This is an interesting observation. Earlier you said:
Most FW players have not in fact tried gang play, and if they did try it they would find they are 100% feasible (esp. if you don’t scare off opponents by having your gang centralized prior to engagement). If there aren’t many gangs, it’s only because players choose not join them rather than because they don’t work PVP-wise. This is 100% cultural. In this one specific regard (ie. excluding other considerations), EVE doesn’t need a mechanics change, but players and ‘trendsetters’ could help encourage others to get into gang play to shift the culture. If you pull up guides and videos and forum/reddit posts on FW it’s all about solo this and solo that - the expectation and aspiration of players is highly influenced by the attention solo play is getting that gang play is not.
The good news, however, is that you don’t need to actually face an opposing gang in order for it to be worth using a gang yourself. If your bait ship is essentially all defense and tackle, it doesn’t even have to survive to have entire engagement served its purpose, it only has to survive long enough for everyone else to arrive and contribute their own tackle.
From a new player’s perspective there is very little constructive feedback with frigate pvp in general - the fights are too fast and too short. There’s a lot of factors that add up to that - bad overview settings, suboptimal module layout, general lack of agility in new player’s input, hell they usually don’t even know about '‘Logs and messages’ window. That’s why I think destroyers are actually newbie-friendlier.
This is not true - I just checked. My main is faster in a rifter than my no-skill farming alt in a slasher.
It is not like a beam slicer would win dps race against against a punisher if caught on warp-in. There’s only one faction frigate that can be tanky, damaging and fast at the same time - the worm - even the vets are reluctant to duel that one.
I don’t think I’ve resorted to profanity once through our conversation and you keep ‘quoting’ me on that. But that’s not the point.
When a new player (like legit new player, not some old geezer’s 21st alt) starts playing eve they have a lot to learn besides training skills. How long do you imagine it will take them? At least several days. ‘Entry level pvp’ is not entry level in a sense ‘as soon as you started playing’ but rather ‘as soon as you’ve learned enough to even think of pvp’.
Now, I’ve actually had goal for the first month of my gameplay - scavenge enough to buy a plex. Couldn’t even join fw on free trial. So during that time I’ve only occasionally left hisec since I couldn’t find isk elsewhere. I did though, every now then, mostly dying to gatecamps. 3 solo fights that I’ve lived long enough to get during that period were regular frigate vs regular frigate and weren’t even close. The only stellar lesson I got from all three - condors and kestrels can kite.
A long red trail starts at the point when I plexed my toon and joined fw. And it didn’t feel much different to duel regular frigates or faction. Bad fits, bad engagements, wrong ammo choice - these mistakes will kill you anyway and they need to be made. But without communicating they won’t make much sense to you.
So the accent in that ‘go faction or get ■■■■■■’, that you like so much to assign to me, is actually on the last part. ‘Get ■■■■■■’ as much as possible - you might get lucky while you’re at it. And if you communicate with people, maybe you’ll get good enough that faction ships won’t be useless in your hands. You see the difference between this and ‘waiting’?
Navy ones are neither expensive nor skill intensive. Also open the agency and watch the animated illustration of how ‘faction warfare is suggested by the game as a place to try out pvp’.
And gangs do happen if you communicate. Communication is what really changes things. With militia members, with locals, with your adversaries. And with your corp
I compared shield slasher to a dual-rep rifter, and both boats 200mm-plated. And even in your scenario that gap might dissappear since the old guy heats longer and might have a better web
But the majority of Rifters are fit with at least a 200mm plate. Some are fit with armour rigs and/or 400mm plate. And the majority of slashers are fit with some kind of prop upgrade or astronautic rig. Check zkill if you don’t believe me.
Are there exceptions to the rule? Yeah. Like a nano-tristan.
But it truly takes a day or so training before those exceptions are reversed. And new players can recognise (or be taught) that they have an option to them that will go faster than vets in a comparable frig. They can make a ship to try and kite those tough combat ships or burn down that pesky nano-tristan. They can see progress.
Unfortunately this is not the case when it comes to faction frigs which overwhelm in every situation. In fact it is uncommon for vets like yourself to succeed against a faction ship in a non-faction ship.
That used to be the most popular tristan fit around amarmin warzone. If ZKill shows otherwise - that is probably because of their high gtfo capability. But maybe that’s not the case elsewhere.
Nanotristan is exceptionally strong btw. Light missile breacher too. Both could easily engage most faction frigates. The only reason my KB is not filled with solo-kills in those is my irrational resentment to their fighting style.
To be honest I barely ever solo in non-faction frigs. In gangs - sure, but solo - the price difference for militia member is just too low to not pick navy ones instead. And that’s the case for most people in fw. And it’s not a mistake imo.
My point is, when you’re really new, you gonna make mistakes that will make no difference what you are fighting. That’s the only reason you shouldn’t go faction right away. By the time you’ve learned the basics though, you’re not gonna be as poor and undertrained as you used to be. And flying navy frigates is the right thing to do at this point.
But making new boundaries is always a bad thing. When they added gated BS-size plexes, that made sense - the gap between caps and subcaps is enormous. The gap between faction and t1 frigates is nowhere close to that.
I like this one. This would also encourage people to actually cap their plexes rather than going elsewhere when they didn’t get the fight they wanted.
I see what’s the intention here, but actually it kinda feels right that the people willing to push the tier further have to give something in order to gain more. Especially if it’s about the side in high tier which is crowded by lp-rich crabs - yelling at them in militia chat does help sometimes)
Seems too radical to me. It might disencourage people from FW as a whole. Besides without missions there’s no real reward for struggling for ‘peace time’ after victory. Warzone control should have benefits.
The idea of tier removal however might solve this in a better way. And also the problem of upgrading systems. But that’s quite a bold idea as well.
This could be abused. In fact it is being abused by NPC-corp militia alts created by opposing faction. They can’t do much direct harm since they gonna lose standing and get kicked but they can still scout plexes and provide logi support. But if there’s a standing hit for killing player-corp allies, you effectively get a carte blanche for awoxing - you just need to have high standing alts in your corp to mitigate your own standing penalties. I’ve been using that trick myself against stabbed farmers when they could run all plexes.
It would make fw-affiliation slightly more attractive to pirates, but doesn’t make much sense logically and lore-wise. Why would military reward militia members for shooting civilians? Even if they’re armed and aggresive civilians they should be legal to shoot back (already implemented by suspect timer) but not rewarded - it would make military hunt civilians, not just shoot back when fired upon.
Here are my thoughts about how to make fw better:
•The lp reward for killing war targets should be increased further. They’ve already made it kind of wothwhile but still not good enough. If it was, say, twice the amount we get now then killing a navy frigate would give almost as good lp as a novice plex - and that’s roughly the average level of opposition you usually get while you’re at it.
•The new ESS mechanic turned out pretty good in terms of people having to protect their isk. So maybe a similar thing could be done in fw as well. Say, half of the mission lp reward goes into a plex lp pool and this is somehow visible to the opposing faction. It would encourage people to actually fly pvp-capable ships for their missions. Or they’d have to team up with a designated plexer.
It does however has lore issues - why would a faction agent greed half of the reward for his operative until the said operative serves a portion of gud ol’ trench duty? But I think a viable mechanic could be created along these lines.
I appreciate your thoughts. Here are my thoughts-on-your-thoughts
The way I see it, what players need to give is their participation, not their reward. Right now we have a “tragedy of the commons” where the majority which are contributing very little are exploiting the contributions of a few that are contributing almost the whole - it’s why many (most?) communes throughout history don’t work out, particularly when there’s no way to hold others accountable or enforce contributions as would be the case in a RL community commune, etc. A change such as this (if not this specifically) would eliminate the tragedy while maintaining participation, which is what matters. Increasing your faction tier shouldn’t come from spending LP but from further participation - THAT is what bolsters FW. Can you imagine how boring FW would be if almost the entirety of LP generated came from missions so that minimum conflict is held at complexes but systems can be quickly upgraded nevertheless? If you want to rally Militia chat, don’t rally everyone to spend LP, rally everyone to fleet up at plexes. (With UP, you would coordinate with others - within your FW corp/alliance and perhaps with the militia as a whole - which systems to invest in, but since this investment costs you nothing there would be no reluctance to invest and the only consideration would be strategic significance and/or diminishing returns on upgrade points per UP investment)
FW missions are not FW and FW mission runners are not FW participants: FW missions are not a unique gameplay experience (missions are already available to non-FWers, and FW missions aren’t particularly special or interesting), they play zero role in territory expansion/control in terms of contesting, and they are not a hybrid PVE/PVP or pro-PVP experience (technically a beacon spawns whenever the mission site is entered that anyone can warp to in order to facilitate combat without combat scanner probing, but in practice this never happens), etc. I don’t count dumping LP earned from FW missions into system upgrading as FW participation - that doesn’t involve player interaction (which is what matters) and that LP could have come from elsewhere, namely ways involving player interaction (plexing and kills). If you remove FW missions, you’re not removing a gameplay experience from anyone that doesn’t already exist in identical form outside of FW, the only thing you’re doing is removing an LP faucet and forcing players to get their LP where player interaction is actually required.
Your explanation does not make sense to me. The awoxer is getting penalized twice instead of once - this isn’t a benefit. This does not empower them to do anything. Saying “this might encourage them to use alts” is not indicative of being an exploit since they could have done that anyway. Nothing is stopping them from using alts now or switching alts more regularly than they already do, so there is no empowerment. There is penalty for players that don’t want to use alts and inconvenience for players that would have to rotate alts more frequently, however, and the implementation is straightforward for this. We shouldn’t not-do something just because it has a minimal effect on something it wasn’t intended to do.
Indeed it would make it more attractive for pirates to enlist in FW, but that isn’t even why I proposed this idea: not only do I think it would make pirates actually enlist in FW but I do think it would make non-participants enlist knowing there is more opportunity to score LP than there was before. I did previously think about the need for an explanation lorewise, and it was not difficult for me to conceive of one: these are trespassers who are knowingly trespassing on military grounds - given the acceleration gate, it is not possible for them to have stumbled onto the premises by accident, and for them to have willingly entered they are then to be presumed armed, dangerous, and with malicious intent. For defenders, they are rewarded for defending their complex against presume pirates, and for attackers they are rewarded for taking the complex from all hostiles (enemy militia or pirates). The pre-existing suspect timer already justifies this lorewise: these are already deemed in the eyes of CONCORD to be pirates, so it is not difficult to justify rewarding militiamen for defending/capturing a complex by eliminating hostiles both in the form of opposing militia and pirates.
I should point out that even if this were considered to be slightly absurd (I don’t think it is to be honest), a precedent already exists for effective-albeit-absurd-lorewise mechanics to not only exist but to be greatly expanded upon just recently: ESS. The concept of ISK from bounties magically being pooled to some deployable that CONCORD somehow has control over (despite being in an unmonitored and unpoliced part of space) in a way that doesn’t even happen in HS/LS is absurd, but the mechanic exists because it is highly effective at producing the intended player behavior: good fights. FW would be made more sexy for both non-participants and for pirates already participating but not enlisted if LP was awarded for killing pirates at complexes as an on-grid rule.
This has to be measured, otherwise it could be farmable. We don’t need players farming alts on platinum-insured T1 ships for LP, esp. if FW missions are removed (which I guarantee will happen eventually). This concern is one of the reasons why I suggested introducing a new pool of eligible players to net LP from - pirates at complexes - instead of increasing payouts.
I don’t think UP is a bad thing. In fact it almost seems too good of a thing. If a complex rewards you with specialized type of points that have no other use but upgrading systems, you don’t have to make a tough choice whether you dump your hard earned currency into an ihub or keep it to yourself. Just seems kind of casual.
That is true. So maybe the missions need to be reworked rather than removed completely. For example, they could give much less direct reward from the agent but have influence on target system’s contested status. Like in an ESS a significant portion of LP goes into LP pool of plex in that system and somehow makes it easier to capture - either by affecting the timer or, say, stopping it from spawning rats. That plex also needs to be flared somehow for the opposing faction.
Also the mission rats should start recognizing friendlies and don’t shoot them - that would encourage people to hunt mission runners, allow them to camp their missions.
Of course things like this are very difficult to balance so people not interested in being commited to the cause wouldn’t get too much influence. But if done correctly that would give a different flavor to FW making what was lore-wise intended as a special op to actually have a meaning for the effort.
That’s what I was saying. Commited fw players already use alts in enemy faction sometimes for scouting plexes, support roles in pvp and hunting risk averse farmers. They don’t actually switch sides - they’re just living up to their purpose. Aggresing a spy-alt from NPC corp is penalized by standing hit - so often people just allow them to be if their behaviour is not very harmful. If you want to create a combat capable spy alt you put him in a player corp with equal amount of high standing farming alts - so standing losses of awoxing alts are compensated by the standings of farming alts and the corp remains in fw. But these alts are legal to shoot for the faction they’re infiltrating so as soon they’re figured out they are only a threat to sole pilots who didn’t get the intel.
But if you give them that protection by standing an NPC corp has, player-spy-corps would become very troublesome - they can shoot you because their personal standing (which they don’t have personal interest in) loss is tanked by alts for their corp. But if you shoot them - you get a standing hit as well, and for you it usually means something.
It just seems to me that rewarding non-fw kills encourages non-fw-committed pvp behaviour too much. In my early days of Minmatar FW we had this Huola coallition - a group of fw corps and alliances that barely ever left their home system because local pirates gave them enough content. Systems were getting rapidly flipped by amarr but these people cared very little because ‘fw pendulum’, ‘lp too cheap’ and so on. I mean people have every right to act as they see fit, but rewarding strategies like this with lp would be acknowledging it as an actual war effort, which it obviously isn’t.
So I think suspect timer for non-fw pilots in plexes is where balance is and there’s no need to push it further by rewards.
Very true, my estimate was quite eye-balled. Btw, I might be wrong, but it seems to me that lp rewards for pvp already take insurance into account. When I was derping around in a platinum insured battlecruiser, the killmail it generated listed an lp reward comparable to that of a navy frigate. The actual killmail value was roughly triple that amount, but if we substract the insurance payout - the result would be just about right.
A very quick change to the Tier system and it’s adverse influence over the FW zone can be achieved.
It would simply be for CCP to dive into the code and change 5 integers (see below).
The Tier system does have one minor incentive: to encourage the WZ to be pushed.
Removal of the code is probably a fair bit of work.
The current bonus’s are the key issue. They encourage harvesting of LP at low risk and zero commitment to the war, via missions.
The tier 1 penalty is significantly adverse and should be erased.
Fallout:
There might be a concern over the loss of LP generation and it’s affect as an ‘isk sink’?
If this is so perhaps a return of the increase to warp speed on large ships that was tested temporarily not long ago. Increase the warp speed of larger ships (or all ships) in high and low sec space (make it null if you want but I am guessing sov holding raiders will have objections).
With an increase in warp speed LP generation from mission runners will be increased to slightly offset the decrease of LP generated by FW mission runners. It was seen that increased warp speeds encouraged use of larger ships in low sec space.
