Last night, I enjoyed some of the most intense fighting I’d
experienced in a long time. The soldiers
of the Amarr Militia had seized back Auga, a key low sec trade hub in the Hed
constellation, and the system that stands between my alliance and the rest of
Matari space. With Auga fallen, the
Amarr were on my doorstep. By the time
I had arrived home from work and logged into the game, they had begun to siege
my home system of Kourmonen. I hopped
into a Hurricane, punched the undock button, and warped off to join the
fleet. Any other night, this fight would
have seemed routine. Inferno, however,
changes the stakes for all of us.
Failure to hold Kourmonen until May 22 means I will be uprooted from my
home, exiled from the comfort of docking and the ability to repair and reship,
and forced to convoy over half the ships in my personal fleet to a new safe
haven. This fight mattered more than any other before it.
The next several hours were intense – two fleets, the
Amarrian invaders and the Matari defenders, brawled across the entire Kourmonen system, fighting in each new complex that spawned as the Amarr pressed to
capture victory points and tip the system in their favor. We fought in battlecruisers in the major
compounds, and shipped down into cruisers for standard complexes and frigates
and destroyer gangs for the minor outposts.
We had a large fleet, so did our enemy, but the time it takes to reship
and fact that many pilots had their hangars elsewhere meant that we rarely
fought with the entire fleet in one location.
Cruisers would camp entrances to minor outposts, unable to enter due to
ship restrictions, frigates would rush to start the countdowns on major
compounds until the heavy muscle could arrive to chase off the enemy that would
soon follow, and ship after ship after ship was reduced to smoldering wreckage. This is the type of action we all enlisted in Faction Warfare to enjoy.
The system of tiered complexes, victory points, and control
bunkers that form our “terrain” and allow pilots to use gang warfare to take
and hold space has always led to some incredibly fun evenings like the one I
enjoyed last night. For all of its bugs
and imperfections that still need ironing out in subsequent Inferno releases
(such as Dramiels and cynabals counting as Tech 1 ships), the system works.
But only if you care enough to use it in the first place. This has been a major issue for years: the purely cosmetic nature of occupancy
plexing meant that pilots like myself abstained from participating because
whether my enemy occupied my home system or not was irrelevant. Faction Warfare was just a big war dec, and
some boring missions I farmed to pay the bills. All of
this changes in less than two weeks.
When the Faction Warfare community first began to see the
final list of mechanics slated for the Inferno expansion, many were
outraged. The denial of docking rights
to enemy pilots is frightening to those of us who are used to being able to
load up a system we want to capture with resources, and then reship as often as
possible during the plexing battle in order to win the battle of attrition and
come out on top. As a CSM member, I had
opposed the docking rights change from the beginning, citing it as one of the
most common reasons pilots live in low sec as supposed to 0.0. I opposed the extreme scaling of the LP store
prices, because I felt it offered little comfort or hope to the faction that
had fallen behind. There is little
satisfaction to be gained in seeing an enemy so demoralized by these
consequences that they quit Faction Warfare entirely, which is precisely what
many individuals on the “losing” side of the war have threatened to do in the
past week. Just as I said during my
campaign for CSM, I have little interest in some scorched-earth “total victory”. If I was, I’d move to 0.0. I’m just
in Faction Warfare for the fights.
Many members of the Amarr and Caldari militias in particular
have set their sights on me as the responsible party for the items they’re
unhappy with in the Inferno expansion.
They see the CSM member they voted for playing for the winning team,
changing the rules on the fly to favor his own faction. Disregarding everything I’ve ever said on the
topic since before I even campaigned for CSM, all they know is the future
presents some major obstacles for mounting a comeback, and that they never should have
trusted an enemy to represent them. I’ve abandoned neutrality, they claim. The great irony in all of this is that
despite consistently claiming that the Inferno changes ruin casual PvP and
force 0.0 gameplay down our throats, my detractors are actually transforming
the community's culture, injecting every drop of the hate-fueled
bloodlust that we’ve come to expect from null sec Sovereignty warfare. Distrust
breeds hatred, hatred fuels war, and war brings fights. CCP’s expansion is already working as
intended.
The fact remains that the bulk of the Faction Warfare
changes headed our way in Inferno are community-driven. The crown jewel of the package: generous
rewards that enable sustainable PvP and territorial warfare without an NPC grind, is what Faction Warfare pilots have
been demanding for years. We got
it. We asked for consequence and meaning,
a reason to fight beyond a system’s name.
We got it. We asked for a reason
for new players to join Faction Warfare, we got it. Even the most controversial part of the package:
the docking restriction I opposed, was originally a community suggestion. We’re a fickle bunch, often forgetting what
we’ve asked for in the past. The single
feature that FW pilots are regretting the most that didn’t make it into
Inferno? Cyno-jammers, a blatantly 0.0-style mechanic. The irony is still lost on those complaining about the "direction" this is all headed. Lack of consistency in feedback, combined with the emergent
nature of EVE’s gameplay, means that CCP’s developers have little to latch onto
as far as a “perfect” set of Factional Warfare mechanics, ones we can all agree
will drive small-gang warfare more than ever before. I didn’t
like station lockout, but I don’t know for a fact it will destroy the
feature. Neither do any of you.
This is my message to those in the community that are
outraged right now: you can blame me if it helps you get through this. If you want to accuse me of having "won the
meta-game", sucking up for votes from all four factions only to turn around and
endorse mechanics designed to crush my enemies, go right ahead. Believe whatever you want, it doesn't make it the truth. All I
care about is that you do something useful with that hatred. Forum foot-stomping is
pointless – CCP is at the end of their time to tweak the package, and we now
know what we are up against. There will be time to make adjustments later. Right now, we need to make the most of it. Take pride
in your faction and come up with a plan to win this new war. The defeatist attitude amongst a handful of players on the
forums is not representative
of the community that elected me to office. I was elected by players that care more about
the number of good fights to be had than about living in comfort.
As I said before, the bulk of my personal fleet is currently
in Kourmonen. My corporation’s home is
the Huvilma constellation – Bosboger, Gulmorogod, and Lulm. My alliance keeps its assets in Huola. If you’re outraged, than come at me bro. We'll work out our differences on the battlefield. My responsibility as a CSM member is to see that Faction Warfare community enjoys
the greatest war it’s ever seen in the years ahead. It’s
my job to make sure we all give a damn about logging in and playing the game. So by all means, tell your corpmates I'm a horrible person, and call them to arms. Come out and punish me for my “betrayal”.
Make me regret my supposed “capitulation” to CCP’s awful plan to ruin your game. Just don't dishonor yourself and your friends by saying its going to be too hard. Work together if you must - the new mechanics allow allied factions to be rewarded for assisting you in burning down my ships, invading my territory,
and exiling me from my home.
I’ll be waiting for you.
