To the left is my Minmatar freedom fighter that has enlisted in the Factional Warfare. Especially the first few days were a lot of fun. I roamed around in a few smaller gangs and some bigger fleets. The bigger fleets were a new experience for me. There were some good FC’s, and only one mediocre one. The mediocre one was bad, because his orders weren’t clear, his mic didn’t work properly so fleet chat was all ‘Uh what are we warping to ?‘ ‘what system are we in ?‘ etc ;).
In the first few days I lost a few ships, three ruptures and a stabber. Only one was actually lost in a gang battle. Got picked off the gate while catching up with a gang by an Abbaddon, and two ships were lost to pirates.
But the last few days the war has gone a bit stale. We have mainly been capturing a lot of complexes and the Amarr seem to have given up. Which is understable as their morale must have hit rock bottom. Minmatar gangs all over their low sec space, we have more numbers and also seem to be a bit better experienced at pvp. Think a lot of alts signed up for the Minnie fleet. While capturing plexes, make sure to have a magazine or books at hand, or catch up on some blogs, as it takes up to 20mins to capture one and it can be very boring. The standing boosts and the titles are nice, so I hope it’s worth it.
I tried a few missions as well, but they’re not worth it, unless you’re in a gang of a few similar ships. They’re very hard to solo, especially in a pvp fit. The rewards are awful at the moment, they might get a bit better over time, as I assume a lot of them fail, raising the reward. It’s just a shame you don’t get any loyalty points for capturing or defending structures, that would make the loyalty store a lot more interesting. At the moment I can’t see the general population grinding 80k lp for a faction frig, with this mission system in place.
Anyway so far I think FW is a moderate succes. There is a lot more going on in Lowsec than usual. Whether things will stay this way over time, we’ll have to see…
Here is a thought for you….DFo you think CCP will add more rewards to the content, or do you think this will encourage more people to move towards to end game ( 0.0)? If they boost rewards much then they will pull in 0.0 folks, if theykeep them the way they are it will go a little stale I wold imagine. Tough line to walk for sure.
Here si the questions. Will this drive people to play in 0.0? If it DOES then I would consider it success, if it DOES NOT then I think they have quite a bit of trouble on their hands…
To be honest I doubt it will drive people to 0.0. FW is more fun than the fleet battles there, from what I have been hearing.
CCP might be adding some rewards in the future that are linked to the titles, but I dont think they’ll go over the top. As you said it’s a fine line to walk 🙂