Recently the ability to "choose your side" in merc battles was made available, so in my mind this opens up the opportunity to.... well implement faction standings, and allow players to work towards something that isn't SP. So lets say you fight with the amar all the time. Win or lose your faction standing will go up a small margin all the way up to level 10 eventually. Obviously winning will give you a bigger boost then losing, as why would an empire admire you for constantly losing? In addition to faction standings you also earn faction specific "loyalty points" and "bonuses". As your faction standings go up, your faction bonuses increase, and the amount of loyalty points you make for that faction also increases.

Loyalty points can be used in the market to purchase faction specific weapon, suits and equipment. The higher your faction standing is, the higher level suits you'll be allowed to purchase. (assuming you have that faction's suit skills leveled up) For example, you might have a +10 standing with Amar, and you can purchase prototype Amar faction suits, HOWEVER because you don't have the "normal" racial suit skills upgraded you still wont be able to "use" the faction suit. To use the faction suit you, the player, will need level 5 in both the racial and basic suit operation skill, and the reason for this is because faction suits will have additional advantages over non-faction suits of the same tiers. For example these faction suits may have more CPU/PG, perhaps an extra high or low slot. Maybe there faster then the other suit variants, or perhaps they have some other benefit. They should also have a hefty isk price tagged along with the loyalty point cost. These suits should be the type of suits you pull out every once in a while just to have fun (or fight in serious corp matches).

Loyalty Bonuses go into how I think these matches should be run. If you select a merc contract for a faction, you are given a certain selection of fittings to use. In other words, you don't get to bring your own suits to the fight, the state provides you with clones that THEY made. As your standing for that nation goes up, you get to use better suits, or perhaps just get better bonuses using the already set suits. The standings could also allow you to get payed more upon completion of each battle, and also give you more SP (that partially does not count towards your cap).

CONCLUSION: This idea addresses the problem "noob" players have with getting proto-pub stomped all the time. If they don't like it, they can join a Faction battle and they will be on relatively even ground to any other player. This also gives players incentive to play outside of grinding for SP. Instead of SP grinding they would be Standings grinding, AND they would be rewarded for doing it. One thing to incentivize continual loyalty would be to have a slow "count down" effect on standings. For example, if a player doesn't play for a faction for more then 1 week, there standing will drop down by 1 point until it reaches zero

Not sure if that's a "word" as much as it is "three words" but i get what you mean...... The word i would have used is "diverse" because it adds more to the game then just "shoot at this guy so he dies" it adds...... "shoot at this guy while you work for this faction so he dies and you could potentially get cool loot out of it cuz everyone loves loot"