Five Things Friday: 5 More Things I’d Change About FW

 

1. Leeching

LP leeching is a huge annoyance in FW. I’ll explain how it works. In Faction Warfare, militia’s take control over their space by scanning down military complexes (we call them plexes for short). They come in four sizes: novice, small, medium, and a large. Each size has a specific amount of time it takes to run it. Novice will take you ten minutes, small is fifteen minutes, the medium is twenty, and the large is twenty-five. If you successfully run down the timer, you are then awarded LP for your faction.

Whoever is on the timer when it hits zero gains LP no matter how long you’ve been in the complex. So if I run a timer down for twenty-five minutes and a day old alt of someone warps in at the last minute, the LP is split between the two of us. Basically one person can do all the work, some scrub can warp in at the last moment and take half the reward!

I think plexing LP rewards should match the time spent inside the complex itself. That is only fair.

2. Missions

FW missions were put into place a few years before FW gained LP for capturing complexes and for kills. From my understanding they were given to us so that we would have a way to make a reasonable amount of ISK to fund our PVP.

But since the Inferno changes, LP is granted in other ways so missions aren’t really needed.

We have pilots who are in the militias that contribute nothing to the war front, all they do is farm missions, get massive amounts of LP, then water down the market on faction items.

This wouldn’t be quite so bad, but now that FW occupancy is in Tiers, and each Tier grants you more LP, the mission farmers bask in the rewards of those who actually have to push their faction’s Tiers up by running the complexes. Again, one group does all the work, another does nothing but leech off everyone else’s hard work.

If I had my way about it I’d ditch FW missions all together, but I know that isn’t likely to happen, so I would like to propose these changes:

-Missions become comparable for each faction. Minmatar missions can be solo’ed in a stealth bomber. Amarr’s missions are much harder and you need something like a tengu to be cloaky. So, balance those rats!

-Have it so that missions cannot be picked up unless the pilot has also ran X amount of complexes. Even if it is one for one. Run one complex, unlock one mission. I think the farmers should have to risk something for the war and contribute someway or other.

3. Security

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love the new upcoming changes with the tags-for-security, I think that is going to be so awesome. It’s going to bring a lot of people out to low sec and into the belts ratting.

But what I wish is that if a militia pilot aggresses/kills someone in one of their war zone systems then that pilot would take no sec loss for it.

Imagine this scenario. You’re in a complex doing your duty as a militia pilot (ahem!) and you hit d-scan, you see that something is on your accel gate and you reason it is about to warp in on you. You have the advantage, you’re inside, you know where they are going to land. It only makes sense to engage first, to web & scram before they get a chance to pull range- or do whatever dastardly things they were going to do! And yet, by Concord, you get punished for defending your site!

So yeah, I think it’s a bit strange that an Amarr Militia pilot cannot actually go to Amarr itself because Concord slapped their wrist with sec status hits for …defending Amarr.

4. Face

Okay look. If you go into character creation to create an Amarr male, you’re not going to get a face that looks under fifty. Why do Amarr men have to look so wrinkly and old, seriously!?

How does this tie into FW? Well think about it. A new player goes to make a character. Oh look, they can make a hot Caldari or sexy Gallente…or a prune Amarrian. I would wager most people do not choose to make Amarr men.

And once they choose another faction, well they get attached to that faction and end up joining that faction’s militia if they choose to do the whole militia thing.

So I think Amarr character creation could use a bit of work. The public demands hot Amarrian men!!

5. Terrorists

Whatever faction you’re fighting against, lore propaganda will tell you that they are terrorists. The Minmatar are all ‘rawr we come for our people you are evil slavers’ and the Amarr are all, ‘whatever, you’re savages that need guidance and God’ (by whatever means necessary ahem).

So I think that the NPC Navy Commanders should issue a Terrorists List weekly for their faction. It would include twenty pilots, top ten killers and ten pilots with the most LP for that week. A special faction bounty would be issued for the these pilots and would be updated weekly. The faction bounty would co-exist with the current bounty system, however only enemy militia pilots could receive the rewards.

 

Five Things Friday : 5 Ways I’d Change FW

 

Today’s topic is five things I wish CCP would change about Faction War.

 

1. Make each faction unto itself.

Having forced ‘allies’ makes little sense in FW. From the in-game story, it makes no sense at all. The Caldari wouldn’t really want to help the Amarr. The Amarr are such snobs and look down on everyone I doubt they really would ally with anyone.   And then this past week, we have that story where the NPC Federal & Republic fleets went at it, not very ‘ally’ if you ask me.

From game play, it’s just dumb. I’m an Amarr. The Caldari show up as allies on my overview, pretty purple stars…but that only gives newer militia members a false sense of security. You don’t lose standings to your own faction if you awox your ally, so what we have been seeing a lot is ‘blue’ on ‘blue’ fire- though we aren’t technically blue so it’s all confusing.  It’s gotten so bad with Caldari awoxing that we’ve had to give our guys permission to shoot first.

Another reason CCP should drop the fake allies stuff is that currently, ‘allies’ can run one another’s plexes to gain LP. So basically when the farmers harvest one faction they move on to the allied faction, further skewing the efforts of the people who actually care about their part of the militia. This is why you’ll see countless vulnerable systems up in Cal/Gal space, it’s because farmers have plexed them but they cannot shoot the Ihub- not that even care to in the first place, so the systems don’t flip.

2. Put something else in a plex.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and just say it. MINING is more exciting than plexing. Hear me out. When you mine (and my whole experience with mining is like, very minimal), you at least get to watch your mining lazors chucking away at the rocks. Once your cargo is full, you have to move the stuff. And I presume miners have to watch their D-scans as well in case a ganker happens by.

In a FW plex, if you’re offensively plexing, you shoot one rat. If it is defensive, you shoot nothing. You get in range of the timer ….and wait.

That’s it. You wait. You click your d-scan and hope a reasonable fight happens upon you. It is so incredibly boring if you don’t get any pvp action.

I’ve come up with a couple of ideas that could make it a little more interesting…like, perhaps there could be some wrecks and debris floating around that people could salvage. Or maybe 20 or 30 cargo cans scattered about with something in them like tags perhaps or whatever, just something we’d have to move around to loot. Some plexes have old abandoned stations or broken monuments or whatever floating around off in the distance. Perhaps around those things there could be hidden rats that drop nice loot, or stuff hidden around them to find. If there were more loot/salvageable stuff in plexes, then that would inspire more pilots other than FW pilots to enter plexes. More people coming in equals more conflict, more fun!

3. Get rid of donating LP to IHubs.

I really dislike this whole mechanic. It always ends up being the people who actually care about their militia are the ones who donate their hard earned LP. The farmers do nothing but feast off the efforts of others.

4. Get rid of the Tiers.

“People don’t really need to be paid 2x or 3x the amount to circle a button. The end result of the FW system ownership. The ownership should bring the goods – not the process of acquiring it.” Zarnak Wulf

I know that CCP has stated that they really don’t care if FW balanced, in fact they don’t want it to be…but at the same time, what we have in place now kind of sucks.

If one faction is ‘winning’, then all the farmers pile onto that side making it so much harder for the opposing side to pull out of it. I think that everyone should get the same amount of LP per plex they run, and they should also get the same amount of LP per kills.

5. Section out the war zone into ZONES.

We have roughly 70 systems in our warzone currently but most of the pvp action happens in very few systems. A lot of the backwater systems are just unused.

So, we take those 70 systems and divide them up into smaller sectors.

Ten Sectors.

Each sector should have two base systems, one for the Amarr, one for the Minmatar. That leaves five systems per sector to fight for.

Base systems should be ‘guarded’ heavily by the NPC Navies of it’s faction and therefore cannot be flipped into the enemy hands.

Bases could greatly benefit militias for several reasons:

1. Bases would give better access to the war zone for new pilots and corporations coming into FW. A new pilot/corporation would be able to look at their in-game militia tab to choose a sector and move into that base, knowing that they aren’t going to be locked out of their assets by choosing a system that is likely to flip. Pretty much they will ‘know where to go’.

2. Bases would likely become smaller market hubs. This would encourage more movement throughout the war zone.

3. Bases would encourage corporations to spread out over the war zone.

Some kind of reward could be given if all of the systems in a sector were taken by one militia- but only to those who actively plexed in those systems.

War Zone Diaries- The Empire Strikes Back!

The last couple of weeks in the war zone have been mad crazy with the Amarr Militia slowly climbing out of it’s hole.

We were down to one system. ONE, out of seventy or more, and from what I read, most people thought we wouldn’t even hold that one either.

There are many reasons that the Amarr were on the brink of losing it all:

1. Out numbered. If you watched the Militia pilot counts over the last few months, you would see that the Minmatar always outnumber Amarr. By thousands.

2. Russians. Soooo many Russians who love to plex and only plex. They warp-core-stab their ships, never want to fight, hide in POS’s and say things in local like ‘it’s okay, we will plex it once you go to bed.’

3. Predator Elite. After his drama with Pinky & Fweddit, he pulled his corp out of the Amarr Militia…and began shooting them. Sure, he has blues with *some* Amarr corps, but not all, which left his minions to hunt Amarr at will. And they did, especially in Kamela on the undock. It got so bad that Kamela had fallen because they were getting picked off by Pred’s guys.

 

It was nearly a recipe for the Minmatar getting a medal for conquering all the systems. Sure, it’s just a medal in a game, but apparently it meant a lot to some people…myself included.

I just couldn’t tolerate the thought of it!

We had two options at that point; Move to the one remaining system, Sahtogas, by hunkering down ‘Fort Apache’ style, hoping we could hold onto the system and perhaps try to fight our way around the neighboring systems.

...or try to ninja a system elsewhere, which is easier said than done. We knew that anything nearby the star-system we lived would be impossible, so we pulled out the map and voila, we chose the last system in our war zone. We scouted the area, found a non-FW system to base out of and before I could even officially put out a corp mail about it, my guys were in that system plexing.

We moved ships, put up POS’s, got links set up, and invited our BFFs, Fire fOr Effect, to go with us, .

My hope was to take at least one system so that the Minmatar would have to split up, I wanted to take the heat off of Sahtogas as much as possible.

Taking that first system went rather well because the Minmatar hadn’t even noticed we were gone yet.

Meanwhile, our other BFFs, Fweddit, decided they didn’t want the Minmatar to get that medal either. They started a plexing campaign, splitting up the Minmater even more.  FHP and his guys were able to hold Sahtogas.

Since then, more systems have fallen. We pushed the Minmatar out of Tier Four down to Tier Two.

It’s been a constant battle of wills. Keeping the systems we’ve taken offensively plexed down while striking out for more. During those first few days of our deployment I was so OCD about taking our target systems that I would actually mail the corp while at work via EVE Gate just to get an update on how much we gained or lost!

A bit obsessive perhaps but it worked out. We are at Tier Two now, at least, and…the Minmatar still don’t have that goddamned medal. 🙂

Thanks to all the Amarr Militia pilots who have gotten out there and fought for your Faction.  You are awesome!

Five Things Friday

Today’s Five Things Friday topic is ‘five things you probably should never say to a female you’ve just met on EVE.’

Granted, I’m not trying to say that ‘all girls are the same’ just like I wouldn’t generalize and say ‘all men are assholes’ etc, but generally speaking, these are pretty obvious things most girls don’t want to hear.

1. What do you look like/can I have your picture?

You don’t ask guys for their pictures do you? You don’t nag random dudes asking what they look like do you?

On EVE it’s probably a bad idea for a girl to give out her pictures. Either it becomes fap material, or the enemy get’s their hands on it and turns it into wretched propaganda.

I think my worst experience of giving out pics on the internet (before I came to EVE) was with this guy on another game who took my pictures and made a website with creepy I-love-you poetry he wrote for me. A whole website dedicated to me! Creepy.As.Fuck.

2. What’s your Facebook & other IRL information.

Respect a female’s right to privacy. No, she probably doesn’t want to be your facebook friend. No, she doesn’t want some random dude she’s just met that she shoots spaceships with to know where she lives in real life. The internet is scary enough for females.

EVE Online can be worse because of the male/female ratio, oh, and also because EVE is such a crazy game with a cornucopia of sociopaths. Most girls don’t want out of game contact with people they have just met. So don’t ask. If eventually she wants you to have it she will let you know.

My worst experience with facebook was friending a gamer and he used it to stalk like…everything. Every person I knew, my schedule, everything. Creepy. I got so fed up with the harassment I just deleted the whole thing.

3. Can I see your boobs?

Would you want some basement dweller online asking your mom/sister/wife/daughter/girlfriend for nude pics? Probably not. So why do you think it’s okay to ask? Sheesh. It’s the internet, find your bobbie pics elsewhere please!

The maturity range on EVE spans from gentlemen to guys who act like prepubescent little boys who snicker everytime a girl speaks on comms. I guess some guys were never taught by their Mamas that it’s not okay to ask for pictures of no-no parts.

My worst online experience with boob pics (before you assume, no, I’ve never)…back before I was wary of giving out pics, this guy asked for boobs and ofc I said no. No worries. He photo-shopped my head onto a topless body. #someguysarepervs

4. Get back in the kitchen/Make me a Sammich.

Comments like these usually come from guys who are awkward and don’t know how to speak to females, yet crave some kind of female attention. It’s silly, really.

I’ve never really experienced anything like this (except that one time, at band camp, with Poetic), in EVE or any other games but I know some other girls have.

It’s rude, so don’t say it, don’t even think it because girls are quite capable of giving you an in-game beat down thank-you-very-much. Being good (or bad) at games has nothing to do with gender.

5. Are you on your period?

This is usually said after the ‘honeymoon’ phase is over. At this point guys used to having a female around all the time and suddenly one day she bitches about you not getting tackle or fucking up her PVP experience somehow or other. Instead of owning up to your mistake, you turn it around by saying ‘oh my god you’ve got your period don’t you!’ Bad bad mistake.

So there you have it. Sure, there are exceptions to every rule. I know there are girls like Mintchip who document most every little thought they have and put it out there for you, and sure, there are a couple of girls I’ve heard about who have flashed boobie for ISK (so gross). But for the most part, the majority of females on EVE just want to log on just like you and play the game, just like you.

Joni Does Fanfest

Was it very costly to go?

For me, everything cost around 1600€. That included plane tickets , hotel for 5 nights , fanfest tickets , eating and drinking.

Alcohol is heavily taxed , so if you plan to drink much..do shoppings at taxfree when you arrive to iceland, ppl there are very helpfull with amounts you can take with you.

Eating was cheap, comparable to prices I’m used to.  For instance,  bacon pasta (they do know how to make food there, yummy!!) cost around 7-10€.  However, it’s harder to find meat, like steak or something.

How many days were you in Iceland?

We were from Wednesday to Monday morning, so 5 full days.

Describe Fanfest for those of us who haven’t ever been?

Fanfest is to meet people, just talk to everyone! Like I met guy who has killed me a lot! Damn you Karl Planck!. Everyone there seems to be happy and willing to talk.  (even with me and my baaad English) 

Also, keynotes were full of information which is otherwise hard to dig and get together, even after all those devblogs.

What were your most favorite things about Fanfest?

Gotta say again , meeting peoples!  I’m Finn so, I don’t complain about drinking a lot at party on the top of the world, also the view is awesome.

Did it meet your expectations?

Yes pretty much, it wasn’t so much of nerd cave as I expected. One thing surprised me…the water , it smells like fart, because of sulphur,  but even me with my extra sensitive nose I  got used to it so it’s not deal breaker.

Name some people that you met.

Hmm, hard one. I met Karl Planck , some dudes whose  names I can’t recall from Veto and Cyno.  Also some funny dude from Test.

And of course guys from Finnvasion!! Elodin Vintaes , BenZkie , Demonos Silentium , shot, me , Balrighian , and Vincent Pryce.

Plus many many many dudes and girls from everywhere from eve, I just can’t remember everyone.

Did you get a tattoo while there?

No I didn’t. I was sooo close to getting one but then I thought it’s going to be difficult to keep it clean etc.

How much alcohol did you drink?

Uhm…too much?

Did you do anything else while in Iceland other than Fanfest?

No, besides eating in town. . which I’m gonna fix at next year’s fanfest.

Do you think you’ll attend Fanfest 2014?
– YES , yes yes yes and yes yes!!

 

(more pictures from Joni’s trip can be found here!!!)

 

Remember The Dalamo!

Pinky Feldman made another video that I’m so loving.

(I would like to point out that we weren’t the only corps moving North, Fire fOr Effect & a couple of guys from Atomics Tactical came with.  I wanna give them credit too!)