Greetings.
For your consideration, I’ve an idea which, in my opinion, is kind of interesting. I’ll have to warn you that it is a bit ambitious from a software development standpoint, though I have two versions of this idea: one light version and an extreme version, both of which are presented here. It is a little bit difficult to explain, with the more extreme idea being based upon the other. I promise to keep it as short as is possible, but bear with me as I’ll attempt to structure this in the most comprehensible way that I can manage.
Firstly, a little bit about myself: I’m a faction warfare enthusiast, although I consider myself to be more of an old-school faction warfare player who was into FW before plexes as we know them today were a thing. Back in those days, fleets were the name of the game, and I enjoyed it. From there, I drifted into various nullsec blocs and into large-scale warfare like a moth to a flame. So if anyone can appreciate the glorious warfare that the eve universe is capable of, my name would certainly be among that list.
The Problem with Warfare in Nullsec
This is obviously the lack of warfare. CCP acknowledges a problem, and has expressed their intent to “shake things up” in null with Equinox. I can agree to that and while I’m sure there’s always someone willing to debate this point, let’s just agree to disagree here. We need more wars, for the economy and for content.
Idea #1 – Empire “insurgencies” into nullsec
This idea almost speaks for itself. Insurgencies, for better or for worse, have successfully demonstrated an effective way for a larger-than-the-now-normal scale of conflict to temporarily upset all conceptions of normality in empire space. The idea here is obviously simply to bring the equivalent of insurgencies, though for empire factions, into nullsec.
You would obviously be faced with some interesting challenges, such as achieving some kind of balance between cap-heavy nullsec empires and relatively poor FW lowsec brawlers, and while there may be plenty of ideas on how to approach this, it is the starting point of my much more ambitious version of the idea. But first, I need to address some issues in FW.
The problem with Faction Warfare as I see it
I’ll try not to go into every detail here. The plexes are… interesting, but not designed with players like me in mind. Don’t get me wrong, tournament & arena style gameplay has its place. I just wish it wasn’t in Faction Warfare. Faction Warfare, in my opinion, should resemble, you guessed it, warfare.
Also, in my opinion, viable ship classes in FW currently are way too limited. I understand that’s to “protect” the viability of what used to be the lesser-used ship classes. It just seems like there should somehow be more diversity of opportunity to use a variety of tactics other than the typical brawls that we’re now relegated to due to plex design. Regardless, it is a difficult balance to achieve no matter how you slice it, though this brings me to my next idea.
Idea #2 – AI-Driven Empire Fleets
I tried to warn you that this was a fairly ambitious idea, but it suffices to say that if development resources for this revamp were not an obstacle, I would develop an AI system capable of not only controlling massive fleets, but of competing in large-scale, multi-system fleet vs fleet conflict with other AI-driven competitors of opposing factions, to the effect that the goal of players is to help determine the tide of war. FW content could be transfromed from crashing plex after plex searching for gf’s while evading multiboxing farmers, to logging in, checking on the status of the current conflict, receiving orders, and joining up with your faction’s fleet while avoiding death to carriers and HAW dreads.
Further, as it applies to the first idea presented here, Empire-driven capital fleets could certainly pose a real challenge to be faced by established null blocs. That challenge would have to be carefully constructed, however, as I imagine it could potentially destroy nullsec as we know it over the long run, when the goal of this idea is merely to improve and provide additional content in all of k-space.