State of the Union: Factional Warfare & Frontlines

Different type of dangerous if you fit tank to your ship’s then its pretty safe I fly a blockade runner with 40k ehp and no one even tries to kill it now.

Hell when I was in gallente fw I still flew to Jita with very little issues lol.

Traveling in any parts of space where the mechanics are unfamiliar is more dangerous than traveling through the conditions you’re used to. But I’m not talking about autopiloting or afking. I’m talking about the fact that sometimes, the shortest path between two parts of space goes through HS. And sometimes, that HS is places where you’ll get navy conflicts. Is it easy to get through anyway? Usually, yeah. But not always. Inexperienced pilots, people with high latency, and other factors can make things more of a hassle than some will want to deal with.

I really think that there’s a large potential market for PvP activities that generate character income, especially those that generate it in ways that can then be taxed by corporations and alliances.

Like, to the tune of thousands of accounts—possibly tens of thousands of accounts—large.

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Will be strange thou when half the people in the alliance have -6 gallente and the other half have -6 caldari.

That is probably what CCP is strugling with now I can’t imagine a decent solution unless the alliances are fine with having people split.

Personally I had -5 gallente when my friends all had the reverse I had to farm for a week straight to change it around to be ready for this patch.

Having people in the same alliance on different sides destroying their own kb xD. not that kb matters but w.e

I guess a potential solution is being able to join anyside you want without needing a minimum standing, but the lower standing just effect’s your payout’s until your standings are up again.

Would also be cool to have 10.0 faction standing actually be rewarding with better lp payouts. Then being un-able to enter some high sec’s will be worth it.

Yup. And there are other complications to consider, like how being in the same militia impacts highsec wardec mechanics.

Personally, I’m fine with shooting blues in empire space if they’re dirty evil slaver scum. :wink: I’m less fine with being shot at by blues, but that’s because I’m a jerk. :smiley:

And let me be clear when I say there is a potential market for sustainable PvP revenue streams in the thousands of accounts: this is a thing actively being looked at by groups that want new revenue streams. For this system to work, it’ll need to be something that’s attractive on its own, and able to bring people into FW for the sake of FW. It’ll also need to be something that can be adapted and exported to replace the current entosis sov warfare nonsense.

Because otherwise, CCP’ll be celebrating a ‘win’ that FW players will hate: null blocs taking over FW. Let’s take 2 examples of well-known(ish) FW groups: Local is Primary on the Amarr side, and Ushra’Khan on the Minmatar. LiP has ~500 characters. U’K has ~450. Most BRs, you’ll see them maybe get up to 20% of those numbers, with about as many from other groups. So ~100-150 people for large fights.

Now imagine Horde, FRT, or Goons in the warzone. Any one of those three can outform… basically the entire warzone. And can do it in a more unified, focused way. Sure, at first the null blocs will fall on their faces as differences in mechanics bite them in the arse. But they’ll learn. They’ll adapt. And those experienced, organized groups will quickly become the center-of-mass in the WZ. Snuff will be in there making money, too, in a far more active, focused way than they are now. Because right now, the number of viable alliance-level revenue streams is… limited, let’s say.

To avoid that, similar improvements need to happen in other parts of space in very short order, and FW needs to find a way to draw people to the factions. Any system that gives actual profitable incentive to PvP cannot be limited to FW without utterly destroying FW.

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O yea tbh I would have probably stayed in null if the sov mechanics wasn’t such a grind fest.
It was still pos’s for me back then I can’t imagine trying to grind these citadels.

Well, they’re always gonna be a grind, just like FW is always going to be a grind. After all, another term for ‘grind’ is ‘time sink’. And that, after all, is what MMOs make their bread on: activities that keep you active for extended periods of time.

The goal is maximize the player time spent without pissing people off, while minimizing the developer time needed, so developers have the time they need to make the next time sink.

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A bit more than that thou, the players need to feel and see the progress. If players on the opposite side can purposely increase your grind only to wear you out then it goes overboard.

Like I was reading that as people where taking down a single structure the opposing force was placing 2 more. Not sure if this has changed I’m a bit out of the loop for structure mechanics.

Guess this is all a bit obvious thou -_- let me stop spamming up the place.

Well, the problem you’ll run into is that when it’s PvP, you have to be subject to a variable grind. Because you have to be able to defend your space. You need tools to do that, and that includes tools to give yourself time to rally. But time to rally means more time the attacker has to devote to the attack, so it increases the grind.

As far as ‘placing 2 structures while one is being destroyed’… it’s timers. It takes 24 hours to put down a structure in your own space. It takes at least 48 (maybe more, I’m not doing the math right now, heh) to kill one under optimal conditions.

But you can also kill the ones they’re trying to place. Play/Counterplay… and all of that, again, extends the grind.

It used to be, but they eliminated that system.

Let’s be realistic for a moment: the reason why (the relatively small amount of) players “enjoy” FW is because it’s nothing but another PvE vector for them. Most FW members have never even shot at another player’s ship.

My analysis:

“Frontlines”: LP gains will not be buffed in any way. Instead, they will do the same gimmick they did when they introduced Alpha: instead of (correctly) portraying Alpha as 0.5x normal training speed, they framed Omega as 2x training speed. So what they’re gonna do is nerf LP gains everywhere, and frame frontlines as “increased LP gains” when really they are the standard LP gains we have now. Coupled with:

“Scaling”: You will now have to compete not only with tryhard elite PvPers trying to score easy kills under the pretense of “system defense”, you will now have to compete with friendly militia in the frontline systems. Amazingly, CCP has found a way to punish both solo and group gameplay. While groups running plexes will be dis-incentivized from grouping beyond what the plex scales too, hostiles coming to take the plex will not. This will result in a lot of people being run off because of being outnumbered or forgoing any LP gain for the time and effort they spent supporting their fleet. A very, very bad mechanic.

“Rank/Size”: An actual good change but will probably be implemented in a pisspoor manner that will reduce the amount of PvP content available.

“Advantage System”: ADMs or whatever they’re called come to FW. Puke!

Like the sound of this, I can never find the right candidate to show my support these days.

Plex’s only pay out 1 person worth and split it evenly atm? so its already 5x better than current and we still run groups? When you are in a group the money aspect matters less you generally just want to have fun at that point, when you solo you think about the isk a lot more.

What this incentivises thou is when you enter a plex with another 1 or 2 randoms already in it so that those 2 guys dont tell you to leave.

Also you can solo pvp on grid with 2 to 3 fleets np it wont kill solo pvp. Solo pvp thrives on lot’s of people on grid so that some where someone is creating an opening. This happens a decent amount in tama you fly in see some guy out of position fly up to him brawl him quick and warp out before the rest get in range.

P.S. you seem to have a negative out look on everything, you know what they say when everything you touch hurt’s, its your finger that is the problem.

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Stopped reading at “you do realise”

I would believe you if I didn’t see “Xuixien is typing” for the last 8 and a half minutes :rofl:
I can imagine that it would be pretty hard to respond to that.

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OMG

I just realized

NO MORE WORMS IN PLEXES

HEAVEN

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Yes, the size/rating restrictions are the best change in this blog. As long as they increase the number of plexes in system so people don’t have a content draught, being penalized for what they choose to fly.

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I guess specific missions will contribute to war resources ?

I’m happy as long as the normal fw lvl 4’s are gone, but no idea.

I remember proposing the idea of missions having a more dynamic role in FW, quite a few years back. Granted I wasn’t the only one, but I’m glad they listened.

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I hope they have found a way to deal with the tag crisis, maybe more npc’s are dying dropping more tags maybe even to other npc’s maybe we can somehow get a 2x tag collection rate bonus for completing something no idea but hope they think of something, because 150 tag’s to get a 1mn ab seems excessive no one is going to kill 150 frigates for 10mil worth of tags.

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