My FW Wish List!

My top ten wishes for FW:

1. Remove GCC penalties for repping ‘pirate’ militia members.
I don’t understand the logic behind punishing logi pilots by giving them a sec status hit and flagging them with GCC.

2. Reduce the GCC timer in low sec.
If low sec is for pvp, then why punish those who do it? It is an enormous hassle to engage something then go wait off GCC for fifteen minutes. It slows down fleet action. And not everyone is pirating and being evil. A lot of times we are forced to shoot neutral alt spies and boosting alts. They are clearly working with the enemy militia but just aren’t seen as such by CONCORD. So, reduce the penalty to five minutes.

3. Stop AFK plexing.
From a roleplay perspective, when you go into a plex, you’re invading an enemy military base of operations. It makes no sense that the actual objective to destroy this base can be accomplished by whizzing around it at a very high-speed in poorly (un)fitted ships.
Though it might be considered PVE, I think that the invaders should be required to down all of the enemy ships within the base, and then should be required to blow it up.

4. Let pilots bribe Scotty or do a good deed to dock.
The no-docking in enemy space still sucks. I wish we were allowed to either:
*bribe Scotty with some ISK and/or LP to dock
*or, give X amount of looted dog tags from plexes.

The roleplay reasons could be something like, a pilot is returning the remains (the dog tags) of enemy soldiers. So for their good deed, they get to dock. Another reason I think this would be a good thing is that it will motivate more people to plex to get those tags.

Also, I was musing on something like, allowing docking if the system is 50% contested.

5. An announcement system.
I would like to see some kind of NPC announcement, from whoever is ‘commanding’ the war, to announce in militia chat when systems go vulnerable, and when they are within 90% of being vulnerable. Also I wish when we logged in, militia chat should have a generated MOTD with basic info of what systems were taken and what systems were lost.

6. Better Militia clothing.
Yeah yeah, I can hear you now ‘stop being a girl Shalee, nobody cares about clothes’. Whatever, I do, and it’s my blog so naynaynay.
When they announced clothing in the LP stores I was thrilled but quickly saddened to find out it was just the shirts that are already on the noble exchange, just in a different color.
I’m not asking for pink uniforms (though I’m tempted to!), but rather, something more unique to each faction. There should be a variety of things, like dress uniforms and downtime combat fatigues. Long sleeved black shirts with Blah Blah Militia wrote across it. Or with the faction symbols. And dog tags! And a novelty belt that says Amamake or Glory on it. Get it, glory belt? lol

7. Reduce plexing timers and add variety of plexes.
Twenty minutes for a major is an awfully long time, especially for defensive plexing. Just. Orbiting. A. Button. For. Twenty. Minutes. Yuck.
It’s not so bad when there are fights to be had, but when you’re in a backwater system and no one is there, it’s dull.
I wish it could be something like:

minor light: 5 minutes (only allows tech1 frigates)
minors: 7 minutes
mediums: 10 minutes
major light: 13 minutes (has excel gate)
major: 15 minutes (no excel gate)
colossal: 25 mins (has way better loot and tags, making it worth the time spent)

8. Give LP for being inside the plex.
The majority of plex fighting happens on the warp in, not on the ‘button’.

9. Reward some defensive plexing.
I feel like if LP were given for all of defensive, then the winning side would have far too much advantage. When a militia is in tier one, then reward defensive plexing with some LP, perhaps 30% of what you’d get if it were offensive plexing.
Also maybe have a rogue NPC try to infiltrate the plex and if he is shot down, he drops some mad loot. (since we aren’t supposed to shoot defensive rats, when you offensive plex you get LP and tags etc)

10. Do some live events centered around FW. Also, publish more EVE chrons about FW.
There is so much potential for this kind of thing!

Dev Blog

CCP Sreegs stated today in his dev blog,  in regards to the GOONS recent FW market manipulation, that “we ARE classifying this activity as an exploit”.

Read the blog here.

Minmatar Drama

Petrus Blackshell posted here about the Mim on Mim wardeccing.

An excerpt:

“The friendly-shootings were beginning to impact corp morale, and discontent was very high. After an unfortunately failed last ditch attempt to sort things out, spearheaded by Transmaritanus (who has been the most helpful and friendly member of LNA in this whole affair), Damu’Khonde declared war on LNA in order to get at KPP.”

Separating The Men From The Boys

Last night Amarr had combined fleets out in Kourmonen and we were pretty much locking down the system. It was nice for a change to be on the winning side. Practically everyone was there, us, Fweddit, etc.

The Minmatar couldn’t do anything about it but sit in station and let us plex their system.

And plexing is awfully dull when there is no fighting to be had. Most of us can find other ways to entertain ourselves (I roleplay!) but some of the other guys who are new to FW entertain themselves by trolling local. It’s not just a Fweddit thing, a lot of guys do it.

It’s usually funny and I’ll snicker right along with them. (the Hans joke last night was hilarious)

For so long now Susan Black has filled her blog with nothing but garbage and trashtalking about the Amarr. Being the subject of her many, many trolls, I take a certain kind of delight when the Amarr does it right back to her.

So yes, I think she deserves what she gets...however...

There was a guy in our fleet last night who was giggling with delight, saying ‘we should tell her tits or gtfo’.

What? I sat there shocked for a second before saying no, we are not going to say douchey things like that.

Seriously guys, grow up.

You can troll without being vulgar, without being the equilivant of a twelve year old pube who just found a copy of his dad’s playboy.

Yes, girls have boobs and other interesting body parts but you do not need to discuss these in a video game about spaceships.

These things are off limits, okay? All the girly bits are not fodder for your local smack talk.

And maybe I was just having one of those oh-my-god-you’re-being-hormonal nights because I also took offense to a guy entering into the Amarr command channel saying the word cunts.

After he had been kicked for it before. After he had been warned to behave upon returning. Someone else said cunts right after he did, I kicked them both and went to bed.

Apparently there was a huge drama about it after I logged, to which I don’t have all the details about but I will say this:

Men know where the line is. Men realize that EVE is just a game and that there are actual females that play this game too that don’t want to be harassed by boys. They know how to have fun and be respectful.

Boys tend to be provocative douchebags with potty mouths, saying stupid things about tits and ass because I don’t know, maybe they’ve never seen any IRL. Bazinga.

Be a man.

 

What I Missed

Apparently over the weekend the Goons brought a fleet down to our war zone and tangled with the Minmatar, and the Amarr got in on it.  You can read about it on Almity’s blog.  Seems they also had a lot of fun with the Minmatar afterwards.  I hate to have missed it, looks like there was a lot of Big Playz going on!

An excerpt:

“So guys want to camp them in?” “Hell yes!” was the response from the fleet. Camping LNA in their home station on a Saturday night. If you told me a month ago we would be doing that I would have never believed it. Local was full of scams and Susan Black quotes. It was good. We decided to call it a night and headed to Kam to dock up.”

My Fwendz on TEN EVEning News!

‘Thunderdome, everywhere, all the time.”

This is a really great podcast with some fellow Amarrian pilots, Rina Kondur & Pinky Feldman.

( the bitches didn’t give me a shout out so I’m so pouting with them.)

Outside of that, the podcast is really interesting, well worth the listen!

Thoughts On A Scandal

It’s always been said that dominance in the FW war zone ebbs and flows.

Anyone who has been in the militia for over a year will agree to that. It’s a number’s game, really. If one side has too many, they blob the other. (and this isn’t a post about blobing, there’s nothing anyone can do to limit the amount of pilots on the field at one time) And nine times out of ten, those with the most numbers win.

Math, really.

In the past, FW pilots have been known to switch sides merely because their side was ‘winning’ and they wanted more people to shoot at. That’s how casual FW used to be.

Throughout the history of FW, that’s all that really mattered. Shooting people. There was no gain really other than whatever loot was dropped and the smug satisfaction of blowing someone up.

We were always broke as a joke, PVP was King, and it didn’t matter what ‘side’ you were on, not really. We undocked, we shot at each other, we docked back up and called it a night.

We left the plexing of systems to those who cared, which equaled very few. To the majority, it never mattered who owned the system and if by chance some hard core pvp’er happened to wander into a plex, you knew it was on the odds that they were chasing someone who was already in there or waiting on the warp in for someone to come in.

Occupancy just didn’t matter to 90% of FW.

And then, suddenly Inferno.

Now plexing is everything. The entire strategy of FW has changed with one expansion.

We knew it was coming. Since Fanfest, we had an inkling, that was later confirmed. We knew it, but at the same time, the Minmatar was winning the numbers game, so there was little we could do about it.

They simply had more people. Everywhere you went there was a gang of orange stars buzzing around laying claim to space.

Remember, in those days you could flip a system in six hours. All it took was the efforts of one time zone and you could have it all. You did not have to coordinate with your counterparts. It was a bit frustrating to do anything plex/system wise and have it undone by the next time you logged on. In the time of sleeping and working, a star-system could change occupancy twice.

Those were the days.

So with superior numbers, somewhat better organization, and their secret weapon, the Minmatar managed to have most of our FW space claimed by Inferno.

The Amarr were nearly defeated but still we held on. We rallied to fight back,despite their ever-growing numbers, despite the station lock outs, and despite the horrible LP ratios.

All the while we never had an inkling that someone else was pulling the FW strings, making marionettes of us all.

As you have all read, the Goons manipulated Inferno, using the Minmatar as a cash cow machine.

What they took from us was the chance that the Amarr could ever possibly turn the tides again. It would be nearly impossible to plex enough for it to matter. The ‘cabal’ would merely lend its LP to grant tier 5 again. It turned the Minmatar into formidable foes with endless amounts of LP and ISK.

The Amarr have become the victims of the biggest scam ever run on EVE.

No matter what CCP does in regards to fixing the market, fixing the exploits, or even banning those involved in the exploit, they can never undo the trickle down effect that this had on all of militia.

And don’t think I say this just for the sake of Amarr. The Minmatar were affected by this as well, probably more so than we were because now, now history has been rewritten, and victory has been stolen from the Minmatar. They will never be able to truly claim that they won on their own merit; there will always be someone there to say if it weren’t for the Goons the war might have been vastly different.

But that’s just my opinion, what do you guys think?

For The Record

For the record.

Today, newbie blogger Almity posted a rather scathing article about Hans Jagerblitzen on his blog.

As a corp, we don’t really prohibit what our pilots can say on forums or blogs or even local chat, other than to say ‘don’t be vulgar’.

So today when I logged onto IM while at work, Almity told me he posted on his blog and linked it. I knew that he was going to post about Hans Jagerblitzen, he’d mentioned it the night before, and even asked if I would mind since Hans and I are friends.

I told him to go ahead, because I knew that the things Hans has been saying since being elected has bothered him. Before the election, as any politician would, Hans represented himself differently than after the election. Before, he represented himself as someone who would speak for the four factions, as someone we all could point to and say ‘that’s our guy.’ You can scroll back through my blog to see the countless threads I made in regards to the CSM election, desperately pleading with my readers to vote Hans, because we needed someone to represent us.

I believed in him.

After the election, things seemed to change. As things for FW were being announced, of course most of the Amarr had a problem with it. And a lot of them were vocal on the forums about it.

But what else can you do really? If you don’t speak up and voice your complaint, then CCP assumes that everything is hunkyfuckingdory.

If you do complain, it’s met with responses of ‘stop whining’ and ‘harden the fuck up’.

Well, okay.

Just before the launch of Inferno, Hans asked me to keep my corp in FW and I did, despite some of our Amarrian allies leaving it.

I.LAW made a decision to move one jump out of the FW zone so that we wouldn’t risk being locked out of stations. It wasn’t that big of a deal to us to move to Egghelende, we spent a night jumping our stuff out and the next night we were back on the war front as per usual, roaming and killing.

But instead of appreciating the fact that we stayed, we were taunted with several snide remarks about ‘retreating to Egg’ and ‘stop whining in Egg’ etc.

Well, okay.

Even closer to Inferno, with the station lockouts and the fucked up LP pricing, some players in general were starting to turn on Hans because they assumed he could do something about the changes.

He could not. He isn’t CCP, he is only a voted representative from the player base. He has the power to voice his opinions but that is it.

I do think it was very unfair that Hans was getting blamed for things that were out of his control.

However, at the time I told him that he was the posterboy for FW Inferno changes whether it was fair or not, that’s how he would be viewed. I advised him to change sides, even for a little while, so that when he said things like ‘suck it up’, his words would have more merit.

Instead of soaking up the benefits of Inferno, that he should suffer the miserable impositions that we would be dealing with. If it isn’t so bad, prove it instead of profiting off of our misery.

He didn’t, not that I really thought he would.

But therein lies the problem. It was timing really. He was elected when FW was getting a major overhaul, and he received benefits from it (as all Minmatar). Did some players think he orchestrated such changes? Yes, but it was wholly unfair. He doesn’t have that much power within CCP.

So yes, I think Almity had a right to post his feelings on the matter, he had a right to say that he felt betrayed by Han’s saying ‘come at me bro’, ‘suck it up’, ‘stop whining’ etc. Especially when Hans singled out our corp for no apparent reason several times.

Do I think Almity said it in the right way? Absolutely not. I think that, as adults on this game, we have a responsibility to express our opinions without shredding apart another person. It’s just the decent thing to do.

So, on IM this morning I was in the process of telling Almity that his post was over-the-top and needed to be edited when Hans tweeted it…

And so the shitstorm began.

Pretty much this. Hans needs to stop with the snide comments about my corp, that if he has a problem with something or someone to come to me and I will personally handle it.  I think that as someone we all voted for and elected, we deserved better than the snide, underhanded remarks that had been thrown at us by him.

Also, Almity needs to edit his post, because as much as I love the guy, he went too far in his word choices. Way, way too far.

And though it sounds like all we do is sit around on our comms and trash Hans, I assure you that is far from the truth.

Both guys do so much for faction war, both offer so much that I hate seeing either getting viewed in an unfair light.

As for Susan’s post in regards to the whole matter, I think it is foolish to try to paint all of Amarr with the brush of one post by one disgruntled player. Just like we don’t judge all of Minmatar by the stuff she posts.

I hope that everyone can just chill, hug it out, then get back to blowing each other up. 🙂

A New Blogger

And from Twitter I’ve found yet another FW blogger, granted he just created it and there isn’t much there yet, but I have a feeling this is going to be a really good blog.

MinutemanKirk‘s blog.

 

Another FW Blogger!

Check out this blog by Azual Skoll.  It has a nice summary of Faction War.

An excerpt:

“Speaking of fleets, there’s almost always a fleet up for you to join (at least there has been in my experience – obviously I can only speak for the Amarr). Unlike RvB where there tended to be a single fleet active at a time, in FW there are regularly two or three militia-wide fleets on the go chasing different objectives. There tends to be more roaming between fights than in RvB since the combat is spread over a larger area, however it still requires far less time commitment to find a fight than regular roaming PVP.”