Though FactionWar was heavily focused on in last year’s Inferno update, since then there has been little attention given to the militias.
Of course I don’t blame CCP, they have a lot of different things to juggle and really they can only do so much, I get that.
But at the same time, I can’t help but to wish they could give another glance to FW and do a little tweeking here and there. Or, you know, revamp the whole damn thing.
I think the fundamental problem with FW as a whole is that many undeservingly benefit from the efforts of a few.
Currently, FW operates on a tiered system. Aka, if a militia has X amount of systems that are upgraded with donated LP, then the Tier bar slides upwards. There are five tiers and the benefits play out like this:
A novice sized ‘plex’ in FW takes ten minutes to complete if there is no opposition. If your militia is in tier one, you will gain 5k LP for your effort. You will get 10k LP in tier two. Tier three gets 17.5k LP, tier four gets 25k LP, and in tier five you’ll gain 32,500k LP.
In theory that sounds great. Ten minutes of your play time for 32, 500k LP? If you’re just looking to join FW without any real preference to any specific militia, I think one of the deciding factors would be how much ISK you could make. If one militia is in tier one and the other is in tier four, I think I’d choose the money making militia.
And that factor alone keeps a militia in a certain tier for a long while, because you have so many new people joining up to reap those benefits. They did nothing to help the militia to get to that tier, but they will soak up all the increased LP from other people’s work.
People who were already in militia had to plex those systems up and spend their own LP to upgrade the systems. Upgrading is done at the IHUB of each system. Systems are ranked from level one to level five. If you donate at the IHUB, then you can upgrade the system which gives small benefits for the system, like more industrial slots and cheaper clones. (to be honest I don’t think anyone at all even cares about those benefits) It also adds to the over all point system for tiers. So basically, a few people who actually care about their militia will donate their own LP to do this upgrading, but everyone else mooches off their efforts.
This increased LP system works for FW missions too. So someone who hasn’t done anything at all for their militia, never pvped, never plexed a day in their life, they get to reap the rewards of higher tiers. You get that 150% LP payout at tier four for missions…and you did nothing at all to help your militia achieve tier four, and you do nothing to help them maintain it.
All these farmers and leechers of increased LP skews the market prices.
It’s a sad state of affairs to think that I, a die hard Amarrian, doesn’t really give two figs about what tier we are in…because I can reap the benefits of the Minmatar efforts on a two day old alt. I can make just as much ISK whoring the opposing side.
But really it shouldn’t be this way.
I would love to see the system drastically changed to something along these lines:
Ditch the tiered system for an entire militia. There, I said it. (someone needed to)
Instead, give personal tiers to individual militia pilots. Viola, a system that is fair.
In militia, we have ‘victory points’ that are awarded for each plex you run. Victory points have never had a meaning, no one really knows what they are for. So why not let that be the measure of what tier a pilot can be in for the week.
X amount of victory points for a pilot and that pilot alone gets to move into tier two or tier three etc. The more work you do for a militia, the more reward you get. Your work is your reward and you don’t have to share it with others.
I think personal tiers instead of militia tiers would solve a lot of problems. The people who contribute the most would earn the most. If it we had personal tiers, then there’d be no real ISK motivation to join one particular faction over the other. The market would benefit as well because there wouldn’t be an overabundance of ships like it is now when a militia is at a certain tier.
Missions should be at a flat out rate as before. It is absurd that the LP scales with the tier’ed system currently. Missions are still unbalanced in FW and they add nothing to the pvp experience- chasing after cloaked bombers is dull, boring, and fruitless.
Also, I think the whole, plexing in someone else’s war-zone and getting LP for it should be changed too. The whole ‘allies’ thing of FW is weird. Currently Caldari and Amarr show up as ‘purple’ to one another (the default in-your-militia color) Yet, we are allowed to shoot one another and not take any standings from our own militia. It’s like we are fake allies. As an Amarrian, if I shoot at another Amarrian I lose standings and if I do it enough, I will be kicked from militia. But I can shoot Caldari all day long and suffer no consequence. I can even go over to Caldari space and run their plexes, etc. But on the overview we show as ‘blue’ to one another. It’s all fine and dandy for someone who has been in militia for a while and know that blue doesn’t mean blue, but some new person to militia gets easily tricked by it. I see it happen all the time.
So yeah, those are just a couple of changes I’d make to FW to make it better. I’m interested to know what you think, do let me know!
~Shalee
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