Del Narveux
Dukes of Hazard
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Posted - 2008.06.12 10:11:00 -
[1]
From what (admittedy little) I've seen of FW so far they're going to have to boost it considerably, and throw in a bunch of rules, for it to really have much of a long term popularity. Sure its big now, cause its right after the patch but the test will be how many are still doing it 3-6 months from now. The basic problem I see with it is funcionally, it doesnt offer much more than Red/Blue alliances already did so those who wanted that style of 'consentual pvp anywhere' were already doing it.
Some suggestions I would make, to encourage the more casual, non pvp focused crowd to do it which is apparently CCP's intention according to devblogs:
-Disallow 'legal' podding so team hisec wont have as much risk of losing their precious +5s. Someone could still do it, but it would come with a sec hit per any other podding outside of .0 or empire war.
-SERIOUS faction item rewards. I'm talking State Raven territory here. Since FW inherently involves real ships getting blown up a lot, for anyone to do it as more than an occasional thing to let off steam it needs to be a viable alternative to grinding L4's all day in highsec. Otherwise itll meet the same fate as L5 did, i.e. weak rewards compared to the cost of a ship means one makes more grinding lower-level but safer missions.
-Restrict the wardec-flagging to only be active in the contested areas (unless they changed it being in a militia flags you to the other side anywhere in space). This way miners could go to the warzones and have some fun, then go back to their regular stuff. Anyone whos ever been in a war with miners on either side knows their strategy is dock/log first, ask questions later and a lot of hisec corps have at least some miners.
-Redo the levels for the mission, specifically break levels 3 and 4 into several new levels to account for how uber t2 cruisers and up are compared to t1 counterparts (e.g. level 3 should not allow t2 cruisers). More people would do it if they could show up in cruisers or BS and not worry about getting pwnt by a bunch of skilled PVPers in t2 ships.
Basically, CCP stated they want it to be a middle-of-the-road option between living in hi sec and never fighting wars, and the wardec/.0 alliance thing where theres always bad guys everywhere. So they need to do this, instead of combining the negatives of both playstyles (weak rewards of hisec and constant threat of .0 and wardecs) and hoping theres enough roleplayers to maintain interest. |