Factional Warfare updates now available for testing

EVE Technology and Research Center Test Server Feedback
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Greetings loyalists,

As revealed in this news item, we’ll be making a few changes to Factional Warfare in the coming Loyalty to Lowsec update. These changes are now ready to test on Singularity, and we’d like to welcome feedback or to report on the discovery of any issues you identify. If you find any bugs or issues in game, please file a bug report from within the F12 Help window.

Non FW participants who choose to entering FW sites will now get a Suspect flag when activating the acceleration gate

Entering the site as a non-FW member will incur a 15 minute Suspect timer. For this change, we have also added a Suspect icon and yellow text to the Activate Gate option in the right click menu. Additionaly you must have your Safety setting at Partial or No Safety to be able to activate the gate.

Suspect.PNG

A new FW Complex site will be added for Battleships and smaller classes

To coincide with the release of the Frigate Escape Bay for battleships, we’ll be creating a new site for FW that battleships can better play a role.

We have decided to change the definition of the current size of “Large” Complexes to be these new Battleship sites. Therefore the current Large sites will be renamed to “Open”, as they are unrestricted and have no acceleration gates inside preventing access.

These new sites will be available in FW space, as “[Racial] Large Outpost”

Increased activation ranges for Acceleration Gates in FW Complexes.

This change will allow you to activate acceleration gates from further away, avoiding the likelihood of being tackled whilst attempting to enter the complex capture area. This represents an alternative approach to the ‘gate sliding’ behavior used by players, which the ability to do so was removed some time ago during a rework of the underlying acceleration gate mechanics.

Currently on Singularity, we are testing different activation ranges and would like to hear feedback based on these ranges.

[Racial] Outpost [Novice/Small/Medium] to 10 km
[Racial] Outpost [Large] to 30 km - The new Battleship FW Complex
[Racial] Compound [Novice/Small/Medium] to 30 km
[Racial] Facility [Novice/Small/Medium] to 50 km
[Racial] Stronghold [Novice/Small/Medium] to 70 km
[Racial] Installation [Novice/Small/Medium] to 90 km

Note that the mapping of different gate ranges to site names is purely to facilitate testing. We do NOT plan on having different ranges for different sites upon release to Tranquility - we will pick one range for all, based on playtesting and feedback.

New Perimeter Lighting visuals will be introduced surrounding Acceleration Gates to show their activation range

All Acceleration Gates will now show new perimeter lighting effects, which will show in space without the need for UI. These will indicate whether your ship is in range of activating the acceleration gate or not.

This is also coupled into the above change to FW Acceleration Gates having an increased distance, and as such will be visible in space for everyone.

Perimeter.PNG
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Perimeter Lighting will also be added to the Capture point inside FW Complexes

To also facilitate visibilty into when you are within range, there will be Perimeter Lighting around the Capture points in Complexes.

Update:
We managed to go a bit further, and complete an internal “Stretch Goal”. The perimeter lighting effect surrounding the capture point, will now change color and animation depending on the state!

  • Green perimeter lights - Being Captured by Defending Faction
  • Orange perimeter lights - Contested / No control by any one faction
  • Red perimeter lights - Being Captured by Attacking Faction

Caputre.PNG
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Increased LP payouts for FW PvP Kills

We will be increasing LP Payouts for FW PvP Kills. The payout rate has been decoupled from the warzone tier multiplier, and now all FW PvP kills will payout at roughly the same as kills currently made in a Tier 5 warzone. In summary, the tier of warzone no longer affects the LP payout for PvP kills.

LP payouts for FW missions will be reduced substantially
We will be lowering the payout for all associated FW missions. This will therefore be increasing the relative value of FW combat when coupled with the change above for increased LP payouts on PvP kills.

And a final pair of war-related changes for the release:

If a war ends because the attacker failed to pay the war bill then a one-way force peace from attacker to defender is created (at the usual length of 14 days)

War HQ structures will now have a reduced armor reinforcement period of 24 hours (down from 4.5 days) giving defenders a realistic chance of taking down the HQ within 7 days.

Thank you for reading, and please feel free to discuss feedback on these changes in the thread, and again if you encounter any bugs on Singularity please file a bug report.

Fly safe o7

17 Likes
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More details? like how that will work? how much time?

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Enforced peace is always 14 days in the cases of surrendering, losing a war HQ, and now for failure to pay the War Declaration bill.

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Awesome thank you

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While I appreciate any attention that faction warfare gets, this doesn’t address the reason that FW is bad and most groups aren’t interested in it any more. Here are the problems FW faces:

  1. Faction tiering for rewards pushes players en mass to the already winning side of the engagement. As a solution, there should be a FW “season” system where, for a given time frame, the more FW kills, plexes, and LP donations you complete gives you a personal LP multiplier that scales similarly to the current multiplier, and has a reward payout at the end of the season based on your total progress.

  2. Low sec is an inherently dangerous place to be in place for 10+ minutes and the pvp kill rewards in plex’s don’t reward you for fighting roaming non-FW gankers, who make up the majority of low sec encounters.

  3. Spliiting the LP from plex’s among the fleet makes any group effort at engaging with this content return pennies. The rewards should not be split for under 15 players, and possibly ever.

7 Likes
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This just makes it even easier for carebears/krabs to escape. With this change introduced, they can warp in at say 30km, and you won’t have enough time to burn to them AND tackle them before they take the gate into the site. No longer will we be able to stop incessant krabbing by instantly warping to newly opened mission sites and at least MAYBE attempting to get tackle before their insta warping jackdaws can take the gate. Now that will be even harder. Now krabbing will be even easier. Your change to LP per mission isn’t going to mean ■■■■ if the risk of doing the sites goes down with this change.

It’s also encouraging balkanisation of fights to within the sites, where other sizes and types of ships cannot participate.

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Extending the activation range is pointless if you dont remove the lag at gate activation.

It doesnt matter what the activation range is because everything lands at the same spot inside

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My initial reaction to reading about these changes was very positive, especially when I read about the return of “Gate Sliding.” Now, reading about this “alternative” I must say that I am somewhat soured.

Nobody asked for an “alternative” to gate sliding, and implementing this new approach is totally unnecessary. Just bring back actual Gate Sliding as it was before.

With the previous incarnation of gate sliding it was always possible, assuming player attentiveness, for a ship warping to a plex to slide inside, even if the outside of the gate was camped by fast lockers. This was a massively positive influence on the fight ecosystem of Lowsec because it prevented the multitude of tryhard high SP pirates from camping outside FW plexes with snaked garmurs, interceptors, and cloaky T3Cs to farm noobs plexing in T1 frigates. FW players could always depend on being able to get into the plex and at least have a fighting chance.

Without gate sliding FW players often get camped by hostile “neutral” (non-FW) pirates in super cancerous kitey comps that are designed to be as unengageable as possible. FW players are much more likely to be new, low SP, and not flying with a pod full of high grade implants.

I’ve heard the argument in the past that removing gate sliding created more opportunities for PVP, and FW players should HTFU and fight outside the gate. There are some big flaws with this argument. First, the opportunities created for lopsided PVP outside gates do not make up for the lost opportunities for more evenly matched PVP inside the plex for both FW pilots and neutrals alike. It was that potential for having a more even match that truly made FW plexes the driver for solo and small gang PVP in lowsec. Second, fights happened outside the gates all the time before Gate Sliding was eliminated. The big difference was that they happened organically when both sides decided they had an opportunity to win, instead of happening when one side with a massive advantage was able to force an engagement with a much less capable foe by catching them on gate. Third, by removing the ability for players to slide gates, a major incentive for neutrals to reship into a plex appropriate hull has been removed.

I don’t care if you keep the new perimeter lights and the greater activation area, but you should still just bring back gate sliding as it was. This is a clear example of y’all reinventing the wheel.

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OH MY GOD. Thank you! +100 hearts.

Not entirely sure about this one. I’ve been insta-popped before by cancerous campers sitting some distance from the gate, and these are unengageable cowards farming frigates 1/100th the cost of their kite Lokis, so the sliding will definitely starve these idiots of content - which is good 'cause nobody likes that risk-averse ■■■■.

On the other hand, it could make evasion a bit too easy. We shall see how it goes.

Good feature! +1

Same as before. Well done.

PERFECT change! +100 likes. LP farming consists of sitting at the button unopposed and/or blitzing FW missions when your chosen faction is in the top tier. This change is absolutely brilliant, as it rewards the real fighters.

Overall, I give this update a 10 out of 10. All my love to you, CCP. Well done.

PS: Remove the red dots. Or at least give us an option to toggle it off.

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THIS IS NOT REAL GATE SLIDING AS IT WAS BEFORE.
CCP you made an un-necessary change to gate sliding that was proven to be completely NOT NEEDED by a patch later. RE-introduce real gate sliding. HOW THE *** are battleships supposed to slide in on a 30km beacon before a frigate gets them? that will NEVER happen.

if your are incapable of doing real gate sliding again (WHICH YOU ARE but choose not to) create a new way to get into the plexs. extend range to 1000km to activate. have people choose whichever range to warp at. anything more creative than this… the whole point of fw was that you couldnt stop people getting in the plexs if they met the ship restrictions. AT ALL.

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One question with the plex gate activation range.

If we expand the activation area, does this also widen the variable area one will land inside the plex?

I think 10 to 30km activation range feels about right. We don’t want to completely get rid of plex gate fights. But need to balance it with insta lock supers… Lol

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This seems like a classic example of ccp looking at an issue and overcompensating, and in this case, i couldn’t say if this will even help, even at 70, 90 kms, you can still get popped, as others have mentioned, the old gate sliding seems like a better solution. Though, like with all things in eve, I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

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Plex gate fights were never a thing. And yes we do want them completely gone. FW fights for fw players. if you want to interfere get in the plex and fight.

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Dscan the plex before you warp to it in your battleship…duh

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Have you even pvped in lowsec? do you know what an interceptor is? Sure let me warp to a plex i know there is no ships at.

OH before i landed theres a stilleto with abyssal warp disruptor out to 30km. OH GEES im caught. This is already how fw is.

and will continue to be. this change does nothing.

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if it were an abyssal point it would prolly go out to 40 km unheated on an inty

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I’ve been flying pvp in calmil and as a pirate in Black Rise for years…

Sorry you can’t Dscsn well, but that is your issue. BTW interceptors show up on dscan and if you see one… Maybe reconsider warping to that plex.

Defending the plex gate is a viable technique to control the plexes in FW.

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LOLOL dude dont toy with me. Blackrise is perhaps the best place to farm battleship kills with the huge warp distances people never show up on dscan until its to late.

Let me paint you a picture of how its gonna happen in blackrise. I’m a scum bag pirate or whoever

  1. cloaky alt watching the bs plex gate
  2. see bs come in and warp interceptor pilot & call gang because i will have tackle in 15 seconds
    GG

Good luck not ever getting into a bs plex.

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Dude, nothing in Eve is a sure thing. Don’t fly what you aren’t willing to lose.

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I’m glad your fully prepared to loose countless battleships because you will. Flying a bs to these new plexs will be a death sentence everytime 100% of the time without question. The current meta of interceptor mach gang will not change. it will infact become more desired as the massive dps will be needed to pop noobs in battleships warping to the gates.

3 Likes