The trouble with pvp is this; there's no incentive for the losing side.
Say you're an admittedly mediocre player. You may have some faint desire to engage in pvp, but if you join open and attack someone else and lose - which, lets face it, you probably will - you not only have to eat a rebuy, you've actively helped your enemy by giving them Merits, or just sated their bloodlust.
This functionally biases the game entirely towards the top 1-5% of combat players, who can kill everyone else, while neglecting the other 95%. Even if you're in the top 90%, you probably still don't want to play, because most players less skilled than you aren't participating due to getting slaughtered by the most skilled pilots, while you're left to consistently barely lose.
What is needed, is a system that encourages players such as this to participate even if they lose. A system where even eating a rebuy can be a positive thing.
Pilots Federation Combat Ranking
With this in mind, here's the idea; remove the concept of killing enemy players for any direct benefit. Instead, each week, players compete on a leaderboard of top pvp players.
The game calculates your win/loss ratio against enemy players and uses this to assign you a rank. (The method via which this rank is calculated would be somewhat obfuscated; killing weak players might give less of a benefit than killing highly-ranked players, for example. These modifiers would largely be hidden, with delays in place, and occasionally automatically rerolled, to ensure players are less able to game the system.)
This rank, then, rewards players with a certain amount of points for their faction, with the top players getting the largest amount of points, and lower ranks giving correspondingly lower amounts of points. These points function fundamentally as merits, obviously rebalanced to ensure they're competitive with other sources of merits.
But, very importantly, participating at all, even if it means just getting killed by an enemy player, still assigns players a rank. Even the lowest possible rank would reward that player with a small amount of points for their faction.
Result
What is the desired result of this? It means that players are always encouraged to participate in pvp, even if they lose. Worst case, they have still earned their Power a small number of points, while minimally helping their enemy. Best case, they might actively rise up the ranks, especially since there will likely be other players doing the exact same thing as them. A high-ranking player wouldn't get much of anything from killing a top 100% player, but another top 100% player might go up to top 90%, and increase their points correspondingly.
Very Importantly, the total amount of available points should never singlehandedly determine a conflict.
PVP should be one aspect of Powerplay, not the dominant aspect. If a faction has really good pvpers, but inferior haulers, additional effort from the haulers in solo or private groups should be sufficient to overwhelm the pvpers.
But by giving players a reason to engage in pvp like this, it could enhance the competitive pvp aspect of the game, and encourage newer players to get their foot in the door, without establishing an inordinate dominance for pvp that might drive those same potential players away.
Say you're an admittedly mediocre player. You may have some faint desire to engage in pvp, but if you join open and attack someone else and lose - which, lets face it, you probably will - you not only have to eat a rebuy, you've actively helped your enemy by giving them Merits, or just sated their bloodlust.
This functionally biases the game entirely towards the top 1-5% of combat players, who can kill everyone else, while neglecting the other 95%. Even if you're in the top 90%, you probably still don't want to play, because most players less skilled than you aren't participating due to getting slaughtered by the most skilled pilots, while you're left to consistently barely lose.
What is needed, is a system that encourages players such as this to participate even if they lose. A system where even eating a rebuy can be a positive thing.
Pilots Federation Combat Ranking
With this in mind, here's the idea; remove the concept of killing enemy players for any direct benefit. Instead, each week, players compete on a leaderboard of top pvp players.
The game calculates your win/loss ratio against enemy players and uses this to assign you a rank. (The method via which this rank is calculated would be somewhat obfuscated; killing weak players might give less of a benefit than killing highly-ranked players, for example. These modifiers would largely be hidden, with delays in place, and occasionally automatically rerolled, to ensure players are less able to game the system.)
This rank, then, rewards players with a certain amount of points for their faction, with the top players getting the largest amount of points, and lower ranks giving correspondingly lower amounts of points. These points function fundamentally as merits, obviously rebalanced to ensure they're competitive with other sources of merits.
But, very importantly, participating at all, even if it means just getting killed by an enemy player, still assigns players a rank. Even the lowest possible rank would reward that player with a small amount of points for their faction.
Result
What is the desired result of this? It means that players are always encouraged to participate in pvp, even if they lose. Worst case, they have still earned their Power a small number of points, while minimally helping their enemy. Best case, they might actively rise up the ranks, especially since there will likely be other players doing the exact same thing as them. A high-ranking player wouldn't get much of anything from killing a top 100% player, but another top 100% player might go up to top 90%, and increase their points correspondingly.
Very Importantly, the total amount of available points should never singlehandedly determine a conflict.
PVP should be one aspect of Powerplay, not the dominant aspect. If a faction has really good pvpers, but inferior haulers, additional effort from the haulers in solo or private groups should be sufficient to overwhelm the pvpers.
But by giving players a reason to engage in pvp like this, it could enhance the competitive pvp aspect of the game, and encourage newer players to get their foot in the door, without establishing an inordinate dominance for pvp that might drive those same potential players away.
![[VR] Bulbulunufus](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/261/261245.jpg?1671230473){kind=avatar}
I never bothered. As I don't play pvp (well hard to find people out there, or even NPC) I don't need their rewards which are strictly for pvp. For pve better to have, for example, biwave, which allows to farm 5 hours without going to SC.