I’ve been doing fac-war a bit over a month now, and as a new observer to the system, I’ve noticed a few things. First, Faction Warfare can be a lot of fun! The potential for fights is exciting, and you don’t need to be sitting on billions (or trillions) of ISK to have a great time. In fact, some of the funnest fits are cheap (less than 10 or even 5 million ISK). Small gang warfare predominates, and solo action is relatively easy to find. Faction Warfare generates that excitement that can be addictive. Addiction notwithstanding, there is a serious issue.
The glaring problem with fac-war is how in-game rewards are set up. I won’t go into the specifics of how you reap those rewards (fac-war pilots know this already), but lets say it boils down to time spent sitting in plexes, doing missions, or killing ships. From my personal experience, I have listed these in order of decreasing in-game reward and increasing complexity. Not only is the complexity and risk not met with increased reward, the low-risk/high-reward nature of plexing is a haven for bots.
Now, people do things for different reasons. I’m not here to say that people who farm LP, or mult-box missions in jackdaws are a problem. In the end, they’re just solving problems as they seem them and (I guess) having a good time. They are seeking to be rewarded by a system CCP set up, where minimal effort equals maximum reward. And, sadly, their behavior is often indistinguishable from bot behavior. I am guessing that this is not what CCP had in mind.
In the spirit of improving gameplay might I offer the following ideas:
Implement a frigate which is invulnerable to d-scan, as d-scan appears to be a prime tool for bots. It could be fragile, aimed at taking down bots, and players who behave just like them.
When in a plex, prevent warping for all ships within the 30km radius of the outpost, plus a timer for initiating warp after moving beyond the radius.
Alternatively, similar to attacking a station, have a timer which inhibits warp each time a player shoots at the NPC within the plex. (This has the obvious downside of conferring advantage to the defense, but since they get less payout, perhaps this is reasonable.)
Modify mission NPC algorithms such that they will not fire on members of the same faction, unless they are aggressed by said individual. (Shoot your own faction, all bets are off)
Improve payouts for PVP actions. Your faction should pay you well enough to bleed for them that you don’t need a side hustle to replace lost ships. This could perhaps be as simple as creating a separate ship insurance system for fac-war members, with payouts being increase.
I’m curious what thoughts others have which might improve the experience of fac-war. Anyone from CCP interested in testing out these ideas?
At best this is an ineffective approach to barely addressing the symptoms of a peripherally related problem. At worst, this does not solve a problem or enhance the game. The notion of introducing a ship whose core feature is D-scan immunity is absurd. (By contrast, that is not generally viewed as the primary feature of Combat Recons.)
Why? You have not made a case for this. This is not what normal PVP is like anywhere else. One nice thing about PVP is that, excluding Abyssal Battlegrounds, you generally have the opportunity to escape. Why change this? Especially in FW, which is supposed to be entry-level/newbie-friendly PVP, of all places?
The consensus of the FW community is fairly uniform: FW missions need to be removed, not “fixed”
That was increased VERY recently to a very generous extent (the equivalent of a fixed T5 payout of what it was previously as opposed to a current-tier-dependent payout).
This is not simple - this unnecessarily complicates things (esp regarding entry and exit and re-entry of FW, esp between different militia, while policy is in effect - and completely unnecessary. Yet again, it is at best an ineffective way to indirectly address the symptoms of a peripheral problem.
Because you never actually fight alone, so you want to gank that one player with your 6 other friends. Lets not pretend that request is nothing more than selfies one you snuggly (according zkill) pilot.
Glad your having fun. but I doubt you would if you could not warp away when 4-6 people come at you.
All good points. It’s certainly valid to point to the new guy as having little experience and therefore and invalid opinion. I’m simply offering that the PVP aspect of FW a lot of fun, but there are parts of the experience which could be better, such as greater risk for the attackers.
What about simply equipping the NPCs guarding the plexes with a point?
This makes FW less newbie friendly, especially for those who can’t break the tank of FW rats and want to leave the site accordingly. The rats aren’t formidable in the slightest but if you can’t break their tank then they’re just annoying.
There is no shortage of PVP at FW sites so this is not necessary. It doesn’t solve a problem or enhance gameplay but does introduce an barrier to entry for newbies and lower end PVP fleets when it comes to being unable to break tank and then being stuck there (for longer than would be desired) as a result.
Your opinion is ofc relevant. If you done it for a day it would still be relevant because everyone is entitled to am opinion. But experience is crucial to makeing changes.
And what that guy said pritty much. There is a ■■■■ ton of pvp every hour in FW space so the change is not needed.
If I was back in FW and I was to be perma pointed on a site I would just leave FW and be pirate.
It’s in a good place now and i wouldent say any change would be needed.
I would say resetting the timer on a Plex when every time you warp out is a far better solution, it will force you to fight or lose all progress. Also missions in faction warfare should not be a thing
Having the plex timer tick toward 0 instead of being instantly reset would probably be a better idea as it is not uncommon in FW for players to constantly move in and out of plexes, especially to respond to PVP at other plexes. They should not have to lose all their progress as a result of that. FW would become substantially less attractive if instant loss of progress were a thing, and it would be harder to abolish missions if it were implemented since less LP could be generated from plexes.
I always liked the idea of Faction Warfare but when you can use any faction ship it becomes less about faction ties and more about another way of making isk. Which defeats the point of caring about FW.
Failing to use any and all armaments (eg. ships) at your disposal, especially when they are readily available (openly traded to and by civilians) is not how you win a war.
But! =) FW is a fairly nasty business, and I’d like to offer a few qualifying thoughts to you as to the ideas you’ve got.
A flimsy frigate that can duck DSCAN already exists, it’s called an Imicus =) but yes, it can’t go in a novice, and it needs a cloak. They do make Combat Recon cruisers which can quite easily perform that task. However, they are heinously expensive, and hit like a whip-cream balloon =) However, if the aforementioned “bot” in question is in a large or medium, I think at that point it wouldn’t matter if your Rapier hit’s like a zesty destroyer/duplicitous cruiser. Could be fun. Could be incredibly disastrous, deeply embarrassing, and scar you for life emotionally on the killboard. Who knows! =)
This second one honestly I would not really accept as a viable thing. The nature of military tactics and strategies in this game is sorely lacking. The blob has reigned supreme for ages, and attrition works. Grudgingly difficult for me to admit, but the power of a blob usually out-weighs the merits of tactical behavior and any real semblance of strategic thinking. I would implore you to consider that you’d only walk straight into the hands of the blob by removing the ability to bug out by having to wait for a cool down after leaving a sphere 30km in radius. I think if I take the time to get aligned so if I need to make a strategic withdrawal, I’d like to be rewarded for the planning. I’d dislike having to tip toe across the line, get aligned, and bloom a sig with a prop mod to try not getting a Gurmur in the tail for my trouble.
Not entirely sure, but I’m fairly sure if you trash a friendly rat, more show up and educate you in the fine art of shame. As for giving the NPC more presence in what is largely to be a PVP environment… I see what you mean, but at the same time, if you’re offensively plexing, the rat is distraction enough when a legit war target or a random pirate or frig roam shows up. Not sure I’d like to make offensive plexing harder, or defensive plexing easier. Interesting idea though.
We’ve been barking about the nature of how the LP tiers work, the nature of PVP/E challenges in FW and the need for a little less sketchy a ship insurrance paradigm for something like since EVE was EVE. Do fight the good fight. We will happily accept the bounty of that particular conquest, should CCP ever grant that concession =)
Just don’t hold your breath, you seem like a nice person. Again - I LIKE you! lol
@Renge_Ukyo if you quote the relevant passages like I did in my responses, it would be more clear specifically what portions of OP’s points you are referring to.
Ever heard of the instant probe technique? The enemy will combat probe your location in one attempt, so you might not even see their probes on D-scan, and if you do it would only be for an instant before they are recalled (a blip on D-Scan), so you don’t really get the safety D-Scan is supposed to offer you in terms of Combat Probe Detection if you don’t see the probes or don’t think they were meant for you in the one instant you saw them before they disappeared. Also, almost all ships can cloak, so T1M0 exploration ships aren’t special. I’m pretty sure they can also enter the sites, but whether or not they could, I’m not sure why you’d want them to given that the Astero can and is a common sight at Novice sites as a CAPWAR ship.
Basic use is to highlight the passage of interest (you can even navigate to a different post as long as the reply box is already open) and highlight the text - you will see a “Quote” box appear you can click. There are more advanced uses (you can edit the fields of the quote macro - this comes in handy, such as when quoting from locked threads, which is not possible otherwise).