I’ve done some looking here and most of the information I’m finding is from before direct enlistment and Uprising.
Now that the empires are not allied together in faction war, does this eliminate the danger of faction war related standings loss for the formerly allied faction via derived standings? I know the choice of a faction is meant to have an impact, and one of them is the loss of standing for the faction you’re fighting. However, if I were to join say the Federal Defense Union for example, since they are no longer at war with the 24th Imperial Crusade and the Amarr Empire, would my only at risk standings be those of Caldari State and the State Protectorate if I confine myself to activities in the Federation/State Warzone? Would I still be taking hits with the Amarr via derived standings?
I have long been working toward positive standing with all four factions, a goal which is not served by or compatible with participating in FW at all, but if I could keep my excellent standings with three of the empire factions and only take hits with one of them, that might be a viable option for me.
No, I don’t want to make a FW character. Simply looking for information on how I might participate in FW on my main under the current rules, what the trade offs would be, etc.
You can’t. Make an alt and dedicate it specifically toward this purpose. CCP created the FW standing system so that players would ruin their characters, and either train up new ones on additional subscribed accounts, or pay a few hundred dollars (if not thousands) on skill point extraction/application.
The FW system isn’t this game’s PvP “jesus” feature. It’s a customer retention program in which CCP allows PvE-focused players to farm ISK in isolation and very little danger while getting feel-good vibes about being an “elite spaceship PvP admiral” that they can brag about to their gamer friends, all the while generating lots of extra revenue for CCP through alt account stacking.
A few months ago, I shot a FW war target, and it instantly dunked my Amarr FW standing to -0.3:
I once shot a Caldari NPC in one of those complexes, and my entire faction standing went down because of it:
I don’t do PvE. I don’t run missions, with the exception of the few I did to get some Amarr locator agents.
This is the reality of the FW system. It’s exactly as I described it in my previous post. It’s like this by design, in order to generate CCP more revenue.
Most FW standing changes are just derived from promotions, you will tank standings with the Militia group you are fighting, IE Gallente Militia tanks State Protectorate corp standings, but Caldari State will never get less than -5 unless you shoot NPCs in missions.
I’m in FW and I have positive faction standing with all 4, enough to run any level 4s, the trick (which is easier now to do with the ceasefires) is to spend time with opposing factions to keep them all in balance. Yes it takes work to do, but it should considering you are working with a factions enemies and need to “smooth things over”.
Don’t run the special FW missions and don’t shoot pods in FW.
Apart from that, the only thing that’ll give negative standings are promotions, and after a while you’ll get less of those because of the requirements getting exponentially bigger.
That’ll only lightly impact your standings, something that the SoE epic arc or cheap tags can readily fix.
Don’t run the special FW missions
Don’t get promotion, it means no plex capture
Don’t kill FW npcs
Just kill players ships AND pods
I am at +3 to the 4 factions for years …
Maybe we need to add some more restrictions on an activity that allow activities outside of it to remain viable. That list doesn’t seem anywhere long enough for me; let’s neuter the act of engaging in FW some more.
This is a lot more information than I had when I started and I appreciate that. If I was tanking only one faction I could work around it, but tanking two is untenable. Looks like direct participation in FW isn’t for me.
Except you can maintain it the same way as you would with tanking one faction. If you tank Caldari standings while in Gallente, you can go work for Amarr and your derived Amarr standings will raise Caldari. Besides, you need to REALLY work at tanking your Caldari standings to get to a point of not being able to do anything.
People who try to maintain positive standings with all four empires do NOT do story mode missions normally. The derived standings are severely punishing and you hurt two factions more than you boost one on most story mode missions. So repair through derived standings is not a tenable option.
Maintaining high standings with all four core empires is accomplished through selective mission running and selective npc kills combined with epic arcs which do not have the aforementioned punishing derived standings and are limited to one per 3 months.
If it were only one faction you could compensate by doing the SoE arc with credit to the enemy faction and the enemy factions’ empire specific epic arc. Then you would just have to figure out the math and participate accordingly.
Juggling this for two factions along with the requirements for getting and keeping good standings in the first place is technically possible, but the amount of work involved is simply staggering, way more than getting good standings in the first place or focusing on repairing a particular faction’s standing. Any meaningful interaction with the mechanics, if what I’m reading here is true, will simply hurt 2 factions faster then I could simultaneously repair them given IRL time restraints.
Given all this I thought if they factions weren’t in military alliances anymore, perhaps they wouldn’t trigger derived standings, and I could more easily 1 for 1 repair standings losses as they occur.
If the military alliances were dissolved the concept of severe derived standings is kind of ridiculous anyway. If they’re not allied, why would the Amarr care I blew up a Protectorate ship? IMO that breaks the forth wall way more than keeping faction consequences as it related to FW restricted to the actual warzones.
I see no value to players for it to be this way, but I’m going to leave the argument about CCP’s motivations alone. If money wasn’t a factor this game wouldn’t basically require multiboxing to begin with.
The game’s entire standings system is absolute garbage, and should’ve been scrapped entirely over a decade ago. It’s something that literally interferes with people actually playing the game.
… is a personal constraint you choose to follow. Many people have no problem being negative to one or two factions. Impacted my ability to go through high sec when I wanted to a grand total of 0 times in a decade.
Derived standings are way less of a boogeyman than you make it out to be. I get it, you want to have a cake and eat it to. It just isn’t for you.
This is conjecture, though. An assumption at best.
Having your cake and eating it too might be bad, but can we also settle for something that’s not being given cake as a reward for first consuming a plate of cat poop?
Helloo forum
I don’t plan on joining FW this year. Maybe next year but I have a little question on this topic.
Why is it so important to keep high standing with every faction?
For example, I’m Gallente ( the best faction by far ) and I only plan to have good standing with Gallente corps and maybe Minmatar cause I plan to fly in their territory but why would I need good standing with Caldari or Amarr if I’m not going to go to those factions space?
That’s what I’m thinking of also but maybe there’s a good reason I don’t yet know.
