I think I see where you're going with 0 isk payout with LP payouts... so you can farm isk in pubs and use it to battle in FW... however, I think you might wanna consider how negative people will be going in really good FW matches, its going to really hurt the desire to play it for most expect those who can get huge payouts from things like PC.

I would consider changing it a little. Reduce the payouts on FW by ~40% vs pubs but don't remove it altogether. This would still make pubs ideal for farming isk, while giving an incentive for people with too much isk to blow it on FW.

If you give 0 isk in FW, only the wealthy few can pay for it for any more than a few matches at a time.

I would also consider a 'winner's bonus' for LP. Something like +50% LP for winning the match.

I'm a bit worried about the OB change.

Right now, it's quite difficult to get orbital support in EVE, simply because of travel time in EVE.

Given that the warbarge time is ~30 seconds now, even if the squad leader tells his eve buddy WHERE to go to as soon as possible, they simply might not arrive in orbit before the match is over.

There needs to be some way for random eve pilots to know "Oh, this district I'm near has a battle going on, I'd better go support them."

They've arrived! Needless to say I'll have a lot to say about these changes, I'm going to likely throw them up on my blog. We saw them posted internally only briefly before they went public, and I've been so busy putting out various fires the last couple days I haven't sat down and processed it all yet, but I'm quickly catching up! FoxFour and I have talked about this stuff for a while now though, so the general idea here is no surprise.

FW peeps - I'll give the disclaimer now. Yes, I'm the FW expert and worked heavily on the EVE-side FW changes last year as part of the CSM. I fight for Minmatar almost exclusively, and will be doing so in the days ahead. No, I don't care about the fact that you feel feature _________ favors the _________ militia, I've had my fill of those ******** arguments and I wont waste my time with them this time around. If you want to obnoxiously badger me because you think I'm trying to game the system for Minmatar or whatever I'm prolly just going to ignore you. The rules affect all miltiias, if they hurt one day they'll be hurting your enemy the next.

Likewise, because I have such a long history with FW - I'm usually the last person to buy in to the "BUT ___________ IS GOING TO DESTROY FW AND END THE FIGHTING!!" arguments. You can win me over, but its tough as nails. I've heard them all, and 95% of the "serious issues" I was warned about last year never materialized when people actually got out and used the system. I'm notorious for disappointing FW people because of this, and not taking your pet issue seriously enough for you to be satisfied.....but I look at the big picture, and the long haul. Data comes in over MONTHS that determines whether these systems are elastic enough or not, if you've decided in the first 2 weeks that the system is broken cause your faction isn't coming back I'm prolly going to just tell you to fight harder. I've literally seen it all and heard it all in the last few years and I am extremely resistant to hyperbole. I can be swayed.....but it takes a lot of hard evidence, and a fair amount of time.

My feedback for CCP will be informed by this experience, of course. I'm much less likely to be alarmed about some features because I understand that they are unpredictable and need to be released into the wild to see what players do with them before coming to conclusions, and FW is nothing that any designer can simulate or test in-house the way they can a rifle. Don't be shocked if you hear me say "we'll see" a whole helluvalot.

I also want to bump my newly created Dust Scussion channels. I'll be moderating a Skype chat on Faction Warfare, anyone is welcome to join, but I will ruthlessly boot people who are being disruptive. I look forward to getting to know more of you that are excited for and/or actively fighting for the militias regularly!

o7o7

As I said we expect specialists will exist in the game, but that won't be sustainable until the player market comes online. Until then we're not compromising on our big picture plan, so you'll need to supplement it with pubs / PC / corp income etc

I don't know about you or how you think, but I don't see this as punishment to FW people at all. We are being rewarded with something far greater than just mere ISK here. We will be given Loyalty Points which will go towards purchasing faction-specific gear. The faction-specific gear is something that can only be acquired (for now) from faction warfare for the side that you choose and they are exactly like the proto-level weapons but with lower CPU/PG requirements which is something a lot of proto folks love to have for their suits (especially us scouts). And unlike the pub matches or PC battles, our rewards and standings grow proportional to the time and effort we put into building our relations with the factions. That alone is something far more rewarding than mere pocket change.

I understand that people want ISK for fighting but I think that LP only is good. It creates an opening for player driven content. Corps should be paying their mercs for doing FW and the high cost to individuals is also a good thing. LP only payouts make players create contracts for payment and keeps the riff-raff out of FW because they will be going to win not to get paided for showing up.

Public matches should be for profit, FW for your government and PC for glory. No ISK payment creates content by forcing merc to use the community to get paid instead of NPC money printers.

I'm a mercenary. I won't fight if you don't pay me when the job is done. You need the LP market or trade for ISK when you implement the changes, not just LP with no isk. I don't want to be wasting ADV suits getting killed by blues who dont even know friendly fire is on, only to not get ISK at the end.

I wouldn't mind bringing in LP only items, but players with lots of ISK will be running full proto. It'll be interesting to watch how this plays out. I for one will be running full BPO suits to avoid loosing a tonne of ISK.