Out of curiosity, who engages in Faction Warfare with their main character?
Do you prefer a dedicated FW alt? Do you just ignore this game content due to your reward versus risk calculation?
Please share your thoughts on this game content. Would love to hear from you before enlisting into it myself.
I made two dedicated FW pilots (specialised into different ships, not for multiboxing), but I wasn’t able to compete with multiboxers, nor the very occasional roaming gang. My home space was recently under insurgency and local was filled with multiboxers. 
As I understand it, enlisting in Faction Warfare makes the character a valid war target to all other faction warfare pilots regardless of location. I believe this limits the character to FW only. Would rather not be enjoying other game content as a open war target. Would restricting the faction warfare designation to FW systems or complexes be better for your gameplay?
recent changes applies where now you no longer lose standings to other factions when participating in FW.
Thank you for the information. Good to know.
I wouldn’t say ALL.. but targets of enemy factions… Caldari/amarr vs min/gallente
and you can fly in space that isn’t “yours” you’ll just be shot at by the faction navy of the space you are in.
Oh, that severely limits space travel. Running to Jita could be nearly impossible.
thats why people don’t use mains to haul lol.
I see your point. My point was the severe limitations on travel for pilots enlisted in Faction Warfare. It basically forces single-purpose-only on the pilot. For me, that limit prevents me from engaging in Faction Warfare. So FW is just another bit of content broken and unavailable to me. Variety is the spice of life. Monotony does not entertain.
you do know you can attack the faction navy/police right?? they are not CONCORD, and won’t one shot kill you
“limitations on travel”… welcome to EVE.. where there is always a risk to any action you do.
Yes. But how many are necessary. This game is for entertainment purposes only. I am giving feedback to Fenris Creations regarding the entertainment value of their product. This is especially valuable for game content generally considered broken and unplayable.
being an enemy of the state and being attacked for being the enemy isn’t a broken mechanic.
Faction police only target enemy militia. If you absolutely have to go to Jita, just don’t be in Gallente or Guristas factions and you can still go to Jita.
That aside, you generally don’t fly your main to Jita, regardless, because it’s a big dumb waste of time Vs. logging in your Jita alt, pasting your shopping list into the multibuy, and setting up a courier contract to wherever you’re living. Even if you’re in Calmil, it probably makes more sense to stock up a front line station instead of running the Nourv/Tama gate every time you get dunked.
High traffic frontlines also tend to have a ton of fully fit ships on contracts in a variety of popular configurations. There are 238 contracts in Aldranette right now and almost every one of them is a fully fit ship.
Well, nobody is really responding correctly, is the problem.
You’re supposed to say, “Faction war? On a MAIN? Are you daft? Have you taken leave of your senses? Have you not even performed the risk/reward calculus? Did your quant get podded?”
When it’s actually the normal way of engaging with FW and very, very few people have the Quilted Northern Ultra Plush level of softness required to be worried about whatever the concern is meant to be, here. It sounds like it is probably a mix of worries re:easily bypassed inconveniences, and the possibility that someone on the other team might attack him before he has officially declared, “Okay, I am ready to fight now!”
You do have a lot of alts in the warzone, but this has everything to do with farming and nothing to do with managing risk to one’s main.
Luckily wars are only relevant in a few parts of the game, and being part of a FW group and thus at war means nothing if you fly in Pochven, wormholes, null sec space or even Exordium. In LS it has little impact (standings and security only, but people can attack you anyway if they want) so only HS is affected.
For high sec it adds a bit of risk to fly around on a character at war, not an unmanagable risk as people successfully fly ships eligible for combat everywhere else in the game too, but if you wish to avoid that risk the most common advice is to not waste time sending your main character all the way to Jita, but to do that with either a trade alt and courier contracts or a hauling alt.
Or if you insist on only using your main you can jump clone to Jita, do your trades there, send stuff over to your staging system with courier contracts, and deathclone back home when done. All with zero risk.
I do that a few times a year when I for some reason need my main in Jita, who is near permanently at war, such as for new rare skillbooks.
Joining faction warfare has some issues that make me not join it on my main, but war eligibility is not one of them.
If it was the standing issue thats been changed. You dont lose standings with the opposing factions. That was a huge hiccup with ppl joining FW
Standing issues is one, the fact that it’s all about farming standings and that players need to run missions to repair standings when I do something wrong another. In 9 years of playing I’ve stayed away from standings and standing-based PvE as much as possible and FW is all about that.
Another issue is nullsec politics. As part of a group I am expected not to fight ‘allied’ players even if these players were to sign up for an opposing faction warfare group and fly in low sec.
Not that I would mind getting killed by a Caldari pilot of my own corporation if I fought for Gallente, I’d find it fun and part of what I signed up for by joining FW and flying in LS, but my bloc doesn’t think the same about this as I do.
As I prefer my null sec life over trying FW, and don’t want to try a watered down FW experience where part of the time I’m not allowed to fight a FW opponent or help FW allies because the FW opponent also is a null ally, I’m out of luck.
This conflict of interests means I only ever could try the normal FW on an unaffiliated alt, or by leaving null sec.
I’m a main in FW since the beginning of FW (except for a few real life breaks from the game). I like the casual nature, the constant turnover of new people and the surprising variety of ‘additional’ content FW provides as a solo player.
Edit: Just to add - Militia is not a commitment for life - you can drop at any time (takes a day) and rejoin any time (another day) if you’ve got bulky hauling to Jita to do etc… You should give it a go before making assumptions about it being limiting - it’s content you’re missing out on by not being brave enough to even try it. Not everything comes down to ISK/vs time.