Warfare & Tactics

honestly, it boggles my mind that FW doesn't get more focus. most of the gamer market consists of casual gamers, and FW is the only place in EvE that allows casual gamers to be successful at having fun. every single gamer i've talked to who has tried EvE but quit has said the same thing (paraphrasing) "It sucks too much to spend hours earning enough ISK to buy a ship only to lose it in ten minutes".

It could be that CCP doesn't want to risk killing high-sec and null-sec by making FW all that it could be, but by marginalizing FW it's also closing the door on casual gamers who are instead using their money to buy into Star Citizen.

the problem is that FW plexes used to be the ideal sandbox mechanic: if your ship could fit, you could do whatever you wanted there and if nobody stopped you then you'd get paid for it too. Now, live pilots don't have to stop you from doing whatever because the game will spawn red crosses to do that for the players. Now, two FW pilots cannot engage in a duel in the privacy of a plex without one of them being at an overwhelming disadvantage due to rat interference. This, of course, has zero effect on fleet fights, but kills the potential for soloing. In other words, this so-called solution has, rather than reinforced the sandbox, harmed it by limiting options.

The most insulting thing about this change is that it hasn't even changed the FW landscape, and likely will continue to not do so, because exploitative farming was not a fault of the plex mechanics to begin with. Most exploitative behaviour in the game is a result of there being too few pilots across too many systems. For example, it's difficult to stop a gatecamp in systems where only a few hauler alts will pass through in any given time period. Conversely, it's trivially easy to stop a gatecamp in an active part of FW space where a reaction fleet can be assembled from the 40 in local. Similarly, it's easy to stop farming when you have active pilots in the same system as a farmer and they are given some incentive to stop the farming from happening.

You don't have to look far to see what happens as a result of terrible PvE mechanics providing inadequate incentives: most of the PvP pilots engage in campaigns focused on bottleneck systems while the rest of the warzone languishes in whatever state. Why not just take those backwater systems out of the warzone altogether? I mean, if they're not being used for FW activity by the very PvP pilots complaining about farming, then farming is the only possible use for them. It's not like returning them to neutral state will prevent FW pilots from engaging in sanctioned combat with other FW pilots in those systems.

Seriously, what good has come of having all these systems involved in the sov grind? What use do they have other than enabling farming? Why would cutting out some of these systems not be a BETTER solution than killing solo FW PvP?