EVE General Discussion

just wanted to stop by to get a feel for peoples' feeling towards the war dec mechanic.

I have endured this mechanic from both ends and think it's overdue a complete overhaul.

With corp and alliance dedicated to the profession of a merc I somehow get lost seeing how players war dec corporations/alliances.

Alliances like Public Enemy, Marmite, Forsaken Asylum, P I R A T, Pursuit of Hapiness, Break-A-Wish Foundation, Vendetta Merc just sit spamming the war dec button because they are too lazy to hunt and would rather sit in Perimeter with alt logi's and 10 man fleets ready for that solo mach or megathron to appear.

Whilst I understand the war dec mechanic, at the same time I don't get it due to the behaviour of the alliances listed above. Don't get me wrong I'm not point fingers or anything but I just wanted to try to understand how exactly war deccing makes the game interesting for anyone on both sides of the mechanic.

90% of people look for the easiest way to feel elite. Ganking/wardeccing gives people l33t killboards with little effort.

Easy, clean fun.

Just leave HS and do your think in low/null/WHs, no one will follow you. The counter to wardecs is to not give targets. If they get bored, they will leave you alone.

Knowing this, why did you choose to fly through Perimeter?

Confirming, if I see you mining in low/null/wh space I'll definitely leave you alone to "do your thing" - so feel free to officer fit your hulk and bring along the rorqual as well!

edit: And feel free to stay afk as long as you like as well. Only those animals in high-sec would kill an afk miner.

On one hand it gives ones side targets to stalk/hunt/ambush and for the other side, it serves a risk and a challenge to perpetual, risk-free ISK-printing. Eve would be a terrible game, not to mention most of the interesting bits would be irrevocably broken if the PvP was purely consensual.

Given how much of Eve PvP is pure random violence that takes place between two sides by chance while roaming around, I don't see why so many players seem confused by the fact wardecs can be declared for basically no reason at all. They demand meaning, purpose and "win" conditions for highsec wardecs, while they are perfectly fine with some cloaky hunter getting the drop on a ship while in a wormhole, or two random drunken fleets getting into a tussle for no greater reason than they can.

Eve is a PvP sandbox game the prominently features player interactions of the non-consensual variety. Yes, that includes highsec and always has. The very fact that player can 'interact' with you against your will is what makes the game interesting and the fact you have to account for the actions of the other players. Wardecs are one of the only two ways left that that can happen in highsec, and the only way you can contest and attack a player structure there. Wardecs literally enable much of the content that takes place in highsec. Without them, much of your activities would be 100% safe. You really think that would be more 'interesting'?

Wardecs aren't perfect and could use iteration, but they are certainly more interesting than just deleting them as you are implying. The chance of something happening is way more interesting than NPC-enforced boredom.

I understand 100%, but if you are choosing to be a high sec wardeccing corp, you're choosing to PvP in what is supposed to be the safest area of EVE. If you want to fight targets who you basically know won't fight back, and where third parties can't attack you due to CONCORD protection, you take the consequences that come with it. What consequences? Harder to find your specific targets, or having to do more intel gathering to find out where they are.

HS wardeccers want to be bounty hunters. Bounty hunting is 90% intel, 10% fighting/chasing, not the other way around. If people want quick easy fights with little intel gathering, don't hang around HS, get out into dangerous parts of space. Everything is working as intended.

It's funny what EVE has become. NSers want null to be 100% safe to PvE in for max isk gain with no risk, and HSers want HS to provide rich, easy targets for max kills with no risk.

Little backstory: I've been in both large mass dec Alliances which have ran anywhere between 50 to 300 active wars, and small Wardeccing corps, which at max has had only 10 active at one point. I've been using the War Dec mechanic for a while, around 3 years, and I generally have a pretty good idea on where it sits and how it sat when I was involved in the past.

I honestly prefer the 10 decs, Locate and poke them in there home system. Not a sit and watch and pounce on the unlucky who happen to wonder into a killing field.






Highsec being Safe or not has nothing to do with the way Wardecs work on average terms. Once a Wardec is activated on a corp, you should be aware that you are less safe. The game literally tells you that. Both are parties, one forcibly are put into a higher state of risk. The reason NPC corps are around, is to insure that you do not want to decced, you have that option.

So with that stated, It really doesn't matter how many Jonny Nobodies are in local when you catch a Mission Runner who decided he wants to try and run a quick SOE mission, but not pay any attention to what's going on. Jonny Nobody isn't going to help the Mission Runner, nor a they going to hinder the Attacker, Normally, at any point during the altercation. So Saying that one side should be hampered by a neutral and fair background is biased.

And yes, Targets are harder to find, but the main issue with the Watchlist changes, is that the implication and issue within 100 percent, was that Cap pilots were incredibly vulnerable. In PL logged in all of the then Triage Archon pilots and Goonswarm noticed, they would know that PL has an active standing fleet ready. Or if Goonswarn didn't have any active bridgers online PL would know they could happily drop away on Goons without any fear of a counter drop. (sorta)

That was why the Watchlist was changed. The Backwash to Highsec and W-space was crossfire.





The Watchlist, was the only tool available for an Attacker to actively find his targets. The only tool. The time it takes to implement a spy and so forth, takes to much time for an average player. You have to be dedicated, and have a job that accommodates a regular work schedule honestly to do something like that.

Now, with the tool gone, intel is by far harder almost impossible to come across. You either convospam, or you watch high traffic area's, pipes, Mission hubs, Trade Hubs, and try to catch them there. And to be honestly that part of a wardec is by far the most annoying and unfulfilling.




Not really, you just group two groups of people into two separate categories. That's not how the world works. There are people in Highsec who would very much love for it to be completely and utterly safe. There are people who want it to be like you said, Risk free for them to blow up everyone.

Same goes for Null. Group people up like that Solves nothing at all and it an utterly ******** way to think and serves no purpose to driving a debate to a positive outcome.

the last way to do wardecs without hub camping was effectively removed because of a nullsec problem.

nothing says more about the state of highsec wardecs than that.

we weren't even given a second thought.

Just gave my opinion, IMO the only part of EVE thats still true to the game is LS and WHs. You can find targets w/o a watchlist, you just need scouts and decent tracking (as it should be).

Watchlists didn't let people hunt, they let people kill without the need to track. Even still, once a wardec is active you ARE less safe. That doesn't mean a deccer should be able to effortlessly track you to any system you are in any time, any day. It should take effort and scouting on their part. That's the hunting part of being a bounty hunter.

I agree caps were a decent part of why watchlists were changed, but as a WH resident for a long time now I say good for that change! We became too complacent, and relied too much on watchlists to make knowing when it is safe in our home systems. EVE is supposed to be hard, and dangerous.

A mechanic that (combined with locator agents) can pinpoint exactly where/when specific people are is exactly opposite what EVE is intended to be. HS wardeccing just happens to be the worst example of that. All kills for no risk. What should we do? Recruit more scouts. Pay newbies for intel. Work to find targets, as it should be.

You are obviously allowed an opinion, however your opinion that is from on outsiders perspective. It would like Trump telling the UK that leaving the EU is a good idea. Sure he has somewhat of an idea, but he's not there to feel the choices that happen. Your allowed to have it.



Yes. Yes they do, Watchlist allowed Hunters like, myself and many others to see who where online, which then told us we could run locates on. Locate agents will tell you where a target is regardless if they are offline or not. And at the time of the watchlist it was fairly balanced. You had to wait 5 minutes after the locate was ran, which only gives you a starting point.

Then you either ran another locate, or sniffed around the system with a scout.


Scouts. Are still in plentiful use today as they were before the change. The only difference is that we are blindly looking in different area's highsec, hoping to find some random bonker who happens to wonder into us, then hope that he's not an interceptor or a ship that can out warp a lock timer.

At least I do. I'm not an idiot who klunks around in a triple seboed Svip and prays that nothing that is actually set to fight is there.

We also bring tackle. But Tackle is just as bored as DPS is when they are just randomly poking around systems hoping to run across somebody.



No, the watchlist was change for Capital Pilots. Highsec, like normal, was ignored in favor of that area of space.




Like I said about, the intel on where the target is, is not instant. It's 5 minutes old. You know how far you can skedaddle in five whole minutes? It's not that strong of the tool.

And the defenders can make use of it to.

And since we still want to generalize. I suppose your like all of Lowsec? Either in Stabbed Merlin or a Smart Bombing T3 yah?

EDIT: Mah bad. You said Wormhole. So you sit in a pos all day? And only shoot other POS'es is a cuddly group?