Faction warfare is pretty bad at one of its goals of generating pvp content because it is almost always more profitable to avoid fights then to look for them. There is zero penalty for leaving a plex (the timer doesn’t even regain time) and the benefits of killing people in the plex are minimal.
I suggest reworking plexes in the following way:
Introduce a king of the hill mechanic: Each plex has a timer that counts down as long as ships of one faction control the plex. However the timer is shared, who controls the plex once the timer reaches 0 captures the plex.
This way fighting for control of the plex is actually encouraged. It turns FW LP farming from an afk multi-box activity to one that actually promotes conflict.
Either remove the NPC’s completely or put 1 ship of both factions there.
It’s not that nobody cares, it’s that CCP seems reluctant to change anything surrounding FW, I mean how long have players called for a ban on WCS in plexes.
With 9/10 of the CSM being Null, your best bet is to contact Jin’tann or maybe the The Judge as they seem to be the only ones from the CSM I see on the EVE forums.
Yeah they are finally banning WCS’s from plexes but that is a half hearted solution anyway. It won’t really change anything because people will either plex the large complexes or just fly ventures/ disposable frigates without warp stabs. You aren’t going to catch a frigate on the other end of a complex anyway because of the gate.
The fundamental problem is that there is no reward for actually winning control of the complex and no penalty for fleeing.
There is alot that needs changing. Citadels need buffs or debuffs depending on who owns the system, rewards from the different sizes of site. But also the culture around fw needs to change as well, as long as people blob or blops or even use cloaky/ cyno caps and supers. Fw will be largely ignored and will only be a place where big alliance can ROFL stomp small gangs/corps.
Have you actually done FW?
I have recently made an alpha character dedicated to FW and in 3 days (equalling maybe 6 hours of playing) I had just about 15 encounters, 2 of which I was the attacker in, and I lost 3 ships.
Granted, there is not much activity between militias, because plexing is much more lucrative than fighting. And I believe this should be changed by increasing the LP payout for killing enemy ships. And don’t base them off of the kill’s net worth, it makes no sense. Like there would be no point in roaming around in frigs when you can camp acceleration gates with a cruiser and oneshot everyone. No skill involved.
However, there is PLENTY of action between neutrals and both militias. There is not a single day where you don’t have neutrals gatecamping and searching for semi-afk-plexers. Sometimes it’s not even funny.
Here’s a story: I decided to dplex in a venture bc why the hell not. A group of 3 neutrals with 2 cruisers and a stealth bomber came in and I had to leave the plex, so I warped to a station but stayed outside just to watch d-scan. They warped to the station and for 15(!!!) minutes they tried to bump me away from the station since I was tethered. All of that for a 200k Venture. It just eludes common sense.
A huge part of why FW is such a solo activity is IMO the splitting of LP between all people in the area. This goes against any kind of teamwork and it’s just ■■■■■■■■, and I would go as far as to say that this feat single-handedly is responsible for all this afk-plexing. If you did it the other way round: The more people are inside the plex, the faster it goes AND everyone gets the full share, then people would LOVE to fleet up and do plexes together and then the enemy would also have to fleet up to combat them. This would have two effects:
More PvP between the militias and more teamwork which I think is the whole point behind FW.
Less harassment from neutrals that find it funny and/or rewarding to boost their killboards with ventures and t1 frigs from piss-poor alphas and/or afk-ers.
I’m running a small FW corp, after 4 or 5 year playing in low sec, inside and outside of the millitias.
FW is much more complex than it looks. It is an excuse to do many kinds of PVP and Farming activities.
That is going to break the income of new FW players, which can not do L4 missions in bombers or t3 dessies due skills, specially when your facition tier is high.
Why is needed to force people for a given gameplay style. There is already big and strong territorial wars in null sec, where people is forced to fight. If that is what you like join a NS corp.
FW Low sec is another thing.
My suggestion is that if you want build up fleets and create team-work, go to the millitia channel and create your own fleet/corp.
I don’t think a shared timer would force people to fight. Farmers would create another character. If their gallente character gets chased off, they’ll log on their caldari character and profit mostly unhindered.
People just multibox to plex faster and earn multiplied lp.
And the trouble with king of the hill is that new players will be forced out a lot more, and just before the site expires. It’d be very hard for them to earn lp’s. It’d also be easier for risk averse snipers to know when theres going to be a rush for a particular site to ensure them easy targets.
Not totally against the idea though. How about half and half. Smaller sites remain as is, but larger sites or a new type of large site, spawns as king of the hill style for a big capture boost for the system.
No matter what you do, there will always be a group that can exploit it or benefits from it. Does it mean that just because of that a choice is bad?
People who multibox have an advantage in just about everything, but this means you need to have multiple accountes and/or everyone on omega, which is not everyone.
Yes the idea is bad to implement across all fw sites. New players will be locked out a lot more than they are now. Better players will dominate more. Changing some sites would be better.
With regards to multi boxing. Yes it’s a bad idea to let multiple people capture sites faster just for being there. Too easy to multi box.
Then it’s also a bad idea to give more lp payouts to people who are multi boxing. Then you make it too rewarding as well.
Multiboxing happens. But don’t make it too easy, too rewarding.
There was a lot of good ideas regarding FW already. Hopefully CCP will look into FW with all their recent mentions. Adding capture timer rollback when nobody is in the plex can be a good start, but KoH mechanics is bad encouraging only the last momnet capture with superior force.
PS: Citadels already have an ability to ban NPC factions from docking and the enemy/neutral ones can be bashed using the legit ingame mechanics.
PSS: Also NPC removal is dumb because ppl will just spin these sites in Ibises to get free LP.
And do you think the current farming meta of warp stabbed completely disposable frigates run by multi-boxers and sometimes botters isn’t “abuse” of the system?
Disallowing stabbed ships to enter the plex gates does nothing, since people will just farm the large plexes, plex in ventures or equip disposable frigates for fast warp entering.