@SWAGGZENEGGER I moved the discussion here with our comments thus far, so we don’t interrupt the role playing in the linked thread. 
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Unfortunately Faction Warfare has lost its essence.
Back in 2008 YC110, the Writer of the CCP said: that victory or failure in the war will influence the policy of the Faction.
In the Amarrs, the “war for heaven” was very much associated with the NPC character:
“We need to save them, all of them, from themselves. We need to reclaim their fates and envelop them in ours. And we need to love them, no matter how much it hurts.”
“All these wayward children.”
And what is happening now? I do not understand anything. Why did they come up with the title “Holy”, which was not once in any Emperor in the history of the Empire.
Why is this?
Faction Warfare lost all meaning in 2015 YC117.
And how well it all started:
War has begun!!!
Abaddon and the horsemen of the Apocalypse 
I adore Faction Warfare, because it’s that little that the Developers made for us, roleplayers. Some of FW features (for example - ranks), have no other value except for roleplaying and even provide us with sweet pieces of lore (I highly recommend people to read rank descriptions, there are some brilliant pieces!)
Faction Warfare gives roleplayers unique chance to show allegiance to the faction not on words, but on actions as well. I have seen a lot of attempts to bring in “pirate faction warfare”, so people could show allegiance to pirate factions, but, unfortunately, I don’t think there are too many voices of interested people to lobby this idea. And this makes current Faction Warfare even more valuable (from roleplaying perspective for faction pilots).
And they have kept the promise, even if for a short while.
Caldari faction was the first one who have won the whole warzone. And it has resulted in this:
Of course it was way before 2015, but still - we have it. We have a feature that gives faction loyal roleplayers juicy bones and ability to fight for the faction for real. 
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That’s exactly what it was before 2015 YC117. 
Unfortunately Faction Warfare has long been not an indicator of role-playing. Now this is another way to earn. Since FW does not affect the story.
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We can write our own stories.
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Another story about the immortal capsuleer…
Yawn … boring …
In any MMORPG you can write a story about yourself.
To come up with an interesting world, characters, a story, you already need love for your project.
To be fair, you don’t have to write the story about yourself, or capsuleers at all. Your stories could be about the ordinary people in those regions whose lives are affect by the ongoing warefare, the conflicts in loyalties, the growing mistrust of authority, or how some lose themselves in authority worship in an attempt to find some solidity in an uncertain world.
Just to put a bug in your ear.
Or how millions die, fighting each other, and insane eggers call it “just a game” or “pendulum”. 
I actually had a couple of ideas of stories about regular people who fight and die for their nations. I just need a bit more time and determination (which I feel I lack terribly lately) to grab a quill.
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Unfortunately like many things, CCP has let FW fall to the wayside. A ingame thing that gives people an RP reason to fight for their “nations” instead of their corps is always good. But the lack of real effect on the rest of the faction due to your success or lack of success makes it feel hollow, like a PVP battle ground in an otherwise non-pvp game.
It is more or less an isk sink for those RPers who are left.
Amarr RP is pretty strong in faction warfare. Granted, it’s not the sophisticated roleplay suitable for the IGS, but it’s roleplaying nonetheless.
Havn’t been in a Amarr FW corp yet that didn’t roleplay to some extent, even if it was a bit crass.
I have found the GM’s to be pretty responsive to what we do in the warzone.
Maybe the GM’s could tell us what they do when something happens in FW. After we won the warzone, I saw a ton of Amarr skins come out. Amarr got a lot of attention all of a sudden. Minmatar won the warzone a little while ago, and they got some skins as well.
The RP team seems to be spread pretty thin. I’ve played games where events were nearly daily in a storyline, here, you’re kind of lucky to get something once a quarter.
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Faction Warfare is a ‘fun’ and ‘engaging’ mechanic that saw a considerable amount of participation from the roleplaying community because of the direct way one was representing their faction in the aftermath of the brief all-out war that the Empires were embroiled in around YC110/2008. Furthermore, the way that the militias could influence the development of the story through their actions such as the auction of Federal systems by the CPD, the Federal offensive to retake their lost systems or the mission objectives set by the 24IC/TLIB over certain systems to evacuate certain assets, had a great appeal to those that wanted substance in their actions. Especially as it was reported in the in-game news at the time with FCs or other people of importance being interviewed to get player opinions and messages to the greater community at whole.
However, the lack of an end goal to the conflict, with the exception of a medal for capturing the entire warzone that will never be issued again to a new generation of pilots now that all have been awarded, has put many off engaging in it. The mechanics are stale, boring and reward farmers and bots over active combatants and roleplayers that wish to fight for their faction in a war that has been ongoing for nearly a decade now with few to no IC reasons to continue. I recall one of the Caldari Navy NPCs stating on a forum post in the old IGS that system control does not matter in terms of the ability of each Empire to administer their territories even if it is conquered by the opposing side in the CEMWPA zone. The lack of any meaningful consequences in terms of the actions taken by the Militias is another turn off, what is the point in capturing ten systems if the Federation or the State can still ICly control them.
The use of FW and membership of the Militia as a metric for determining the loyalty of a capsuleer is bunk as well, because one shouldn’t be forced to join a combat organisation in a conflict which has little to no IC relevance or impact, as well as being excluded from all your opponents space just to have the emblem of your chosen faction appear by your name. Whilst it is a way to show your allegiance, it is not and should not be perceived as the only way to do so. In my honest opinion the entire system needs to be decommissioned and replaced as it isn’t fit for purpose in its current iteration.
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Fight for Caldari State, they have cookies. 
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Hard, stale, practical cookies, but cookies nonetheless, I guess.
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Outcome:
FW must be closed.
- Medals have received all Fractions.
- Of the NPC characters who were associated with the FW there was only one left.
I think the DSP will solve this problem, in his own style.
- It is inadvisable.
I’ve always said that FW is sov lite, introducing people to the mechanics in a less stringent manner by design. IE, it’s not a problem that you can’t fly capitals since there are complexes that can be accessed only by frigates anyway.
There have been two major forces that have worked against FW.
Citadels:
With the advent if Upwell structures, something was clear: they were not designed with current game mechanics in mind. They’re all fine and dandy, but their existence makes system ownership in FW space unimportant. They have singlehandedly reduced the associated capsuleer forces from the status of Royal Navy to mere privateers. It’s one of the larger blows against it, the dangle of doing something meaningful is no longer there.
Players themselves:
As with every feature that gets released, CCP’s ideas must compete with those of the players themselves. Such is the nature of the sandbox.
So, you ask, what’s the competition here? Well, there have been a lot of major nullblocs that introduced groups oriented towards newer players. Nullsec is more accessible than ever, and in effect is siphoning people that would go to FW instead. Why? Because in nullsec you can progress towards the big stuff a lot faster, and you actually feel like you matter.
So yeah, all for reiteration of FW, but it would have to be pretty earth shattering to change things as it is.
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Not earth shattering at all. Three things alone could bring FW back to inferno levels.
•restrict docking to Citadels in enemy space, just as it is with stations.
•restrict t2 and t3 hulls from entering/activating fw mission acceleration gates
•all defensive plexing LP goes directly to the corresponding ihub and system contestation is reduced 4% every day at down time.
I’m not going to discuss the exact specifics, but it’d have to be a big enough change that it’d make nullsec alliances want to leave null and go to fw. You see, facwar is an entry point towards having a cohesive doctrine, working together in a large group and all that jazz. Once you spent enough time there you could choose to move onto null. Or not. However, nullblocs are established enough that they can just integrate day 1 players into themselves seamlessly, causing an immense drain on the fw recruitment. Small changes won’t do much to alleviate that.
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FW will always be nice for subcap warfare, as you can only cyno on top of the hub during a bash. Even for a large complex, it has to cyno in remotely and then do a warp to the large. You can see it coming a long way off. This almost guarantees a specific type of content, along with the ship restrictions with the smaller complexes. I don’t compare them at all. Null sec has nothing like this.
I’ve been struck by the apparent swing towards the Caldari in the war zone over the last few weeks. It might be nice to see an IC announcement about this campaign in the IGS. There must be a story to be told, although possibly some hesitation about triggering a rehearsal of the old GalCal name calling.
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It came as a surprise to me as well, part of it was the apparent absence of galmil defensive force in the warzone for nearly a week leading up to the big system flips, particularly in pegeler and nearby constellations.
Now, my character(s) have no real stake in who controls the warzone, not directly at least, most being from a decidedly independent faction prior to capsuleerhood, but an interesting dynamic has emerged internally within my alliance’s roleplay cadre where normally we’ll actively interfere with the militia’s, but right now with the flip, the consensus has been that the toons involved preferred the lax, barely competent local FDU administration to the currently more dogmatic and firm State Protecorate administration coming into the areas in and around the Pegeler warzone lowsec. Even some of the few state loyalist RPers we have are of that viewpoint internally, so minimal interference has been made against what little FDU presence is returning post flip.
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