Warp Core Stabs, Faction Warfare, Plexing, and Rewards

Rixx Javix responded to my defense of Faction War Farmers in his post titled "Two Algos Walk into a Bar" last week in which he writes this:

I mention this story for a couple of reasons, but primarily as a response to Kirith's post over on Ninveah. He makes the argument, which so many people have, that there is nothing wrong with people being allowed to play the game anyway they want. Which I happen to agree with. But he also lumps in the use of stabs in a combat zone into the argument. And I would like to make an intelligent counter point to that insane circle of logic. You don't need a crutch.

I didn't respond right away because I wanted to think on it hard and respond solidly. No one quite goes to war for something they believe in like Rixx Javix; he will fuck up the unprepared. (That is meant as a compliment, BTW.)

On Friday I did comment on his post:

I think you are not seeing the situation from the other side very well. Not all farmers want to be on constant vigilance when doing something as boring as plexing can be, similar to afk mining in high sec or ratting in null sec. I don't see stabs as a crutch for bad players but as a tool for a player to casually farm the plexes while doing other things with their attention.

But I do want to dig into this issue deeper and discuss some philosophical issues with Faction War in particular and grinding for ISK in general in the game.

* * * * *

One of the big  issues with EVE is that the PvE experience is vastly different than the PvP experience. You can run missions until you are blue in the face with 100 million skill points, it does not prepare you for your first instance of combat against another player. The NPCs, aka rats, are dumb, weak, foolish opponents that can be dispatched with ease once their scripted responses are figured out and cataloged. This has changed a bit with Sleeper AI, incursions, and the new burner missions but even there an NPC is never going to fit outside the current meta to catch you unawares or set a bait trap and crush you when you engage.

So this creates two divergent gameplays, one where interaction is with scripted NPCs and the goal is to earn (ultimately) ISK for the player's purposes, and another where the interaction is with other players and the goal is to beat them (roughly boiled down).

The friction we are talking about today comes from the fact that faction warfare plexing mechanics straddle both sides of that gameplay coin. Rixx and I, being PvPers, care not a whit about the ship fittings of mission runners, high sec incursion runners, wormhole sleeper farmers, or null sec ratters. Of course, they don't fit warp core stabs because they actually need to fight their NPCs, but I'm willing to bet if they did that it would not be a big deal because they live in areas were getting attacked while doing PvE gameplay is the exception whereas the dangerous waters of low sec doing PvE is pretty much impossible, hence why low sec incursions, mining, and missions are unheard of.

Faction warfare has no high sec option, nor does it have the vast stretches of null sec or wormhole space to stretch out in. So the plexing side of it is unusual PvE in that respect. The other unusual aspect is that defensive plexing requires no guns as the rats in the plex are friendly, allowing the situation where a pilot can fly a non-tanked warp core stabbed frigate and still do PvE content.

Is this acceptable?

My position has been stated as "yes" due to the fact that I don't see an issue with players doing this type of PvE in this manner any more than I have issues with almost AFK mining, mission running, or null sec ratting. I think the reward is congruent with the effort of this boring gameplay (boring unless someone attacks you I suppose).

Rixx's position (and correct me if I get it wrong) is that the implication of being in faction warfare is that you are ready for warfare at any time. After all, its part and parcel of being a low sec denizen that non-consensual combat with other players is one grid away at all times. Being in low sec in any capacity and being relatively safe and able to AFK do anything in space goes against the nature of the region and should be actively discouraged. In other words, warp core stabs on an ostensibly combat ship is in-congruent with low sec in general and faction warfare in particular.

In my opinion, it feels like I'm looking at the PvE aspect of the defensive plexing and Rixx is looking at the PvP side of it, and to be fair, I can see what he is arguing for and against and at first pass I would have agreed with him.

Here's the aspect that gives me pause.

Rixx and I have a very privileged position in the game in that neither of us is hurting for ISK to fund our PvP habit due to the fact that we are long time players and have built up reserves of assets and Rixx I'm sure can leverage his considerable skills for ISK-paying jobs much like I have done with my writing skills over the years. I'm pretty sure we don't have to worry about grinding out a few dozen plexes to fund the next set of ships we need for our PvP adventures.

Others are not so fortunate and, outside of buying a time code from EveTimeCode.com or some other less-awesome retailer, they have to face the prospect of the mind numbing orbit of so many buttons with the constant threat of maybe being attacked. The best way to do plexing is with friends to chat with to whittle away the time but if you are alone, the internet beckons to distract you, so I can see the desire to only pay half attention and let warp core stabs save you when you inevitably get attacked.

What I'm getting at it is that plexing is SOOOO boring. But it is ultimately the only easy beginner friendly way to make money part of faction warfare. (I've heard that better money is in fact warfare missions but that requires a lot more attention and effort I believe.) So if you want Faction Warfare to be self contained in that pilots can live and make a living in the system without having to have outside sources of funds, you either need to have reward sufficient enough that the effort is worth it, or effort low enough so that the meager reward can be harvested relatively often enough.

Right now defensive plexing in faction warfare opts for the latter alternative and I think its a valid question of whether it should be that way, but I'm concerned that simply changing the paradigm by essentially making it require more effort (which is the end result of removing warp core stabs from the equation) might be most detrimental to younger pilots who want to be in faction warfare for the PvP but don't have the secondary sources of income to support the PvP expenses incurred. I don't want players to feel like they have to exit faction warfare to make ISK to enjoy it as a similar situation happened in null sec a few years back when anomalies were rebalanced and many line members of the old Northern Coalition realized they were better off running level four missions than ratting in null sec.Many left and didn't come back as they felt abandoned.

But this starts to lead into another philosophical discussion on all grinding for ISK in all areas of space, and perhaps further into all AFK gameplay like mining, high sec hauling, afk cloaking, etc. Players automate and go partially or wholly AFK when the gameplay is necessary for a desired outcome (getting ISK, getting to point A from point B, etc) but is extremely un-compelling to participate in. I don't want to lead to far into that tar pit today so let's stop there and get to my closing.

I can see the point Rixx is making about warp core stabs being a crutch. However, I can see the pressures that lead to such a choice on the part of a pilot running that plex, and I have concerns that changing the mechanics to put pressure the other way, or disabling the option altogether, might have knock on effects that are undesirable, such as lowering the ability of newer players to fully participate in the faction warfare environs. If we are going to approach the goal of getting warp core stabs off combat ships, we need to ask some question about how they got there in the first place and what can be done, if anything should be done, to alleviate the blowback from getting them off.

Low Sec Podcast Episode Rebuttal

On Crossing Zebras episode 28 Xander Phoena had Marc Scaurus and Rixx Javix, two people I have a lot of respect for (except Marc, he's a dink  ), on to talk about low sec and for the large part they acquitted themselves quite well. However, there were a couple things I took issue with.

First, there was a little bit of historical revisionism by Rixx when he complained that the old faction warfare plexes from last year were superior to the current model because (and I'm paraphrasing here because I don't have the exact quote) "they had rats you had to fight and you couldn't just sit in there and spam deep scan".

Let's remind ourselves of last year, shall we? Faction warfare was infested with noob alt characters that trained enough to fit an afterburner because on a Tech 1 frigate that's all you needed to speed tank the rats in the plexes. Plus, since the buttons to orbit were 50-60 km away from the warp in beacon they didn't even have to spam deep scan to watch out for trouble, they just waited until you were in the plex and approaching then they warped off.

At least now in the current plexes they have to kill the 1-2 rats that spawn or the timer does not count down, and if they miss hitting deep scan, they are usually in point range when you land, both big improvements. The number of farmers has dropped substantially and while I sympathize with Rixx's frustration about the proliferation of warp core stabs we must remember that the farming PvE'rs will always try to adapt to field before they just up and leave altogether.

But this little confusion is indicative of a lot what these two low sec denizens had to say about faction warfare.

Marc expressed the thought that faction warfare people must get frustrated by the pirates that don't get locked out of stations in faction warfare systems like the opposing militia does. Never, absolutely never, have I heard that sentiment in faction warfare circles. We welcome the targets! We fight pirates as willingly as we engage the Caldari (perhaps even more so as pirates tend to fly flashier ships).

The opinion was also expressed that faction warfare happens in low sec but its not part of low sec, that it does not incorporate the core values of low sec because it has these mechanics with plexes and farmers and system control, etc.

This pissed me off a little.

I was a pirate in low sec years before the original Empyrean Age faction warfare was introduced and I can assure you it was a wasteland. Pirate groups dominated the entry points, anti-pirates would try valiantly to push them back but both groups were few in number and fighting a losing battle as it was near impossible to make enough ISK in either occupation to afford replacement ships. Beyond the occasional newb ratter/mission runner/miner the kills were few and far between and usually consisted of pirates fighting each other. There was nothing of value for groups to really fight over, excepting the occasional moon. Low sec was effectively dead.

The first iteration of faction warfare breathed life into the husk that was low sec, but it was a temproary reprieve as it languished with broken mechanics and bad design decisions until Crucible/Inferno/Retribution turned things around. Faction warfare is now the major engine that drives low sec and makes organizations like Stay Frosty even possible. It brings pilots into low sec, it brings fleets into low sec, it gives both militias and pirates somewhere and something to fight, and fight over. The increased rewards in low sec (better rats, tags for sec, better exploration) have helped increase population density but only faction warfare has given enough cover for those activities to have a chance. In the old days, any neutral in a system was detected and hunted to extinction by very efficient apex-predator pirates.

I've been on both sides of the fence. I joined faction warfare over a year ago and before that spent a year or so being just a low sec pirate. You want a glimpse of what low sec's core values are without faction warfare? Visit the few areas far from the militias and you can see it: pirate wasteland. That's not a core value worth integrating into.

Marc and Rixx seems to hold on to this romantic notion that low sec is all about the fights and proving yourself as a pilot. I can support that but let's not fool ourselves into thinking that Faction Warfare is not the engine and framework that allows that notion to exist.

Dire Straits - Risk Aversion, Warp Core Stabs, Blobs, And Bloggers

Not quite what I meant...

Rixx Javix posted a dirge for Eve last week that can only be described as depressing:

Consider this fair warning. This is indeed a trend. Perhaps you are too blind to see it, but I'm not. This has been building for years and it seems to be picking up speed. Null sec is static. High-sec is entrenched. And low is increasingly full of avoiders and big hammers. ( Big Hammers are those that will only engage when they have far superior numbers, yet another risk aversion tactic )
To much has been invested in "the way things are". The wealth is building up in station. The ISK is easier to acquire. The benefits of taking risk have been mitigated to a nominal result. The biggest rewards fall to those that take the least risk. This is backwards thinking at its worst.
If this trend continues Eve will peak and then slowly, very slowly die.
Not screaming and kicking. But mired in wealth. Spinning in station.

Then the next day posted that "no, no, you don't get it!"

Writing 954 posts about a single subject can also get rather boring and repetitive. I strive to write about new things, new perspectives, new subjects and be as entertaining as possible at the same time. Mostly for myself of course, but judging by the numbers, for others as well. It can be difficult at times.
But even then, I am careful about my words.
I would never sink as low as to stand on my soapbox and scream that "Eve is dying!". A careful reading of my post yesterday would clearly indicate that indeed I feel the opposite. Eve is better now than it has ever been before. And yet...

I think I've read Rixx's blog as long as anyone and I can safely say that the first post sounded like an "Eve is dying!" post but perhaps I didn't read it carefully. ;-)

To be fair, Rixx is not altogether wrong. Although his current frustration with warp code stabilizers is misguided in my opinion, and I'm not sure that risk aversion is on the rise so much as we're more aware of it now than ever, but I definitely agree that risk aversion is a problem in Eve and one I don't know how to address since it is so fundamental to human nature to strive to minimize/avoid loss and maximize gain/victory.

Its not hard to see actions that reinforce this behaviour either. We mock the player that undocks and dies in a sub par fit or in a bad situation to superior numbers, and scream in frustration at the payers that fit warp core stabs or fly with friends and off grid boosting alts. We shake our heads at the play that jumps into a gate camp without scouting first and curse at an enemy "blob" that catches us at another gate camp. We tell the players that express frustration at some game mechanics to "go back to WoW" and then turn around and expect people to respectfully listen to our ideas.

We are in a game that celebrates success and shames failure to a degree that it should be no surprise that risk aversion is rampant: everyone wants the former and no one wants the latter.

So, is Eve in trouble as we march down the road to the future? I'm more optimistic than Rixx in this case; I think its a self correcting problem especially with the tiercide initiative and tech 1 ships regaining a lot of lot glory. I've come to terms with my strength and weakness in the game and the resulting failures and successes. I find that in faction warfare I have found a balance between small gang/solo and fleet gameplay that suits me. Perhaps Rixx needs to mix it up a little for a while to refresh his perspective. 

But off grid boosters, man, they have got to be changed! ;-)