Faction Warfare right now has some flaws and CCP is addressing some flaws with the recent changes, mainly adding rewards. But even after these changes, faction warfare will still lack a sense of progression and EVE players trying to give support to their Dust players will still end up getting ping-ponged across New Eden. So why not knock out two birds with one stone?
Part of the progression issue is that it seems odd that a 15 minute skirmish is all that decides the outcome of a district. Instead of making the battles longer, I propose the following.
Say the Imperial Guard is attacking a district owned by the Republic Command. The battle will proceed as follows:
- Ambush. The attackers are trying to gain a foothold in the district. If the defenders win, then the district is successfully defended and temporarily locked up. If the attackers win, proceed to case (2).
- Ambush OMS. The attackers gained some ground and opened up the battlefield to off map support. If the defenders win, return to case (1). If the attackers win, proceed to case (3).
- Skirmish. The attackers have made their presence known and are trying to seize as much territory as possible. If the defenders win, return to case (2). If the attackers win, proceed to case (4).
- Domination. The attackers are going in for the finishing blow on the critical objective. If the defenders win, return to case (3). If the attackers win, the district is successfully captured and temporarily locked up.
Here is a flow chart by everyone's favorite cat to help you visualize this,
http://i.imgur.com/fnaa7RI.pngEDIT: It came to my attention that a mod may mistake me for a Cat Merc alt. Obviously this is not the case, he simply helped me in collaboration of this idea over skype.
Each battle would happen on the same mega terrain, but would use different maps and moods as you are moving to different portions of the district (perhaps rotating moods between matches to give the illusion of a day/night cycle). After each map, players will be returned to the warbarge where they wait about 5 minutes for the next stage of the battle to happen. If players leave, new players queued for FW will replace them. Bonus rewards for players who stick from the beginning of the battle to the end if successful. This would also help solve the case of EVE players ping-ponging across the warzone, as they would spend more time sticking around the planet then flying several jumps to the next one.
Additionally, imagine you take all the districts that the Amarr and Minmatar fight over for example and string them together to form this circular track such that one district leads to the next nearby district and so on and so forth until the last district leads back to the first district. Now imagine you are on a GÇ£trainGÇ¥ following this track. Once the district you are fighting on gets GÇ£locked,GÇ¥ you advanced along the track to the next district. This will give an even deeper sense of progression for the Dust players as well as further help in keeping the EVE players localized. To accomodate for the large player base, new GÇ£trainsGÇ¥ will be created to follow this same track but be evenly spaced out. Also in this case, the district wouldnGÇÖt actually need to be GÇ£locked,GÇ¥ instead it simply wouldnGÇÖt be attacked again until the next GÇ£trainGÇ¥ arrives.
And even better, CCP wouldnGÇÖt have to create anything new as this uses entirely existing resources.