Warfare & Tactics

I'm going to disagree with some of the above.

FW's stated goal is to be an introduction to PvP for low-SP pilots. Given that, I think it is entirely reasonable that the missions should be doable solo, and in T2 frigates. It is one of the main charms of FW missions, in fact.

It would make a lot more sense to me to make them all doable in Bombers and/or AssFrigs, solo, and if anything, scale the reward.

They should absolutely NOT require fleeting up, or BC+ ships to run, at least in my opinion. Leave them accessible to solo low SP pilots.

PvP accessibility for low SP pilots does not necessitate access to L4 missions in bombers or assault frigates. Beware Malcanis' Law here.

Low SP pilots can make more than enough to sustain their PvP losses by plexing. Even now, you can run 4x novices per hour easily, making 40k LP at tier 2. That's at least 40m per hour, which is solid income for folks losing ships in the 2-10mil isk range on average.

FW L4 missions should require something on par to regular L4 missions in terms of skill / ship investment. If newbros want to run FW missions, the L1-L3 should be perfectly doable in assault frigates and the like.

I don't have a problem going either way (easy mode/slightly harder mode) as long as the risk/reward is in line, at the moment the risk/reward is out of wack though.

Agreed. So, combining a few posts, I think:

1. The missions should be balanced so all races can complete any FW kill mission solo in T2 frigs or faction cruisers.
2. The reward scaling should be fixed, because as much as I like having an alt that can pull in several hundred thousand LP an hour, it's just wrong.
3. CCP should consider adding a FW-based Incursion like mission system that requires fleet action. This could actually be very cool, if PvE is your thing.

I agree with this. The reward should be in line with eve economics generally and plexing in particular. If for example ccp puts a timer rollback in plexes and does some other changes where every plex captured requires about one or 2 pvp fights then mission rewards would be way out of whack.

To the extent they add risk to plexing they should decrease the reward for running missions. Otherwise those lp you gain from doing the more pvp focused plexing jobs will be too watered down to be worth trading in. Hopefully that will be a problem ccp needs to correct soon.

Why? Why not just scale the rewards better? That's the real problem.

Have to agree with FHP here. In general, L4s pay about twice as much per hour as offensive plexing. Given that L4s are much harder to do than plexes, that relative reward balance is ok in my opinion.

The PvP risk is higher in plexes, but the isk/time investment is lower. That kinda balances out.

What's out of whack is how easy two of the factions have it compared to the others, due to racial Ewar and weapon selection. That needs to be fixed, and given the historical preferences in FW mission running I'd say that scaling the difficulty up to Gallente or at the very least Amarr level would be better.

Because so few hisec lv4 missions are of an assassination type of objective. They are mostly destroy-all-the-npcs, while containing several rooms full, and the acceleration gates don't unlock until the room is cleared. And unless you're under a hisec wardec, you don't need to worry about traveling in your BS since there are no random/neutral gatecamps that'll get you.

But in lowsec, FW, there are pirate+wartarget gatecamps. In addition there is an assassination type of feel and objective to many of the missions, which does makes sense to be all cloak and dagger about it in a SB. Also, exactly how often do you see BSs (solo) going around the WZ for any reason? There are a few, but nothing like all the ravens and apocs you see in hisec for mission running. Anything bigger than cruiser steps into wz territory to die or hub bash. Nothing more.

This is just plain wrong. I took my phoon and with a cloak, mwd, ec-600s and mjd you are basically uncatchable in amarr/minmatar lowsec. In fact, most of the gates have nobody on them anyways with the exception of the odd roaming gang, so with a cloak+mwd there is no real danger in taking gates. The only danger I ever encountered was with the odd dude trying to beat me in warp to a mission and catching me there for a gang or something.

For some reason the meta in lowsec fw seems to be to not bother with bs despite the massive incomes you can make and the relatively low risk in doing so. It is insanely easy too considering you can just land inside of a l4 mission, mjd off and anyone trying to come into your plex has almost no chance of catching you while you are 100km off.

Why do people want to dillute the lp/isk so much so that anyone can do them with just a frig/cheap cruiser? It hardly seems like people who can't fly bigger ships are going to be needing all that extra isk anyways and it's hardly fair or fun that someone in a bomber in fw can make more isk/hour than someone in a carrier doing sanctums in nullsec. All you get are a bunch of farmers who train up an alt for 1-2 months and then make obscene bank while contributing nothing to the pvp enviroment of fw. I'm honest enough to say that is exactly what I was doing for the last month (ableit in bigger ships cuz it was more profitable) and it's downright broken that the only place more profitable then l4 fw missions is in wh's.

If you want a simple fix to missions, just add webs into the l4 fw missions that can reach out to 150km. Alternatively, add a bunch of elite frigs with mwds that go 3-4k/s that have webs and points.

For one more orientated to pvp, change the way that missions work and make them basically like storyline agents but based on pvp. If you get a kill in fw against the opposing factions, you can then start talking to agents who give out lucrative missions.

edit: In any case, it is absolutely broken that I can farm 30bil out of fw in a month almost risk free.

See, that makes more sense. Rather than screwing with something, making it less accessible, why not add something new into FW such as the incursion system in some form. People want bigger harder battles, and I agree with that, but not from changing the existing play that works. Balance it out for bombers across the board etc sure (or just don't change it at all), but add something new to FW that is harder, such as something based on the incursion system. I know it's been mentioned before... including my input and support previously.


Because a mission isn't a raid. EnB, SWG etc (internet spaceships examples) you didn't need to find more players so you could do a mission. Missions are just generic quests in every other game, same mechanics/coding, and have been in graphical mmo's since the 90's. Now say for incursions, that's more old-school raid style (open world etc), takes more players, and more waiting around etc. So the way it is, it's more traditional for an mmo, even for those games that mostly focused on forced-grouping (e.g. early EQ1), yet still had missions/quests that players could do solo and in small groups when wanted.

And remember, just because you do something such as scaling up missions to be harder/more people required, doesn't necessarily produce players to be doing those missions any longer, and may have the opposite effect.