GMVA Faction Warfare Vision 2020
Overall Themes & Goals
- Make warzone control, winning control, and participating consistently in warzone control fights matter
- Focus & drive conflict with more diverse PVP objectives while equitably engaging all TZ’s, preventing timezone gaming or anti-social opportunism
- PVP-centric shift in rewards & content richness. Buff PVP rewards overall and shift most PVE income to PVP while also tying maximal PVE income & opportunities to PVP participation. Reward wholesome play.
- Eliminate opportunities for unlimited passive & anti-social playstyles that encourage botting, farming, opportunist, AFK, and other dilutive forms of play.
Vision 2020 at a Glance
- Much more overall variety in combat plexes and use of combat plex style fighting for objectives that presently invite no PVP such a system upgrades & downgrades. Checkpoint plexes to periodically limit low-effort system control progress. Multi-timer objective plexes for warzone milestone and endgame challenges. XL & Large plexes to create new apex meta niches.
- Meaningful dynamics to system & warzone control including access to endgame opportunities to cash out new LP reward accounts. Warzone control will affect the use of citadels in ways that reward winners and present dilemmas for losers without stifling competitive forward deployments. Access to new LP sinks will be exclusive to achieving warzone milestones.
- An unstable, chaotic warzone pendulum that does more than just tick-tock, fueled by rewards that accumulate until one side emerges victorious, requiring them to face risk & reward dynamics in victory while also inviting newcomers with fresh incentives to ensure rebounds back into chaos. Defenders can expel attackers with meaningful consequences to the attack. Rewards structure encourages come-backs and builds momentum from the smallest victory to diverge anew.
- An overall feeling that both faction warfare space and its features & content are focused on faction warfare. This includes limiting unintended neutral citadel interference. Farmers and cross-plex alts will be much less able to dilute both control mechanics and the LP economy. This is partly due to a revamped economic model that emphasizes the intersection of PVP & completion of warzone control activities. The mechanisms themselves will be more resistant to dillutive control influence of bottom feeding farmers. PVP-augmented rewards model will cause third-party fights to benefit faction warfare pilots.
System Control Checkpoint Plexes
Rolling-Window Participation-Based Rank
Rewarding Execution of Broader Strategic Goals
Multi-timer & climactic events
Deferred Rewards – Generating LP vs Getting Paid LP
Competitive vs Anti-Competitive
Status Quo Estimated Income Distribution By Activity
Estimated Vision Plan Income Distribution by Activity
Bounding Economics of Loyalty Rewards
“Boss” Rat Spawn After Plex Capture
Disable Crime Watch In & Around Plexes
Involve Citadel Mechanics in Warzone Control & Tier
Announce Plex Value Upon Entry
Mechanism to Cause Failure of Enemy PVE
DPS Checks on Offense & Defensive Control Objectives
History of this Document
Following a lively & competitive cycle of the GalCal warzone that seems unlikely to be matched for some time in current mechanics, a FW overhaul plan was well received on Reddit.
Later, during the most recent CSM campaign, one of the pro-facwar focus candidates, Matthew Dust organized a FW Discord to receive various proposals. Many of the original designs in the Reddit thread were represented, iterated, and debated. Most items in this document were individually presented to the Eve Reddit and linked here.
This document was drafted out of the iterated proposals to create a monolithic, coherent representation and leave no doubt to downstream consumers that the proposals are intended to work together.
While other treatments will be made, this document is decisively pro-PVP, in favor of larger scale objectives, and in favor of doing what it takes to funnel the faction warfare economy through wholesome faction warfare playstyles.
Original contributions within the FW Discord were integrated, some explicitly credited so. We have mutual interests but are not one entity. Nonetheless, thanks to all.
Endorsements
NanDe YaNen
Independent Changes
Stuff that works with or without changes elsewhere.
Low-Hanging Fruit
- Bring back “power slide” broken by WCS hotfix
- No standings loss for in-fleet aggression (smartbombs, scram-chain, ECM bursts etc)
- Built-in WCS ships or WCS refits cannot cause timer progression
- LP taxes for corporations
- Disable crime-watch in & around plexes
- Default overview includes faction above criminal for displaying color tags
- Dual-timers for plexes instead of backwards rolling
- Show plex payout along with timer
- Variable distance from button to beacon (brawl vs kite plex)
- Uniform DPS check for both offensive & defensive objectives
- Split large into large & extra-large plex from Quick Proposals
- Navy cap booster BPC’s. BPC’s in general. Remote LP store.
- Better LP soaks such as XL ammo
Less Trivial Mechanic Changes
System Control Checkpoint Plexes
Similarly posted as Checkpoint Plexes on FW Discord
Voted for on FW Discord: 16 up 4 down
- Limit system contest progress achievable without re-shipping and bringing more people and/or going somewhere else
- Some checkpoints are completely not soloable
- Defensive & offensive
- “Good” rats protecting goals. In general, we love NPC miner response fleet style rats
- Variety in checkpoints. Specific checkpoint spawns randomized so that players can’t know up front which hyper-optimized fit to bring because the response fleets have different capabilities
- Upcoming checkpoint generation is discoverable via FW map & agency. Timer-based goals force confrontation at the appointed time. Sprinkle some timers of consequence into the warzone to attract regular medium-scale fights.
Rolling-Window Participation-Based Rank
Very similar proposal posted on FW Discord as Change of the method by which LP are accruing for FW plexes and missions.
Voted for on FW Discord: 27 up 1 down
- Overhaul rank mechanics to avoid late-comer syndrome. These people are just vultures who dilute the rewards after others make them available
- Rank math should make consistent participation over time the exclusive and optimum way to achieve & maintain high rank. Use formula involving recent faction time * LP earned per each week. Use a ten week window. For example, showing up for the last three weeks of a campaign caps late-comers at 3/10ths maximum rank
- Metrics of activity should include PVP, but as stated later, if LP is more strongly tied to PVP, LP can be used directly as a metric for wholesome activity for the purpose of rank
- With robust rank mechanics in place, reward higher rank more LP and more LP store access
Citadels & System Ownership
X-posted as Involve Citadel Mechanics in System Ownership & Tier
Voted for on FW Discord: 8 up 0 down
- At anchor time all warzone citadels either declare fixed allegiance or dynamic neutrality
- Fixed allegiance allows faction warfare structures exclusive (nullsec level rig? Fuel consumption?) bonuses when your side owns the system and upgrades it, but exposes you to penalties fuel consumption if the enemy faction holds the system, requiring starbase charters as an extra fuel components.
- Anchoring a structure in a hostile system and declaring it with the countervailing allegiance, especially according to upgrade levels, costs an extreme amount of fuel & charters etc. Staging citadels should have a place, but not be spammy.
- Dynamic neutrality means you just want to ignore system ownership, but to do so, your structure always rejects docking from the losing faction.
- Structures that would evade fuel penalty with “low power” either receive “ultra low power” with zero timers or are cleared by a spawn of faction navy
Rewarding Execution of Broader Strategic Goals
The mechanics that follow require coordinated changes to achieve balanced benefits. These changes must be read and interpreted in the context of each other.
In order to enable climactic event arcs to exist without content hoarding, we need multi-timer events to distribute content equitably over timezones and to inject all TZ’s fingerprint on warzone shifts.
To establish large end-game and milestone rewards without exacerbating late-comer behavior or blowing up the faction warfare economy, we need deferred rewards & the earlier enhanced rank proposal
To weave PVP into incentives more prominently without introducing avenues of unbounded evil, we need good mechanism to scale LP in ways resistant to abuse. An analysis of how to prevent runaway economics has been drafted and appended.
Deferred rewards is an enabling mechanic to promote much healthier
broad-spectrum behavior by separating LP generation from LP payout. It deserves considerable focus. An informal analysis is presented to establish fundamental concepts and vocabulary.
Multi-timer & climactic events
We want to have big fights and big events. We don’t want content hoarding or TZ gaming. We don’t want late-comers to show up and eat half of the pie.
Voted for on FW Discord: 9 Up 3 Down
- Influential events are set up by triggering a multi-timer series of fights, clearly discoverable with advance notice
- Triggering climax system causes 5-50(?) countdown timers spawn, distributed over 24 or 48 hours, with generation density weighted according to online player count trends – “eve random”
- At each countdown, Individual timer-goal spawns. Goals can be some mixture of baby-citadel like mechanics, NPC fleets, combat plexes etc
- Winning majority of timers determines winner of climactic outcome, such as system ownership flip or major upgrade levels
- Defense can “win” instead of just merely delaying the inevitable to the next timezone shift. (current Ihubs defense is inconsequential and dissuades serious defense fleets). Cooldown on attempts is a must!
- Offensive & defensive incarnations can both be running at the same time, indicating maximum level of competition
- Uniform mechanics (not inherently offensive or defensively favorable and timezone insensitive) that preclude any time advantage being achieved by “cross faction” alts gaming timers and opportunities.
- Triggering timers costs some ISK & LP (spam prevention). Use RP candy in the trigger mechanisms. “Anchoring Federal Jurisdiction Outposts” etc.
- Actual end-goal-state events require a significant LP & ISK “wager” to trigger and will generate a significant reward if the goal is won. Defense can win to earn a significant portion for themselves via deferred rewards. This behavior enables variation in warzone conclusion & more interesting overall cycles.
- Climaxes. Important. Lucrative. Exclusive LP store access gates etc. Major RP porn. Gold at the end of the rainbow.
Related write-ups:
Deferred Rewards
Written up on faction warfare discord as Loyalty Rewards™
Appendix on Preventing Runaway Economy of PVP Activity
Enhanced Payouts for Continuing Activities. The Deferred rewards system’s biggest trick is decoupling income earning from income payment. This enables fine-tuning the relationship between income and behavior. Late-comers will no longer be able to swoop in and grab lucrative rewards. Single-style play, anti-social play, and anti-competitive play will be unable to achieve maximal income, strongly discouraging them overall. Overall income can be buffed but while being difficult to game.
- LP rewards are paid out partly up front and partly into a deferred account
- Having a large deferred account balance boosts payouts for future activities.
- Basic combat plexing should generate lots of LP but deposit most of it into deferred rewards, becoming a massive personal pinata
- “Important” activities such as checkpoint & climactic arc fights have more potential to pay out the deferred account, allowing you to reap more of what you sowed
- Objectives themselves should capture and thereby socialize a fraction of PVP augmentation, allowing sunk-cost recovery
- Consequent objectives should acquire a fraction of the LP of objectives leading into them
- Warzone flip and winning major warzone milestones are the only actions that fully or near-fully pay out the entire deferred account balance, via wager. All other milestones net more rewards farther down the road. You need a high rank and lots of successful participation in a climactic event to get a big payday.
- Highly competitive churn builds up latent rewards on both sides, making victory more urgent when fighting is back & forth.
- Decay. If not enough LP is earned relative to the account balance, it should be decayed into a socialized faction-wide account. LP that never gets paid out will then be socialized so that players who refuse to participate in broad spectrum activity will end up paying the rest of the faction.
- Upon leaving the faction, fully socialize all remaining LP in the deferred account. This will help newcomers pick up where other groups moved on from faction warfare.
Related Write-ups:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/98yfmm/fw_tiers_and_tears_why_fw_missions_are_outdated/e4kcalg/?context=3
Destruction Augmented Rewards
ISK destroyed is used as one major factor to calculate rewards payouts. Bloody plexes, bloody systems, and bloody warzone pushes pay out the most. Rewards should accumulate on heavily contested goals. Scale LP payout with destruction wrought.
- Destruction should be measured in any space FW pilots must pass through, such as plex gate grids, so that third party harassment just means more ISK for us if we kill / die a lot
- Allow fleets to equally share in kill LP but use the kill share, damage dealt, to determine extra-fleet LP splits. If you can be in the fleet, it’s assumed you’re considered worthy of sharing.
- Destruction is more robust than activity-driven churn such as pushing all the buttons to flip the warzone without ever fighting or doing it all as uncontested as possible
- Make expensive plexes discoverable at least on slide so we know when the loot pinata has gone critical
- Deferment & socialization is an easy mechanism to avoid price-gaming that has been seen in the past. Also just use actual robust “value” estimates. Set flat reward benchmarks for rarely traded, actual expensive stuff like AT frigs.
Related write-ups:
Deferred Rewards – Generating LP vs Getting Paid LP
Modelling Faction Warfare
Informally established fundamentals dynamics to provide a common framework for reasoning & communicating about how mechanics & behavior interact
Healthy Behavior
First, we establish what behavior we want to make a place for.
Healthy behavior is cooperative, competitive, and diverse. Unhealthy behavior is repetitive and anti-social, and anti-competitive.
Competitive vs Anti-Competitive
Fleets of combat interceptors warping past each other for Fozzie sov are
anti-competitive. Capturing plexes by warping in and out to avoid the PVP dynamics
of plex fights is anti-competitive. Standing down from infrastructure hub bashes to
re-flip the system instead of winning the fight is anti-competitive.
Most fighting behavior is competitive. If fighting is not an integral mechanic and
metric for success, anti-competitive behavior is basically encouraged.
Cooperative vs Anti-Social
If there’s zero benefit to flying in a gang instead of solo, then anti-social behavior can
emerge. One-vs-one fighting is not anti-social. Anti-social is when
you don’t form gangs to do even anti-competitive or PVE activities.
Diverse vs Repetitive
Defensive plexing endlessly is repetitive. Running L4’s over and over is repetitive. If
activities bear no relation to each other or have no coupling dynamics that relate them to each other over time, repetitive play styles may emerge.
Aspects of Income & Behavior
Both income and fun drive activity. Income is one limiting rate parameter for fun that can be had at PVP, so we can study income to learn how PVP is incentivized and enabled or limited.
Coupled vs Independent Income
Coupled income activities are those that require the completion of other activities
and achievement of certain environment states such as faction tier to generate the
income-earning opportunities and to maximize the realizable income from those
activities.
Independent income activities are those that require no further interaction with the
warzone or other activities. They can be repeated endlessly regardless of warzone
state.
Coupled income sources are usually rate-limited by the availability of the
opportunity, which may require social or competitive play to maintain. Independent
income vectors often scale without bound and are more prone to becoming
Unhealthy.
Immediate vs Latent Income
If a player can earn ISK relatively instantly from an activity, the activity is
independent with respect to how it pays income. Spinning timers for whichever
faction pays more using AFK plexing alts who can be lowly alphas is effectively an
instantaneous form of income. This is a fair weather, anti-social, anti-competitive
play style. The effectively instantaneous access to income (switching faction alts)
is the enabling financial dynamic.
If a player must engage in other activities to realize the potential income of their
earlier activities, it is latent income. Waiting until the warzone flips to cash out LP in
the less competitive market is a latent income behavior. Latent income is not
necessarily more healthy except that it tends to involve more behavior over time,
enabling other ways to encourage healthy behavior.
Sources of Income by Activity
We can first break down play styles into PVP and PVE activities. PVE activities can
then be broken into elective vs coincidental. PVP activities can be broken into
focused or diffuse.
Coincidental PVP is a coupled activity that takes place in the course of achieving
warzone control. It’s less prone to farming than elective PVE, which can be repeated
without limit whenever the faction tier is high enough or if one has mission pulling
alts in multiple factions. We should definitely favor coincidental PVE over elective
PVE.
Diffuse PVP today can be thought of as fairly anti-competitive. This is mainly
because the majority of “combat” plexes are won by AFK plex spinners in backwater
systems. Focused PVP is more likely to be competitive, but in the current system of
infrastructure hub bashes, is also often won by groups of high DPS blaster ships to
little fanfare.
Status Quo Content Breakdown
- Elective PVE – Agent missions picked up at faction warfare stations
- Coincidental PVE – Killing rats in combat plexes
- Focused PVP – Ihub bashes and concurrent combat plexes
- Diffuse PVP – Most combat plexes
Status Quo Estimated Income Distribution By Activity
This is the estimated current breakdown of all LP paid out over the course of a warzone flip. With the current mechanics, there are several glaring problems with this distribution and the behavior that it promotes.
- Elective PVE, L4 mission farming, is very independent, requiring only some plexing alts to gain access to the mission agents to pull missions for you. You can farm an unlimited amount once set up. The activity is very, very lucrative in terms of ISK per hour. This activity is completely anti-competitive and anti-social. Mission farmers don’t cooperate with other players and they avoid confrontation or any activity leading up to the high tier, preferring to just switch their mission pulling alts depending on which faction is currently at high tier.
- Diffuse PVP is primarily earned from plex-spinning. This can be highly anti-competitive swarms of disposable AFK plexers who exert enormous influence over the warzone but participate in little of the engaging gameplay.
- Focused PVP is basically limited to infrastructure hub bashes. These are never worth it in terms of payout and only occasionally generate good fights. The greatness of a small fraction of the fights owes no credit to the infrastructure hub mechanics. Large plexes can be more exciting. Infrastructure hubs are basically anti-climactic. They have strong anti-competitive incentives for the defenders to just re-flip the system instead of defending the ihub, which reverts back to being right at the edge rather than having some meaningful victory.
- Coincidental PVE, the PVE that occurs in the course of allowing timers to start spinning, is worth virtually nothing. The tags and bounty are, like infrastructure hubs, negligible in terms of the faction warfare economy.
Vision Plan Content Breakdown
- Elective PVE – Supplemental PVE encounter generation according to plex activity
- Coincidental PVE – Checkpoint & multi-timer rats necessary to kill to start timers rolling
- Focused PVP – Multi-timer fights, checkpoint fights, end-game fights
- Diffuse PVP – Mostly contested combat plexes
Estimated Vision Plan Income Distribution by Activity
- Elective PVE Missions should be replaced with elective supplemental PVE content that scales more with plex participation, especially in terms of income potential. Coupling elective PVE content availability to PVP participation ensures that it won’t grow without bound. The elective PVE is a good way to provide ways to supplement income if PVP income alone is causing wallet stress.
- Diffuse PVP will be shifted to mainly destruction based metrics. While it will still be possible to earn significant LP from plex spinning, the largest LP stream will be engaging in costly fights and then collecting the resulting deferred income in climactic and milestone events. Ship spinning alone will no longer encourage the AFK plex bot menace.
- Focused PVP Where Ihubs now sit, we will instead have checkpoint fights, system flip fights, multi-timer climactic arc fights etc. Ihubs are somewhat anti-competitive, but establishing that defenders can win will lead to more competitive behavior. The combination of more engaging gameplay and increased incentives will likely lead to more escalations and competitive defenses.
- Coincidental PVE Much more diverse and challenging PVE via checkpoints and multi-timer DPS check rats. Much higher rewards too. This income is very coupled to making plexes available. It’s some healthy border content between PVP and PVE players, PVE that happens in activally plexed systems.
Balancing the Pendulum
Arguably the most important design behavior for faction warfare is that it does in fact present clear competitive objectives, motivated by reasonable rewards, resistant to behavior to prioritize the reward over the competition the reward is intended to motivate.
Stability analysis is the field of study that describes how systems will evolve over time with a specific focus on which states are reachable and what the most common patterns of movement will be.
The goal is to construct a system that exhibits more than just a monotonic drum beat, instead taking multiple paths to non-guaranteed edge states and does not get stuck in any one state or oscillate wildly so as to become incoherent and dominated by churning.
We can guarantee this with the following design behaviors:
- All states, including edge states, become more excitable to leave the state the longer that state is occupied
- Effort required to cycle between edge states scales with overall reward being paid out
- All progress promulgates further progress (snowballing)
- Local changes of direction have a larger reward / time invested than local maintenance of direction
- Edge states have sufficient attraction in terms of motivating rewards and that attraction grows as edge states are not reached
That local changes are chaotic to each fight can be insured by systemic socialization of small portions of rewards and making those rewards available in intermediate-level milestones such as system flip fights. A loss of many PVP objectives and large overall loss of ISK still should present an opportunity to net benefits through further investment of PVP effort. In short, make the sunk cost fallacy in fact a sunk cost opportunity.
Wager mechanics are intended to be destabilizing to the conclusion of objectives. Seemingly clear momentum towards a clear end should, through the capability of defenders to steal & destroy the wagers, attract new competition when it is most critical to ensure that snowballing doesn’t lead to stagnation at edge states.
Deferred rewards is exactly a sustaining force designed to encourage snowballing and attraction to edge states that grows over time.
Scaling the number of combat plexes presented by multi-timer objectives according to how much LP is presently in the system and player counts etc would have the effect of increasing activity friction between edge states, properly regulating the frequency of the drum beat and accommodating growth / reduction in participation levels.
Biasing rewards payout towards LP generation when at the lowest point of faction control and biasing towards payout at the highest levels of control will tend to cause fizzling of the pressure to reach edge states and in fact exhaust the winning faction’s incentive to continually occupy that edge state. A high level of LP generation at low levels of control will build up rewards, which need to be realized by reaching the edge state.
Bounding Economics of Loyalty Rewards
How Rewards Can Run Amok
It’s not simply enough to say that “too much” LP will be accessible through PVP activities. It is necessary to show that either:
- ISK and LP in the system can be magnified through feedback, in the absence of significant activity friction or bottlenecks
- PVP input into the system can result in arbitrarily large payouts or arbitrarily large profits
If there’s just an “unhealthy” amount of LP flowing, we can just dial it back as long as we don’t have a runaway mechanism.
Tools in the Box
Socialization
If players can’t get exclusive access to manipulated prices, it’s still possible to execute a scam, but harder to sustain it unless everyone’s in on it.
Competition
Wager systems where players must front a large amount of their Rewards™ LP and make this vulnerable for other players to capture or capture in part and then destroy the rest, it’s inherently like other risk-reward activities. We can survive net ISK creation as long as there is significant risk and risk scales with reward.
Activity Friction
If extracting an inflated reward requires an equivalent activity so that it becomes like other high-income, high-APM activities, the incentive will be within reason well enough not to entrain the entire playerbase.
Rate Caps
Limited rate of generating opportunities, via spawn rate or tying rates to PVP activities with significant warzone friction will bottleneck abuse attempts until adjustments can be made.
Visibility
The player base will never declare false negatives about someone getting conspicuously rich. Expose LP gains via leaderboards. Make large LP wagers discoverable with advance notice. Don’t allow silent LP rivers to flow.
Breaking Conversion
Direct conversion of ISK to LP and back is necessary to magnify LP. The ISK costs of items in the LP store limit the extent to which these ratios can be positive and control the deflation of those items, establishing a floor to further item creation.
Sublinearity
Grow LP amounts lower than linearly. There are many numbers where sublinear growth has the effect of adding an upper bound to runaway behavior
- Median player LP rewards deposits per month
- Median player LP rewards balance
- Kill LP estimates
- Base LP buff from PVP
- Wager payouts
Robust PVP Valuation Metrics
Ultimately, net creation of more than 1.0 ISK of LP per ISK destroyed is the magic ratio to understand, model, and measure in practice to spot abuse.
- Exclude drops
- Deduct insurance from “destruction”
- Deduct bounty payout
- Exclude non-PVP items
- Use manufacturing cost as a reliable cross-reference
- Use fixed values for rare, replaceable items
- Use metric based on mutaplasmid value, mutation result, and base gear for mutated gear
- Measure total uniqueness of signals, the first moment of pilots involved, locations & quantities of items created & destroyed, systems bought & sold in, strength of those markets
- Ignore market data when uniqueness & cross-references show low coherence, falling back to pessimistic baseline
- If you can’t establish a good price, we can’t either. Zero is fine.
- Use other tools in the toolbox to add soft upper bounds
Changes in Draft
“Boss” Rat Spawn After Plex Capture
- After plex capture, spawn elective PVE rat that is considerably more capable & powerful than the DPS check rat that gates plex progression.
- Not necessary to capture plexes, but present as a way to generate more LP & tags per plex
- Various capabilities and form (one big, three small, kite, brawl etc) so that the optimum ship for capturing plexes is very different than the optimum for killing the boss rats, strongly favoring cooperative plexing where DPS can be allocated where needed while running multiple timers
- Use PVP relevant capabilities such as scramming, webbing, kiting & requiring a slingshot to kill. Always at least warp disrupt so that boss rat fighters are served-up pre-tackled
- Occasionally murders AFK plexing meat bots “on accident”
Dischord Archives
To prevent the loss of vote text from the Discord era, all proposals most influential to this document are appended. Many of these may have been censored in the record on Discord as a result of pro-mission manipulation attempts.
See Quick Proposals for an alternative rendition of the Discord
Loyalty Rewards
Pilot Name: NanDe YaNen
SubCommittee: lp-store (because facwar economy)
Proposal: Loyalty Rewards:tm:
* All activities generate some base LP
* All activities pay a fraction of the LP immediately and deposit the rest into a rewards:tm: account
* All activities can pay a boosted reward out of the rewards:tm: account
* Activities that are intended to generate LP will favor depositing LP rewards:tm:
* Activities intended to pay out the rewards:tm: account will buff their base reward from player’s rewards:tm: account
* Completely paying out rewards:tm: account requires completion of advance notice, player discoverable endgame arc challenges where players make vulnerable (stealable / destroyable) wagers, meaning risk & reward
**Destruction Buffed Rewards:tm:**
* Measurable destruction on grid buffs base LP of PVP-centric activities, such as plexes
* PVP kills themselves will pay out LP
– Rewards deposit vs immediate payment ratio depends on activity
– Fleets split kill LP evenly
– Multiple fleets and / or players split based on damage share, then evenly within fleets
* PVE activities, elective or coincidental, only achieve max LP payout from rewards:tm:
* Rewards:tm: decay and socialize from inactivity or dropping faction
Proposal is heavily predicated on introduction of multi-timer events & event arcs, voted on in another proposal
**Preventing Runaway Economics**
Knock yourselves out.
Intended Purpose:
1. Tie the maximal income to wholesome activity over time
2. Enable sweet endgame content without blowing up the overall economy and attracting massive late-comer syndrome
Who does it affect outside of Faction Warfare: Farmers
How does it affect them: Optimal LP lower and harder to achieve
Links: https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/cf94j6/facwar_deferred_rewards_lp_for_the_working_pvper/
Disable Crime Watch In & Around Plexes
Pilot Name: Mgaati en Daire
SubCommittee: Warzone Mechanics
Proposal: Disable crimewatch inside plexes.
Intended Purpose: Remove punishment for engaging in pvp in a designated pvp area. It is intended to solve the same problems as suspect timers for neutrals inside a plex, but without punishing neutrals. It would allow more pilots to dip their toes into lowsec and pvp without ruining their ability to live/travel in highsec.
Who does it affect outside of Faction Warfare: Anyone who enters a plex.
How does it affect them: Allows them to freely engage anyone and everyone without having to worry about sec status or suspect /criminal timers.
Involve Citadel Mechanics in Warzone Control & Tier
Pilot Name: NanDe YaNen
SubCommittee: Citadels
Proposal: Involve Citadel Mechanics in System Ownership & Tier
Citadels, at anchor time, must declare either a faction allegiance or dynamic neutrality.
Faction allied structures benefit when their faction owns & upgrades a system but suffer penalties when anchored in non-owning space.
Dynamic neutral structures are ACL-locked to not allow the system non-owning faction to dock.
The following benefits & penalties relate to ownership & tier:
* Fuel burn reduction for owning faction
* Fuel penalty to non-owning faction, up to 500% in tier 5 system, payable in starbase charters or fuel blocks
* Rig bonuses that allow owning faction to achieve nullsec bonuses in lowsec space
* Reduced vulnerability windows for owning faction
* Guaranteed docking access if you’re willing to pay
+——————+————+———————-+——————–+————-+
| Declared Faction | Rigs | Fuel | Bad People Docking | Vuln Window |
+——————+————+———————-+——————–+————-+
| Good People | bonuses | charters + bonuses | not allowed | Shorter |
| Bad People | no bonuses | charters + penalties | allowed | Default |
| Neutral | no bonuses | no penalties | not allowed | Default |
+——————+————+———————-+——————–+————-+
Intended Purpose:
* Make system ownership, to a large degree, convey docking access consistent with station docking. Staging citadels should have a place, but not be spammy
* Reward system owners for upgrades with better citadel bonuses, exclusive to facwar structures and tied to facwar mechanics
Who does it affect outside of Faction Warfare:
Non facwar structure operators
How does it affect them:
Loss of clients or avoidable increased cost of operation
LP Accrual
Pilot Name: МАRСОS GOODMAN
SubCommittee: Warzone Mechanics
Proposal: Change of the method by which LP are accruing for FW plexes and missions.
Today, fractional wars have evolved from collective PVP events with a long-term interesting goal into boring LP farming without the need to create any serious PVP activity and unite into groups.
In my opinion, this has happened due to flaws in LP accruing system. Since the PVP activity of specific characters is not taken into account during the capture of plexes, hubs and systems, it does not matter who wins. It is always possible to create an alt on the enemy’s side and get the maximum LP in a short time. I even saw examples when newcomers are advised to do so during recruiting to a corporation. Moreover, FW alts on the winning side are created by pirates, highsec-crabs, null alliances, i.e. a lot of Eve pilots benefit from the results of hard labor of a small number of people who for several months did plexes, installed/destroyed the citadels, sieged hubs etc.
As a result, all the players in Eve believe that the FW is not a real WAR of the states, but a boring PVE, where high tier is “a pendulum that swings itself.” And of course, the Lv4 FW missions will seem very “easy” when most people have not put even a bit of effort to this. For a while, everything was held up by enthusiasts who were simply interested in FW-PVP, but then they began to leave, since this system does not imply rewards for work, but rather encourages a parasitic way of playing, when even the title “General …” is awarded for the 4lv missions farm, and not for real PVP efforts. The apotheosis of this for me was the long upholding of a high tier for Minmatar due to the absence of the Amar militia, and the subsequent voluntary surrender of warzones due to boredom in the hope of future good fights in home systems where agents are present (Huola-Kamela). Instead, the new Amar militia, without unnecessary PVP activity pragmatically captured all the quiet systems bavoinding the aforementioned Huol-Kamela and quietly farming the Amar LP on 5th tier. Which means that half of Eve is farming Amarr LP on the 5th tier with the alts. There are many good ideas for improving the FW here, but most of them can be compared to attempts to cure a cancer with the Band-Aid .
My suggestion is to introduction of a coefficient (or index), which will take into account both the value of the current tier (for example, with the weight of 50%) and the amount AND cost of kills of enemy militia by a particular character over the past six months. The second parameter must also be dynamic, so that PVP activity in FW does not occur once or twice a year, but is a constant activity. If this change is hard to implement technically, we will support any solution that at least indicates the movement of the CCP in this direction.
Intended Purpose: Pilots demonstrating maximum PVP activity in capturing systems will consciously and with interest move towards their long-term goal (capture of the entire warzone), spending time and resources. Whereas only they receive the maximum reward for their work. The motivation system itself will unobtrusively hint to pilots that the maximum reward is possible only if there are midscale battles for key systems, and players will have to unite in order to achieve victory for their faction. The system will also encourage newcomers, as the FW-alliances never forbade them to participate in the fight on the noob-frigates. Pre-agreed “pendulums” (swings or whatever they are there) will become disadvantageous, since both parties without PVP activity will receive only 50% of the reward. Each confrontation will be a real event in Eve, and not a dismal LP farm with alts on both sides, since this will be at least two times less profitable. This change IMHO will solve the main problem, but not the rest, such as the lack of new story lines about the opposition of factions. After all, there is a potential here no worse than that of Star Wars or Game of Thrones.(edited)
Who does it affect outside of Faction Warfare: all eve pilots parasitising on the farm of FW LP .
How does it affect them: Anyone who wants to receive a high LP reward will have to personally participate in battles for plexes, hubs and systems, or find an interesting occupation in other aspects of the game.
Announce Plex Value Upon Entry
Pilot Name: Emily Briscou
SubCommittee: New-Players
Proposal: Announce the remaining time and LP payout of a plex on entry.
Intended Purpose: Help newbros understand what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. Help eliminate the guys d-plexing systems that are already stable.
A message in local (like the “Your job is done, go home” for missions) saying: “Warning X Militia Pilot! This plex is occupied by Y agents. Completion of this site will take Z minutes. High command will reward you with ??,??? Loyalty Points for its completion” would go a long way towards getting people up to speed. A potential downside is clutter in local chat for people zipping between plexes for fights, so maybe there could be an opt-out.
Who does it affect outside of Faction Warfare: Nobody. Since neutrals can’t receive LP, there’s no need to tell them about it.
How does it affect them: It shouldn’t.
Multi-Timer Events
Pilot Name: NanDe YaNen
SubCommittee: warzone-mechanics
Proposal: Climactic Events & Eve-Randomized Timers
Intended Purpose: Bigger, better rewards to drive more big fights but with equitable representation for timezones
Who does it affect outside of Faction Warfare: 3rd parties can expect more large FW fleets, off of structure fights that have been focal points during certain campaigns
How does it affect them: n/a
Links: https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/c10tx3/fw_climactic_fights_events/
Checkpoint Plexes
Pilot Name: Wyrlith Ceos
SubCommittee: Warzone Mechanics
Proposal: Checkpoint Plexes
At intervals of 10% system control, (i.e. 10%, 20%, 30%), “Fleet” plexes will spawn instead of the normal plex. A fleet plex has the same size and time restraints as an ordinary plex, but instead of the standard punching bag rats, contains a single or series of rats requiring the dps of 2-3 properly combat fit ships. This rat also dishes out fairly beefy dps to avoid gank fit ships soloing the rat. This plex is triggered by both offensive plexing and defensive plexing. (i.e. You must clear these plexes deplexing down through a 10% checkpoint as well as up through it). This plex would have an LP bonus appropriate for 2-3 people (i.e. 200-300% of current normal plex LP reward)
Intended Purpose: To increase the need for cooperative action to deplex or oplex a single system large numbers of % over a time period. Because it is possible to fit a ship to run many sizes of plex, it is possible to linger in a single system running plexes as fast as they can respawn. This would force solo plexers to either move more within the warzone to plex, or to open communications with other solo plexers to complete the fleet plex. Since this plex can be completed easily by 2-3 people, it does not materially affect system sieges in any meaningful way. Because only a fraction of fleet plexes would be present in the warzone at a time, this would offer an objective to small gangs roaming for fights. This proposal is easily compatible with other proposals looking to motivate fights or prevent warpoff.
Who does it affect outside of Faction Warfare: Neutral gangs looking for fights.
How does it affect them: They would have a smaller set of systems and known targets to look for fw targets.
Mechanism to Cause Failure of Enemy PVE
Pilot Name: Matthew Dust
SubCommittee: Missions
Proposal: Put “Standings Based” fleets inside the missions. For Example in a mission. both an Amarr Fleet and a Minmatar Fleet who shoot the player based on standings. Standings hits are received for shooting at the rats. If the runner’s side of the fleet is destroyed, the mission is failed.
Intended Purpose: To add counter play to mission runners, they can still earn heaps of Loyalty Points, but now when chased out of the mission they risk the hunters killing their side and a failed mission with no payout. Currently if they are chased out and the rats are destroyed. their mission is complete (except for a few which require you to loot.)
Who does it affect outside of Faction Warfare: Anyone who hunts Mission Runners
How does it affect them: Standings hits
XL Plexes
Pilot Name: Jordan Bailie
Sub Committee: Warzone Mechanics
Proposal: Rename Large plexes to Extra Large and introduce Large plexs that allow T1 BC and T2 cruisers to acess the plex. Remove T2 cruisers from current Medium Plexes.
Intended Purpose: Allow for more variety in Fleet compositions and maintain the conistency of ship restrictions from Novice to Extra Large.
Who does it affect outside of Faction Warfare? Little to no Impact
How does it affext them? Would prevent Recons sitting in Medium plexs while forcing larger fleets options for engaging either within a gated plex or an open field ( Large vs Extra Large)
Intermediate PVP Objectives
Pilot Name: Torvald Uruz
Sub Comittee: Warzone Mechanics
Proposal: Weekly target systems and challenges. (Idea drawn from something Matthew Dust said in the Warzone Mechanics channel)
Intended Purpose: Create an area of concentrated activity, and rewarding whichever faction completes the objective. One week you’re on offense, the next defense. Secondary objectives could include alternative systems, capturing a certain number of complexes, or being involved in kills (destroy X number of enemy militia frigates). GOOD WAY TO TIE IN FW TO THE AGENCY WINDOW! To get new/old players interested in FW!!!
Who does it affect outside of Faction Warfare: No one, other than providing anyone outside FW with an area that has concentrated activity for content.
How does it affect them: Gives them an area to go to for more activity
DPS Checks on Offense & Defensive Control Objectives
Pilot Name: Oreb Wing
SubCommittee: warzone mechanics
Proposal: Force both sides to clear FW plex npc to activate ticks. Npc must not be present for timer to roll, requiring both sides to bring appropriate levels of dps for each size plex.
Intended Purpose: remove viability of unfitted ships from dplexing, a profitable and entirely afk possible action that can be done with the same unfitted frigate in all sized plexes presently. Also makes ventures slightly less of a problem, as they have poor dps. Plex rats don’t give standing loss, so forcing dplexers to clear them will not affect standings.
Who does it affect outside of Faction Warfare: anyone looking for gf’s.
How does it affect them: They might actually get a fight.
