additional information" pane. Make it into a web-page to use with in-game browser for extra awesome sauce

- Border-zone systems has an optional "contested bar" similar to what is seen with Incursions for easy reference.

- Other than missions being completely detached from the wars and being woefully easy/fast I do not generally see any issues with them so tried to keep it simple (CCP likes simple I think)

- Each militia will have to balance offensive and defensive efforts to achieve success, the uber-blob of doom will lose hard. Choosing the right system to assault becomes important as it can widen or shrink the border-zone quite substantially and decides access to militia stations.

- If/When hell freezes over and occupancy gets a real purpose then the game changes drastically in favour of fighting over and in plexes.

- There will be fighting almost non-stop in and around the border-zone. It will be fast, dirty and exceedingly violent .. just like proper militia wars have been throughout history.

Don't be fooled by the bittervet 'tude.....

o7


*I stand corrected.

With any luck he'll have company, too.