Empyrean Age expansion (since nobody else mentioned it)

[Viin]

Battlegrounds would get me playing Eve a hell of a lot more.  Pvp without having to look for it for hours, or get a fleet of 30 together to be competitive would be great.  Even if you still lost your ship it'd be great.

You're right, it would be. As long as you got to loot!

[Endie]

If this sort of thing is brought in, and done right, then I'd probably be keen to do another recruitment thread, as I suspect we'd see another spike in numbers.

[Nerf]

Even if it was put in a timewasting minigame, with no purpose or consequences, I'd still hop on alot more for it.

Eve combat is alot of fun, it's everything leading up to the combat that isn't.  And sometimes, what happens directly afterwards.

[Phred]

Pick a side, live in their space.
Or just move to 0.0

Or quit the game if they fuck it up too badly.

[Simond]

Pick a side, live in their space.
Or just move to 0.0

Or quit the game if they fuck it up too badly.

"If" ? 

[JoeTF]

Holy Crap I'm agreeing with Simond again! 

[apocrypha]

I was part of Red vs Blue for a while which was an attempt to bring easy pvp to EVE in anticipation of Factional Warfare.

The idea was 2 corps (ended up as 2 alliances) permanently in mutual war with each other in Empire, based in a relatively small area. It worked superbly at first and for upwards of 100 people per side we had weeks of awesome pvp without any of the tedious bullshit that precedes EVE's pvp usually.

it fell apart unfortunately, mainly due to moving to 2 warring alliances open to entire corps to join which meant that it quickly became totally unbalanced. It also relied heavily on good leadership and the Blue side was lacking that due to just plain bad luck.

But, point is, it was immense fun. People were free to join and leave the corps when they wanted, we tried to encourage fair fights where possible and we regularly got easy access to small/medium gang and solo pvp. It wasn't instanced pvp, it wasn't arenas or battlegrounds, it was entirely accessible to pretty much anyone and I think if CCP could make Factional Warfare work in a similar way it might be a massive success.

The things that need to be avoided are huge imbalances. One one side starts to utterly dominate another side then it will become a lot less fun for all concerned.

[Endie]

A little more detail, mainly around the 4 minute mark, which still sounds positive: http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/31039

[Phred]

Pick a side, live in their space.
Or just move to 0.0

Or quit the game if they fuck it up too badly.

"If" ? 

Ya, the whole tone of that interview spoke louder than any words needed about the dev's attitude in this one.

[Gets]

"Faction warfare" has among the community obtained the taste of a dead horse they've been beating for a long while now. The real feuds in EVE don't have anything to do with the roleplay ones, if not counting the Amarrians vs. Minmatar player initiatives we're part of. Not surprisingly the Gallente and Caldari aren't that popular to r0l3pl@y. I'm quite worried that if you lay "faction warfare" on top of what's really going on the result will be a typical non-holistic game design blunder.

At least I don't want to see players and corps signing up for it as soldiers only to be hammered by a big gang in their own space. Yes, I can agree that this was the case when RvB got other corps in the game. It was much more entertaining with only alts and newbies. Though I would love sign up as a soldier for the Caldari or as a mercenary for Amarr, complete objectives, get rewards and standing while battling it out for some low-sec control. If the faction I'm fighting for is willing to at least pay for the ammunition (I'm looking at you too Tabula Rasa) that'd be great. What would really be incredibly fun - an agent giving me a mission to anchor a sovereignty claiming POS in a specific part of low-sec (obviously this POS wouldn't work anywhere else).

I'm already pleased that this has markings of a large scale Empire war without the large fees, giving newbie characters ways to participate without having to committ to a player corp off the bat. If the whole purpose of this "factional warfare" to activate more people into the PvP of the game, then there should be rewards for players taking up higher initiative in fighting the war. If a player gets a group of people together and leads them towards a successful system capture, then he should get a higher reward or rank for it. This would make people consider training Leadership skills a bit more maybe. For player organizations there could be a lot of opportunities to show their abilities in combat by completing these objectives and get other people interested in joining them. This would be really good for a roleplay alliance like Aegis Militia, since most people involved would be other Amarrians.

It's not likely considering EVE's kick-in-the-nuts nature, but I don't want to see this turned into some sort of sports-PvP where people get rewarded just for showing up.

[MahrinSkel]

Frankly, I see a whole host of potential problems with this.  The "Blue Healer" type exploits are legion, not so much from direct participation in combat, but using faction outsiders to scout, run logistics, etc.  It will change the nature of 0.0 as well, by sucking out the players who just want the pew-pew.

It also implies that the governmental upgrades for 0.0 (gate guns, NPC patrols, permanent stargates) are being dropped.  Which is very disappointing.  It smacks of "WoW Envy", somebody decided that the problem with Eve PvP was that it wasn't enough like WoW.

--Dave

[Jayce]

That would especially suck for me, since I am here because I'm fleeing from WoW PvP.

The sport thing is just stupid.  PvP is not a sport.  It doesn't make sense in a persistent world unless it sucks to lose.

Also, I'm wondering why they want more people involved in PvP.  It seems like there are a host of people involved as it is.  And every war needs its profiteers, so there is a place for the carebears too.  Especially when they are occasionally reminded that you can't be a complete carebear in this game by folks such as Slay 

[lac]

Eve needs some breathing space. Since it's a capless game, characters can keep improving forever, and all the fat patches are occupied. There needs to be some place to go for those ten mates that just joined the game and want to make some fortune. Personally I think Endie's idea of providing a lot more of the lower profit 0.0 space would be a great way to lure people into nullsec but maybe ccp's new lowsec regions can do just that. If the rewards are right and the fights are calculated to accomodate small groups this can be good.