So while we are already under way implementing the core of these changes, a lot of the specifics are still up for debate so we want to hear concise and reasoned feedback on everything. Please take the time to chew on this for a bit, ask questions if it's not clear then let us know where we might run into problems and why.

Looking forward to hearing all the comments. Cheers.

... cite your sources.

Sounds absolutely wonderful! Good luck getting these features implemented, I look forward to the day! When can we get an Aurum faction change? :P I was not aware of the EVE universe upon starting the game. I want to fully immerse myself in the universe now, but I'm Amarr at heart with a Gallente avatar. Pretty please!

Not sure if Ghost's recent post/idea is original or not, but it bears some similarity:
https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1374939

Isk + Loyalty Points or Aurum. Loyalty points (LP) are acquired currently in EVE when running missions for npc corporations. In Dust LP can be earned by PVP or PVE for specific Non Player Corps (NPC). A positive corp standing should earn the dust merc benefits such as lower LP cost or access to better items at the corp LP store. The items that exist in the LP store can also be purchased using Aurum. Again this follows Time vs Money principle since with enough effort anyone can acquire LP and purchase goods.

Now everyone take a deep breath. Items in the LP stores can be better than isk or Aurum only items. This gives CCP an opportunity to offers suits with alternative bonuses, better fitting modules, and larger bonus equipment.

So to deal with LP farming that would devalue Aurum I offer the following solution. Items purchased with LP+isk come with Restricted Blue Print Copy (RBPC). This means it is not transferable. Now the Items purchased with Aurum come with Open Blue Print Copy (OPBC). This gives those that purchase these items with Aurum the ability to sell it on the market for isk.

Now that the LP farmers hate me let me explain why. Aurum has to have a constant value and should not be devalued by in game grinding. ItGÇÖs that simple.

So while we are already under way implementing the core of these changes, a lot of the specifics are still up for debate so we want to hear concise and reasoned feedback on everything. Please take the time to chew on this for a bit, ask questions if it's not clear then let us know where we might run into problems and why.

Looking forward to hearing all the comments. Cheers.

I didn't find the salvage rewards when playing PC that appealing, perhaps the quantity and randomization could be tweaked, especially if there will be no ISK for matches. I don't like the idea of having to switch to Public contracts "to make my wages". On the EVE side can't they convert LP to ISK?

Once someone totally looses their standings and gets booted out of FW, is there a way for that person to get back in?

Could it be like a cool down period of say, a month? Then they get a few loyalty points so they can turn over a new leaf. But, if they don't then the small size of the gifted loyalty points will be used up and he'll be kicked out for another month.

Not even close.

Overall nice iteration. I commented on specifics in the thread but overall the only things that stand out are

"Losing too many standings will remove you from factional contracts. " seems harsh and should be phased in from a higher to lower amount. Accidentally kills are rather high in PC, so I expect them to be even higher in FW

Vehicles cost lots of Isk so there seems to be a need to have greater rewards if you bring them to the match.

If all someone is doing is playing FW and not getting any ISK, all they're going to do is hemorrhage ISK, but they'll have loyalty points. What exactly could you get with LP? Would I be able to replace a full tank with LP?

These changes do sound awesome. I did post a request in the matchmaking thread, and have a larger question that doesn't seem to be addressed:

Will there be a way for Dust mercs to attack a specific district, creating the match contract themselves? For example, if a side knows that Old Man Star is being fought over heavily, will there be a way to constantly attack all the open districts?

Once someone totally looses their standings and gets booted out of FW, is there a way for that person to get back in?

Could it be like a cool down period of say, a month? Then they get a few standing points so they can turn over a new leaf. But, if they don't then the small size of the gifted standing points will be used up and he'll be kicked out for another month.

Not sure if Ghost's recent post/idea is original or not, but it bears some similarity:
https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1374939

I am so excited that team killing will be turned on! I can hardly stand the wait!!!

I am gonna blow up so many [team] tanks, you don't even know. For you idiot tankers out there, just remember my name ("cSRT4") and know you WILL be losing a tank if you blow up a ******* supply depot and I know it was you. Just letting you know ahead of time so you don't QQ later. Just know it and accept it cause it's gonna happen. (I call it the Kobe theory.)

God damn. That's about the best news I've read in a very long time.

I am so excited that team killing will be turned on! I can hardly stand the wait!!!

I am gonna blow up so many [team] tanks, you don't even know. For you idiot tankers out there, just remember my name ("cSRT4") and know you WILL be losing a tank if you blow up a ******* supply depot and I know it was you. Just letting you know ahead of time so you don't QQ later. Just know it and accept it cause it's gonna happen. (I call it the Kobe theory.)

God damn. That's about the best news I've read in a very long time.

If you want to keep that Depot, I wont destroy it on the condition that you defend it.

Depots are important to both tanks and infantry, but they also allow the enemy to swap out fits with ease if flipped, I will destroy it to stop that.

Making it more of a hassle for enemies to swap to AV.

For now it's a timer, probably around the 24 hour mark. So once kicked from FW they will have to wait 24 hours before being able to get back in.

Makes sense. Looks like this change has been in the works for awhile.
Regardless, this all sounds like alot of fun.

---

It'd be stinking awesome if we could "legitimately" participate with multiple squads rather than trying one's luck with a queue sync. The last FW challenge demonstrated -- quite abysmally -- the impact of bluedot sabotage and inactivity.

I am so excited that team killing will be turned on! I can hardly stand the wait!!!

I am gonna blow up so many [team] tanks, you don't even know. For you idiot tankers out there, just remember my name ("cSRT4") and know you WILL be losing a tank if you blow up a ******* supply depot and I know it was you. Just letting you know ahead of time so you don't QQ later. Just know it and accept it cause it's gonna happen. (I call it the Kobe theory.)

God damn. That's about the best news I've read in a very long time.

Not at this time, once the secondary market is in and you can sell your LP items for ISK then yes.

as a tanker i can tell u we blow up supply depots because our infantry is incapable of securing it and instead the enemy sits there farming ammo to launch swarms and fg shots at us, sorry but u cannot be mad at tankers for blowing up depots if the infantry on his team dont go to secure it

Tanks cost alot more than your suit so to stay alive if it means destorying it then i agree tankers should get rid of it same as CRUs
again if infantry cant secure the CRUs then blow it up. Infantry can get ammo via a nanohive anyway

Replace ISK payouts with loyalty point payouts.

Add a loyalty point store with unique items that cost both ISK and LP.

...
Thats some crazy stuff right?

Hopefully the whole Team Kill thing gets sorted out. I know griefing is a major issue that needs to be policed well, but right now, the punishment doesn't fit the crime. The way it is now is like getting 20 years for stealing an apple. There are multiple things you can do to punish TKers without ruining the gametype for them. If you look up the stats for PC matches, you'll see that TKs are pretty common, and that's in organized squads with solid communication. Now you're going to throw randoms in the mix and expect us to kill LESS friendlies by accident? Here are a few of my ideas.

1) A Match Limit - Set a limit (3-4) for each match. If you hit this limit, you are kicked from the game. No payout. No ISK gained. Counts as a loss in standing.

2) Weekly Limit - You can have this either be a number like 30 per week, or you can pair it to a match limit. For example, if you get booted from 10 games in a week, you lose the ability to play FW for 2 days. It's not an excessive penalty at all, but it would still be effective. Throw on a cap of how many weeks in a certain amount of weeks you get suspensions, say 3 weeks out of 6, you lose FW for even longer.

3) Charge ISK/LP for Team Kills - At the end of the day, the game is SUPPOSED to be about ISK. Make the match summary show your potential ISK/LP gain, then subtract for TK's, much like the taxes show now.

Right now, the penalties are entirely too severe. When you add the randomness of idiot blueberries, you shouldn't ruin the gametype for those who play hard. The penalties are going to cause players to stay away from hot spots and play more conservatively for fear of losing the gametype. That's not what you want.

Like the look of the changes so far.

But.....

Team Deploy? (Sorry if it was mentioned and I just missed it)

And I assume you'll be adding the Secondary Marketplace at the same time (Or at least, close to the release date of this update), because the last thing I want is more useless salvage lying around.

The general idea is that if you are a hard core factional warfare player you grind up LP, buy things from the LP store, and then sell them to other players for ISK on the market. DUST doesn't have a secondary market for this implemented yet. This left us with a difficult choice to make. We could delay this feature until the secondary market is in; that would suck because we want to play this, and we're sure you guys want to as well. The second option was put this feature in but somehow balance it for there being no secondary market and then rebalance it again when the secondary market comes out. This would be bad as it means a lot of wasted development time. The third option was to balance it for the secondary market and just let you guys do your thing in the meantime. In the end, we settled on the third option. This does mean that people participating in factional contracts will make less ISK right now, but if they are hoarding loyalty points then they will have the potential to make lots of money when the secondary market comes along and they can sell FW gear to other players.

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 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.

The general idea is that if you are a hard core factional warfare player you grind up LP, buy things from the LP store, and then sell them to other players for ISK on the market. DUST doesn't have a secondary market for this implemented yet. This left us with a difficult choice to make. We could delay this feature until the secondary market is in; that would suck because we want to play this, and we're sure you guys want to as well. The second option was put this feature in but somehow balance it for there being no secondary market and then rebalance it again when the secondary market comes out. This would be bad as it means a lot of wasted development time. The third option was to balance it for the secondary market and just let you guys do your thing in the meantime. In the end, we settled on the third option. This does mean that people participating in factional contracts will make less ISK right now, but if they are hoarding loyalty points then they will have the potential to make lots of money when the secondary market comes along and they can sell FW gear to other players.

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."

General Overview
So now that you know why we are looking at factional contracts and our general goals, you next question would likely be "What are we looking to change?"

Well, if this is implemented in the way outlined here, it'll be one step forward and about ten steps back.

I'm so tired of seeing so many blatant issues with every single new feature added that I don't even feel like it's worth my time explaining why this stuff is so bad anymore. This might just be the last straw for me. I can only watch this dev team blunder and stumble for so long, it's just painful to watch... almost as painful as actually playing Dust 514 is at this point.

DUST players targeting specific systems is something we are looking into, but will not make it for this iteration.

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.

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

how so! listen you didn't even point out a single thing you think they do better!

Ok, let me sway you. I've took data from nearly 2 months now, one month where Gallente and Minmatar FW were winning 99% to 1% and another where Amarr and Caldari FW were winning 99% to 1%. I think there is something up with this, and this is me saying the faction warfare system is broken even though my team came back and is winning now, so yeah. I've posted exactly what I think is up and why the FW system in broken in numerous threads and a few of my own threads as well, if you didn't see them then I question how well the CPM really listens. Yeah I know you can't see everything that goes on in the forums, but I and some others have literally been spamming this for a couple months now.

Hey now lets get to know each other a bit before we rush to conclusions alright?? FW has changed in a couple of significant ways over the last two months that have created atypical scenarios. And they will change again immediately once these are implemented. I'm not saying there aren't phenomena that need to be studied closely looking at the last couple of months, only that once FoxFour actually delivers these on the server the clock resets and we get to observe a brand new set of data.

No need to assume I'm marginalizing your current research, I'd love to chat soon and discuss your findings and the lessons we can learn from them before FoxFour finalizes this latest iteration.

Not rewarding players with ISK for participating in faction warfare means that it will be impossible to have a faction warfare only corp. Unless they buy Aurum Gear only of course.

Pay to play now

Well yeah, that's why I said:

"I'm so tired of seeing so many blatant issues with every single new feature added that I don't even feel like it's worth my time explaining why this stuff is so bad anymore."

I'm done wasting my time trying to explain why the dev team is terrible, I will now commence with simply stating that they are in fact terrible.

For now it's a timer, probably around the 24 hour mark. So once kicked from FW they will have to wait 24 hours before being able to get back in.

as a tanker i can tell u we blow up supply depots because our infantry is incapable of securing it and instead the enemy sits there farming ammo to launch swarms and fg shots at us, sorry but u cannot be mad at tankers for blowing up depots if the infantry on his team dont go to secure it

Tanks cost alot more than your suit so to stay alive if it means destorying it then i agree tankers should get rid of it same as CRUs
again if infantry cant secure the CRUs then blow it up. Infantry can get ammo via a nanohive anyway

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

Well yeah, that's why I said:

"I'm so tired of seeing so many blatant issues with every single new feature added that I don't even feel like it's worth my time explaining why this stuff is so bad anymore."

I'm done wasting my time trying to explain why the dev team is terrible, I will now commence with simply stating that they are in fact terrible.

I am personally in full favor of making the loss of gear or even clones in Dust more expensive than it currently is. Increase Isk scarcity! Make profitability as necessary yet difficult as you can without negatively impacting playerbase growth.

Make loss hurt! That is such a great driver of intense gameplay and wealth distribution based on skill and complex gameplay. As long as your playerbase is growing then making successful gameplay more closely aligned with playing profitably then you make the economy a viable force.

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.

EVE Orbitals
We have some rough ideas for a battle finder in EVE to help the FW guys out.

I didn't find the salvage rewards when playing PC that appealing, perhaps the quantity and randomization could be tweaked, especially if there will be no ISK for matches. I don't like the idea of having to switch to Public contracts "to make my wages". On the EVE side can't they convert LP to ISK?

Accidental Leak?

but they'll show up in Eve local, which will give a big hint that things are going down somewhere.

Which might be okay, I guess, but i was expecting beacons, not local spikes :)

That's fine, we want to be showing activity in DUST when it happens.

We are more concerned about DUST accounts being used to dig up intel for EVE.

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.

1. Friendly Fire
2. EVE Orbitals
3. [Team Deploy ... missing]
4. [Suicide / Sabotage ... missing]

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.

Please look at this whole post. Who are you to tell us what game modes we should play to be considered having a "healthy lifestyle" in Dust? Isn't this supposed to be a sandbox? Your "good reasons" to remove the ISK penalty is punishing people who only do FW with an ISK sink?

I am part of a corp that has been focused on FW since it was introduced in EVE. This is all we do. Now you're telling me in order to participate in FW I'm going to have to play pub matches for these randomly selected corps like Blood Raiders and Sansha's Nation? And while I'm fighting for these corps, my faction that I truly care about could be losing a district in FW that I otherwise would of been able to defend?

I'm sorry Nullarbor, you're going to have to come up with a lot better reasoning than that. And look, I see your argument of "we still want people playing public matches" and that's great! But you can't FORCE us to play public matches. Why not instead have public matches pay more ISK while FW matches pay less ISK and LP. So basically

Public Matches: Lots of ISK payout, no LP payout
Faction Warfare: Small, but still there, ISK payout. LP payout.

That would give people a reason to play public matches over FW without FORCING people to. FORCE being the key word.

And again, as many have said, I'm fine with the removal of ISK from factional contracts if you gave us another way to make ISK that doesn't take time away that I could be spending defending my faction, like a player market where I can sell LP and salvage. But until then, FORCING us to play public matches is absolutely unacceptable.

Also in terms of team kills, I know there is no way to tell between an intentional TK and an accidental TK, but it really shouldn't matter. If you are TKing at all you are a liability to your team and should be punished (unless of course you are "TKing" someone who has already TKed to defend yourself"). Yeah it will suck for the person who gets too many accidental TKs and gets suspended from his faction for a long length of time, but that will teach him to be more careful.

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

Since when was it a good practice in game development to release something before it was ready? If something won't be sustainable until something else arrives, then it needs to be delayed so they both arrive at the same time. Game development 101. I know you guys are excited about expanding FW as am I, but you can't get ahead of yourselves.

As for supplements, I already made my point on pubs and PC is a terribly exclusive party with how few districts there are. Corp income on the other hand really shouldn't even be listed in my opinion, as right now corps have no way to get income aside from PC, which is already listed, and taxing players, which is through pubs and PC, both already listed. But that does bring up a good question, will corp tax apply to LP as well?

It won't be too far behind, and experience tells me you guys will complain but manage just fine until the player market is rolled out. We could delay FW until *everything* is ready by that seems like a worse idea.

No taxation on LP, corps do not have an LP wallet.

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.

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

wouldn't it be great to prevent intentional team kills by adding a system that stops your gun for a while whenever you hit a friend?

What about players that don't try to team kill , but activity damage their teammates shields and their health close to zero? Or deliberately get in the way so your teammates kill you?

How about once at the end of every one or two weeks you get isk based on your performance? Like I won 30 battles and received 5-10k wps at the end of the week (or more) I maybe receive about 1 million isk .

The sentence about there being a lot of ISK in Dust and FW items being a motivation to spend it is irrelevant as far as the actual issue goes. There being too much ISK in the game is a symptom of the game economy being a farce and arbitrarily punishing dedicated FW players for playing in the sandbox as they want to is not going to help.

I'm sorry I couldn't read the whole thread, so please accept my apologies if this has been answered already, but I'm very concerned with there being no reward for fighting for a losing faction. I know you're supposed to ideologically attach yourself to one faction and then stick with it for glory and honor, but I have the feeling it's not going to work very well. Are there any concepts in the pipeline that would help stabilize FW when the fight becomes extremely lopsided?

On one hand I see why people want ISK payouts for FW until there's a market. I evensuggested it myself in Zatara's thread: Everyone gets some ISK, as a sort of advance on fighting, we are mercs, we want some guaranteed money up front. Winners get a lot of LP, losers get less, but the small amount of ISK stays the same just to keep it semi-sustainable.

However, as I went through this thread, specifically Odinsons post, it just occurred to me that there is actually an upside to ISK loss in FW. If more advanced players turn to pubs to get ISK like he says, then suddenly we might actually see a drop in protostomping. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but if people start saving their good gear for FW, perhaps the noobs don't get pummeled quite so relentlessly when they leave the academy anymore and player retention rises. Might for once be a positive unintended consequence. Or maybe there will just be more farming, in fact I'm sure there will be, and there's always the PC vets with more ISK than they know what do to with (for now, lol) Regardless, I still see some potential for something good to come from this aspect.

The issue of having too much ISK is relevant. I know a corp that has a wallet size of at least 1 billion ISK for that corp alone (it's an estimate based on number of shareholders) and that's just outside of EoN. Can you imagine the mountain of ISK that EoN has? A lot. Think of Scrooge McDuck's money bin from Duck Tales. That can have a negative impact on the economy if too much ISK is in circulation at one time.

Many of us have constantly asked CCP to implement some kind of ISK sink to alleviate this economic problem and so far the idea of no ISK payouts for FW seems like a novel idea. But as others have mentioned here, we won't know of what the ramifications will be until we see the effects for ourselves. All this speculation about people joining FW in free suits and all is just that... speculation.

Flux grenading your whole team just before a big skirmish is pretty lame though, so we'll keep chewing on that problem.

A simple solution to this problem is to implement an IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) system to the Flux Grenades.
Say Shields are modulating on a certain frequency range or phase for friendly troops and the flux grenades are programmed to identify these frequencies and not affect them, but affect all the enemy frequencies.

Love it! Hope LP items will have different skins for show off value.

This is a good point and something we have discussed already. Whether we should be tracking kills, damage done or maybe ISK destroyed. Kills are simple for now in that they can also be forgiven and are easy to track and explain to players.

Flux grenading your whole team just before a big skirmish is pretty lame though, so we'll keep chewing on that problem.

We will have a forgive option to cover accidental where the victim agrees it was an accident. I kinda like the suggestion about no TK penalty for squad mates as well. Will discuss that with the team.

I see your view but like I and many others we arent in PC nor did we get 500mill isk from the reset, in total me and my directors hardly have more isk than whats in the corp wallet. And If your like me you easly blow 200k-400k in one battle for your fraction Im only asking for 100k and less payout nothing more.

Like I said, I'm good with a small amount of ISK for FW. I'm not in PC either.; I still have a small nest egg from the reset I sit on for a rainy day, but it's nowhere near 500 mil, it's not even 100. But, since I use STD suits or BPOs 95% of the time in pubs it's consistently profitable for me, so I'm less concerned about going broke than I am about Nyain San or whoever running full proto squads and HAVs in pub ambush matches and making new players ragequit, never to return.

See the match info thread. There's a 24h cooldown before they can start participating in faction contracts again.

That would make sense, and essentially make flux grenades voided in terms of FF. It is sort of the same principle for why you don't stand in enemy nanohives and get ammo.

Except are you aware that these changes will only encourage Nyain San and other to protostomp in public matches, since they won't be making any ISK in FW so won't want to play it?

Except not all of us are EON or play PC. Why should they punish the FW players in order to give PC corps an ISK sink? There's nothing novel about that.

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 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.

So: Friendly Fire. It'll be great to introduce this to FW as it forces people to play better and stop merely relying on the lack of FF to spam grenades, OBs, etc and decimate only the enemy.

However there are 4 associated aspects to consider:
1) Griefing by intentional TKing
2) Griefing by partial damage to allies (e.g. via EMP grenades) leaving them vulnerable to enemy kills
3) Griefing by suiciding yourself (e.g. in front of an HMG or tank)
4) Collateral damage (i.e. accidental TKing)

The CCP proposed method on punishing TKing directly deals with 1) however allows an exploit/workaround via 2) and 3) and leads to harse punishment for inevitable accidental TKs via 4).


I have an idea for how to deal with FF incidents that I feel would be an improvement on the current offering.

a) all FF results in a milita standing decrease
b) the standing decrease is immediate and = to the rank of the char who died * 10
c) TK 'assists' are counted at a 50% rate (as per the WP reward for kill assists)
d) reaching 0 standing results in instant kick from match and 24hr ban

This results in a standing penalty equivalent to the importance [to the NPC militia] of the person who has been killed. You'll still have to deal with intentional TKing, but griefers will quickly burn through their standings, whilst also having a low impact when suiciding too.


Supplemental: Team Kick Vote

Separately there should be a Team Kick Vote functionality, in order to kick known griefers. 6 votes and you're kicked from the match. You can add also players to a permakick/dislike/block list in order to reduce being put into the same match as them. Likelihood decreases further as more players [in that team] have that individual 'blocked'.

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 see what you did there. You place that little disclaimer of yours of "being to tired" to explain the problems so you won't have to answer to the challenge.

I admit that I sometimes do that with respec discussions, but if I'm pressed to accept any challenge to explain myself then I become a kind gentleman and rise to the challenge.

Now be prepared to accept this challenge and rise to it.

What is wrong with the proposed factional system posted by CCP Foxfour that needs to be adjusted before implementation and how would you propose to change it? Please include numbers if needed.

Not rewarding players with ISK for participating in faction warfare means that it will be impossible to have a faction warfare only corp. Unless they buy Aurum Gear only of course.

So get an eve corp to fund you

Very quckly wanted to go on record that I do NOT think the LP store reward changes should be released until a player trade option / market exists. I agree it risks a huge damaging impact on participation levels, and I will be in talks with CCP about this about what options exist here.

Very quckly wanted to go on record that I do NOT think the LP store reward changes should be released until a player trade option / market exists. I agree it risks a huge damaging impact on participation levels, and I will be in talks with CCP about this about what options exist here.

You can't transfer funds between games.

Very quckly wanted to go on record that I do NOT think the LP store reward changes should be released until a player trade option / market exists. I agree it risks a huge damaging impact on participation levels, and I will be in talks with CCP about this about what options exist here.

well then CCP should get on that then

I allready wrote my suggestion. Daily allowance isk transfer between FW eve/dust players based on standings. Or they can just open the floodgates since people like me have more money than I'll ever know what to do with anyways.

CCP already confirmed that they will allow such transfer in the future. Except there will be a heavy-ass tax on any ISK transfers coming from Eve to Dust.

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.

First in what should be an epic thread. Looking forward to the awesome FW changes in the pipeline

TO sum up the way I feel about these changes I will say that this will most likely turn FW into the biggest PC District owner's Noob stomping Proto Party this game has ever seen.

These changes will most likely lock new players out of FW altogether.

Just want to say......it is features like these that will distinguish dust from other fps for a long time. The only issue is actually putting all of these promised features in the game so players can actually play them.

Looking forward to these changes....the LP market sounds great and will add more depth to the game and allow for more customizations in dropsuits.

As much as I dont like friendly fire....it does seem balanced. I am disappointed that ccp actually wants griefing but it is what it is. I can see people getting pissed off and walking away from the game because some people dont care about the penalties at all. Peple will TK you if you choose to use high end proto gear and officer gear. I can also see tanks getting TKed etc.

Since when was it a good practice in game development to release something before it was ready? If something won't be sustainable until something else arrives, then it needs to be delayed so they both arrive at the same time. Game development 101. I know you guys are excited about expanding FW as am I, but you can't get ahead of yourselves.

As for supplements, I already made my point on pubs and PC is a terribly exclusive party with how few districts there are. Corp income on the other hand really shouldn't even be listed in my opinion, as right now corps have no way to get income aside from PC, which is already listed, and taxing players, which is through pubs and PC, both already listed. But that does bring up a good question, will corp tax apply to LP as well?

CCP Nullabor... I have a suggestion I think can help everyone out on this without compromising the goals your team are working towards and help guys like Aero.

Simply increase ISK payout in public contracts by 33% until the market hits then drop the ISK payout to its current baseline rate. Is this a viable option for the way the Dev team wants to build the game?

What's to prevent entire squads (or teams when team deploy arrives) from awoxing matches? They could avoid any TK or damage monitoring systems by just loitering in the middle of nowhere and still cause their faction to lose (and still get standing to boot ).

Just want to say......it is features like these that will distinguish dust from other fps for a long time. The only issue is actually putting all of these promised features in the game so players can actually play them.