The factional warfare and friendly fire penalty system will be reworked in EVE Online
The devs of the space MMO EVE Online have sketched several changes due in the summer expansion. Factional Warfare is getting a revamp, and there's a new Military Campaigns system on the roadmap.
The stated aim is to make factional wars easier to understand and to lower the barrier to entry — for fresh pilots and for people who’ve been around the block. Two problems keep coming up in player feedback: loss of faction rep (short: rep) and so-called friendly fire (FF), when members of the same militia end up shooting one another.
Right now the rep system behaves oddly. PvP fights and capture actions often don’t touch your rep, yet some special missions can tank relations with other empires. Players even reported that moving up the militia ranks sometimes felt like getting punished: rank increases could correlate with rep drops, which makes people unsure whether they’re being rewarded or penalized.
Some fixes are already in place. Career agent missions no longer drop your rep with other empires. Climbing the militia ladder also no longer alters your standing with allied or hostile factions. On top of that, 1st and 4th level factional warfare missions no longer slap penalties on you for destroying NPCs; 2nd and 3rd level missions are slated for the same treatment later. The idea: simplify entry and remove one of the things that scares off newcomers.
There will be tighter limits, too. Characters with a reputation below −5.0 will be blocked from joining faction corporations and alliances. If someone’s rep slips past that threshold after they’ve already joined, they’ll get a warning and then be booted from the militia automatically.
Friendly-fire penalties are changing their tone depending on where the hit happens. Attack an ally inside dedicated factional warfare zones — e.g., on designated battlefields — and the rep penalty is doubled. Outside those zones, the punishment is lighter than before.