Donnachadh wrote:Cearain wrote:This was a problem before there was lp for finishing plexes.
Snipped out the rest read it above if you are interested.
You make my point for me. Warp stabs are not the problem in FW, the basics of the mechanics are the problem and changing warp stabs will not change the basic flaws.
In reality the entire FW concept was flawed when it first came to light, I mean the basic concept of players using characters to fight a battle on behalf of their faction of choice and claim areas of space always seemed like nul sec light to me, you know a stripped down, tasteless shadow of what it should be. The real problem what should FW actually be?
The best possible would be to take an area of space and give all 4 factions a home system or systems that can never be taken away from them. Then have a whole bunch of systems that are open and you conquer them by killing those who are there and you hold them by killing anyone that tries to take them from you. No sov structures to aid you, only you and the rest of your factions combine military might to keep hold of what you have. Basic mechanics and the warnings to those not involved in the FW are the easy part. The hard part is how to reward the players for capturing and then holding onto a system or systems?
I think you are right about stabs. I also think you are right to ask the very basic question as to who is FW supposed to appeal to in this game.
For me FW sounds great. I do not want to join a null sec alliance where a prepubescent sounding unemployed person tells me he is my dictator and I need to follow his orders or get out. Now sure not all null sec alliances are like that all of the time. But plenty are like that enough of the time such that null sec will not appeal to me.
And to be fair null sec is harder and more time intensive - unless you just want to be a grunt. Its no surprise that the leaders in null sec tend not to have families and/or jobs. So while I think pvp in faction war (and low sec generally) tends to involve better pvpers, I do agree that
at the leadership level FW is Null sec Lite. Faction war (and low sec generally) are like the middle class. Null sec has tons of people who don't know a thing about pvp (and often very little about eve generally) but then the leaders are like full time eve employees.
But fighting a war and having some overriding point to the combat does very much appeal to me. Fighting for goons/PL/Test/NC or their pets is IMO worse than fighting for fictional factions Amarr Gallente etc. Smaller alliances need to cozy up to one of those or they will find they are spending allot of their play time moving their assets around and re setting up.
So the fact that no one has power to kick people who do their own thing is both good and bad for Faction war. I think it will have the most appeal to people who just want to pvp in a war and for some sort of cause instead of just racking up more random kills.
The problem is the cause of gaining sov for your faction is too far seperated from pvp. If you want to really get the most sov for your faction then you should rabbit plex on several accounts. When PVPers see this is how it works they tend to say forget fw sov and stop caring about it. CCP can just tweak the system a bit by adding rollbacks and better real time intel tools and that would fix the problem. Suddenly fw sov would be about who is better at pvp and who can coodinate better over a large area. (as opposed to now where a faction will go for a single system by forming a blob. In that respect fw is null sec lite because those "blobs" are very underwhelming compared to what null sec brings.)
Faction war will appeal to people like me who value the pvp in eve more than hoarding isk. Making isk is a necessary evil you need to do to pvp. If you think pvp is a necessary evil so you can hold space and rat up isk then null sec is likely more for you. CCP just needs to focus on making the FW sov game fun. It does not need to worry about making the fw sov war pay better isk. Also if you want to be that guy saying look at me and how many powerful ships I can bring to a fight null sec leadership is for you. Faction war has always been the junior league for that aspect of the game.
TLDR: Faction war is for the medium player who has a busy real life and so cant run an alliance but doesn't want to just be an eve grunt either.