I really don’t like stabbed plexers, people who plex with nothing but stabs are clearly just wanting to farm LP and have no actual interested in fighting other players, however there is a fine line between a rabbit plexer and a stabbed farmer. Rabbit plexing seems to be something more newbros do to try to help out the militia effort but without dying over and over because at the moment in the amarr/minmatar warzone 99% of the time a newbro will lose a 1v1 vs virtually anyone that comes into his plex with a t2 fit frigate. I’ve personally found that even when I fly a t1 fitted frig (I have max skills and I’m a very good pvper) it is an extremely tough challenge to compete with other people in the area who are usually pretty competent and in t2 fits. This is why most newbros tend to run from engagements because they simply cant compete and don’t get anything from actually staying inside the plex and dying in the fight. I personally teach all of the newbros I recruit to stay and fight because I provide them with unlimited free t1 frigs/destroyers to pvp in.
Anyways take the amarr/minmatar warzone right now, I can lead a fleet and get a systems contestation level up by like 30% in a day but all it takes it takes to get that back down is like 3 or 4 stabbed minmatar dudes semi-afk plexing overnight. This is something that needs to be addressed because 12 hours of work done by like 10-15 guys who are actively participating in pvp and looking to actually pvp while plexing shouldnt have all of their work roled back by 4 or 5 dudes just semi-afk plexing in the system overnight when less people are on. I don’t support the idea of the plex timer rollback because as has already been said in this thread, even if a rabbit plexer (usually a newbro) does stay in a plex to take a fight, hes likely to lose anyway and the plex timer will count down anyway, so instead of warping out and having the timer go down hes now lost his ship and the timer is going down aswell.
I’ve always been a supporter of having it so when you start capturing a plex with warp stabilisers fitted, the plex capture rate multiplier should decrease.
So take a novice for example where the multiplier is 1x at 10minutes:
Each stab a ship has fitted will decrease the timer multiplier by 0.1x, stacking upto 0.5x. So each stabilizer adds another minute to the total capture time.
However if you really wanted to do the timer rollback, then you need to actually look at the engagement in the plex and how it should effect the person running it, because at the end of the day, if you are taking a fight in a plex you’re likely to lose because you want to run it down asap, there needs to be a feature in place to actually reward you for taking the fight rather than running.
My proposal for this:
A = Amarr Player
M = Minmatar Player
P = Pirate Player
A is sitting there in his novice plex with a tech 1 fitted executioner, with 5 minutes left on the capture when suddenly P appears on scan with a daredevil. A decides to take the fight and P comes in and as expected kills him. However, as P kills A, the complex essentially analyses both players and realises that A is FW and attempted to defend the plex, whereas P attacked the plex and isn’t FW. So the plex now goes into almost like a frozen state for lets say 2 minutes (obviously this timer could be tweaked). But in this 2 minutes the plex timer remains the same, if A comes back within the 2 minutes then the plex continues ticking down from where it was left.
However, if A doesnt come back within the 2 minutes, and someone from the opposing militia doesn’t go in to start capturing it, the plex then starts ticking down to neutral again.
However, in this scenario, the defend is A but the aggressor is M, the same happens and A is defeated by M and the complex again analyses both players and realises the players are of opposing factions so the plex starts to get captured by M, however because A actually stayed and fought, he gets a small amount of LP (Unsure on exact amount).
This way, people are actually encouraged to fight, and if they lose to a pirate then they can just reship and continue plexing from where they left off and everyones content, and if they lose it to the opposing militia then they’ve lost the plex however because they stayed and fought they got a little LP out of it.
But honestly if CSM wants to talk about changing FW and adding new mechanics etc. maybe actually consult a few players who have actually spent years of playtime in FW, maybe even make one of your focus groups if you’re genuinely wanting to do something to help out FW.
And lastly, massive yes to decreasing the standing hit of being in FW, I’ve literally lost about 6 or 7 recruits in the last 2 months because they didn’t want to mess up their standings to join FW.
