Crime & Punishment

(Assuming I read your post correctly), I think the point is that the bulk of members from current merc organisations actively hunt and kill (for the most part) contractual war targets. It is the predominant playstyle which draws the most interest (activity) to the game. You'll find far less interest in players wanting to be "secret squirrels" over actual PvPers.

To the point, yes.

My hope is that the Citadels will revitalize Contracted Wardecs, up to a point. I guess even 'fun' random Wardecs can be had that way, as individuals/groups start to probe down 'hidden' Citadels in safespot and declare content Wars.

The bad of the Citadel Wardec concept is that Larges and X-Larges will be extremely hard to nigh-impossible to do for small/medium sized Merc groups, such as Devils, considering the amount of DPS/Logistic taht will be needed to deal with those.

Hisec Keepstars? Darn, where are the Dreads when we need them?

Maybe that will lead to Hisec large Mercenary coalitions (or alliances merging) to deal with those, though to be fair, considering the ego of many of a CEO, I doubt this will happen on any large scale.

I am hoping that there will be entities in hisec that can grow to take you on, to be honest many of them will need the Citadel to balance off against your skills and your doctrines.

EDIT: I don't want to clutter up this goodbye thread with my suggestions, so I will just say I hope you guys try what I suggested, set up an info merc section and then see how it goes, or go join Spendity Lost in the WH and at least keep playing until the structure of hisec changes. Good luck and sorry for jumping in perhaps more than I should have.

But do such players exist and if so, can they be found and recruited?

Or maybe that becomes a new "service industry" in Eve, "tracing"? Maybe CCP will go that way, like special skills for schmoozing locator agents and such...

(I'm now remembering the show "Rockford Files" where... OMG some of them I saw when they first aired prime time! I'm f**king old!)

The thing is, there is a way, and if there are players who can drill rocks all day, and players who can camp a gate all day (two activities that would have normal people cutting themselves to see if they are still alive IMO) then there must be players who would enjoy the sleuth work of tracking people down in the game.

I have done it. And Dracvlad has done it. Drac once managed to get one of his targets IN SPACE on a safe spot using his private eye skills combined with some scanner derring do

This could be the same problem as we saw with nullsec corps before the Age of the Blue Donut: people not entirely versed in PVP wanting to get out of nullsec but met with "Stats or GTFO!". So you ended up with organizations depending 100 percent on ratting and no production capabilities of their own. Sure the mercs want the pew, but they should enlist the aid of those who cannot, or are not so good at it, or have a better time doing something more challenging.
(que the usual "KBs are the only measure of success" complaint.... )

To be honest, a few major entities in this game do departmentalize their leadership structure to account for non-pvp ventures such as funding spy networks. I know a few of you won't like these next few lines but I do believe high-sec mercs can learn a lot from the complicated yet well organized entities of low/null. Yes every group needs it soldiers but in order to keep them well practiced they need content. I'm a fan of leadership and I won't lie to you all; there are groups in null/low paying players billions of isk a month to simply probe down wormholes, map moons for entire constellations, set up alliance infrastructure, and most importantly spy.

Whats the point of having a military if you don't have a reason to use it?


@Herzog Wolfhammer- Yes, I keep track of officer mods for reasons.

You both may well be right, I do not know.

It may be pessimism, or call it realism if you will, but it seems to me taht most (if not all) Hisec mercs entities tend to be very laid back, and lets face it, many are Lowsec or Nulsec alts (or burned out mains) that are there to enjoy laid back and no politically involved PVP. So I don't think it is going to happen on any large scale.

Small scale of what you describe is likely already happening, I heard of some from time to time. Myself, I loathe the infiltration and gain of confidence only-to-be-betrayed that spying involve. I am a grunt, I like commando action, used to do some logistics in Nul, got burned out. Now I just want to apreciate the simple joys.

I have heard that if one wants quick, fast, and plentiful PvP , that one only needs to leave hisec. No need to spend hours hunting one hisec carebear.

I do hope mercs find a new place to be in EvE, I don't think many are in a very good place right now, it was sad when we lost low sec pirates please don't let us lose you

May be all who support this type of work need to write to ccp asking them to look at this, if someone writes a short letter and we all send it in, not a rant just a request for help, sent hundreds of times be each member and supporter of eve mercs.

In the mean time I hope you find other ways to have fun out of eve, like someone said eve is changing who knows what you may find around the next corner,

One more point and this is my own view, Merc's are some of the best small scale pvpers in the game by far, in a pvp game too, you should be top of the food chain, don't you think this hub camping life style is a bit **** with endless war dec'ing just for kills

Please don't leave, there must be a way, sandbox remember.

Ps Just been rereading some of these post and it got me thinking, the name Merc is a bit blurred these days, I know game changes are messing around with game play but are you all really Mercenarys, I don't mean this in a derogatory way but are some of you not just high sec gangster, criminal type gangs out to kill and misbehave, if you are that's OK. Admit what you like and work out how to do it, might be fun, in eve who's to say what works,

If we have less group's looking for contacts maybe the one's who are real Merc's get more work, just a thought

Spais are very PvP.

Spai vs group of players. Spai gets in and procures useful information, spai wins. Spai gets caught before getting anything useful, spai loses.
A good spai will shoot and die with the rest of the group being infiltrated because that's just how spais work. It just takes a certain type of psycho to do it. Or someone really bored with playing soldier.

Also in 2015 we had 7 or 8 active Major Wardeccing alliances, that I actively kept track of, along with my group plus some smaller ones I kept track off.

Absoslut, BAW, Devils, Forsaken, Marmite, Public-Enemy, POH, PIRAT, Stratagem along with my group Abysmal, multiple smaller corps like mine that existed.

Absoslut and Forsaken Folded. Stratagem was brief but deserves to be counted and switch direction near the end of the year.

During the end of the year What Squad and Logitech showed.

At the start of 2016, You Had Arche, BAW, Devils, Complaints, Logitech, Marmite, Public, and PIRAT, What Squad, and Vendetta.

Complaints took most of Forsakens members, And is ran by a old Marmite/Forsaken Leadership.
Vendetta absorbed POH members with POH folded early in the year, along with some of Logitech.
Arche, is basically old Absoslut members.
What Squad died and went into several different area's, Marmite and into low/null
Devils are now inactive
BAW is basically inactive.
Abysmal went inactive right when the watch list changed

Leaving you with basically: Arche, Complaints, Marmite, Public, PIRAT and Vendetta.

With no real small groups to really even be aware about asides from Xris's group who seem to be focusing lowsec more so anyways. That I am aware of anyways.

It went from groups folding and reappearing, with lotsa content and booms throughout the 1 and a half years. To No new groups and the old veterans milling about. And multiple long staying Highsec Mecs becoming inactive or moving to Null/Low. Because one very dependant feature being changed due to Null Kiddies, without thought to other aspects of EVE.


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I'm just really annoyed by it and was thinking it over yesterday and wanted to share. My opinions are obviously heavily biased, but I feel that it's hard not to argue that a large amount of Highsec is become more and more industrialized to create an environment that forces players down a singular chain of, Highsec > Lowsec > Nullsec because CCP wants to further increase it profit margins and is thinking more like a Publisher then Developer.