I have noticed several problems with the Plex Restrictions & Distribution table you all presented in the Faction Warfare Frontlines stream.
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- Counter-Productive XXX-1 sites
First off, the existence of XXX-1 sites.
If your goal is to discourage anti-cooperation gameplay (the “get out of my plex” situation) in the Warzone and, at a more holistic level, encourage to group up, play together, and then maybe corp up together and follow the whole Friendship Machine program.
If that is the goal the mere existence of XXX-1 sites is counter-productive and adds nothing to the system.
If the goal of those sites is to encourage solo players, XXX-1 still makes them open to being blobbed. And since the sites are static, you still end up with the situation where you have one guy farming them all and asking everyone to get out of his plex.
If Cooperation is to be encouraged, rewarding at least 5 people should be the default for all plexes. Then the number can be increased for other plexes.
I would have all XXX-1 changed to XXX-5, with their NPCs unchanged in order to still make them available to solo players.
Then potential XXX-15 and XXX-30 could be sites featuring some challenging types of PvE, but still asking for PvP fits to deal with the war targets (think Flashpoints during the Triglav Invasion).
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- Backward Progression
Second, overall I am worried that you guys are imprinting deep into that Plexe Destribution the message that “Bigger is Better”.
I have been repeating this to everyone I could find for years now, but I truly believe that the strong point of FW is Accessibility, and by putting the most amount of LPs and VPs, and by the look of it heavily tweaking System Control toward Larger ships (simply comparing the static Small to the static Large…) you are putting a “you have to be this big to have fun” post over the entire Warzone.
I worry that you might be installing a kind of Progression, that would be totally Backward to what the zone is best at, which is being an affordable, quick source of content, that also allow people to participate in something bigger than themselves (a faction and system sieges).
The reason people were willing to welp fleets after fleets, and funnel so many people through System Sieges, was that everyone could participate and it was cheap to do so. Now this will only be possible through the bigger organizations, and if that happens all the plexers and pvpers will be relegated to the Rearguard while the big fleets own the Frontline, essentially defeating the goal of putting everyone together in the same zone.
Also, Battleships are no longer cheap or easy to make, I hope you realize that. They ask for the kind of Logistics and Pockets that are very different from what they used to when FW was doing system sieges and welping hundreds after hundreds of ships. Them becoming the forefront of System sieges would ask for a level of organization and pockets that goes counter to the Accessibility I was talking about. At best most sites should have capped at BCs instead of BCs.
I joined FW out of being bored out of my mind mining and skilling up in High-Sec. I joined FW and a few days later I was killing a BC with a frigate alongside @BEETHOVENSMITH (you still here, mate XD?!), if BS become the norm and you get sent a Skillplan as soon as you join a corp, you will lose one of biggest strenghts of the zone!
I hope you pay attention to that and not just give the ear to the few biggest influences in Low-Sec. The average FW soldier needs to be taken into account too.