During the low-sec roundtables CCP Fozzie mentioned something as we were discussing farmers.
"We have been thinking about decoupling LP for kills from tier levels."
The more I think about it, the better this sounds.
Currently in faction war you get loyalty points for missioning, PvP kills and plexing. The number of LP for a kill you get is based on the value of the kill and a calculation on the rough 'value' of LP. This is made to make sure you cannot make an alt in the opposing militia and kill them all day long. These LP rewards are linked to the warzone control tier your militia is at. If you are down at tier 1 you get 50% of the LP. If you are at level 5 you get 225%. I assume the calculations to ensure people cannot profit from killing their own alt takes into account the maximum level. Therefore you cannot profit from farming yourself even at tier 5.
If players got 'maximum' LP for PvP rather than the usual 100% from being at tier 2 (which we seem to be sat at most the time), would that encourage more fighting and less plex farming?
Lets see.
At tier 2 in an empty system I can run a novice and a small in half an hour roughly. That'll get me 27,500 LP if I'm offensive plexing.
So how do kills measure up? I nuked an alt to test.
A 5m ISK frigate kill got me 312LP at tier level 2. So I can make the same LP by killing 88 five-million ISK enemy frigates every half an hour (of course this doesn't include scooped loot or any losses on your own part). Yeah.... not going to happen. Stabbed farmers make a lot more LP than PVP'ing in Faction WAR. Is this really a problem? Yes it is.
"We have been thinking about decoupling LP for kills from tier levels."
The more I think about it, the better this sounds.
Currently in faction war you get loyalty points for missioning, PvP kills and plexing. The number of LP for a kill you get is based on the value of the kill and a calculation on the rough 'value' of LP. This is made to make sure you cannot make an alt in the opposing militia and kill them all day long. These LP rewards are linked to the warzone control tier your militia is at. If you are down at tier 1 you get 50% of the LP. If you are at level 5 you get 225%. I assume the calculations to ensure people cannot profit from killing their own alt takes into account the maximum level. Therefore you cannot profit from farming yourself even at tier 5.
Lets see.
At tier 2 in an empty system I can run a novice and a small in half an hour roughly. That'll get me 27,500 LP if I'm offensive plexing.
So how do kills measure up? I nuked an alt to test.
A 5m ISK frigate kill got me 312LP at tier level 2. So I can make the same LP by killing 88 five-million ISK enemy frigates every half an hour (of course this doesn't include scooped loot or any losses on your own part). Yeah.... not going to happen. Stabbed farmers make a lot more LP than PVP'ing in Faction WAR. Is this really a problem? Yes it is.
Raziel Walker Commented April 8, 2015 at 1:34 AM
What's the problem with WCS? Someone farmed a plex and you killed him. Doesn't really sound as if the dead person needs another nerf...
Are you so bad at pvp you need to saddle up WCS fitted ships with another 80% damage nerf? Is it not enough that he has a 10 km lock range and needs a minute just to lock you? Are you afraid he might actually shoot back?
If I fit a ship for transport and I somehow I do get tackled, I really like the option to shoot back. It's my final resort.
Keep the WCS, remove rewards for plexing!
Are you a pvp-er looking for a fight or a ganker looking to execute someone?
What's the problem with WCS? Someone farmed a plex and you killed him. Doesn't really sound as if the dead person needs another nerf...
Are you so bad at pvp you need to saddle up WCS fitted ships with another 80% damage nerf? Is it not enough that he has a 10 km lock range and needs a minute just to lock you? Are you afraid he might actually shoot back?
If I fit a ship for transport and I somehow I do get tackled, I really like the option to shoot back. It's my final resort.
Keep the WCS, remove rewards for plexing!
Are you a pvp-er looking for a fight or a ganker looking to execute someone?
Well.... that last bit should be easy to see by the killboard. I'm a PvP'r. You'll also see very few industrial or mining kills on my page. I like PvP and I like my targets to fight back. Don't get me wrong. I'll happily insta-blap your frigate with my artillery Thrasher if you give me a chance but I'm here for the 'gud fites'.
WCS farmers prevent me from getting 'gud fites' in two ways.
Firstly they are stabbed (well dur) so once I find one, he'll just warp off. I've wasted time and energy tracking down the WAR TARGET and engaging him only to have him piss off. He'll wait at a safe and then go back to the plex. I then have to go and get an anti-WCS ship, avoid other people and kill him. Truth be told, whilst this is annoying it isn't the worst.
The worst bit is that they are attempting to capture my home system day in, day out. Every plex they run is a few more victory points towards being fully contested. Therefore we need to repair the damage they do each day to stop the percentage contested getting too high and the real faction war players on the other side making a concerted push to capture our home system and lock us out of our home station.
If the other side captures our home system then we are completely locked out of the station. That station that holds all of our Eve stuffz. This is a major PITA.
Therefore I need to deplex what damage the farmers have done. I do this by sitting in a plex and watching a massive clock countdown from anything from 10 minutes to 30 minutes. Thats right. I sit there doing nothing but spamming D-Scan (so I know if, hopefully, anyone is coming to fight me). In 45 minutes I can reduce the contested level two and a half percent. 45 minutes of sitting still watching a big timer tick, tick, tick, tick.
Without WCSs farming becomes a lot more difficult. The chances of losing their ship and the delay in reshipping causes farming to be a less palatable occupation therefore hopefully will reduce. I would love it if when I saw an orange backed white star (you know, a WAR TARGET) in local that I knew that was a guy who was here for PvP, not some areshole with multiple warpcore stabs who not only frustrates me when I try to kill him but makes me spend my VGT sat watching a counter tick, tick, tick, tick....
Yes plexing rewards should be nerfed, yes PvP rewards should be buffed (and we are likely to see the later later this year). However, warp core stabs used in what is supposed to be a PvP environment (you have joined a war) currently frustrate and annoy people. They need stomping on in regard to that respect. I'm not saying ban WCS. I'm saying their use in FW needs to be addressed to even up the risk verses reward.
WCS farmers prevent me from getting 'gud fites' in two ways.
Firstly they are stabbed (well dur) so once I find one, he'll just warp off. I've wasted time and energy tracking down the WAR TARGET and engaging him only to have him piss off. He'll wait at a safe and then go back to the plex. I then have to go and get an anti-WCS ship, avoid other people and kill him. Truth be told, whilst this is annoying it isn't the worst.
If the other side captures our home system then we are completely locked out of the station. That station that holds all of our Eve stuffz. This is a major PITA.
Therefore I need to deplex what damage the farmers have done. I do this by sitting in a plex and watching a massive clock countdown from anything from 10 minutes to 30 minutes. Thats right. I sit there doing nothing but spamming D-Scan (so I know if, hopefully, anyone is coming to fight me). In 45 minutes I can reduce the contested level two and a half percent. 45 minutes of sitting still watching a big timer tick, tick, tick, tick.
Yes plexing rewards should be nerfed, yes PvP rewards should be buffed (and we are likely to see the later later this year). However, warp core stabs used in what is supposed to be a PvP environment (you have joined a war) currently frustrate and annoy people. They need stomping on in regard to that respect. I'm not saying ban WCS. I'm saying their use in FW needs to be addressed to even up the risk verses reward.
There was a suggestion from CCP that it would be very hard to limit FWplexes to non-stabbed ships. I still think they should do this...
ReplyDeleteHowever, if the option is too hard, I think it would be easier to limit the number of plexes in a system to at most 4, normally one or two, and massively increase the impact they have on the tug of war. Instead of 300 plexes ,(cannot confirm this number is correct, I heard it somewhere...), make it 30 or so, and increase the respawn delay. The 'time to take' should be lower, but only on a sustained effort.
This would also have the effect of pushing the farmers and PvPers into one spot, so the farmers can't compete.
Alternatively, I would propose a 50km bubble on the button, so plex farmers can't run straight away. This unfairly penalises brawlers though, so I oppose it.
As an aside, I'd be interested in the impacts of 'system locks', where if none of the surrounding systems are contested, FW plexes don't spawn and the system can't be contested. Planetside 2 has a somewhat similar system. I think it would suffocate PvP in the non-contested systems though, so probably not a good idea.
Rob K.
"Therefore we need to repair the damage they do each day to stop the percentage contested getting too high and the real faction war players on the other side making a concerted push to capture our home system and lock us out of our home station."
ReplyDeleteThis right here is your problem. As things stand right now, the farmers ARE the 'real' FW players. They shouldn't be, but if you look at how the mechanics actually work, it's clear that PvP is pretty close to meaningless. "Gud fights" don't contribute to warzone control, and it's warzone control that the Empires' respective high commands care about. The people running plexes are the ones who are actually achieving the goals of the war (you know, like soldiers are supposed to...).
There's a good in-depth analysis of the whole issue over here (in your blogroll, so I assume you've seen it).
The problem with fighting the Farmers is that it is unrewarding. It is boring . The only pleasure is catching them if they escape once. If you get them straight off, it is like squishing a bug. Little reward, no fun.
DeleteConsidering CCP is attempting to de-incentivise boring game-play in null-sec, maybe they could consider doing the same in FW.
Rob K.
and maybe I'm young and stupid, but I'm sure incentivise is a word. Google disagrees. =/
I think for 1 month. Every FW player should fit a venture and just farm. No Killing. Just plex with ventures with extra wcs. Give it a month and tell CCP to see if they feel that FW is now how it should be?
ReplyDeleteWhat about adding an additional requirement to make the timer tick. There must more more hulls than fitted WCS stabs within the timer area.
ReplyDeleteAcceleration gate can be set to allow only certain ships if stabbed you can't come in the FW plex. But I don't think this will resolve farming as running will still be optimal
ReplyDeleteThey just Dscan and run. But better rewards for Pvp would be good
This was going to be a TL;DR for my point, but its all that is needed: This is WAR, not gud fights are us. In war you don't want "fair fights" you want to out play your enemy for advantage and then crush them with minimal losses. Stabbed farmers are a form of asymmetric warfare, intentional or not. they are the embodiment of guerrilla tactics, hit the infrastructure, reduce your enemy's ability to fight, and then disappear into the shadows. You signed up for WAR, not duels at the sun. If you really want those gud fights I hear RvB is always recruiting.
ReplyDeleteDisagree Raphael most system changes are due to Pvp players. The farmers tend to avoid these contested systems as they are defended by pvp players
ReplyDeleteAnonymous is the farmers had any interest in the war I would agree but as they basically just ratting with no interest with sides or the war their involvement should be made suboptimal. They are being paid to defend the base something they have no intention of doing. Timer resets should be added so if you run you have to restart
ReplyDelete