Friday, June 15, 2012

Thoughts on ranks and defensive plexes

Team Game of Drones did a lot of great things this expansion tackling ship re-balancing, overcoming language barriers(yes i watched CCP Yitterbum on fanfest), and most of all the FW overhaul. But did they give us a relatively big bone to chew on for a while? I think so, because even though the new FW system is quite fun and has that new feature smell it was half done so to speak. Yes great rewards for offensive plexing, good kills in the defensive plexing but that's about it for defending your space. How does this match up in 0.0 terms? Well in null defending your space does get you the fights, but it also allows your alliance(s) to continue holding the resource rich space bringing in the bacon. The offensive side can take the tech moon but will they use it as soon as as they have it? In most cases no, they'll continue their conquest until the region has stabilized.

I understand CCP's logic here, I mean this is a "forever war" and keeping things topsy-turvy keeps things interesting. But with no way to actually deny LP's to an enemy faction in a rewarding way people may just get bored and go back to shitty incursions. Drudge matches start and the tug-of-war happens without defense or can favor a winning side for a long time. The tug-of-war is being seen in the caldari-gallente contest not many want to defensive plex because it pays nothing! So when one side reaches tier 3 they are reduced to tier 1 within days.

The Bacon 


This inevitably brings me to my next point why not when you defensive plex contribute to going to a system upgrade? Let it effect it the same way offensive plexes work half the LPs going to the ihub. And then the other half going towards your promotion when you get said promotion. As i remember it CCP wanted ranks to be more meaningful and what better way to do so then this. I posted the idea of rank LPs on my last post, I'll explain the idea again if you rank up you get LP's toward each rank and every time you get podded you lose a rank.  Now tying in the idea of LPs going toward an upgrade so your faction can still rapid deploy LPs to a an important hub if you choose. 

This would be more to par as a "stepping stone" to null as more strategic points would be attacked. As well as bringing awesome small gang fights to the newer players needing the pvp experience. As I  said before this gives noobs time to learn pvp while training those skills for the offensive actions. And provides them steady income after a good podding but not just for newer players older ones as well. Iteration needs to happen at some point hopefully, this is an outcry we need as FW pilots. I see things could become quickly one sided or dull over time with efforts down the sink and burnt out pilots. So what do you say Game of Drones you up for another challenge or did you stick a fork in us already?

SHAM

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