Professional Faction Warfare AWOXING - Corporation Anchoring

[Sean_Parisi]

The Issue:

Players are able to join a Faction Warfare Corporation for a given faction, even if their standings are sub par and would otherwise result in them being removed from the specific militia. Some individuals in the Militia will create alts that average the standings and allow them to remain within Faction Warfare.

These players will then specifically target players within the same militia, including newbros; for easy kills. Although these players will have essentially -10 faction standing, and hundreds of friendly militia kills, they will not be removed from the Militia.

If players are pro-active and engage these type of characters - they themselves will lose Faction Standing and potentially be kicked from the Militia. Many of these players also do not operate with Militia members on their overview. Because of this, the offending players are protected by game mechanics to almost always have the initiative over other players within the Militia.

What Isn’t the Issue:

People with negative standings being able to join a corporation to anchor them is in of itself not a negative thing. In many cases I have seen players move between Militias using the corporations standing to anchor them. These people are good additions to the game play and do not abuse the mechanic.

Understanding that this is EvE, it is not unrealistic for players to have disputes or beefs with each other that can lead to AWOX or Blue on Blue action. This usually occurs when one player seagulls another or just generally gripes the player. These odd engagements are not a problem as the players will be punished and lose standing. If they do it too often, they will be removed from the Militia unless raise their standings or anchor themselves to a corporation.

But This is EvE Bro, QQ Less

The difference between this circumstance and player operated alliances AWOXING each other is that there is very little social enforcement that can take place. Mechanically, a defending party being proactive will be punished, where as the offender is not. It is also completely nonsensical that an NPC military organization would condone a pilot that solely frags pilots of their own group. In the case of a player alliance they would be kicked or their would be a diplomatic break down.

I would argue that the players identified as anchoring a corporation and solely AWOXING fellow militia players should be considered a circumvention of intended mechanics and dealt with at the GM level. By actively avoiding the consequences of their actions (being removed from militia) for repeatedly targeting friendlies, it should be considered on part with circumventing CONCORD.

Alternatively, I would like to see a mechanic put in place that will temporarily ban individual pilots for an extended period if they engage in extended unsanctioned militia (blue) on militia (blue) fighting. This should also be tied with a misfire mechanic to allow players to forgive each other for either disagreements or misfires.

[Ginto_Maldari_Maldarians]

Some suggestions from me due to the constant nature:

New players less than 6 months or a year should be punished by losing 1.0 standings at a time
Player standings involving Militia participation should be based on the individuals standings, not their average based in Corporation. If the owner of the corp Awox’s to getting kicked out, they should receive 1 warning that any further kills will kick their corporation out of FW, but not any members (so the corp members remain in FW themselves)
Stacking standings loss (0.1, 0.2, 0.4, 0.8, 1.0, 2.0, etc)
1/2/4 week/1 month bans from FW for those that have -5 standings with that faction

We need to consider that people are abusing the game mechanics to AWOX. Awoxing legitimately I get it, but this is clearly abusing mechanics. “QQ less” but there is a point where we have to openly acknowledge people are abusing how the mechanics work.

Recall recently that 6 hour long documentary, and the section about the smartbombing battleship in hi-sec who kept getting repped by friendlies that weren’t being shot by Concord. Why should the gamemasters consider a similar style of mechanics abuse wrong but not awox mechanics abuse?

Smartbombing battleship:
Repped by friends
Couldn’t be shot by concord
Killed everyone

AWOX abusing:
Averaged by friends
Can’t be kicked from militia
Kills everyone

Not really that much different. It’s really bad because some NULL bloc alliances/corps that use FW also will awox, not going to specifically mention any because I keep getting flamed by them…but they will literally use any excuse to shoot friendlies in battlefields and plexes. They often steal plex sites from others by shooting them out of it.

[Nicen_Jehr]

NPC corp standings towards player corps could have the math weighted so pilots with a higher “activity” metric have a bigger impact on the corp standings than those with a lower activity metric. (Take your pick - kills, FW kills, FW lowsec deaths, hours logged in, packets sent)

[Ginto_Maldari_Maldarians]

Look at this. This is obviously botting or mega-multi boxing on alpha accounts (these are all less than 1 month old). These AWOX like crazy. Is this again, not abuse of how a system works? This is definitely at least a couple of people with multiple accounts. If my steam account can only have 3 characters, how the hell do these guys make tens of them? Are they running like 10 steam accounts?

This is one snippet I caught as they are all running to the battlefields that spawn instantly. They’re all red because I have marked the SPROT guys red when they awox. SPROT on my character is not red, but these have individually been marked as RED when I have seen them awox - I have been awoxed by them.