I really think we need to have some penalties of some kind for leaving/not fighting in the match.

I fear that if some corps deploy into the FW matches the other team would just constantly either leave the match or stay in the MCC/somewhere else in the redline the entire match.

Will people get standing for AFKing on enemy side and thus passively helping their faction?

Instant battles were a closed system and reeky had no consequences.

There was no real visible link between EVE and Dust in the old factional warfare system. But now there is a stronger link. I am not sure why Corps would deploy to faction warfare is they did not want to fight. But isn't losing penalty enough?

Was also going to say something about, never underestimate the power of a bad reputation. See how it goes. But it seems like the more connections there are between EVE and DUST the more lasting your choices, the more your reputation will matter. Entire culture for Dust might turn out to be different. But it is a persistent world. We haven't really seen that yet.

For friendly fire we are looking at ways we can get it introduced into factional warfare. Our concern is not really about it being "more hard core" but about the ability for people to control who is in the matches and such. Right now there would be no conscience for people going into a FW match and just killing team mates.

Any plans to have mercs (who are in a FW corp) be included in the FW Militia chat channel?

I could be going off of the wrong impression, but I thought that in FW we will be able to "stack" squads, so that we could essentially go in with 16 members of our corporation / alliance.

Any word on that?

I could be going off of the wrong impression, but I thought that in FW we will be able to "stack" squads, so that we could essentially go in with 16 members of our corporation / alliance.

Any word on that?

There are numerous FPSs which have FF always on, and it has never been an issue in the games I've played. Sure, you get accidental TK sometimes and the occasional asshat, but those are part of the game.

There are also numerous ways to alleviate abuse, many of which have been outlined in various pro-FF posts on these very forums.

FF should be on in FW, PC, and there should be a hardcore mode for Skirmish and Ambush with FF on.

Not as it stands.

Thanks for the FW devblog, i really like that you just posted something simple in the forums and left it unlocked. I'd like to see you guys do it this way for basically all of them, good stuff.

Question - There was some talk of giving us real loot from the participants, where is this at?

Yes this is true, however most those FPS have some kind of negative affect for lots of team killing. We don't have any of those systems in place yet and need to get them there before we open that up for griefing.

If you find a server that is empty or just starting up you can fully stack your squads onto one side.

I could be going off of the wrong impression, but I thought that in FW we will be able to "stack" squads, so that we could essentially go in with 16 members of our corporation / alliance.

Any word on that?

It doesn't seem to make much sense to add Mercs that have no affiliation (unlike Eve pilots) to a channel that is faction specific.

Yes this is true, however most those FPS have some kind of negative affect for lots of team killing. We don't have any of those systems in place yet and need to get them there before we open that up for griefing.

Oh man can't wait. Come on CCP patch this thing already so I can fight for my side!

But really, looking forward to these changes and playing with them live on TQ!

I changed both references to PLEX in the OP to complex.

I'm happy as long as FF is coming soon so I don't have to play carebear versions of the game

Thanks. I figured it wasn't referring to the paid PLEX, but I couldn't figure out what it was.

So what sort of complex is this thing?

Silly question.

Will the attacking and defending faction be correctly listed?

I often see myself fighting for the Federal Defense Union (Caldari State) or the State Protectorate (Gallente Federation).

I want to be absolutely sure I'm blowing up Caldari and Amarr HAVs.

[b]Rewards
For now the FW battle rewards will match those of instant battles. We are looking into ways we can change this, things like if you fight for one faction continuously you gain standings and the standings affect your reward.

For now though the rewards will match those of instant battles.

Especially with no rewards or penalties, whats to stop two squads of 6 spliting up and one squad going to the other side to troll be it AFK or team killing with LAVS etc.... ?

I really dont understand how CCP can roll out a feature like this, hype it up (for what its worth ) then not enable some kind of player vote/kick especially if this is supposed to be a meaningful battle for your faction of choice.... ?


So all this is is a glorified Pub match where its easier to Q sync...

It doesn't need player vote/kick, it needs

A) Friendly Fire
B) A heavy favoring of rewards for the winners (aka twice the SP, 4x or more ISK... or at least a similar mechanic.)

The problem is that they haven't made FW any more enticing for DUST players than regular old instant battle, because it doesn't matter if you win or lose. Who cares if I can bring in 16 guys from my corp or not, if I can expect the other people in the match not to care if they lose to us.

CCP, if you don't fix the rewards mechanics, this game is screwed. I'm a freakin' director of one of the largest corps in the game, and even I don't see any reason for anyone to give half a **** about FW with the current mechanics.

It's amazing that you guys could fail this badly at this.

Expect full 16 man teams from a single core running around in free gear screwing off in most matches, because clearly winning/losing doesn't matter in New Eden.

It's like a grade school track meet. Everyone gets a participation ribbon.

LAME

Rewards
For now the FW battle rewards will match those of instant battles. We are looking into ways we can change this, things like if you fight for one faction continuously you gain standings and the standings affect your reward.

For now though the rewards will match those of instant battles.

I really think we need to have some penalties of some kind for leaving/not fighting in the match.

I fear that if some corps deploy into the FW matches the other team would just constantly either leave the match or stay in the MCC/somewhere else in the redline the entire match.

There's a seriously massive issue that has been pretty much totally overlooked by everyone here and needs urgent attention:

AFKing. If you can stack an entire game (which you will be able to on both sides) with your corp/friends, all 32 players can avoid capturing any null cannons and the game will last almost an hour. With these reward mechanics you'd still get some isk but most importantly you'd get nearly 18000 SP without boosters (that's 27000 SP with!).

This needs fixing ASAP. The entire FW system was better as it was - this way is much much worse and hugely open to exploitation.

1. Throwing the match for the side you want to win is a tactic that is going to difficult to deal with.

LP or Loyalty Points
This goes back to the rewards thing but to be honest, we have two currencies in the game already and we don't see the need to add a third. There are plenty of rewards we can offer in FW to incentivise it without adding the complexity of LP.

Oh c'mon Foxy. LP isn't THAT hard to keep track of. I thought these games were supposed to attract some of the smartest gamers around? You have a reputation to uphold! Don't go getting soft on us now....

In the meantime, I'll be the first to ask what those "plenty of rewards" are that your team has in mind already. I know you've got some good ideas, out with it! Don't be shy! We'll all be happy to tell you if they're worth fighting for or not.

Har har har. There is a difference between giving players complex choices and just adding complexity because you can't come up with a better way to do the same thing. We have the chance to possibly come up with something different and that works better for DUST.

But I love my LP :<

AFKing
This is something that should be looked at when viewing the entire game, not just factional warfare battles. For that reason it is not something that will get much response in this thread.

Serious question. Why?

Because its named Loyalty Points.
That's like putting a monetary value on loyalty.

he probably meant that if a team joined a game and show 6-12 imperfects on the other team, got scared and left then there should be a penalty for leaving. Or if they didn't wanna fight /// was beat up soo bad they switched to militia gear and stayed in MCC

How about allowing EVE players to contribute to the ISK payout at the end of the match?

We are mercenaries. It would be awesome if other players could pay us to fight.

Couple ideas:

Have a base ISK reward that is exactly the same as Instant battle. Give EVE players the option to contribute an additional amount to the total match reward for their faction. Have a set limit on the additional amount. So if the base reward is 2,400,000 ISK for each team for the entire match, give EVE players the chance to contribute up to another 1,000,000 ISK per match. Or any amount that would not be too destabilizing.

Give EVE players the option to contribute to the payout with no limit on how much they can add to the base reward. But tax the transfer at rate that would control the flow of ISK so it did not become destabilizing. EVE pilots are rich. If you tax the "sweetening of the pot" at something like 90% to 95% even 98% then a lot of pilots can throw their billions of ISK in pocket change into a match without causing too much upheaval in the system. This would also give the economics guys a chance to look at a minor and controlled flow of ISK fro EVE to DUST.

Seed battles with enough lead time so that the bonus EVE ISK per match can pile up a little, and let DUST mercs see how much ISK is in the pot.

And it would also be helpful if DUST were more visible to EVE pilots participating in faction warfare. I am not even sure what EVE pilots see when they are fighting in terms of the effect our battles are having on the war. A lot of DUST mercenaries might not care either way about faction warfare but if enough players start to participate and battles begin to have a real effect on the outcomes of the fights in space it seems like EVE pilots at least are going to start to care. Hopefully a lot. We really don't have much to do in DUST so a ton of people are going to try it out from curiosity or boredom. There is enough stuff to do in EVE that I would assume the pilots fighting in faction warfare are there because they care and it is something they are invested in.

Edit* You could also make it so that the losing side only got a some of the EVE bonus ISK. And the winners would get all of the bonus ISK put up for their side. That way you weren't punishing the losers so much as rewarding the winners.

Though I agree that we do not want to beat people with sticks and call them names for trying something new, or taking a risk faction warfare and possibly failing miserably.

Will you be restricted to specific factions based on your EVE corp affiliation
No, as it stands the faction your EVE corporation is in will have no effect on what matches you can join or what faction you fight for in DUST.

for a start hopefully u will add penalties for people that leave games. would love to see Deserter occurences on their permanent files along with an Deserter %. expose the rage quitters.

then make it so player contracts have an option and some of the higher npc contracts have a minimum Deserter % threshold on them. provides the perfect incentive for mercs not to desert.

Hey guys,

I just got into the office and want to respond to your feedback and concern.

Rewards
Yes, we hear you and we agree. Factional warfare should offer something more in terms of rewards than instant battles. What we have done with Uprising is a major shift in how the FW battles work and we wanted to focus on making sure that the actual mechanics of it work right and work well.

There are a lot of things we can do, and could do really easily, to increase the rewards in FW battles. Having the loot be what people used, just increasing the ISK payout, and other things. However when we look at FW battles we want to make them something more special than that. We are looking at incentivising you to fight for one faction and increasing the rewards you get based on your loyalty to one faction.

What we don't want to do is just increase the rewards for the winners. As soon as people think they are going to lose they would just drop and go to another match where they have a chance to win. That is no fun. In planetary conquest battles we have things like the minimum clone loss, loot rewards, and other mechanics to help incentivise people staying until the end.

TL;DR: Our focus for Uprising with FW was completely redoing the foundation, we will continue to iterate on this and make sure you have a reason to play FW over instant battles.

But what if one of your squad fails to launch with the squad (I've had it happen to me and seen it happen numerous times)? Should the squad stay in the match while the poor sod that got left out sits and waits? If your idea were to bear fruit, if that squad left to launch with their whole squad they'd get a little black mark on their record, all cause they were just being a good squad.

Quitting battles, not participating and team killers should get some type of status change or security status that is easily viewable to everyone. I don't want to pull a merc into my squad only to get killed by him. I try to pull in mercs that I know will work hard and will not rage quit.

Dynamically created battles
FW battles will no longer be created by corporations selecting a district to attack. Instead the server will dynamically generate battles for players to join. Where these battles take place will be based on where complex are being completed in EVE FW.

The system will make sure there is always a battle available to join. So as running battles fill up new ones will be generated.

There are some issues with the battles starting up correctly and the system ensuring there are enough battles. CCp Nullarbor is looking into this, along with a few other issues. Please bare with us as we get to the root of this and fix it as quickly as possible.

Lots of work going on at the office right now and we do apologize for this. :)

Would love a FW lobby area or just an easer way to find players than spamming local :-P

So is there anything else that goes into these dynamically generated battles? I'm wondering if the contested status of a system will matter? Like if a system is currently uncontested, but the enemy 'owns' a couple districts on a planet can you run some defensive plexes to then try and open up a district to take it back and 'clean up' a system? Also does it matter the size of a complex that is completed? So if there are 60 complexes completed every 10 minutes across all warzones, will mediums and larges be more likely to spawn districts than novices and smalls?

http://www.army.mil/symbols/armyranks.html you might want to re-look at your rank structure.

Wait I thought we didn't appear in system local...?

You guys should really think about doubling the ISK reward and adding the system that lets you salvage Aur items (like the PC one is going to be) as soon as possible (as in, before 5/14) because if the Instant Battles I've been playing lately are any indication, your matchmaking system has once again failed miserably.

You need to get high-SP and high-skill players out of Instant Battles in order to pit players who are less experienced and with less SP against each other so they aren't getting completely smoked every time. The only way you're going to keep new players playing for a long time is if they have fun--and getting destroyed by someone with 11 million SP isn't fun.

The message to the community should be that FW is where the competitive crowd that wants more of a reward and more of a challenge is at and Instant Battles are where people go get better at their gun game and build up SP until they're on a more level playing field (and thus start getting into FW).

I've had a few thoughts here on FW.

Also, in terms of linking the Eve-Dust connection further. I've wondered if there are permanent system infrastructures on FW districts? If we will be fighting ont he same places/sockets in each district when we revisit?

Also, could we make it so that I-Hub upgrades in systems in Eve then possibly lead to bonuses Dust side?

The two main ones I'm thinking...

Each tier of upgrade could increase the owner's MCC HP by 2.5% and clone count by 10 and could also reward defenders by increased amounts.

Or you could tie bonuses to the SI on the districts so that there could be a different urgency to strategies in each battle. Loot rewards could also be different based on the outcomes of battles with each type of SI as well. Kill MCC in a production facility reward modifier A, win by clones at PF get reward modifier B....

So districts with production facilities could be harder to take because defenders get more isk from defending at them and therefore fight with higher risk.

Districts with research labs could return more officer salvage for the winners.

Districts with cargo hubs could start with more clones for the defender but give more loot to the attacker based on clones killed.

Also each SI could spawn specific salvage that could then be traded to Eve when those markets link up.

What we don't want to do is just increase the rewards for the winners. As soon as people think they are going to lose they would just drop and go to another match where they have a chance to win.

Solution:
No SP or Isk if you leave a FW match before it ends.

There must be a reason to win.

You don't want to give more isk for winning?
Give 2x salvage to the winner and none to the loser.

posted a thread that disappeared into the ether so i'll ask here. Do I have to be a member of a mercs corp or alliance to OB for the minnies in EVE

friendly fire on pls. leave the casual stuff in instant battles.

Problem with this is that if you give nothing to the loser, as soon as it looks like one side don't stand a chance of winning, everyone will leave. It needs to be a reward system that encourages people to fight to the bitter end, even if they're going to lose overall.

What about splitting up players through squads. So more experienced players join a battle they join with other experienced players. Giving new players who are not in a squad will join a match with others who are not in a squad. This would defeat the whole pubstomp against other experienced played. Because currently it's random, for instance- you are in your squad with say corp members, then on the other team is full of new players who are trying the game out for the first time, the squad with corp members are more likely to win.

I was wondering if there will be pirate factions added to FW, also if there will be loyallty points for doing FX battles. Also if there would be a way to add a section to the market to use the loyality points to get different kinds of gear, I.E an upgraded version of say a caldari assault dropsuit that was modded by a different faction( kinda like the black eagle scout suits that we recieved from the event)

just throwing this idea out there CCP... but maybe if you work for a certain faction, the SP required for the dropsuit for that faction (i.e amarr heavy dropsuit, or amarr medium dropsuit) would be less. just an idea thought i would throw it out there. thanks

friendly fire on pls. leave the casual stuff in instant battles.

As long as we can tag people for the team to see after they've team-killed us

The future of Factional Warfare in DUST
We have mentioned multiple times that factional warfare (FW) battles are changing come Uprising and we have also said in varying places what is changing. What we have have yet to do is write one concise public document for you guys about what the changes to FW are. So here we go. :D

The following changes are going live on May 6th with Uprising.

Dynamically created battles
FW battles will no longer be created by corporations selecting a district to attack. Instead the server will dynamically generate battles for players to join. Where these battles take place will be based on where complex are being completed in EVE FW.

The system will make sure there is always a battle available to join. So as running battles fill up new ones will be generated.

Choosing your side
When joining a battle for FW you will have the choice in which side you join. Pretty simple and straightforward. :) I love those changes.

Picture of awesome

Rewards
For now the FW battle rewards will match those of instant battles. We are looking into ways we can change this, things like if you fight for one faction continuously you gain standings and the standings affect your reward.

For now though the rewards will match those of instant battles.

EVE changes
There are actually no client side changes in EVE to how FW works in DUST. Orbital bombardments will be the same and the effects controlled districts have over systems will also be unchanged. The only change to EVE is the monitoring of completed complex to determine where battles in DUST should take place.

Battles
The FW battles will be 16 versus 16 and NO friendly fire.
These battles can be found under the Mercenary tab of the Battle Finder come May 6th with the release of Uprising.

Thats it for now. Just a quick and simple blog to bring you all up to speed and allow for some discussion in the comments thread. I look forward to seeing you all in battle come May 6th.

Team True Grit

FF off, period. FriendlyFire should only be enabled when you can control who is on your side. Otherwise you are asking for exploitation.

We really need some sort of reward........

FF off... i just want to play on a team and be a team. MCC campers are annoyong enough add some ass clowns or genuinely poor players and nothing but 4 hour game sessions with corpmates would be profitable. Other FPS don't lose suits and equipment. This game is different genre of game that closely resembles other FPS. Wtf do people want FF on?... giving 1 more thing for people to cry about on comms.

Friendly fire is needed bozo. It may save dust. Hopefully.

For friendly fire we are looking at ways we can get it introduced into factional warfare. Our concern is not really about it being "more hard core" but about the ability for people to control who is in the matches and such. Right now there would be no conscience for people going into a FW match and just killing team mates.

We have ideas like faction standings and such, but they are not on the roadmap right now. Once we have something like that though we can look at adding friendly fire to FW. :)

Friendly fire is needed bozo. It may save dust. Hopefully.

This tells me the layout is already decided.

The man has to work! He also needs a fresh new pair of woolly socks, just in case cold weather hits -.o

Check out the Wikipedia article on Reykjavik, specifically the climate section. The highest temp they've ever recorded was 79.2f/26.2c. Their average high for September is 51.6f/10.9c. He definitely needs those socks.

Man, if we were averaging 10c this month I would be a much more happy man.

Man, if we were averaging 10c this month I would be a much more happy man.

Man, if we were averaging 10c this month I would be a much more happy man.

Man, if we were averaging 10c this month I would be a much more happy man.

FW definitely should have a larger isk payout than a normal match and some more salvage would be nice

I think with the 6min waiting room time including the importance of the battles the isk payout should be around 300-600k isk and getting at LEAST 1 salvage per game I think that's fair I mean most people who look at FW are like it's just a really long skirmish that you can do in a public contract. People should be rewarded for there time and effort.

This is the one reason I couldn't move to Iceland.. Not enough of a motorcycle season.

EDIT: Plus, my bike is carbureted and would never start.

Hell no we should never be paid that kind of ISK., all that does is encourage incompetent mercs to get in on FW which ruins the whole experience.

I think friendly fire would be a good addition with some sort of penalty system in place which would remove and ban players with a certain amount of team kills with even an SP reduction or total removal after offending for a period of time, but that's just an idea thrown out there I'm sure if CCP were to put something into place it would be good anyway. :-)

The layout of what? I am a bit confused as to what you are upset about. We had a discussion here openly about FW changes. We are now having an open discussion about FW stats in another thread. That does not mean we will not come back to this thread. Fair enough the thread has had another 2 pages of discussion since I last posted but I can't keep posting in every thread I post in forever. At some point I have to take the feedback and work on it. That also doesn't mean we won't come back to this discussion, probably with a new thread, as we get closer to actually beginning work on this stuff.

If you get more than say 2 FF kills in a game the TacNet turns you red and you stay highlighted on the map similar to being scanned...and kills on you now net 60 WP.

TacNet announcement:
"As infiltrator has been identified...terminate with extreme prejudice...an infiltrator has been identified..."

AWOXing coming soon to a FW event near you.

https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=112914&find=unread

How about a minimum KDR or other failsafe to prevent this?
Or FW only every 30 minutes and only those with highest LP can join.