Tag: faction warfare

FW changes came early

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , ,

Just yesterday Factional Warfare has received the update, which was initially planned for Retribution. Why would CCP resolve to ninja patching in this case? Well, there can be a few explanations.

  • First, market has been quite well unbalanced by militias dumping a lot of LP store goods. Prices for implants and datacores sold by Gallente Federation have fallen sharply after Gallente militia pushed to T5 on October 7th . the same happened to ships like Dominix Navy Issue (it has affected Navy Meathron and Comet as well, but to a smaller degree). Crashed market also means that L4 and L5 mission runners had their income substantially reduced.

   

  • PLEX prices have stricken through the roof again. Similar thing happened when CCP has introduced the Incursions, when a lot of people quickly become rich, PLEX prices went from roughly 350 million to 500. Now the overflow of ISK caused PLEX prices to hit 590 million. High PLEX prices might discourage younger players from sticking to EVE.
  • Factional Warfare had no real meaning; players would push to cash out, instead of keeping space. Moreover, players of one militia would keep alts in their enemy’s militia to flip systems and farm plexes in them.
  • Factional Warfare was supposed to be a fun PVP experience. Instead, it has became a PVE-centric gameplay.

To combat the issues above, CCP has quickly deployed some of the planned features:

  • Replace the LP store price reduction from War Zone Control Tiers with a LP gain bonus.
  • Remove all rewards for completing complexes in a system that is already in vulnerable state.
  • Add LP rewards for defensive plexing. Formula is as follows: LP Gain = Base value of plex * (Contested percentage of the system/100) * 0.75
  • Increase the cost of upgrading systems and decrease the bleed-out when those systems are attacked.
  • It is now required to kill the defending NPCs during offensive plexing.

More details is available in this dev-blog.

Impact of DUST districts on Factional Warfare in Inferno 1.3

Lukas Rox DUST 514, EVE Online, Games , , ,

While I was busy keeping the Retribution Status Post up to date (hence the lack of new posts, just a lot of updates to the forementioned text), CCP has pushed the DUST integration to Tranquility. While DUST servers are not connected yet, Districts and their influence over Faction Warfare is already deployed on live server. The same applies to Orbital Bombardment ammo and the whole Infantry market group.

This only means one thing: CCP is getting ready for DUST 514. While Retribution might seem lacking any “theme” feature (like incursions or wormholes), the crown feature can simply be the introduction of DUST. Let’s have a look at the initial impact of DUST on EVE (shamelessly stolen from patch notes):

  • Each district owned by a particular Factional Warfare faction affects the number of Victory Points needed to move a Factional Warfare system into a vulnerable state.
  • If a district owner is the same faction than the one controlling the Factional Warfare system, the number of Victory Points needed to put the solar system into vulnerable mode is increased
  • If a district owner is the opposing faction than the one controlling the Factional Warfare system, the number of Victory Points needed to put the solar system into vulnerable mode is decreased
  • Each temperate planet in Factional Warfare space contributes by 12.5% to the System Capture Status Victory Point pool, for a maximum of 50% Victory Points in Factional Warfare solar systems with four temperate planets.
  • Until DUST514 is fully implemented on Tranquility, planetary districts have been set to belong to the NPC faction that traditionally owned the Factional Warfare solar system.

What does that mean?

  • It will be harder to put some systems into vulnerable state, depending on which faction originally owned the system
  • Some players are concerned it might be impossible to attain Tier 5 status with this change
  • Math suggests the changes will be superficial: while “enemy” systems require more plexing to put into vulnerable state, originally owned systems require less plexing to make them vulnerable. This means pushing to Tier 5 should still be possible, but will require a bit more work “behind enemy lines”.

EVE: Inferno announced

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , , , ,

Make sure to check these posts about EVE Online: Inferno

I have been speculating about the content and features of the incoming summer expansion in this post. CCP has changed their approach a little bit, announcing their next expansion name way before its release. CCP Unifex covers most of the high level focuses of the new EVE Online expansion in this dev-blog here.

EVE Online: Inferno (c) CCP hf. 2012
EVE Online: Inferno (c) CCP hf. 2012

Of course, you can count on my reports once the new expansion shows up on SiSi. Until then, the list of features in EVE Online: Inferno is rather short and lacks details:

  • Rookie ships makeover – details can be found in this dev-blog. You can also watch your favourite CCP Guard in the first episode of new “In development” series. You will find the video just below this post. This change will be pushed as part of Crucible 1.5
  • Faction Warfare – more fun and more reasons to fight for your nation
  • Corp vs Corp/Alliance Warfare (CONCORD sanctioned wars) – new things which will mix up all forms of combat,
  • Dust514 link – bringing collaboration between console and PC players to a new level
  • Improvements and usability fixes
  • Hopefully, Amarr and Minmatar ships are going to get the V3 overhaul
  • Focus is back on spaceships, but CCP does not forget about avatars. New forms of bipedal gameplay will be released as soon as they are ready. Ever wanted your character to have a sleeve tattoo? Then read this dev-blog for details.
  • Module and implant re-naming to make them easier to remember for new players – see details in this post
  • New EVE Online Launcher – see my post here

It’s worth mentioning, that there will be hands-on demo of DUST514 on Fanfest. Dust bunnies hope that beta follows soon.

PS. Yes, I know I have been writing much less than usual lately: RL is to blame.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IhIFrWBTuww]