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[Issues] Wardecs - what are the key issues to fix
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Shandir
EVE University
Ivy League
#1 - 2012-03-29 16:58:58 UTC
It would be good if we could find a consensus on what needs to be corrected with the new wardec mechanics, since CCP does not seem to be on the same page as *any* of the players involved. Neither the attackers nor the defenders are happy

Wardecs in general
Are wardec mechanics too powerful, just right, or too weak for attackers [Just right
And for defenders? [Too weak

At the end of the war
Should the attacker suffer a penalty if he is considered to have lost? [Yes
Should the defender? [No
Should the attacker be given a reward (based on the defender's penalty) for winning? [No
Should the defender? [Yes

During a war
Does the surrender mechanic work currently [Not at all
Should the defender ever be given the option to mechanically end a war? [Maybe
How long should an attacker be locked into an unwanted war? [at least 2 Weeks
How long should a defender? [At most 3 months

After a war
Should there be a peace period, and how long? [min = war length, max = 1 year
Should this peace apply to characters as well as corp/ally [Yes
Should the defender be immune to other wars for any period, and how long? [No

I'll add other good points as they come up
Marsan
#2 - 2012-03-29 17:45:01 UTC
Part of the basic problem is people want different things. Some people want easy ganks. Some people want good fights. Some people want to be left alone. It's not possible to fix the game for all 3 sets. Personally I dislike high sec wars as when I'm in HS want to be safe, and be able to wander around half aware of my surroundings. (Note that I've spent 95% of the last 2 years in various wormholes so don't get me wrong.) I might be more interested in HS wars, but they are just not fun. I can't remember the last time I encountered a fair fight in a war. (I include the times my side has had a 4 to 1 advantage.) There was always station/gate games, corp hoping, and neutral reps involved. It was rare that any attacker ever came out to fight without a 2 to 1 advantage. Before CCP can fix wars they need to fix the following:

1) No more neutral reppers. It 'snot enough to flag when they rep as the are immune up to the point they start repping. If you are an aggressor in a war you shouldn't be able to be repped by someone not in your corp/alliance. Defenders should be able to be repped until they are aggressed or aggress.

2) Gate and station games need to be stopped. You should NOT be able to dock if you've aggressed (or repped an aggressor) a war target until a timer that goes away. (This timer needs to be at least a minute.) Gates are a more complex issue as preventing targets from jumping when aggressed helps the aggressor too much, but only preventing the aggressor prevents the aggressor from .

3) There needs to be a way to end a war, and the resulting peace needs to last at least 2 weeks if not a month. As much as I hate structure bashing the easiest way to do this is a POS structure that can only be anchored in HS. Alternately a structure like a customs office which has an owner set time to come out of reinforcement. Ideally anchoring the structure requires a certain amount of isk in escrow which is given to any war target's corp/alliance who destroys it. This also for a good way for a defender to push the attacker to actually fight instead of just lurking and ganking lone undefended targets. Being in HS prevents caps, and other players from interfering.

(Note when I say aggressor I mean anyone who is firing on a war target.)

Former forum cheerleader CCP, now just a grumpy small portion of the community.
Aidan Patrick
Aldebaran Foundation
#3 - 2012-03-30 00:45:45 UTC  |  Edited by: Aidan Patrick
I've participated in my fair share of highsec war decs on the side of the attackers. So with that, keep in mind the perspective my feedback is coming from.

First and foremost, in the Wardec keynote CCP posted on their youtube channel they mention they removed the portion of the cost formula that factors in the target entities currently existing wars. This is good. I like this.

MY CONCERNS

I have a few different concerns in regards to pricing and mechanics directly related to the new war declaration system. These concerns are as follows, in a bullet format for easier reading:

    Concerns:
  • 500m ISK makes it so massive alliances are extremely expensive to declare war upon in order to interdict their high sec logistics movement. Goonswarm Federation for example has 8,341 members to their name (as of March 29, 2012 at 22:47 EVE). That is a per week cost of $4,170,500,000 to declare war on this alliance before you even factor in the base declaration fee. This to me seems more like a mechanic to protect large alliances from smaller groups that aren't "on the radar".

  • The ability for a defender to be able to bring in an unlimited number of allies with no cost what so ever is severely unbalanced. Especially when you consider the fact that most war declarations are small groups declaring war on larger groups.

  • The more an attacking corporation has to pay per week will inflate the required/requested ransoms when the target finally decides to surrender, should ransom be the end-goal of the aggressors.

  • While I understand this is not the job of the team working on war mechanics, these changes should address and correct the overwhelming issues of neutral support utilized during high sec wars. In fact, that really needs to be changed for all combat all together.

MY IMPLEMENTATION IDEAS

Based on my concerns and my role play definition of a Declaration of War in EVE Online the following are my ideas on what adjustments should be made to the new war dec mechanics:

    War Declaration Maintenance Cost Formula
  • The weekly recurring war dec fee only contains the base cost (20mil for corps, 50mil for alliances as proposed [base fee is determined by the aggressors group type])
  • The 500m ISK per member fee is turned into a one time "Registration Fee". (I will now refer to this as 'Target Tax').
  • The Target Tax is calculated by the total member count of both the aggressors and defenders.
  • The Target Tax is charged only once at the beginning of the war.
  • Allies called by the defender will incur an additional Target Tax that is calculated using only the member count of the new addition to the war. (IE you call an ally with 200 members the defending corp has to pay that fee on top of whatever agreement they have with the ally)
  • Only the base fee of a war dec is modified by your currently outgoing wars.

    The "States/Results" of a War
  • Retain ability to have agreed upon surrender terms or aggressor cancellation.
  • Have the ability to custom set non-aggression periods. (IE enter a number and select "Days/Weeks/Months/Years" from a drop down.) If the party who surrenders initiates or participates in violence against the other party outside of the war system the non-aggression period ends prematurely.
  • When a mutual surrender term/pact is met, have kill rights immediately revoked.
  • Add the ability for the aggressor to write a description of why the war was declared to add a bit of history and depth to why the declaration of war was made.
  • When a war ends by surrender, the victor is able to create a note on the war (that must be agreed upon by the losers as a condition of surrender) marking the "History" of how the war ended. As the saying goes:
    • Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code wrote:
    “History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books-books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, 'What is history, but a fable agreed upon?

    Cancellation by Non-Payment
  • When the attacker cancels a war by means of non-payment the defender, during the 24 hour cool down has the opportunity to continue the war in the role of aggressor.
  • When a defender becomes the aggressor on a currently existing war they only have to pay the base price appropriate to their group size (corp/alliance). The "Target Tax" is not re-calculated and charged. This provides the defender recourse and an option to prevent their attackers from "bowing out gracefully".
  • When an attacker cancels a war by non-payment, and the defender chooses not to continue the war themselves the outcome is marked as (or similar to) "Stalemate". You could take it further and in this case calculate the winner by ISK damage dealt and account for all fees paid (by either side) to maintain the war. So looking at an attackers profile who dominated their target but canceled the war by non payment would be displayed as "Stalemate, Victor" or something of the likes.

OTHER RELATED ITERATION IDEAS

There are a couple other things that I think are a must when it comes to fixing wars in high security space.


  1. Being in a fleet with someone at war should flag you to their war targets, IMMEDIATELY. This prevents neutral support from abusing game mechanics meant for ALLIES.

  2. Engaging remote assistance modules on a person that is currently attackable by a player or at war should automatically initiate a normal 1 minute aggression countdown preventing jumps or docking. This should be done regardless if their target is actively fighting or not. The 1 minute timer will continue to refresh as long as they are providing the service, just like normal combat aggression.

It wont let me have an empty signature...
Aidan Patrick
Aldebaran Foundation
#4 - 2012-03-30 00:50:41 UTC
As an additional side note that I was unable to include in my previous post (*cough* wall of text)....

A fellow EVE player in the keynote video stated that the existing iteration (props to CCP admitting this!!!) doesn't account for canceled accounts and the exploit that could be caused by that and that we should consider canceled accounts when calculating the costs.

Let me say this; while I wholeheartedly agree with not getting charged for canceled accounts... On the flip side if aggressors pay a fee based on subscribed accounts... Just by attempting to create a war declaration the aggressors can reverse engineer the formula and calculate exactly how many subscribed accounts there are in the corporation.

This is a severe problem as only people with API access to an account should be able to know it's subscription status. Period. That is why I suggested the per member fee be a startup fee and not recurring.

It wont let me have an empty signature...
Aqriue
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#5 - 2012-03-30 04:26:28 UTC
Ok, I asked a sage hermit that lives in a swamp what his advice on dealing with war decs. He told me this

"Hisec you can leave, GTFO you should. Hmm yes, silly newb."

and my mind was blown away...

No really, its so simple!

But then again, most newbs what an easy mode declaration while avoiding total risk to themselves and answer of 2 mill cost = abuse for their own amusement + the fact that CONCORD is watching their back, plus they still get access to highsec and all its conviences....so in reality it didn't really need to chance since if someone hops corps that silly newb could just gank them and if you really get irked someone is avoiding with Dec shields....find another target? Shocked Really, hulks are just that easy to kill and a great suppository to reduce ButthurtOops like medicated hemroid cream.

Higher costs would be better to start and you could still leave the mechanics as is. Or adding something different like higher costs of market taxes (paying a premium to live the life of a cyber warrior Lol to get your guns / ships) from market = isk sink and still lose sec status at a slower rate (cause you know, firing guns in civil space is still not a safe thing to do and it means you are a dangerous individual) so that even the aggressor will find their own limit to end it quickly if they pull off a killing spree.

But no, the whiner newbs need CCP to fix the issue of giving them easy kills without the difficulty of the rest of non-highsec....really want to AFK bash those POS then might as well /wrist yourself cause it is the only reason it needs to change since ganking someone hasn't .
Shandir
EVE University
Ivy League
#6 - 2012-03-30 05:03:00 UTC
Please keep the comments constructive

Aidan, Marsen - thanks for your points

Aidan - lots of good ideas in there, even if you're coming at it from the other side than I am. Wardecs are going to need to find a meet-in-the-middle solution

I personally think the meet in the middle solution is going to be a reasonable cost, where a corp that is decced can profit from winning, and suffers when they lose. I said roughly this in the wardec devblog thread

There should be these options available to a defender
(Pay) Attacker gets cash, Defender gets left alone for a bit - defender does *not* become a juicier target for every other attacke
(Hide) Attacker gets nothing, defender loses significant game convenience/time
(Fight and Win) Attacker suffers a penalty (Probably an ISK cost), Defender gets a high portion of this penalt
(Fight and Lose) Attacker gains ISK through ship kills and loot, defender loses ISK through these methods

Pay should be designed to be an equal option to Hide, and a better option than Fight and Lose. Fight and Win should be the best option by far, if the defending corp has the skill