I don't like the FW Tier system as it currently stands. You are punished heavily financially for being in a Tier 1 militia vs a Tier 5 one. This causes people to swap sides (There is no loyalty) and all the farmers join the T5 side making it even more unlikely of a comeback for the lower tier side. Additionally, If you're someone who sticks around, fights and pushes your militia into Tier3+ and start winning, your reward is the lower amounts of LP that you earned being completely devalued as soon as all the farmers and FW mission runners flip over to your side. I would like to see change to this and maybe introduce personal/corporation tiers and lower the faction wide militia tiers. So you can still earn decently by being in the weaker militia if you personally are contributing, and farmers who switch sides need to work before getting the best payouts, and FW missioners who don't contribute to the warzone earn less.

for the personal tier, i can see the ranks (i.e. luminaire general) could be used/incorporated in this.

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?

Spies
Blue kills
People who steal sites

These are the things that ruin FW.
Fix these issues and it's a great environment.

switching sides should cause all loss of standings from the previous side, at the minimum.

Create 'campaigns'
Only people who participated in the campaign can enjoy the rewards.

I don't see the problem. If you had a personal loyalty system like originally proposed, I assume that would be toon based as well and the same thing could happen.

The only reason I was suggesting negative loyalty point is in my mind (as a software developer) that seems like a fairly small change.... just check all the interactions with LP to make sure they can handle a negative value without crashing or doing something goofy like treating it as a gigantic LP total... and then write the code to reduce the LP balance toward the opposing milita group when LP is earned for one.

This was more of an "easy implementation" suggestion for the original idea... perhaps one that got you 80% of the desired result for 5% of the dev time.

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.

Here's a little things list that has been cleaned up and passed around for a couple years that you might want to send his way. The original is linked in the newfw tweetfleet channel.

Remove FW standings hits in null sec.
Remove purple icon for allied militia - or allied militia should take standings hit if they attack you (or just get rid of allied militia) (4 way war confirmed as desired by CCP Affinity).
FW standings eligibility should be applied on individual basis, not on corp basis.
Remove faction standings hits for AoE effects (or other weapons) when in same fleet. (or remove standings hits for all AoE weapons everywhere in lowsec)
FW overview for newbroGÇÖs in militia MOTD and FW panel.
MILITIA FILTER. Militia-only contracts. GǣMilitiaGǥ filter for POS access, Citadels, etcGǪ Ability for militia members to post future events such as future fleets to entire militia on Calendar
Strengthen Faction Navy to make it harder to camp opposing highsec to farm newbs.
Have plexes persist through DT and redo spawn mechanics of non-outposts (keep them semi-random though)
Randomize plex respawn rate by using a respawn window.
Useful system upgrades
Decouple System Upgrades from Tier Level
Smooth out Tier system and fix payouts for PVP at existing level 5 payouts.
Remove aggression from plex rats (affects afk oplexers without hurting pvpGÇÖers).
Citadel problem.

These are all really good points.

dual timers seems like a more elegant solution than timer rollbacks.

FW has suffered a population crisis because so many long term Militia pilots have quit due to the system not working. .

SHOULD a neutral pirate scaring a plexer away interupt or set back plexing?

They aren't actively trying to "win the system/complex" back for the other side... they're neutral. They just want to blow up ships... they don't care who holds the system. If you're trying to win the faction war, fights with pirates really are a side effect. Fights with the enemy is the actual point.

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 guess it comes down to the question of what FW is about?

Is it just about PvP... as much as possible? Or is it about the "game" of plexing and capturing systems between the opposing factions?

If it's the former, then anything promoting any PvP would be good. I have my doubts that making the current plexing mechanic a lot harder would in fact increase pvp. Instead it might drive people away from FW and more toward other ways of making isk which might in fact lower the number of targets for people seeking PvP around plexes. I suppose it might make it easier for the hunter in that they're more likely to have a willing target at a plex once they find someone at a plex... but the number of people they find at plexes in total might be much lower.

If it's the latter, neutrals aren't really part of the game. I'm not sure their actions should have the same impact as an opposing faction member doing the same things.

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.

No mention of the impacts of Citadels on FW.

My major issue with FW is it feels hollow.

There is no real lasting effect on the rest of the universe. It is like fighting a war that no one cares about and has no effect on anything you know.

If I capture a system with my corp mates, it has NO effect on the rest of the faction. Not like the Minmatar or the Amaar gain or lose a system that effects anything. There is no coverage of the FW in anything for the games news. There is MORE news on some 5 man corp going to war with another 5 man corp than anything to do with FW.

CCP has given us null sec for wars that actually impact the people involved. FW is intentionally static, so that people can relax and find fights. Otherwise, the wars would have ended long ago, as one side in each conflict became dominant and crushed the other. We don't want the Caldari State going the way of Band of Brothers, for example.