Hey guys,

One of the things on the PVE side of FW that keeps getting brought to my attention is LVL 4 FW missions, and an imbalance between the ones that are run by the Gallente and Amarr vs the Minmatar and Caldari missions. The specific issue that I keep hearing is that Cal and Min missions can be run in Stealth bombers while Gal and Amarr missions need to be run in considerably better ships, often tech 3.

The reasons for the higher end ships that seem to be most common is the missile spam prevalent in the Gallente and Amarr missions. I've got a few other things on my list that were mentioned, but I'd rather hear directly from you guys as to what you think the issues are.

My questions for you in this regard are 3:

1: Do you feel this issue is important to you or people you fly with in FW?
2: What do you think is causing the imbalance between the faction missions where some factions can run their missions with SB while others need to bring a "bigger boat."
3: If some balance were to be brought across lvl4 FW missions, should it be geared towards everyone needing a "bigger boat," or everyone being able to run in stealth bombers?

This issue is one of a few on my plate at the moment. If there is a strong desire for change here it's something I plan to pass on and attempt to press the need to the dev team that handles PVE content. If the desire is not strong, and it appears the people who have brought this to me are a small minority, I plan to move on to other issues.

/discuss

On another note: I believe FW missions need to be totally rethought. Currently they are abused for easy isk/LP. FW missions should contribute to the cause, should not be easy, and should encourage PvP.

...

1: Do you feel this issue is important to you or people you fly with in FW?
Yes. I think easy to farm missions creates a bad culture in a militia (see Caldari).

I don't have a problem going either way (easy mode/slightly harder mode) as long as the risk/reward is in line, at the moment the risk/reward is out of wack though.

L4, L4 run run run ...... , but you all forget, how much work it is mean for militia's who off plex, shoot iHub's and donating there LP to reach fu... Tier 4 -> only then farmers (null players alts -> contribute nothing to reach Tier 4 or help militias bro with something) start farm...

Missions can only be good reward for ppl, who actively support militia faction and help reaching tiers!

Right. Let's add more complicating mechanics that don't actually address the mission imbalance issue in order to not even really in any way shape or form change the perception of some people benefiting from Tier upgrades without contributing.

This is all my guess at what their intentions were - which is a much more informed guess than others in this thread. So take it for what it's worth.

The assumptions are that if they didn't want to make missions PvPish, 1) they wouldn't force the player to make 10+ (on average) jumps to get to the missions and 2) they wouldn't show the mission on a beacon in local for all to see.

wrt Stealth Bombers - Read into it what you want. I just told you how (I think) they designed the missions. The L4 missions were NOT designed with stealth bombers or other frigs in mind. They also designed the missions as "head shots" compared to regular L4 missions. More time travelling, less time in mission.

This is kind of the crux of it IMO.

You claim the first is the purpose of the missions, some of us claim the second. I haven't seen anything one way or the other that would definitively push things one way or the other.

I feel that L4 missions are intended as PvE for FW players. Thus I feel the ship and SP investment should be roughly comparable to regular L4 kill missions, taking into account the increased risk for operating in the warzone. I therefore want L4 mission difficulty increased to somewhere between Amarr and Gallente level currently.

Your position for everyone in bombers is reasonable given your take that FW missions = bring solo to the warzone. We just don't agree that you're right about the purpose of L4 missions.

And yes, L4 missions are relatively high end content. Just not to bittervets like us.

Per CCP Fozzie during the FW Roundtable at FanFest, they don't like people running them in Stealth Bombers, and he would like to add things such as webbing towers to the missions to prevent it. Doing so is infeasible at the moment due to their content tools.

In short: your assumptions are completely wrong, and you should feel bad.

Sounds like a classic case of wanting to hammer a nail using a screw driver.

Q: What is the one thing bombers has problems doing?
A: Killing things smaller than a moon.

Include the escort cruisers/frigs in the "must kill to complete" list and bombers instantly become non-viable for most missions. No need to add silly webbing towers and what not.
NB: Can probably still be done in a bomber if a person is married to his cloak but the time/ammo expenditure will make earnings lower than lvl1's in high sec

By the by, that extra time means beacons are up for longer than 45-60s which will inevitably lead to more pew .. doubly so if the much asked for poison pills are added on top thus making fighting for ones missions a near must rather than allowing people to just move and pop another elsewhere.
Poison pill could be substituted by the automatic time-out that is already part of the mission system, just make it much shorter (as in 30 mins or so) counting from the time the missions is popped .. same effect as the pill, just using already existing mechanics so the we-lack-content-tools excuse should no longer be available

Lastly the tags are a mess. Many faction items will never see the light of day as the sheer number of tags needed for them makes them a nonstarter compared to deadspace items.

Reward: At the base Tier 2 level. The Average Payout for a Level 4 is 20kish LP plus a couple million ISK per mission. This can amount to anywhere from 30Million Total Isk to 60 Million Total ISK depending on the market values of LP. Obviously the extremely high payout of 90K LP at Tier 4 is too large of a disparity to be ignored, which is why I insist it be dropped to base Tier 2 Rewards.

Certainly. Scroll back up a few pages and you'll see me suggesting to balance them to be doable in AFs for all races too.

I still reject the idea that FW mission cash influx a priori harms FW. That seems like a non sequitur.

Now, the plex farming feedback loop benefitting the dominant side, on the other hand - that's an actual problem.

so you means that running plexes is so ****** that you need to nerf everything else to get people doing it?
I dont think so.

If the missions were nerfed so that you could gain much more lp from plexing then the whole "tier system" of the occupancy war would have some economic relevance. Now it's just very hard to care.

The Gal/Cal war zone is anything but stagnant if you are active in it.

Maybe your issue is that you are only looking at the past three hours, and you are disregarding fights that include Faction Warfare players (tama/nourv is basically perma camped by Gal Mil pilots if Perunga is online and he isn't involved in something else) if it doesn't occur in a plex.

I would challenge you to find an area in eve outside of Black Rise/Placid that provides more constant PVP (ships exploding) in the last year, let alone one that provides that much pewage and still has tons of solo/micro gang and isn't just station/gate camping. I have to actively force myself to avoid pew pew if I want to do anything else in game, otherwise I would just be constantly flying around and blowing crap up (and getting blown up myself).

Black Rise
Placid

EDIT: For those looking to get in on the fun

No, of course not. That's total speculation, a complete nonsequitur, and in my opinion ridiculous. If you think the primary reason that the Amarr militia cannot flip systems is that the Amarr are too busy missioning, you need to spend more time in the war zone.

Really, if anything, the problem with FW now is that there is *too much* plexing. The reason that the Farmatar are an unbreakable brick is that once they hit T4, a vast armada of deplexing farmers have kept the systems easily controlled. Meanwhile, the Amarr would need to take a disproportionate number of plexes to compensate. If the recent weeks have shown anything, it is how utterly screwed they are..

Just like last year, this is going to continue until the Plex farmers are bored or rich enough.

Mission running is completely orthogonal to the problems facing FW. Totally unrelated.

sorry but this dont compute.
people have whined for years that only pvp'ers sholud be in plexes, that they dont want people to farm them for lp and now your excuse to nerf missions is "so more people will want to farm them for lp"?
did you think about it throughly?


people should run plexes to "win the war", not to make lp..

so basically you are in fw only for the isks.
why you dont like missions then? from what you're saying they should be better for you than plexing.

some guy speed tanking or mwding up to your bomber should draw much less aggro than your bomber, since they are not shooting any rats. it makes no sense the way it is now.

You seem to be confused. Tiers have less to do with warzone control than they do with reinforcing systems. As posted above, it is possible to control nearly all systems in the war zone and still be at tier 1.

Tiers are gained by donating to ihubs. Disproportionately, when compared to the effect of capturing systems, which you would know, had you done it. This is usually done by mission runners (and to a lesser extent, plexers) so I would say that the missions are working as intended, tier-wise.

Nice try, though.