Faction Warfare Represents All That’s Wrong with Eve

Yes, I know that title is harsh, but it really is true.  Go ahead and try to kill a FW pilot.  I’ll wait.

Now you understand how I felt for three hours yesterday, during which I roamed through three regions looking for a fight.  I successfully engaged and scrambled three targets, only to have them either play station games or warp away (yeah, at least two warp core stabilizers there).

On the bright side, I observed very fine flying from one pilot, who successfully kited me – though he didn’t engage – until his FW timer ticked to “Captured”, at which point he warped off.

But I couldn’t find a fight from a FW pilot to save my soul.  They would rather mindlessly circle a button for ten or fifteen minutes to collect their LP than engage in, you know, warfare.  In FW, PvE pays better than PvP.

Eve has the same problem.  Much of both null-sec and low-sec are unpopulated, but high-sec is filled to the brim with PvErs.  Safer activities are more profitable than dangerous ones.  In Eve as a whole, null-sec or low-sec activities don’t generate enough isk to justify the additional risk of entering space that could involve you in *gasp* an engagement.  The only people that go into these areas of space are those who are looking for those engagements.

We need to balance that cost/value relationship.  It was something I was hoping I’d hear about in the Rubicon expansion teaser, but that announcement was filled with garbage, to be honest.  I knew it would never happen, but I was reading with bated breath about the 50% decrease in high sec, 25% increase in low-sec, and 75% increase in null sec of mining yields and mission rewards.

And the solution for Faction Warfare?  Drop the LP reward for capturing sites by 75%, and quintuple the rewards for killing a FW pilot.  Instant PvP-infusion.

But I doubt that’ll ever happen.  CCP seems perfectly content to keep the bulk of their players in high-sec.  I think this is a huge mistake.  Chaos drives industry, encourage PLEX sales, and makes Eve life more difficult for more players.

Difficult?  Is that a good thing?  Yes, it is.

It’s well-known that there are certain thresholds that mark the end of an Eve account’s lifespan.  Owning a supercarrier is one of them.  They all appear to be really good goals that will provide more excitement to an Eve session, but they’re actually a death blow.  The more CCP can extend the period of time needed to reach those thresholds, the longer an account will remain subscribed.  And, setbacks will only make the achievement of all the intermittent goals all the better.

And who knows?  You may get derailed by PvP, which is a self-propagating goal in-and-of-itself that has the side-effect of generating content for someone else, too.

What we achieve too cheaply, we esteem too lightly.