| Author |
Thread Statistics | Show CCP posts - 21 post(s) |
Dynast
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
38
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Posted - 2012.05.30 01:19:00 -
[1] - Quote
Morwen Lagann wrote:A common and recurring complaint I hear from friends in FW is summed up pretty easily in two words: NPC EWAR.
More specifically:
Amarr Militia: "OMG my frigate is suddenly a stationary battleship because the Minmatar NPCs have hax webifiers and target painters!"
Caldari Militia: "OMG I can't target anything because the Gallente NPCs are damping my targeting range down to 5km!"
Gallente Militia: "OMG I can't target anything because the Caldari NPCs are permajamming me!"
Minmatar Militia: "OMG I can't hit anything because I was already fighting in falloff and the Amarr NPCs are tracking distrupting me!" (alternatively: "lol, tracking disruption doesn't work on stealth bombers, n00b NPCs")
What this guy said. The EWAR is the crux of the problem, on two accounts. One, because a lot of it is frustrating as all hell, and two, because some races EWAR is much more powerful than others giving one side an unfair advantage in plex capping and PvP.
Plexes are simultaneously a little to easy to speed-tank and cap, while some of them are frustratingly hard to clear. Caldari suck to clear because of ECM, Caldari and Minmatar NPCs also have missiles (and webs) which make them harder to speed tank. Clearing Gallente is tiresome because of the constant damping, and clearing Amarr is more or less a breeze as long as you didn't bring a turret boat. And clearing should be encouraged in general, because it makes for better (more even) PvP in plexes. Speed-tanking just leads to people warping off instantly the second a hostile comes on grid.
PvP wise, getting ECM'd and Damped by NPCs both suck horribly, with TDing and webbing/painting being not as bad but still a pain the arse. The extra DPS is already an advantage for the defender, it needn't be so large.
My suggestion is, remove all FW plex electronic warfare NPCs, and add a spider drone or two to each wave. If there's gonna be EWAR in the plexes, make the players bring it. if the difficulty of the plexes is deemed too low with that removed, up the ship types/numbers, those are much less unpleasant to deal with than ECM, Damping, and the like. |
Dynast
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
38
|
Posted - 2012.05.30 01:34:00 -
[2] - Quote
CCP Ytterbium wrote:- What about the standing mechanic that govern NPC attack behavior? When do you feel they should engage you? Low standings? Capturing a complex?
FW Plex NPCs should immediately engage all ships that are not members of a friendly militia. i.e., Gallente plex NPCs should shoot anyone who is not in a corp that is in the Gallente or Minmatar militias. There's no reason they should ever decline to shoot based on something that can be manipulated like faction standings, or should allow neutrals or pirates to futz around or harass friendlies at a military site. |
Dynast
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
43
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Posted - 2012.06.04 22:06:00 -
[3] - Quote
How costly would it be to make killing the NPCs required to finish offensive FW plexes? That would at least somewhat even things out between the militias, particularly in terms of nerfing the one day old afk speed-tank alt that currently works for some races but not others. |
Dynast
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
43
|
Posted - 2012.06.06 00:21:00 -
[4] - Quote
Soldarius wrote:Although I have never done faction warfare on TQ, I have tried it out on SiSi. I am sorry to see EWAR go away. No military force in its right mind would deny itself the use of such weapons if they were available.
The problem is that the various types of EWAR are not balanced. This is irrespective of FW. Rather than covering up the problem by removing the offending issue, try fixing it.
All factions should web and scram. These are the basic EWAR needed to hold an enemy down and destroy them.
Minmatar get TP (for their bungholes) to increase damage.
Caldari get ECM do reduce incoming damage.
Gallente get damps to force players to work at close range where their weapons do the most damage.
Amarr get neuts to reduce an enemy's ability to tank damage or even escape at all at close range. Tracking Disruption should be focused on optimal/falloff reduction to force players into close range where neuts are effective.
I also support the idea of having to destroy the defending NPCs to capture an installation. Flying around in space while cloaked or with no weapons for 15-20 minutes and calling ti captured is just not within the realm of believability. It utterly destroys all immersion.
Additionally, I would like to see better AI for faction NPCs. Given an enemy fleet, targets at close range obviously do not need to be range damped. The snipers do. High value targets like logistics, EWAR, and other support ships should be targeted regularly. Target switching should also be possible. The current targeting algorithm is too predictable and completely illogical.
In short, a single player in a frigate should not be able to capture a plex of any kind without some serious effort.
These sort of PvE centric changes really aren't appropriate to FW. They don't add anything of value for the people who have joined FW looking for PvP, and that's what FW is supposed to be about: PvP along faction lines. The tougher the plexes get, the less PvPing in them makes sense -- if you have to spec for PvE, you pretty much always get destroyed in PvP. At which point.. why even try engaging? It's no accident that the lion's share of plex pvp is in and around the minors, which can effortlessly be cleared by destroyers.
There are other places to go for players who want enhanced PvE experiences, such as incursions and wormholes. Take it from someone who's in FW for real: this is not what we need, or want. |
Dynast
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
50
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Posted - 2012.07.06 20:31:00 -
[5] - Quote
Station lockout has at least taken all the ******** station games out of FW, and that's a vast improvement on six months ago.
Requiring all NPCs to be killed would fix the worst of the issues with FW plexes. I'm not sure a big redo is really necessary or desirable. Look at what happened to nullsec sov when they redid it, went from bad to ******* godawful. |
Dynast
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
56
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Posted - 2012.07.13 23:53:00 -
[6] - Quote
Consider putting the LP on the NPC rats guarding the plex, rather than the capture event. i.e. each time you pop one of the various State/Federation/etc NPCs, you get LP, and the total LP for all the waves of NPCs is roughly equivalent to current payouts. This would accomplish several things:
- Remove incentive for non-combat ships, speed tanking the plex alone would not be enough.
- Reward the pilots who participated the most in capturing the plex, rather than just whoever is there at the end.
- Make it easy to code fleet splitting of LPs (as with bounties) to reward pilots who are in fleet, but guarding the acceleration gate.
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Dynast
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
57
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Posted - 2012.07.21 00:24:00 -
[7] - Quote
One other thing to be mindful of, vulnerable systems should not grant LP for further offensive plexing. Right now it's more advantageous to leave a system vulnerable than to flip it, it's an infinite LP faucet, and the result is showing in Gallente/Caldari FW, we have several dozen vulnerable systems and nobody flips them unless they're doing an organized LP dump. While the organized LP dumps are probably a good thing (they reward organization and teamwork), the tons of systems being left vulnerable and perma-farmed are not. |
Dynast
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
64
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Posted - 2012.07.27 23:43:00 -
[8] - Quote
Garviel Tarrant wrote:I havn't read anything here, just want to mention that first.
I say make FW rats point. would make it harder to farm plexes while avoiding pvp.
Ohh and make them not attack neutrals.. Being attacked by the Caldari navy when you're actually in good standing with it and not a part of any militia is kinda silly.
Actually it's absolutely appropriate, you have no business in a military installation, and you sure as hell have no business shooting FW pod pilots in their own military installation. The use of standings by FW Plex NPCs should be removed entirely, it's not appropriate to the setting. It shouldn't matter how good your standings are, if you're not part of the appropriate militia you get shot.
There's increasing militia use of fiddled standings (sometimes at corp level) to make FW plex rats ignore pilots. The outcome is hostile militia pilots "capturing" a plex while the Empire military just sits there on it's ass. |
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