You don't lose standings for losing.

You only lose standings for winning against a faction, but then you gain a lot more with the faction you actually fought for. We did this for the reasons you described.

I thought it was worthless to play FW for standings since LP payout is garbage.

Sadly it's the only place for decent battles because Pub matches are crap and PC is broken.

/me dons the tinfoil hat

CCP made FW that way to get all the gud players out of pub matches because they're restricted to playing pub matches as developers. Thereby, less competition and easier to winrawrs.

/me removes tinfoil hat

Whoa. Feels like I just woke up from a coma.

There is a tiny bit of truth to this, FW is supposed to be tougher and for more organized groups. We prioritize squads and reward winning, compared with public contracts which pay out a lot regardless of the outcome.

Whether we did it on purpose to make the game easier for ourselves to play, well you'll just have to keep unrolling that foil to figure that out.

There is a tiny bit of truth to this, FW is supposed to be tougher and for more organized groups. We prioritize squads and reward winning, compared with public contracts which pay out a lot regardless of the outcome.

Whether we did it on purpose to make the game easier for ourselves to play, well you'll just have to keep unrolling that foil to figure that out.

There is a tiny bit of truth to this, FW is supposed to be tougher and for more organized groups. We prioritize squads and reward winning, compared with public contracts which pay out a lot regardless of the outcome.

Whether we did it on purpose to make the game easier for ourselves to play, well you'll just have to keep unrolling that foil to figure that out.

There is a tiny bit of truth to this, FW is supposed to be tougher and for more organized groups. We prioritize squads and reward winning, compared with public contracts which pay out a lot regardless of the outcome.

Whether we did it on purpose to make the game easier for ourselves to play, well you'll just have to keep unrolling that foil to figure that out.

There is a tiny bit of truth to this, FW is supposed to be tougher and for more organized groups. We prioritize squads and reward winning, compared with public contracts which pay out a lot regardless of the outcome.

Whether we did it on purpose to make the game easier for ourselves to play, well you'll just have to keep unrolling that foil to figure that out.

I did some analysis of faction warfare rewards, LP costs of faction store gear, the results are pretty poopy.

[Comparison]
A purely ISK-bought standard fitting:
STD Minmatar logistics
2X basic shield extended
Basic armor plate
Basic armor repair module
STD mass driver
STD RE
STD active scanner
STD repair tool
Cost: 11,850 ISK

Now the same fitting in pure LP-bought faction store items (republic and federal):
STD Minmatar logistics
2X basic shield extended
Basic armor plate
Basic armor repair module
STD mass driver
STD RE
STD active scanner
STD repair tool
Cost: 200 LP (140 Republic / 60 Federal)

ISK rewards of public contracts on average range from 70-400K ISK depending on your performance; this is not exact, but based on experience. 70k represents absolute laziness (like AFK farming), and 400k represents performing extremely well.

With the ISK rewards you can buy between 6-33 full fits of the STD ISK fitting.

LP rewards of FW contracts on average range from 326-659 LP depending on your standing. This is based on these numbers released by CCP.

With the LP rewards you can buy between 1-3 full fits (depending on standing) of the STD LP fitting.

[Findings]
The crappy ISK rewards you get from sitting in the MCC and doing nothing will still buy you more than the LP you get after grinding through and winning 200 matches and getting level 10 standing.


[But what about the player market?]
The argument could be made that once the player market is out that the LP items will make FW worth it since they could be sold to others for a high price, but most LP items are just lowered-SP-requirement variants, and lower-fitting-cost variants; I don't know how much others would be willing to pay for those, but I'd personally never pay more than twice as much for them. So we established that at lv 10 standing you get 659 LP per win, and you can by 3 standard LP fits whose ISK-equivalent cost 35,550 ISK (11,850 x 3 fits).

If you spend your 659 LP on the faction store on 3 fits worth of standard gear, and then sell it for ISK to me (I'm only willing to pay 2x the price of regular items), then when you turn that LP into ISK you get 71,100 ISK (35,550 ISK x 2 since I'm willing to pay 2x the price of the regular equivalent).

So IF you have level 10 standing, IF you won the FW battle, and you sell the faction store gear you spent all your winning LP on to me, then you can make about 70k ISK from selling the full product of your victory to me... or you could just AFK-farm in public battles and make perhaps even more ISK, and you wouldn't even need to win.

Players will need to value faction store items several times more than their ISK counterparts just to make FW worth it. If valued 3x as much as regular items then you can make about 100k on player market, if valued 4x value is about 140k, for 5x value 177k, for 6x value 213k. When your standing is level 10, players have to value faction store gear to be worth at least 6x the value of regular gear just to make a ISK comparable to a public contract skirmish's ISK rewards.

[Conclusion]
There is no reason to spend all that time in FW trying to get your standings up; a regular skirmish battle will likely be more profitable (win or lose) then a level 10 standing victory. LP rewards need to be substantially increased, like multiply both wining and losing LP by 8.

@ Kagehoshi

Good points. Perhaps the LP store needs more items that have less pg/cpu or other better stats to promote their usefulness.

Fighting in FW without a squad is waste of time and ISK. MORE players are leaving the battle in half way. THE PAYOUT for winning team and losing team should be revised otherwise players will lose interest in FW.

reward winning is great, but why did you advertise a LP system that rewards leveling up but then release a system that doesn't?
The top payout at level 10 doesn't have to change, but you need to deliever the system you promised.

1-260 LP
2-280 LP
3-300LP
4-340LP
5-380LP
6-440LP
7-500LP
8-560LP
9-620LP
10-700LP

See how level 5 is only 120lp more than level 1? But level 10 is 260lp higher than level 5? This is called game design. I've got some books you could read. Also they have these things called "college" I hear they do wonders for ones education!

btw I got this idea from YOUR DEV BLOG. I'm pretty sure you were just guessing ... but you still proposed a great LP payout system.. you know...

Actually... Good game design, as far as free-to-play games usually go, gives more rewards early on and slow the process with more time implemented... That's a basic concept of all free-to-play games and the hallmark of many MMO's. Actually, it's like that for games in general. Ever notice how, when playing an MMORPG, you can hit level ten in the first day but getting from, eighty to eighty-five takes significantly longer?

Incidentally, getting a higher rank in a game like Battlefield takes significantly longer than early on. A private rank can become a corporal very quickly but getting to say, general, is far more investment.

Sooooo, what examples did your book give you? Did they mention any games that actually succeeded?

You don't lose standings for losing.

You only lose standings for winning against a faction, but then you gain a lot more with the faction you actually fought for. We did this for the reasons you described.

I've won only 2 Caldari FW matches so far. In fairness, I don't play much and I'm terrible. Still, if I understand correctly I should get 75 points per win, yet my standings after a loss showed as 75 points rather than 150. Is that just a display bug, then?