Having recently read an INN article covering a proposal for a revamp of FW and hisec. I’m interested in seeing what people who actually take part in FW would change if they were given the chance to overhaul the FW system.
What are your biggest issues with how FW is now?
What would you like to see change to improve the overall experience?
What do like about FW / What works well?
What I would like to see change before anything else has any chance at all of succeeding is that CCP has to actually LISTEN and acknowledge that FW is screwed. To date they have yet to even get that far and until they do they’ll continue developing new mechanics (resource wars, drifters) that they can break and then abandon.
Ew, I feel like I need a shower after actually bothering to read and even respond on these new forums.
Issues: No real PVP drivers anymore, it is perfectly viable for isk generation and never yellow box another pilot. Station control is effectively defunct due to citadels now so ‘home systems’ don’t matter either. Meanwhile FW pilots take a lot of penalties for participation for little reward, especially compared to neutrals participating in the warzone.
Change: Suspect flags for neutrals entering plexes. System bonuses to be reviewed and only to apply to pilots of the owning militia. Neutral citadels to be put at some sort of disadvantage such as wormhole reinforcement timers (before you start screaming there is the rest of Low Sec to anchor in!). Meanwhile the timers on FW citadels timers to be linked to system control/tier so as to make offensive/defensive fortifications linked to plexes. Ban ventures from plexes, also ban stabs (I have rarely had to take an initial fight I didn’t want to in a plex through only using D-Scan and paying attention) there is no excuse for needing them unless you are trying to afk plex (why?).
Works well: Casual PVP heaven. Politics and drama on a small personally influencable scale. A role for most ship types and accessible solo to medium fleets PVP for even alpha players. All of this at no TIDI.
I don’t think anything positive of this INN suggestion. Not only does it make the system vulnerable for sshits and giggles campaigning of big Null sec groups to, for instance, take over a certain region or area, it also stretches the already thin low sec and FW population even thinner. Such a suggestion not only removes conflict out of Null sec into safer low sec and completely safe high sec, it also potentially (very likely) turns it into an even more annoying experience for people on the opposing site of CFC should they, for instance, feel bored (and they are very bored already) and decide to join $randomempirefaction$ to steamroll an entire area far from their home.
FW Mission AI that doesn’t switch fire to their own militia person trying to hunt down the hostile militia trying to farm LP from them would be great.
Also not a fan of the suggestions raised by INN, hence asking for the views of those who, like myself, are engaged in FW.
CCP devs have acknowledged that FW is screwed. Caring enough to do anything about it is the problem.
I think having systems only be able to made vulnerable if it’s next an already owned system does make some sense though. It means that FW can have some clearly identifiable frontlines on the map so you can log in and know exactly where the potential hotspots are to fight over objectives.
As for the objectives themselves, there’s always been a big disconnect in how sitting in a complex for 10, 15, 20 minutes is meant to be an accomplishment beyond getting lp and baiting for pvp. It’s a bit like asking someone what their war was like and them telling you, oh it was horrible we stormed the beaches and ran around an arbitrary spot for 10 to 20 minutes otherwise we weren’t allowed to shoot the bunkers. There’s no real input beyond just sitting there and waiting while shooting an npc every 2-3 minutes.
CCP developed fancy new AI and it’s pretty good at least with the NPC mining response fleets. You get frigates that tackle you, they scram and web, and they deploy logi that stick 30-50km back to rep their buddies. Why not have new and different objectives involving them?
Maybe have plexes where you have to do orbital bombardments while the enemy NPC try to stop you, and system capture is based on owning or losing planetary real estate and not bashing an IHUB after risking burnout grinding out plexes for hours on end.
Or raiding shipyards where if successful it reduces the quantity and quality of opposing militia NPC ships in the system.
Or having to probe out and hack into SIGINT outposts in a system that increase the chance friendly NPC might drop in to assist on an objective.
Without any real consequential objectives that might require different tactics and ships to complete then FW will probably remain what it is now which is just using complexes to bait fights in certain ship classes while manipulating tiers every few months to get better lp payouts.
If they have I’d love some source. Last I heard they were “happy with the current state of fw”
Ok I’ll bite. Came up with what should be a couple of simple things while sitting on beacons and chasing off stabbed farmers tonight.
a. Let us use plex rat tags to up our security status. Make the tags only available to turn in to militia LP store so only actual militia members can use them. A viable counter to having to deal with neutrals entering plexes trying to kill us and wrecking our sec status without making them immediately suspect, which for some reason ccp doesn’t want to do.
b. Make it so whoever completes an FW mission gets the credit for it regardless if it’s an enemies mission. A counter for mission farmers who use milita alts in shuttles to fly around popping missions for them to come around and complete in their non militia main making billions of lp in the process. Let em come into system, pop their missions and leave. I’ll have that lp thanks. Those missions are an isk faucet that could use a little counter clockwise action.
BTW the last thing we need is a load more complex and idiotic mechanics. The tier system and all that crap is bad enough. FW should be simple yet engaging and should promote PvP. Not provide a source of free flowing isk for PvE farmers and bots.
Quote: “Place your citadel everywhere you want…”
What could go wrong? Wait, I got this!
Everything.
Having player actions influence faction alignment and sec status? What could go wrong?
For starters, control of who docks. If someone can mess with a system’s security rating, the game needs to allow a lot of control over who can come in and cause mayhem, and have some mechanism for eviction. As long as stations exist and bubbles can’t be used at all in Empire space, that’s just not going to happen.
Say I’m part of a group of lowsec players who wants a lot of lowsec anoms to farm escalations from, or lowsec minerals to mine. What to do under the system that guy proposed? Kill each other a lot with a lot of alts. Security status decreases, and there’s not a thing anyone can really do about it. Increasing the security status of a system would be great for people who want CODE. to have a harder time, but not so great for people who want Jaspet or Kernite or the odd Gneiss spawn if anoms and truesec behaved the same way they do today.
lol INN trying to suggest how to fix FW.
And ofc their solution is to just turn FW into sov null without bubbles
I’d love to see some changes.
First of all, the suggestion with “get a suspect flag when entering a plex as a neutral” is gold.
Civilians or any other militia not involved in the war have no business here and are a menace. If they are looking for a fight, fine - but don’t penalize the militia.
Getting security status back up to 0.0 is either tedious or expensive.
Anyways, this is what i said to jin’taan on the topic of rabit plexing, stabbed farmers etc.
Yes to this aswell.
Also people in militia should be able to trade in the faction tags from killing the rats in plex’s for sec status, this + people coming into plex’s having suspect timers would really help people out.
Also there needs to be less of a standing hit for faction warfare, ive had quite a few people not wanting to join because they dont wanna mess up their standings.
There was a huge amount of suggestions and recommendations for the fixes of FW on the old forums.
The general consensus was that they were largely ignored and only one or two CSM candidates even read them in order to garner support.
One or two of the CSM openly stated that FW is about PvE (not PvP) and despite the new Warfare & Tactics forum ending up in a PvP subsection.
CCP is lacking in making any public statement about FW.
It has been pointed out that they have lost many of the FW population as the system has been undermined again and again.
There is no long-term incentive to being in a Militia.
Many of the good have gone. Many do not read anything but a bit of reddit.
A demonstration of willingness to listen is needed well before anyone is going to really work hard to present all the arguments for improvements again (ie see old forums megathreads).
Regards,
Master Sergeant MacRobert (retired Amarrian Militia).
While I can see, why this may make the issue a lot less severe, the security status is determined by CONCORD and they won’t give a 
about how many soldiers you kill in this war.
I’d put my money on the suspect timer thing.
I’d like to see plexs that only let 1 member from each faction in and don’t allow non faction people in at all. This way people can get some 1v1 fights in addition to normal plexes. The rewarding people to stay and fight is also a good idea.
Reduce l.p. reward to 10% for stabbed ships too this would help prevent bots by making it less profitable for them.
Tags can be farmed by anyone. You don’t need to be in FW to kill the rat. Sec status for LP would be better. You would hope that the empires could influence the po po a bit in return for capsuleers doing their dirty work for them.
Or you could wear your flashy red status with pride.