Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Let me state upfront that I believe suicide ganking and highsec wardecs are an important part of EVE Online. The element of danger, even in "safe" highsec space, gives weight and meaning to resources.

I started playing 2.5 months ago, and stuck to high sec until moving to low sec recently. Even during my time in highsec, the exhilaration of hauling 200+ million ISK through ganker systems, and evading gate camps during a war dec was what drove me to upgrade from Alpha to Omega. IMHO "even highsec is not safe" is a vital aspect of EVE that should never be changed. That being said, I believe that high sec wardecs might have an impact on player retention, based on personal experience and other threads on this forum.

I have an alt in an alliance that gets wardecced semi-frequently by alliances that are larger, have much higher skillpoints and much more expensive ships. So there is no easy way to fight back. And when we try to fight back, the wardec often gets renewed as PvP action is what they are looking for. That being said, I'm a seasoned gamer and so had no problem staying alive through the war. Likewise for many of my alliance mates, especially those in my corp, which often operates in low sec.

The people who suffers the most are the new players in our alliance, especially those in non-PvP corps (mining, industry etc). I have seen some these corps fall apart, and new players leave because wardecs are essentially turning high sec into low/null sec. This appears to be a common trend in threads complaining about high sec wardecs.

I believe that being in a corp, socializing and getting guidance from other players plays a big factor in getting players to stay/subscribe. These non-PvP corps in my alliance are contributing a lot by putting in the time and effort to recruit and guide new players. It feels like a huge missed opportunity when they fall apart due to wardecs.

CCP's official stance is to stay in NPC corps to avoid war decs: https://support.eveonline.com/hc/en-us/articles/204873262-Known-Declared-Exploits. Unfortunately, staying in an NPC corp means that new players will not be able to take part in the social aspects of EVE. This does not feel like a good way to retain players. It feels like there is a step missing between NPC corps and wardec vulnerable player corps.

I'll leave it to the professional game developers at CCP to figure out if this is an issue and how to fix it. But off the top of my head (not fully thought out at all), a possible way to do this might be to allow players that are less than X months old or have less than X skillpoints to join a corp as a "probationary" member that is not a valid war target but has severely restricted privileges to prevent abuse. Or even allow a corp type, that are highly restricted, between NPC and full blown player corps. These will give new players access to social tools without needing to take part in the wardec system, and at the same time not allow them to enjoy the benefits of a corp without risk.

Nope, social groups are not in the game. Yup, I think I read somewhere that joining a corp gets people to subscribe. It certainly got me to subscribe. :p

Perhaps corp-lite could do the same and get people to subscribe too?

Really feels like a wasted opportunity when I see new players quit or non-PvP corps disband due to wardecs. We are not only wasting those potential subscribers but also people who are motivated enough to run corps and recruit newbies.

I would support a corporation or wardec rule that allows you to make wardec-proof corporations, but also prevents them from anchoring structures, and perhaps adds an additional NPC tax to their activities. Allow people to group up without fear that [insert wardec group] will just stomp on them. The current system seems to incentivize staying in an NPC corp

Sounds good to me.

Players can and already do this using NPC corps and chat channels, so why not add a social level corp that is nothing more than a name, logo and chat channel? Nothing really would change.

I am not married to this particular idea, but some secondary social group, social corp or other mechanism so player groups can opt-out of wars by forgoing all corporation benefits seems like a good idea to promote social interaction while respecting the basic ideas of risk vs. reward central to the game.

+1

Yes, we maintain a non-corp/alliance chat room, even outside of wardecs. I still see some of those who left in the chat room.

However, this does not seem to work for many of them. Some of the new players that drops out of corps disappears from EVE. Some non-PvP corp leaders that used to be really active got tired and left.

I have limited experience with the non-PvP and/or non-seasoned gamer crowd/mindset, but I think having a social level corp or "corp-lite" option would help with keeping them around until they're ready experience wardecs, low/null sec etc.

Having members exempt from the dec whilst some still are is an inconsistent rule and potentially open to abuse.

The social corp/corp lite is something i feel strongly about that we should have. In the mean time you can use chat channels whilst in an npc corp to get the social side.

Keep in mind that players that don't get into pvp are unlikely to become long term players. I would encourage your noobs to stick around for the dec to practice basic survival and pvp tactics.

Thankfully CCP seems to be working to change things. Once POSes go away and the new structures are fully implemented and balanced, there should be clear pressure for highsec industrialists to form corps or other organizations for mutual efficiencies and defense. Structure-based objectives will also make hiring mercenaries during a war more useful as there will be a time and place when a fight might happen.

That appears at least to be CCPs vision for wars. Let's see if they can get there.

1 thing you miss is a lot of Dec corps have alt corps to offer "assistance" or a warcorp could work with a group of mercs to accomplish the same affect. After a while the war ends, you pay the merci billions, both merc and war corps profit

I agree. EVE is a game of progressive learning which tends to pace out over a pretty long period. I think it's important for players to learn better ways to interact and fight wardeccers and other players in general, but there also needs to be better educational tools from CCP to help them along. I would love to see the implementation of a services marketplace that different groups could use to advertise their services - in this case mercenaries could put themselves out there with price ranges, regions of service, size, etc. so that when a group gets wardecced there would be more visibility of options for the defender on where to turn for help.

Fully support the idea of social corps/groups/societies. +1

I do agree. It is not up to CCP to keep people in my alliance ( my corp does low sec stuff and have no problem handling war decs). And I am not asking them to help keep people in corps/alliances.

What I am suggesting is that CCP have a player retention goal right now (NPE etc) and having a "social corp-lite" might help with that, since it has been suggested many times that joining a corp greatly increases the chance of subscribing.

Different people take different amount of time to get used to PvP in EVE. E.g. I love the PvP elements of EVE but stuck to highsec for 2 months before I feel that I learned enough to move to lowsec.

CCP knows this too, which is why the NPE is protected from PvP. And after the NPE, they are automatically enrolled in NPC corps which are protected from wardecs. Imagine if there is no highsec, everywhere is nullsec open PvP, and if the NPE region + NPC corps are fair game for ganking + wardeccing.

Personally, I would still play EVE lol. But not very good for business. A learning curve is good for getting new subscribers and allowing me to continue to shoot these new subscribers for years to come. :p