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Current the Caldari Militia has approximately 5,254 members as per today! HUZZAH!!
Now let’s look at the Victory Point Total for the last seven days:
Wow. So, we taking bets on which faction has the highest number of LP farmers?
Now, I understand that LP farming is an issue.. and a significant one at that, particular with the market fluctuations and relative ease that an LP farmer could make isk. So I’m not real upset that it has been addressed. I also liked the change in how the LP is picked up, with Tiers improving the amount of LP rather than a mad rush and carpal tunnel syndrome at the end of reaching Tier 5. Still, there is something that bothers me about the new system:
- Add new LP donation tax based on each faction’s warzone control. The higher your warzone control level the more of your donations are consumed by the tax. This is in place to provide diminishing returns and to compensate for the increased LP gain from the new tier system. When reaching Tier 5 the tax would be as high as 70%.
- Increase the cost of upgrading systems and decrease the bleed-out when those systems are attacked. Currently 50% of the LP gained by offensive plexers is removed from the upgrade level of the system they plex in. We are reducing that to 10% and increasing the total LP pool for upgrading systems. This will result in systems taking twice as much LP to upgrade but also make degrading those upgrade levels take 10 times as long.
- Old upgrade costs were:
Level1: 10,000 LPs
Level2: 25,000 LPs
Level3: 45,000 LPs
Level4: 70,000 LPs
Level5: 100,000 LPs
Buffer: 150,000 LPs
New upgrade costs are:
Level1: 40,000 LPs
Level2: 60,000 LPs
Level3: 90,000 LPs
Level4: 140,000 LPs
Level5: 200,000 LPs
Buffer: 300,000 LPs
The critical thing that was missing? A detailed way to force non-contributing players to contribute. You see, the above examples require those dedicated to a particular cause, say for example, the Caldari Nation, to put their own LP into raising the tier. That part is good. However, being a reasonably active FW pilot I know that a good 50 to 70% of the FW pilots on the Caldari side are there only to by siphon LP and will NEVER contribute either ships or LP to improving systems. Their reasoning: “Why should they? Everyone else will contribute enough. They always do. Why spend my hardly earned LPs on system upgrades when they will do it for me and I can reap the benefits anyways?”
That logic, while common in various threads throughout all of Eve, is something that Faction Warfare in particular needs to address, especially since at the higher system Tiers a lot of LPs gets swallowed up by taxes. At this point the current LP system still penaltizes the player that participates more, which is unfortunate. True, these people (like me) will continue to donate LP to get the system tiers back up to 5, but we need to find ways of .. influencing.. less interactive players from just skating by. This has to be a game mechanic because, for all intents and purposes, the number of participating players will always just be a trickle, no matter what, because there are just SO many options in Eve, of which Faction Warfare only deals with one or two. Trying to convince current FW players who are only in it for the isk will be difficult because they know someone will step up anyway, so why should it be them?
Such a change could be minor, merely a check against their faction LP to see if a certain amount of LP has been paid into the Tier system. If it hasn’t then they don’t get to buy from the LP Store. Simple and effective. Or it could be something else. Just something so that the burden of keeping systems up doesn’t fall to just a few active players.
2nd Anomaly From the Left 
Perhaps you need to explain why a player, who has lightly particpated in FW needs to contribute the same amount to the tier system, when they haven’t been one of those piling millions in faction LP by orbiting?
Put it this way, not a minimum of LP into the common pot, but a check against a percentage of their faction LP in a given cycle. Contribute to the FW cause (and earn faction LP) a little bit, pay a little bit. Having a certain amount (I assume a raw value) overly favors the players milking the system.
Well, the main point is that everyone who is involved in FW should contribute into the Tier system. A minimum LP amount, which percentage-wise probably hits the player who is lightly participating does, in my mind, force at least every to give some (I wasn’t thinking a lot maybe 10,000 LP total). I’ve thought about running a percentage calculation, but you penalize both hard-working and LP farmers at the same time with that.
One thing that hasn’t been detailed yet (and probably won’t be until we have some time for everyone to adapt to the recent changes) is how the new LP system will be/is being exploited. If the new system is solid, then we’re going to have to see how people operate under the new rules before a fair percentage can be determined. So, for the time being, the minimum requirement is a fast and easy fix that will only hurt a few. The only big question will be is will be on a week to week or month to month basis.
The perfect point to get some penalties to the winning side.
LP payout gets a boost, but why should the winning faction pay a lot for missions? If your faction gets up to Tier 4 or 5 your PvP is rewarded and the LPs made through missioning get reduced due to taxes.
That way, LP farming on the winning side would get reduced, and those farming contribute to the system upkeep.
Well, if LP tax payouts are taken from the front end, and not when you are going to upgrade systems, then I could see the bonus there. The flipside is that the value of Faction LP versus standard non-FW missioning LP will come into play again. If the value of Faction Warfare LP comes anywhere close to what a person can get for their LP from non-faction missioning, then there will be no more LP farmers at all.