That's a good idea, but what if you made multiple accounts? What if you had two different characters and you used the ISK you generated from LP on either side of the warzone to fund PvP with a third character?

I think we're having a miscommunication here.

The problem is related to how the tier system works in Faction Warfare. Say for example, that your faction is at Tier 1 - you get little payouts for flipping plexes. This is supposed to incentivize taking over territory and pushing your faction up into higher tiers.

The problem is that when a faction is in Tier 1, a lot of players give up on trying to push it up into higher tiers. This makes it very hard for the few remaining loyal players who continue to fight to bring it back up. Those who continue grinding plexes in a T1 faction make less than 30 million isk per hour. I'd say they make maybe 10-15 million ISK per hour by flipping novice/small plexes, dealing with PVP situations, and losing ships. Personally, I don't think 10-15 million ISK per hour is enough to warrant flipping plexes - and I can understand why so many players leave when a faction is struggling in T1.

One might argue that plexing isn't meant to be a source of income, it's meant to be a place to fight. If that's the case, why not just take away all LP payout for flipping plexes, and let them sit there? Who is going to sit in a plex and wait inside of it for 10-39 minutes when there's only two reasons for being inside of it: A) Getting fights in ships that are of similar power level to your own. And B) Grinding your faction up into higher tiers of LP payouts for running FW missions? I'm just going to go on a limb here and say this: very few players. If you wanted to get fights, it would be much faster just to roam around asking people to duel you on a stargate.

What bothers me, is what happens when these loyal, diligent players grind the plexes in the faction warfare zone, and get their faction back up to Tier 2/3/4; because when a Faction hits higher tiers of rewards, all of a sudden other players join the party and start farming LP, reaping the rewards of the hard work of the players who were loyal and stuck around to get thier Faction out of a rut. And also making it that much harder for the opposite side to regain territory. So the pendulum swings back and forth. When should you join Minmatar Faction Warfare? Well when Minmatar is winning! When should you join Amarr Faction Warfare? Again, the answer is when Amarr is winning!

I hope what I'm saying make sense to you. I like the idea of individual players or corporations having their own tier of rewards, because then those few loyal players who grind away while a faction is losing a warzone still get rewarded well for doing so. And those who jump in when the going is good, have to actually work their way up the tiers to get good rewards.

Perhaps it could be a two tiered system. Your LP payout could be based on two factors: A) What tier your entire faction is currently at. And B) What tier you are personally at. Then if your faction is at T1, but you personally (or your corporation) is at T5, then you get medium level rewards (current T3 rewards). And if both your Faction and you personally are at T5, then you get what is currently T5 rewards.

Now you said that it could be easier to code a system where a player gains negative LP for the opposing faction when they gain LP for their current one. I agree that it could potentially be easier for CCP to program that into the game. What I don't understand is how that would help in the problem that I just elaborated upon above. If you can explain to me how it would help, I'm open to it.

If you want people in plexes to be pvpers then the more disruption to rabbit plexing the better. The side that can pvp better will have the better chances of winning plexes and therefor the sov war. The pvp may be against pirates or it might be against the enemy it really doesn't matter to most pvpers.

Keep in mind both sides will have to deal with pirates. So unless there is some sort of deal worked out with neutrals (and such diplomacy is something eve has always supported) then both sides are still on equal footing. Plexes will be harder to win. Its true. But perhaps they should award more victory points if that is the case. (I don't really care about loyalty points)

Also I would point out that there are still some advantages to the fw player in the plex:
1) They are in the plex to begin with so can set up range (this is substantial)
2) FW players who just want to win the plex just need to fight off the person entering. So they can have very long range weapons and don't even really need to worry about fitting a point. For the nonfaction war player looking for a kill they would need to fit a point and just chasing someone doesn't really accomplish their purpose.

I don't think it's a dichotomy like you suggest. It can be a pvp game about capturing plexes and systems. And yes IMO I think FW sov should be a pvp game.

If you want to do the whole rabbit v. hunter thing you can do fw missions. Players also have many non fw options in eve to do hunter v rabbit games in null, wormholes and low sec. Missions, exploration, sleeper sites, ratting, special events etc etc. IMO Eve really doesn't need yet another rabbit v hunter mechanic. It needs more good quallity pvp war mechanics. And leaving fw sov as yet another hunter v rabbit game is not good for fw and is especially bad for eve as a whole.

The sov game should simply be better than who can multibox the most alts in different plexes and warp off if trouble comes.

As far as making isk, I don't care if ccp wants to increase the amount of lp per plex. Fewer plexes captured but the same amount of total lp given to plexers. Or they could lower the amount of lp fw missions offer. (which would make the lp in plexes comparatively more valuable.) But right now the lp is just getting devalued by people multiboxing alts and rabbit plexing. If you want that lp to be worth more isk you might want to end rabbit plexing as well.

But the key is to make winning sov fun. If people are just grinding plexes so they can make isk for their null sec main then fw is not where it should be. EVE players need fulfilling game-play that they want to actually spend that isk on. IMO fighting for faction war sov could be a mechanic like that - if ccp makes the changes it promised the players. But as the years go by and the promises are forgotten more eve players leave fw and maybe even the game as a whole.

The Tiers give both sides a reason to push for action in the warzone.

I know it does because I've been on both ends of the stick and have had these sorts of discussions with the main content creators in my militia for the past several years.

Lots of reasons to try to manipulate the tier levels, and to do so you need to capture systems. Capturing systems leads to pvp, which is what we want too.

We might be able to give you some suggestions about how to find/get PVP if you post with your main. I assume this isn't it since it has never destroyed a ship and has only lost 1.

Capturing the right systems does. In general, the more the other side decides they care about a given system, and the more they are active in your TZ, the larger volume of fights.

If the other side doesn't care, then there's nothing you can do about it and you're not going to get fights. But that dynamic applies to every other aspect of this game as well.

So you find it while other people are plexing. Working as intended.

I can't agree more.

My proposal doesn't have deplexing at all. The only way to prevent an offensive plexing attempt is to actively engage with the plexer/plexers. If nobody is attacking nobody has to defend it, so no more time wasted deplexing. This also means the end of AFK plexing, or plexing with alts with unfitted frigates or with stabs. It has no sense mechanically or economical gain.

In offensive plexing the incentive preventing them to run freely is the money (or better: LPs) the ministrutures cost. You can't avoid for them to run, but you can punish them (at least a bit) for doing so, That prevent tactics like rabbit plexing (unless you want to risk to lose more money/LPs that you can earn).