Today’s topic is five things I wish CCP would change about Faction War.

1. Make each faction unto itself.

Having forced ‘allies’ makes little sense in FW. From the in-game story, it makes no sense at all. The Caldari wouldn’t really want to help the Amarr. The Amarr are such snobs and look down on everyone I doubt they really would ally with anyone. And then this past week, we have that story where the NPC Federal & Republic fleets went at it, not very ‘ally’ if you ask me.

From game play, it’s just dumb. I’m an Amarr. The Caldari show up as allies on my overview, pretty purple stars…but that only gives newer militia members a false sense of security. You don’t lose standings to your own faction if you awox your ally, so what we have been seeing a lot is ‘blue’ on ‘blue’ fire- though we aren’t technically blue so it’s all confusing. It’s gotten so bad with Caldari awoxing that we’ve had to give our guys permission to shoot first.

Another reason CCP should drop the fake allies stuff is that currently, ‘allies’ can run one another’s plexes to gain LP. So basically when the farmers harvest one faction they move on to the allied faction, further skewing the efforts of the people who actually care about their part of the militia. This is why you’ll see countless vulnerable systems up in Cal/Gal space, it’s because farmers have plexed them but they cannot shoot the Ihub- not that even care to in the first place, so the systems don’t flip.

2. Put something else in a plex.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and just say it. MINING is more exciting than plexing. Hear me out. When you mine (and my whole experience with mining is like, very minimal), you at least get to watch your mining lazors chucking away at the rocks. Once your cargo is full, you have to move the stuff. And I presume miners have to watch their D-scans as well in case a ganker happens by.

In a FW plex, if you’re offensively plexing, you shoot one rat. If it is defensive, you shoot nothing. You get in range of the timer ….and wait.

That’s it. You wait. You click your d-scan and hope a reasonable fight happens upon you. It is so incredibly boring if you don’t get any pvp action.

I’ve come up with a couple of ideas that could make it a little more interesting…like, perhaps there could be some wrecks and debris floating around that people could salvage. Or maybe 20 or 30 cargo cans scattered about with something in them like tags perhaps or whatever, just something we’d have to move around to loot. Some plexes have old abandoned stations or broken monuments or whatever floating around off in the distance. Perhaps around those things there could be hidden rats that drop nice loot, or stuff hidden around them to find. If there were more loot/salvageable stuff in plexes, then that would inspire more pilots other than FW pilots to enter plexes. More people coming in equals more conflict, more fun!

3. Get rid of donating LP to IHubs.

I really dislike this whole mechanic. It always ends up being the people who actually care about their militia are the ones who donate their hard earned LP. The farmers do nothing but feast off the efforts of others.

4. Get rid of the Tiers.

“People don’t really need to be paid 2x or 3x the amount to circle a button. The end result of the FW system ownership. The ownership should bring the goods – not the process of acquiring it.” Zarnak Wulf

I know that CCP has stated that they really don’t care if FW balanced, in fact they don’t want it to be…but at the same time, what we have in place now kind of sucks.

If one faction is ‘winning’, then all the farmers pile onto that side making it so much harder for the opposing side to pull out of it. I think that everyone should get the same amount of LP per plex they run, and they should also get the same amount of LP per kills.

5. Section out the war zone into ZONES.

We have roughly 70 systems in our warzone currently but most of the pvp action happens in very few systems. A lot of the backwater systems are just unused.

So, we take those 70 systems and divide them up into smaller sectors.

Ten Sectors.

Each sector should have two base systems, one for the Amarr, one for the Minmatar. That leaves five systems per sector to fight for.

Base systems should be ‘guarded’ heavily by the NPC Navies of it’s faction and therefore cannot be flipped into the enemy hands.

Bases could greatly benefit militias for several reasons:

1. Bases would give better access to the war zone for new pilots and corporations coming into FW. A new pilot/corporation would be able to look at their in-game militia tab to choose a sector and move into that base, knowing that they aren’t going to be locked out of their assets by choosing a system that is likely to flip. Pretty much they will ‘know where to go’.

2. Bases would likely become smaller market hubs. This would encourage more movement throughout the war zone.

3. Bases would encourage corporations to spread out over the war zone.

Some kind of reward could be given if all of the systems in a sector were taken by one militia- but only to those who actively plexed in those systems.

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