I can only speak for myself, but if CCP wants to pit the empires at each others' throats, they need to give everyone a good reason to fight that they can feel good about. Right now, no one has a particularly good casus belli; I'm not sure why anyone is really fighting at this point because there's really no threat to the status quo (thanks to the limp warfare mechanics). Even if the Gallente wanted to get the Caldari out of Luminaire, CONCORD has kind of quashed that particular goal even if the Caldari titan had not. One of the problems with the way factional war went down, in my mind, was that CCP tried to make it sound like an all-out war when they didn't have the story or the mechanics to really back it up.
There is also the problem that because of the nature of the factional warfare mechanic, there's no real aims for any of the wars for any of the sides. What are the Caldari trying to achieve with their fighting? How will they "win"? The same questions could be asked of all the empires. The real answer is "they can't," which is the issue. I remain convinced that CCP would have been far better to make a "privateer" mechanic, where players were paid bounties to raid shipping of their enemies while the cold war continues, rather than the laughable "war" we have now.
Now, some people want to play Space Nazis, I guess, and that's their decision, but I don't think more people really want to play villains who are villainous for little or no real reason. If you want people to rally to a cause, you need there to be a good reason for it; you need for all sides to have a claim on being in the right. You also need the reason for fighting to be one that complements each empire's culture.
The problem is that now that horse has already left the barn, and it's a little late to be closing that particular door. I don't know how you bring things back to the point where you can get the Caldari RP block that has been fed up with the State lately to come back without it seeming contrived. For the Caldari, they are primarily insular and paranoid, so their motivation has to be a threat to their lives or, at the very least, their livelihoods. They aren't imperialists like the Amarr, they aren't crusaders for truth, justice, and the Gallente way like the Federation, and up until the sudden about face that was just pulled out of nowhere in TEA, they weren't hell-bent on revenge or the freedom of their lost brothers like the Minmatar.
There is one possibility though. Caldari Prime has been retaken by the Caldari, and now, I think even the most peaceable-minded of Caldari, who want the war to end and things to return to the pre-TEA status quo, would be loathe to sacrifice their homeworld to that end. If Heth were to be toppled, the CPD disbanded, and the CEP to open peace negotiations with the Federation, and the Federation to insist on the return on Caldari Prime to end the war, I can see many Caldari quickly changing their minds about peace. If they were then "betrayed" during the course of negotiations -- some misunderstanding leads to the deaths of Caldari negotiators or prominent VIPs, perhaps in a way similar to how I've said I would have done the death of Gariushi, I can definitely see the paranoid Caldari seeing that this was just a ploy to buy the Federation time to strike, and seeing the Caldari rally again for war. But this time, their goal is to force the Federation to accept a peace, with the minimum condition a return to pre-war borders and the declaration of Caldari Prime as Caldari territory. That is a cause I think Svetlana could get behind.
Of course, for the Federation, this may be a ridiculous demand to them -- a major Caldari world deep in the heart of the Federation? What about the fate of Gallente and other Federation citizens on Caldari Prime who want to leave? Would the Caldari insist they remain, as essentially hostages, even with a peace? So now the Federation is fighting to force the Caldari to accept a peace where Caldari Prime is returned to the Federation.
And then there's another wrinkle in the ointment: the Intaki. What of the Intaki agreement with Ishukone and Mordus Legion? Here's an idea, CCP, and I don't know how feasible it is, but...why not make at least part of Placid merge with the Syndicate and form some sort of new Intaki Free State, which asks for assistance from the Caldari? Then you have a Gallente civil war which only inflames tensions further, and gives the Gallente even more of a reason to want to punch the Caldari in the face, especially if you have it be something that was created with a razor thin margin, where there's Intaki begging for the Federation to protect them from being absorbed by the soulless State, and Gallente business interests demanding the Federation protect them.
These sort of conflicts give both sides the ability to feel justified, and gives them a positive reason to fight, which is really what is needed now. Right now, the reason for the fighting to go on mostly boils down to either phat lewts or "they are bad." Neither of these is particularly appealing to the roleplayer, I think.
Of course, the lack of any endgame makes a lot of this still seem hollow, so that is something I feel like CCP really needs to address. If I was them, I would bring factional warfare back from a rather lame version of a "hot war" and eventually at least have a ceasefire declared, and turn factional warfare into border skirmishes, convoy raids, disputed territories, and a much more murky kind of conflict where empires can have temporary successes and make gains, but where it's hard to get an overwhelming advantage. That would require a significant overhaul to the mechanics though, and I'm not sure that's something that will get much buy-in from CCP. :/
Author
Topic: What do you want your empire RP to rally around? (Read 3583 times)