You???

There are a number of people who have ideas and have posted. However I think that we can agree the following are major topics of discussion

1) NPC balance
2) Plex spawning mechanics
3) Lack of consequences to sov in FW
4) Mission farming vs PvP (PvP is the best part of FW, but gets you no rewards...)
5) Lack of militia uniforms for WiS (ok, this one maybe not so important... though some people might like to have Corellian Bloodstripes or the equivilant)

Not sure we can do much about it, but 0.0 blobs in low sec is also an issue - e.g. PL in Amamake atm

FW being broken isnt only referring to plexing. It also refers to 0.0 alliances (as well as pirate alliances) bringing in supers (that need desperately to be rebalanced and made more vulnerable in low sec) as a trump card (and hordes of their alliance corps) to annihilate any FW corp it can, preventing FW corps from engaging in FW against each other at all.

Also, preventing FW corps from forming alliances under the faction they serve that would better help balance the politics of these third parties who would interfere with FW in the warzone systems.

FW is broken. Fix it pls :)

Over two years ago there was Dev who made a pretty damn good suggestion that would allow alliances to participate as full members of the militias: To be a member the alliance must forfeit all sovereignty.

It is so damn simple but has such impact that the mumbling about "why can't we join!?!" went away rather abruptly. With no fall-back plan or safe hidey hole/cash-cow it seems the support for it vanished.

Supers in low-sec (includes FW) is solved by making their immunity dependent on sovereignty, outside ones own they lose immunity.
Fits perfectly with supers supposedly being alliance assets and when combined with whatever nerf they are slated for , anything but proper super blobs would be very vulnerable to FW fleets

No, not too much. I will ask Soundwave if we can organize something along those lines, but I personally think it would be good to have a solid basis for discussion first (similar to the "0.0 design goals" blogs that started the discussion), and that would take time.

I've been flying with some plexing fleets recently - good fun with frigs and cruisers etc... If we could get some more people into the fleets, it would be great...

Shame the spawnign mechaincs make it harder for the late night guys....

I still think we need some sort of T1 minor plex for our new pilots to allow them to experience plexing without having a dram or faction frig land on them. Minor plexes were originally great pvp, but thrashers started to take over, and then with the easy mission isk they are now full of expensive ships.

Maybe a scale

T1 frig plexes (additional restrictions so high ranks can't enter i.e sasa etc who will **** any newer players)
T1 Dessies down
Minor plexes - as current
And then the same for med plexes. .

Maybe restrict majors to bc up so it takes a group effort rather than speed tanking.

This is pretty much where my antagonist Mr.Cearain and I differ, he believes that removing NPCs makes plexes into PvP havens whereas I believe the spawning of said plexing will have much greater effect.
I would love for meaningful (ie. not in ass-end of cluster) plexes throughout the day and thus the combat gangs rather than just in the hours after DT with the rest of the day filled with run-away frigates closing plexes in the hopes of moving them to an 'targeted' system.

Bottomline: The plexes, with their size restrictions, are what fosters the memorable fights .. there are good fights elsewhere but they tend to be generic blob slug-outs where the individual is just a cog in a machine (read: boring!)....

Hmm, I have never been hugely discouraged by the Amarr NPCs. Maybe a matter of balancing them so one faction doesn't have overpowered NPC assistance.

I don't like the idea of notifying the militia when a plex has opened. My immediate thoughts are that people will form gank squads to burn to any open plexes and this will make solo pvp/plex hunting even harder.

No disrespect to all three of you amarr that do try for fair fights, but I can't even get a fight in a frigate anymore even against the odds without it turning out to be a trap - not even frigs v frigs, but bc and all sorts waiting for me to aggress.

"I am here" beacons will mean that if someone comes into your plex, it is almost certain they already have someone(many) waiting on the other side of the gate.

I think it is much better to make people hunt plexers - pvp should be the reward for active players, not people that wait in station for an alert. It would get more people out and travelling and allow others that don't plex to chase or be chased.

Plexes used to be havens for pvp, but were killed off for two reasons really.

People realized there were no reasons to do them
Those that continue to do them are all flying expensive faction ships which make it difficult for people to compete.

If people want a big plex fight, they will get it, you can't conceal the build up of people into the area

You make some interesting points in your posts, just a side note...

I would be annoyed by the number of mails informing me of people warping into the hordes of plexes throughout the warzone.. some more than once as they get kicked out and return.

On the quote above, I dont think PvP alone is an incentive to take or hold occupancy. We all can get that without plexing, even if against a third party (someone not in any militia).

People will also be encouraged to go plexing if there was an actual point to holding occupancy.

Hmmm, brain just farted --->

Militia wars have never in the history of mankind been about taking and holding land, because it can by definition not be done against an organized/superior entity.

Attrition, Attrition, Attrition. Kill so many enemies, destroy all his stuff and make his life unbearable in general until he collapses/withdraws on his own ..

Where FW is concerned this translates into:
- Denying access to station services (docking permits will never be revoked for NPC stations),
- Removal/restriction of income sources (missions go to 1 predefined system per constellation unless a system in the constellation is captured for instance).
- Decreased performance while operating on enemy militia turf (crude simulation of all the invaders who have died in bogs, swamps and forests throughout history).
- Etc.

PS: Sorry, my brain always develops gas when this thread slips to page 2+ for some unknown reason!

Nahh. The "joining the winning side" issue is hypothetically a concern for ANY advantage brought to either militia for winning systems, but that hasn't stopped "bring meaning to sov" from being the #1 demand of all of us who engage in Faction Warfare and desire some improvements.

It all boils down to good fights, after all. What is the fun in being blue to everyone? No fun for those of us that pew. Same with militia, its not fun when everyone is purple. In a game like Eve - being the underdog means more gameplay and pvp opportunities, so it self-balances. If you talk to many FW pilots, I think the consensus is that it sucks when your side has the highest activity level, because it means less targets to shoot when the opposing team is too intimidated to undock and roam. ....

How would frigates and cruiser fair if they were pwned by station guns in a hostile system?

The pile-up on Caldari never actually happened you know, it merely looked that way because the Gallente was depopulated but the people leaving left FW entirely. The rest is/was down to normal fluctuations.

1. Caldari had a huge influx at the start due to the insane money making potential from COSMOS items becoming easily accessible through FW.
The standings grind needed for said COSMOS items was one of the reasons why Caldari "won". They managed to convince everyone that they might as well help plex rather than grind missions so their plexers outnumbered the frogs by a huge margin.
2. Not seeing how that relates to the pile-on effect, seems to be the opposite. But some good-hearted animosity is very much key if living in the rat infested trenches.
3. We do, just not quickly like our ADHD afflicted non-RP meatshields .. muhahahaha
4. Those new to PvP may well join what looks like the "winning side", but they are promptly eaten alive by the experienced PvP'ers who joined the under-dog side for the challenge .. door swings both ways
5. NPC balance or lack thereof had by far the biggest effect on the apparent pile-on of the Caldari. It has been neutered somewhat with the agent changes though as one can now almost pick-and-choose mission and location due to all purveyors being the same.
Would be super sweet, like rainbow farting unicorns sweet, if there were missions designed for small gangs similar to Incursions as PvP'ers who has a legitimate and often urgent need for cash generally function best with wing-men.
6. Sounds very good on paper, and would serve to make the militia stations the natural bases for the respective militia's. But as any pirate will tell you, sentries are not to be feared, with just a handful of people the damage they do is diluted to a point where even local tanking is enough..

I suggested a solution to the LP-for-plex conundrum a while that nimbly avoids afk-frig farming:
- Closing a plex awards a certain amount of LP that are put into escrow (think Incursion LP).
- Mission LP awards draws from this escrow can never exceed what is available. If pool is empty a mission only pays out half (or something like that).
Straight LP for closing plexes would make a complete redesign of the things mandatory to prevent farming and would most likely have to include your hated plex NPCs to help with this .. just sayin'

As for stations suddenly switching sides: CCP would need to RP it like mad to justify such a thing as they are merely satellite offices of multi-national corporations, but to have corporations that employ 100s of millions pull up stakes just because something as irrelevant as occupancy flips (which happens a lot in some systems!) makes no sense.

You go a long way towards preventing the snowball effect if you make it progressively harder to capture systems. The first enemy system is easy to take and hold. The tenth less so. The thirtieth almost impossible.

[quote=Shaalira D'arc]We will see. Im pulling for CCP to do what is right and keep peoples interest in FW. It is a great place for ppl to learn PvP (solo and gang) and leadership even if they have aspirations of moving on to other things like 0.0, etc.

And how much do you think it will be worth, considering that the current implementation took a full expansion (+cycle) to put together and practically every facet of our little universe needs to be redone?
CCP has not made any strides to even discuss possible FW changes internally according to a Dev a few months back, since it was barely a louse on a hair on the ass-end of their priority list. Do you really believe that FW will be better off with whatever they can cook up in less than a week, which is probably what is left when they are done fulfilling all their other Winter promises ..

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Screw the FW centric thinking Low-sec as a whole should be the 'unique' partition of the sandbox, driven by PvP and YarrRP, FW can then fit neatly into this unique part of the sandbox as the empires fight for supremacy of the wilderness between borders.

Yeah, you are right. It should be in its own sandbox, to some degree leastways.

I think it depends on what some folks mean by 'small scale' pvp. Some of the pvp blobbs I have seen in FW are large, 50+ man fleets and we have seen fleets of well over 100+ ppl (a while ago tho). I've been in a couple fleets with nearly 150 members little more than a year and a half ago. During POS takedowns the numbers can go up (tho recent months there has been a sharp decline in the fleet sizes). Third party involvement inflates this too. I'd call a lot of these fleets medium to large scale gang warfare.

I dont think CCP can regulate the size of a fleet in FW to keep it 'small scale' since that definition is relative and people shouldnt be limited to fleet size to keep the scale 'small'. One man's small scale may mean 5 people whereas another may mean 50+..