Im putting this here too air my concerns about the state of faction warfare and too get a discussion started on how faction warfare could be improved/fixed.
So ive been in fw for 7 years, its alarming to see the active pilot count drop by more than half in that time. Im not sure why this has happened, it could be due to the citadels making it pointless capturing systems coupled with most gal mil alliances making isk outa null sec now. Content in the gal/cal warzone is pretty sparse. I contacted ccp and they have no plans in the pipeline for fw.
So i put it too you lovely people how could fw be revitalised. Maybe ccp will see your ideas and do something before fw becomes a dead zone.
FW needs real goals to get people interested, not a tedious slog to change the flag on the map until the other side changes it back. CCP lost FW when the Caldari side organized, secured the entire war zone, and got nothing for their efforts but a note on their character sheets. That made it clear that FW is just a giant ISK farm where nothing you do will have any meaningful consequences. Is it really that surprising that the primary users of the system are PvE farmers in unfitted ships?
It depends heavily on how much CCP is willing to invest. The ideal would be a story-driven system where CCP is actively updating the fiction and running events to reflect the events in the PvP war, but they clearly arenāt willing to invest any effort into FW (or lowsec in general). The zero-effort fix would be to increase the value of FW rewards (therefore making it worth the risk and an appealing alternative to nullsec farming) while also decreasing the ability to farm without PvP risk. For example, make capturing a plex very profitable, but make leaving one once you start it have a significant ISK/LP cost. Players who make a legitimate effort to engage in PvP would make a net profit, with the fights they win offsetting the fights they lose, but the Russian farmers flying around in unfitted T1 frigates would immediately go bankrupt because they have no ability to stand and fight if a PvP threat appears.
I liked the idea where the less systems controlled by your side the more lp running sites gives. Inversely, the more systems your side controls the higher lp reward for missions.
I also liked someones idea for āking of the hillā mechanics for some or all large sites.
You need people to make anything work. And people need a reason to be there. SOā¦tie it to mining and mission running, and most importantly, to system security.
The farther the frontline goes from a system, the higher itās security status. Once it goes to +0.5, faction police come and keep the peace. The end result: miners mining in HS space can still be ganked, gankers still lose their ships.
The facpo, however, donāt give two shits about the security status. They care about how much youāre helping the cause. How much they care (your faction standings) determines how quickly they come to save your ass.
You can buy tags with LP to increase standing, you can buy tags with ore, or you can simply participate in the PVP. Either way, your standing matters to that faction. Theyāll help you if you help them.
The PVPers get their fights, same as before. The PVErs get to do their stuff in different highsec space. And FW space has people in it the whole time - something it hasnāt got now.
As for the rest of HS spaceā¦ wellā¦ leave lvl 3 missions and ā ā ā ā ore there. Or leave level 4 there, but move all the burner missions out to FWHS space.
And for the love of god, prohibit citadels or force them to have ACLs controlled by the faction who controls the space at the very least.
Fw should also in someway effect high sec maybe the higher gallente go in tiers , the higher broker fees are in caldari space and lower broker fees in gallente space, giving pilots an incentive too join fw. Probably a bad example as most trade is done in caldari space.
I had an idea about how to stop the bots in FW. Make it so that you have to use entosis links to hit the buttons. Yes, this would keep Alphas from capping the buttons, BUT, due to the nature of entosis links, it would encourage fleet play. Bots would be pinned, and could be Leveled Upā¢ļø. Of course, anyone else soloing could then be Leveled Upā¢ļø, but I think this solution kinda kills two birds with one stone: Get people to bring their friends to hit buttons, and get some people to subscribe so that at least one person in the group can hit the button.
As for a proper objectiveā¦ Well, I canāt really offer one at the moment. Iāll do some thinking to see if I can come up with one.
EDIT: I came up with an objective: Do something that has to do with the reason the empires are fighting in the first place. So for instance, the Amarr-Minmatar conflict is about slaves, yes? So after all the systems are captured for one side, have an event happen where the winning side has to go to a location (known to both sides so the losing side can try to defend) and the winning side has to try to take groups of Minmatar slaves (grabbing new slaves in the case of the Amarr, liberating slaves in the case of the Minmatar) and bring them back to a different location. There would be bounties for these slaves, and they could be massive in terms of both ISK and LP (probably more of the latter since thatās how FW seems to go). The more slaves brought back, the larger the overall bounty. This will (in theory, at least) result in one last large battle before the warzone resets. The same thing would be done for the Gallente-Caldari zone, but perhaps with like, āpolitical prisonersā or something like that instead of slaves.