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[Alain Colcer]

I think you guys are steering out of the conceptual design of FW itself:

-It was meant to be a playground so people could do perpetual war on behalf on their "empire" faction (for cheap obviously).
-Complexes were meant to replace "TCU"s or POSs.
-FW missions were meant to be income that you can farm when being a participant of FW, much like moongoo when you hold the moons in the system.

The main points of criticism is not that "plexing" can be done in any fashion or not, or that missions are a poor source of isk (quite the contrary), the issues revolve around the current implementation is "OMG boring to plex" coupled with constant grinding, and obviously not offset by the reward it gives (flipping occupancy). That and NPC imbalances of course.

I prefer if occupancy does not change any status quo on territory, but instead review plexing so it becomes a more enjoyable experience.

It is true most people had nice pew pew in the first iteration of FW, t1 frigs, assault frigs, cruisers and destroyers were seeing more often. But eventually people gravitate to the best isk/performance solution that can grief others, in particular FW suffered greatly from this because there are a couple of one-size-fit-all solutions to its game mechanics. That needs fixing.

Occupancy being contested should be a sort of "soft grind" process that involves many variables, some time after a break event happens, and the system becomes vulnerable. Up to that point everything was kinda "slow" but then you must complete 3-4 plexes and the bunker rapidly in order to really make a change and flip control. Those critical activities should have incredible rewards in LP (busting a bunker should give tons of LP for example).

The idea of plexes limiting ship type and size were good in the beginning, but once you put a dramiel and any-t1-thing else in the same space, its obvious who will win, or who will survive by disengaging and calling backup. This of course is not a problem of the plex mechanics themselves but more related to ship balance, either way, creating tactical scenarios for players to "make the best out of it" is a nice change and should be explored further.

Finally to close the idea, many here mentioned people "who have no interest" in the conflict, go to any null-sec alliance and see how many would rather stay docked than go out to fight? its the same thing. What you need to consider is that those who choose to risk their ships, should do it in a fun enviroment balanced across the 4 factions and under circumstances that do not become exploit-able to the point that is better to avoid it altogether than to be involved.

[Ava Starfire]

The issues in FW are largely reflective of issues everywhere else in game.

1) No reason to contest or hold systems.
2) Little or no solo pvp, aside from a few people on both sides.
3) Cynabals, Dramiels, T3s, and the other ridiculous crap people fly now. Ships that they can fly, that are rather stupidly OP, with little risk of loss.
4) Isk printing press that is FW missions with virtually NO risk.

Want a starting point? Make it possible to cause others to fail their missions, if theyre unwilling to fight for it. Since my corp cannot actually do a whole lot by ourselves, however, we have discovered that our niche is to be extremely annoying...

[Lyn Farel]

The issues in FW are largely reflective of issues everywhere else in game.

1) No reason to contest or hold systems.
2) Little or no solo pvp, aside from a few people on both sides.
3) Cynabals, Dramiels, T3s, and the other ridiculous crap people fly now. Ships that they can fly, that are rather stupidly OP, with little risk of loss.
4) Isk printing press that is FW missions with virtually NO risk.

Want a starting point? Make it possible to cause others to fail their missions, if theyre unwilling to fight for it. Since my corp cannot actually do a whole lot by ourselves, however, we have discovered that our niche is to be extremely annoying...

Oh I definitly agree with this, except for one thing : it is definitly possible to cause others to fail their missions, I can assure you. I have already shot down a lot of mission bombers and stuff like this, and if I was motivated enough to hunt them mercilessly every day, it would be a total rampage. It is pretty easy to do. Main issue though : when they start knowing you, they just leave their mission as soon as you get in system. And they ALWAYS have more patience than you have.

Which denotes one thing : the gap and inadequation between PVE missions and the rest of FW. The former will always try to avoid fight, its even more annoying than in plexes.

[Alain Colcer]

Want a starting point? Make it possible to cause others to fail their missions, if theyre unwilling to fight for it. Since my corp cannot actually do a whole lot by ourselves, however, we have discovered that our niche is to be extremely annoying...

We have two or three pilots who dedicate themselves to hunting mission runners and gank them inside their beacons, and they have been VERY succesful at that. It's true the pilot may return later and finish the mission at another time, but the loss offset part of the profit.

[Louella Dougans]

i seem to recall one of the devs mentioning how they didn't want FW to affect players not enrolled in FW too much.

Unfortunate, because in I think the Minmatar contestable area, there's one of those systems which is/was infested with the lowsec courier farmer chars. If FW affected those, then things might have been different.

Then they had incursions a long time later, which affected players non-consensually. So there's a (slim) chance, that FW could have some effect on non-FW players in the future.

Assuming there will be a FW revision.

However, given the attitudes expressed in the past "We didn't want to fix rockets, nobody used them anyway, but sometimes you have to placate the players" as an example, then FW revisions seem rather unlikely.


As for missions being an isk-printer, well, that was a conscious decision by CCP, when they removed the penalties for declining/failing missions. They reintroduced the one for declining, but afaik did nothing about the failing penalties. So instead of declining till you get the "right" mission, you have to decline, accept & fail, accept & fail to get the "right" mission.

tl:dr Outlook:grim.

[Lyn Farel]

No, failing the mission gives you a severe standing impact.

The only thing that has no consequences standings wise is to let the mission expire (they expire after one day roughly).

[Louella Dougans]

Really? Well, that's something then.

Still, i think one of the devs mentioned something about how penalties act as "a barrier to participation", which doesn't help. 

[Graelyn]

As a longtime FW guy, no, there is nothing you can do to even slightly set-back an FW mission-runner.

If one loses standings, it's because he/she is not very smart that day. No other factors are involved.

[Lyn Farel]

I am not sure what you mean by "set back".

If it means making him waste his time, you definitly can : you can camp his mission or follow him everywhere he goes and piss him off, or just kill him (it works too, he has to get back to his home to buy a new mission ship).

If it means making him lose standings, yeah, if he is smart enough he will let the mission expire (even if accepted), and he will lose nothing.

[Graelyn]

Camping the mission doesn't work, any good FW Runner has 8 or so active at any given time.

Follow him around? Now you're being more inconvenienced than he is, or just as much.

Kill him? 99% of FW missions are run in cloakies, from all races. Goooood luck with that. It's possible, but again, he's now making you waste more time than he is.

Again, all of this involves folks who do the reading and use the documented techniques for running these things. Nooblets will explode and encourage other newbs to bother trying to stop them.

One might as well suggest 'camping them in station with a big fleet' as a proper method of discouraging FW mission running.

[kalaratiri]

Kill him? 99% of FW missions are run in cloakies, from all races. Goooood luck with that. It's possible, but again, he's now making you waste more time than he is.

An easy way to do this is follow suspicious looking enemies in bombers around until they open a mission. Then warp straight to the beacon, and try and catch them on the acceleration gate. Works best in a tackly interceptor, even better if you can fit a sensor booster.

[Arkady Sadik]

Dunno. Judging from local smack, I have good experience with being seriously inconveniencing friendly Amarrian mission runners. Take a Rapier, warp to mission, cloak up inside. Go do something else. Look at screen every once in a while - if he dares to come in to run the mission, decloak and kill. Otherwise, keep reading forums or do whatever else you were doing. Beats station spinning any day. You can also follow them around. Tengus are more annoying.

Likewise, I have had the most annoying people blocking my missions when running them (<3). So it is possible to be extremely annoying.

It might be that the somewhat peculiar layout of the Minmatar FW zone makes this easier against Minmatar than Amarr. Picking up more than 6-7 missions from the Minmatar side takes a serious amount of jumps. The agent quality changes made things easier there.

And well, there are always two sides to a coin.

If you make missions too dangerous, most people will just not run them. Which is bad - we don't need more incentive to do L4s in high sec. So running FW missions should be "mostly safe" - just not fully safe. I'm not sure they currently have the right balance, but I'd be careful with asking for them to be too dangerous.

[Seriphyn]

The Rapier technique...huh...I might try that. Cheers.

[Lyn Farel]

Camping the mission doesn't work, any good FW Runner has 8 or so active at any given time.

Follow him around? Now you're being more inconvenienced than he is, or just as much.

Kill him? 99% of FW missions are run in cloakies, from all races. Goooood luck with that. It's possible, but again, he's now making you waste more time than he is.

Again, all of this involves folks who do the reading and use the documented techniques for running these things. Nooblets will explode and encourage other newbs to bother trying to stop them.

One might as well suggest 'camping them in station with a big fleet' as a proper method of discouraging FW mission running.

Oh yeah, as I said above, I would never try to piss a mission runner off by following him all around, they ALWAYS have more patience than you have.

Though, for killing them, it is absolutely a piece of cake, really. You just have to fly a cloaky ship, and follow them inside their mission. If you do it well, you manage your speed to stop your ship between 2500m and 2000m of the acceleration gate, then you activate. The only random thing that can uncloak you is that fucking entry beacon, or a container that the guy could have dropped at the entrance (but they never do this, for all their missions... too lazy, and more than anything to sure of themselves to be safe).

Those have been done like this :

http://www.amarr-empire.net/killboard/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=203466
http://www.amarr-empire.net/killboard/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=163808
http://www.amarr-empire.net/killboard/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=143759
http://www.amarr-empire.net/killboard/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=137213
http://www.amarr-empire.net/killboard/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=127762
http://www.amarr-empire.net/killboard/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=105492

It might be that the somewhat peculiar layout of the Minmatar FW zone makes this easier against Minmatar than Amarr. Picking up more than 6-7 missions from the Minmatar side takes a serious amount of jumps. The agent quality changes made things easier there.

Not really, it works in both ways : amarr militia have to do a ridiculous crapload of jumps in enemy territory.

[Zag]

Currently, the major issue I see with FW is that in its current iteration it promotes negative engagement as there are no tangible benefits for putting assets on the line other than the prospect of some hot F1 key action, which for those who enjoy killmail whoring is no doubt a reward in itself. However not everyone in FW has the ISK/asset base and attitude to do so and for those that do find that it can get mighty boring roaming endlessly to find things to shoot at only for the few targets available to bugger off (Not to say that roaming endlessly in mostly empty systems only to have the few targets available bugger off happens elsewhere besides FW).

As to how I'd like to see FW repaired though: why not have it fought like an actual war?

By that I mean, why not introduce the actual navies into the picture attempting to capture the systems with the capsuleer militias acting as the specialist force in assistance? The capture system could function like so:

- Each system has a variety of assets and orbital defense systems used by a defending fleet.
- Capsuleer militia members with their mad skills and functional immortality are perfectly suited to conduct suicide operations to neutralize these facilities.
- The goal is to assist friendly naval forces in establishing space superiority in the system and over planets by capturing/destroying hostile facilities and defenses.
- Attacking forces would establish an initial beachead on the closest planet to their 'in' gate. Militia elements assisting the attack have to destroy the orbital defenses over each planet for their navy to 'occupy' it. Defending militia elements have to attempt to push the invaders back by destroying the orbital beacheads of the attacking navy and push them back out of the system. Once all planets belong to either one side or the other then the system is considered captured and secured.
- A system is in a contested state until it is captured and secured.
- Naval forces can only use the stargate system. As such they can only attack/defend along the routes of the stargate network. This would mean (at least initially) the only systems able to be captured would be those along the borders of each empire (i.e Nennamaila/Aldranette or Auga/Kourmonen ) with further systems only being able to be captured as navies advance along the stargate networks assisted by their specialist militias.
- FW missions can only be spawned in systems currently being contested. Instead of them being "shoot a specific BS in under 1 minute" have them be specific facilities that might require different ships/tactics other than stealth bombers/cloaky T3 to capture or destroy.
- Each system captured/lost incurs a minor FW LP gain/loss. Perhaps something like +/- 20% if all systems are captured/lost for a given faction (per system gain/loss would have to divided by the amount of systems available to be gained/lost as the amount of systems varies for each militia).

If FW operated in that fashion I guess a few things may change such as:

- The creation of hotspots/flashpoints centered around systems under contention. This will hopefully have the effect of channeling FW pilots/activities in smaller areas promoting a higher rate of contact/engagement. This may be enhanced if a militia sends automated updates to its members along the lines of "x system is under attack - you should really head there and maybe blow some things up, no?" along with a flashy arrow on the map stating, "You need to be shooting things here."
- Removes some of this boring post-DT plex offensives, respawn mechanics watching, spinning around something for 30 minutes in an empty system waiting for something to happen.
- Merging the sometimes separate activities of pvp, plexing and FW mission whoring into the activity of capturing systems for [insert faction here].
- There's actually some financial incentives to capture/defend systems.
- Makes some more sense I think if FW will incorporate Dust 514, as the primary objective would be to establish superiority over a planet before dropping troops and the fleet proceeding to blow up the beleaguered defenders with orbital bombardments for fun.
- I get to say something like, "Yeah man, I was there with the 24th Fleet Division  during the assault on Hykanima in 113. Those CalNav and Lai Dai assholes didn't know what hit them." As opposed to, "Yeah, we spun all these plexes in Hykanima. It was terrible son, I still can't get Dead or Alive's 'you spin me right round' out of my head to this day."

My ideas anyway to hopefully promote some more action in FW and convey the sense that there is in fact a war going on that doesn't involve spinning around timers endlessly and then shooting a bunker in 20 minutes for victory.