Woo lots of feedback so far, thanks guys. We'll need a bit of time to discuss all the comments with the team. A couple of early tidbits though, basically stuff we have already discussed internally.

Friendly Fire
I can see us also doing a max TK per battle as well as the standings penalties. That was actually in the original design but we didn't include it in the notes here. I think of all the numbers and mechanics, the friendly fire penalties will be the area that undergoes the most change based on player feedback and just how well it plays out once we go live. We are acutely aware of how important it is to get the FF penalties in pubs correct.

EVE Orbitals
On my todo list is to add kill mails for OB, LP rewards and improve the locating of battles. We have some rough ideas for a battle finder in EVE to help the FW guys out. Making the district name visible in the war barge should be possible as well. We may do changing local for dust mercs in battle now that local is delayed and not leaking intel. We will very likely allow connected EVE pilots to talk and chat in the team channel.

No ISK
Faction warfare right now will not be a sustainable career on its own. There will be objections to this of course but we are doing it on purpose for some good reasons. There is quite a lot of ISK in dust and not a lot of things to spend the riches on, so items exclusive to FW as well as the progression in FW itself will be the motivation to spend some of that money. When the secondary market comes online (itshappening.gif) faction warfare specialist should be able to maintain it as an exclusive career. The other concern we have though is that faction warfare becomes more profitable in every way, leaving public contracts under populated. We still want to continue working on matchmaking, levels, game modes and rewards for public contracts and with the current dust population having this starved for players would be a negative overall. A healthy dust lifestyle in our mind includes playing a bit of public, FW and PC. This may change as the game grows however and specialising becomes more sustainable.

With that all said, we are talking about this stuff early in the development and we're very happy to have out minds changed so let's keep the discussion going.

o7

First, let me say that I really appreciate the transparency and the approach CCP has implemented by bringing this to the community for feedback so early. I think it will help find and fix flaws before they go live and save a lot of development resources. This should be the model for how changes are implemented. Awesome job on the interaction with the community!

Second, I'll just say that the proposal is fantastic overall. There may need to be a few refinements here and there, but I'm really excited about the direction you're moving in.

Teamkilling is obviously the biggest concern. It needs to be in, but in a balanced way and it seems clear that CCP gets how important this is. One way I haven't heard mentioned is to have a criminal flagging system. So if I damage a teammate (maybe beyond a 25% of total HP threshold) then I get flagged as a criminal and go "purple." I appear purple to all teammates (minimap and chevron) for 30 seconds and can be killed by other teammates without them taking a penalty.

OBs need to be handled correctly as well. Due to the AoE, it's inevitable that OBs are going to unintentionally kill teammates, but they represent a huge opportunity to grief your team. These need to be handled delicately. Perhaps if you kill more enemies than teammates, you won't be penalized, but if you kill more teammates than enemies, you get an especially nasty penalty.

I really like the idea of EVE-only OBs, but it's critical that EVE pilots get really great rewards for their efforts (make the rewards too good at first and scale back as necessary), as well as the ability to quickly find and participate in ground fights. We need a large supply of eager EVE pilots willing to risk their ships. Being able to reliably earn very enticing rewards is the key to making that happen. If rewards are paid out as lootable tokens, this will incentivize piracy which would further increase the conflict around this mechanic. This might further spice things up in EVE, giving them more reason to care about DUST.

As far as the no ISK payout for mercs in FW goes, I like that there is an ISK sink, and an incentive to participate to get exclusive gear. If you do decide to add in a reduced ISK payout mechanism, base it on a percent of the ISK value of enemy equipment destroyed only. This will ensure that FW is an ISK sink, but may reduce some of the bellyaching until the player market is in place.

Overall, I'm very happy with the proposal, and the way CCP is tapping the community to iron out details before coding them.