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New dev blog: Changes to War Mechanics

First post First post
Author
Chokichi Ozuwara
Perkone
Caldari State
#481 - 2012-04-01 16:20:59 UTC  |  Edited by: Chokichi Ozuwara
The pricing for Wardecs should be inversely proportional to size.

It should be very expensive to dec small corps, and really cheap to dec big corps and alliances.

The truth is, no one starts a small hisec corp for PvP. They join one of the big PvP alliances.

Tears will be shed and pants will need to be changed all round.

Vimsy Vortis
Shoulda Checked Local
Break-A-Wish Foundation
#482 - 2012-04-01 16:36:57 UTC
Chokichi Ozuwara wrote:
The truth is, no one starts a small hisec corp for PvP.

That's funny because that's exactly what me and my friends did about a year and a half ago.
sankoku
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#483 - 2012-04-01 19:00:54 UTC
Vimsy Vortis wrote:
Chokichi Ozuwara wrote:
The truth is, no one starts a small hisec corp for PvP.

That's funny because that's exactly what me and my friends did about a year and a half ago.


Would you do it with this change, knowing you could be infini-wardec'd by any random swarm of goons for pocket change, but that the only people you can afford to wardec are those even smaller than yourself?

Would you hire yourself out as mercs, knowing that the war might stick to you like glue?

It could even be funded as pure harassment, by a tiny shell corp -- leaving you NO TARGETS TO FIGHT? In the meantime, you go on war footing, giving up lots of more interesting activities than preparing for an attack that never comes.

This system is gamed from the very conception.

I can't see this as being good for people who hate PvP, nor people who love PvP. The only people this can be good for are those who love griefing -- and that's not good for the game.

I've got nothing against fixing the wardec mechanics, or making them more interesting.

This breaks them further, and makes them less interesting.

How come no word from CCP? At least with the last round of bad ideas, they came back and fixed them up a bunch. Imagine if COs or fuel blocks were introduced as originally proposed. (They did come out and say they were OK with making w-space dwellers have to transport more fuel and do more steps, but hey, at least they finally made it clear they understood who they were screwing!) A little more of that before rushing them out, and they could actually have been good ideas.

I think this COULD be a good idea with a bit of thought and attention beforehand. Like maybe, "oops, that takes things in the wrong direction, let's just do the opposite!"
Nohb Oddy
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#484 - 2012-04-01 19:22:28 UTC
sankoku wrote:
I can't see this as being good for people who hate PvP, nor people who love PvP. The only people this can be good for are those who love griefing -- and that's not good for the game.

I like what you have to say and agree with all but one point of it. This new system isn't even good for griefing.

Presently a Power-Block can dec for 2m or 50m instead of the proposed base (counting members) which would be much much higher. Those Power-Blocks aren't going out and decing all of High-Sec. I do not see this changing with the new system. The change I do foresee is a dramatic drop in decs from any and all sources. A few people may try the new system, but until an Empire based Power-Block is formed High-Sec is going to be rather void of wars.

I have a feeling that may be their actual goal. Even though they've stated the desire to make being merc (those who declare wars) a viable career path, the costs of operation (not even taking into account the risk of losses assets) are to high. In my years of Empire based wars I keep getting shown, time and time again, that almost no targets are willing to pay the ransom (and this is when it DOESN'T show up on your permanent record). The only possible way we were able to generate an income with wardecing was to go after PoSes and completely ignore everything else. We'd find a PoS, start the war, reinforce the PoS, then ransom them or pop the PoS. Why ... oh why ... should we have to PoS bash in Empire to try to come out ahead? Have you ever tries taking out a PoS in a 20 man corp that only has 10 people on at our peak times trying to take out a Large Guristas tower with Battleships? We all referred to it as mining, not PvP.

Nohb Oddy likes you.

Vladimir Norkoff
Income Redistribution Service
#485 - 2012-04-01 20:14:19 UTC
Chokichi Ozuwara wrote:
The truth is, no one starts a small hisec corp for PvP. They join one of the big PvP alliances.
Confirming that my 4-year old corp is big. Huge even! Impressive in every way. You'll be in awe. Really! You may even faint when you see my big big huge gigantic PvP corp.
Gogela
Epic Ganking Time
CODE.
#486 - 2012-04-01 22:08:08 UTC
+9001

I'm really looking forward to this.

If i can use tags to go from -10 to +5 and if wardecs are really finally fixed, I'm taking a week off of work at launch. I don't get much "stick time" because my RL job takes up *.* of my time... but to be able to war dec and fly around empire and lowsec fighting in wars for profit and lulz will make me feel like a 3mo old char again.

Totally radical dudes (& dudettes) Pirate

Lets get our war on!

Signatures should be used responsibly...

Sephiroth Clone VII
Brothers of Tyr
Goonswarm Federation
#487 - 2012-04-01 23:43:09 UTC  |  Edited by: Sephiroth Clone VII
To prevent giant corps/alliances from gaming the system to have a relatively cheep wardeck against a small target. I would say the cost of a war should be based on both the size of the corp declaring the war, and the defender.

Basically however large the number of people concord overlooks for killing or be killed.

So instead of .5 million per real char in defending corp, .25 mil of chars in both corps.

This would accomplish the goal, without anything ridonculous.


Another suggestion is to have wars be for a limited max time, otherwise a war could happen on a corp and it would just go on forever, and the corp is never able to move anywhere. Some people regardless of willingness to fight wars could do it just to troll corps forever, having a real cost to wardecking helps but a hard limit would help even more and give a break for wars (even if small).

I would say the max time a war should happen is 3-4 weeks, it is after all bribing concord for legalized greifing. Some pressure from non-corrupt officials in concord or empires should eventually happen. After the time period the war ends, and corp is given a week period where no more war decks against it can be made and any hostility between it and others end. To work with multiple war decks, of corps waging war at different times where they still have some weeks before theirs is forcibly ended, the other war decks are temporarily suspended (not costing isk, fighting not allowed, not over), and then after break happens wardeck resumes.

Being that wardecks are based around bribing concord, a defender should have the option of counter-bribing concord to end wars (which should be high to deter it being used too liberally, based on double the cost of what attackers pay for week). This would allow players ability to get out of wardeck without giving money to the offending corp who will likely use it to permadeck them. Also adds another isk sink . Going with the previous idea, paying concord could be the only way to get the occasional sure-fire break from wars described earlier. Concord every so often can keep looking like they are stewards of law while getting all the kickbacks from both players.
Sephiroth Clone VII
Brothers of Tyr
Goonswarm Federation
#488 - 2012-04-01 23:58:41 UTC
Chokichi Ozuwara wrote:
The pricing for Wardecs should be inversely proportional to size.

It should be very expensive to dec small corps, and really cheap to dec big corps and alliances.

The truth is, no one starts a small hisec corp for PvP. They join one of the big PvP alliances.


Do 2-10 man corps get regularly war-decked?

From what I remember, not really, large alliances especially renters can have rolling wardecks, never ending.
Dream Five
Renegade Pleasure Androids
#489 - 2012-04-02 03:16:58 UTC
I suspect the only motivation for it was to allow a way of removing hisec property. This will probably cause a spike in BPC prices one people start wiping out hisec towers just for fun. Previously hisec towers could not be removed at all due to alliance hopping. Plus it ties into the POCOs and DUST514 i'm sure. Otherwise I think CCP realizes that you just can't force people who don't want to PVP to PVP.
Nohb Oddy
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#490 - 2012-04-02 04:11:34 UTC
Dream Five wrote:
Otherwise I think CCP realizes that you just can't force people who don't want to PVP to PVP.

It isn't CCP that is forcing people into unwanted PvP. It is people like me forcing others into unwanted PvP. Regardless of the rules that CCP makes to try to prevent, protect, or even encourage, it will not change the fact that EvE is full of people like me who will go out of their way to blow someone up.

The harder CCP makes it for people like me, the more serious people like me become. The only want to end this is either by running people like me out of EvE (banning us), or by making it impossible to do anything against another player (everyone stuck in their own captain's quarters without any interaction with other players).

Don't get me wrong, I don't intend on leaving EvE just because the devs make new rules I disagree with. Just realize, I, and others like me, will do what we can to bypass, bend, and ultimately break said rules to work in our favor.

Nohb Oddy likes you.

Debir Achen
Makiriemi Holdings
#491 - 2012-04-02 05:11:32 UTC
Vimsy Vortis wrote:
You're making a mistake if you think the the cost scaling is intended to promote fairness.
Define "fair". Why should "number of corps" be the metric, rather than "number of pilots"?

Consider the fee not as "declaring war on a corp" but "declaring war on a group of pilots". How is it unfair that the fee is (slightly less than) linear with the number of pilots that you have declared war upon?

There have been suggestions to proportion the war-dec fee base on ratio of pilots, but this again uses the wrong metric. When a 100 pilot corp declares war on a 100 pilot corp, the fee is 70mil, or 0.7 mil per pilot in the aggressor corp. When a 1000 pilot corp declares war on a 1000 pilot corp, the fee is 520 mil, or 0.52 mil per pilot in the aggressor corp. The scaling isn't quite linear (you get a small discount for attacking a larger corp), but it's already there.

The missing case is large corp aggressor vs small. A 100 pilot corp declaring war on a 20 pilot corp pays 30mil, or 0.3 mil per pilot in the aggressor corp. OK, that looks a little imbalanced. But consider if they declare war on 5x 20 pilot corps - that's 25x30 = 750 mil, or 7.5 mil per pilot in the aggressor corp! And the defending corp can freely invite allies to participate in the war, expanding their numbers. Or they can join an alliance, which increases both numbers and cost to the aggressor.


In all cases, two things are true:
- the cost the attacker pays is directly proportional to the number of pilots they can affect*
- it encourages grouping up

I don't see either of these principles as a bad thing

(* there might be merit in basing costs on "active pilots" - eg those who have logged in at least once in the preceeding two weeks - but I'm not sure that makes a lot of difference in practice)

Aren't Caldari supposed to have a large signature?

Indahmawar Fazmarai
#492 - 2012-04-02 06:54:44 UTC
Nohb Oddy wrote:
Dream Five wrote:
Otherwise I think CCP realizes that you just can't force people who don't want to PVP to PVP.

It isn't CCP that is forcing people into unwanted PvP. It is people like me forcing others into unwanted PvP. Regardless of the rules that CCP makes to try to prevent, protect, or even encourage, it will not change the fact that EvE is full of people like me who will go out of their way to blow someone up.

The harder CCP makes it for people like me, the more serious people like me become. The only want to end this is either by running people like me out of EvE (banning us), or by making it impossible to do anything against another player (everyone stuck in their own captain's quarters without any interaction with other players).

Don't get me wrong, I don't intend on leaving EvE just because the devs make new rules I disagree with. Just realize, I, and others like me, will do what we can to bypass, bend, and ultimately break said rules to work in our favor.


...specially as there are no consequences to you because of the way CCP thinks they'e gonna sell the game to their potential players.

We are just attempting hard to enlighten CCP on how being an asshat only appeals to a tiny minority of people, and how they are already running out of wannabe asshats and wannabe players to counterbalance the haemorrhage of "carebears" who grow tired of being trolled by everyone and CCP the first.

No matter how noisy was the Incarnagate, it should be the least of CCP's worries. They're struggling to keep the subscription count (they even sent a "Power of 2" offer to my cancelled main!! Shocked), and that's a pretty bad sign when they aim at making life even harder (NOT funnier, only HARDER) to 72% of their subscribers.

PvP and Nullsec whiners are like a cuckoo chick, struggling to get all food from the unsuspecting parents while the legit chicks starve. Maybe CCP should grow up a bit and notice what their players play, where do they play, and for how long they play before leaving as opposed to what they think that players should play or want to play in order to stay subscribed.
Chokichi Ozuwara
Perkone
Caldari State
#493 - 2012-04-02 07:05:44 UTC
Vimsy Vortis wrote:
Chokichi Ozuwara wrote:
The truth is, no one starts a small hisec corp for PvP.

That's funny because that's exactly what me and my friends did about a year and a half ago.

Good for you. And I assume you grief small corps, ransom, extortion etc?

Vladimir Norkoff wrote:
Chokichi Ozuwara wrote:
The truth is, no one starts a small hisec corp for PvP. They join one of the big PvP alliances.
Confirming that my 4-year old corp is big. Huge even! Impressive in every way. You'll be in awe. Really! You may even faint when you see my big big huge gigantic PvP corp.

Right, and how do you earn money? By griefing carebears right? You're not exactly in NullSec taking on PL are you?


Look folks, like it or not, you're the problem. You're bad for business and as someone who does his share of PvE, being an outlet for you guys to get your jollies while totally killing my buzz is totally unbalanced.

INB4 some idiot says "this is what Eve is about".

The whole point of it being a sandbox is that it is emergent.

Tears will be shed and pants will need to be changed all round.

Tanaka Sekigahara
United Space Marine Corp
#494 - 2012-04-02 07:06:33 UTC  |  Edited by: Tanaka Sekigahara
I am seeing the new wardec system as something that should have it's name changed, as it has no relation to how what we in the western world call war, works. Also it fundamentally challenges the way many corps work, and how, and why, they were formed.

Democracy, or true "corporations" are now dead. All power, including that to wage war, now rests in the hands of the CEO. The single most important decision affecting a corp is now his, and his alone. I am sure this will change how the dynamic in many corps works , especially old ones, and how they are run. Will A director who used to be able to propose a war vote, and then have it be ratified by corp still be able to do so?

A democratically run corp used to acting it its own defense is now subject to the whim of the CEO.Conversely ,Wars that cost billions of isk can be declared by one man, without corp approval ( in spite of a corp that was deliberately set up that way with shares, needing member approval for wars) running small corps bankrupt in short order. This makes the executive a much stronger figure and in time, will have much farther reaching implications than a simple revision of the wardec system.

Whose idea was it that wardecs can be used as an ISK sink to remedy what you call inflation in the economy?

Large corps are now immune from wardecs from small corps. Large corp CEOS now have more power, and Protection.

Large corp and alliance goods are now effectively protected in highsec, further minimizing their risks.

You say you institute this system in part to make merc corps a more viable occupation, and that the overall content of the patch is to increase PvP, yet, a large bloc of players is now insulated from wardecs by cost. This mechanic, as stated in my opening sentence , is counter to how war works.It is the Offensive force, who must maintain, feed, and pay for mobilization during war that incurs the greatest penalty.

In short we are paying mobilization costs for our corp, not the enemies corp. Fees should be tied to the size of the attacking corp. They are the one Mobilizing, not the defending corp. We should be paying for our mobilization fee, not our enemies. You guys are looking at this backwards.

The fee should not be tied to corp size defending , but to corp size ATTACKING , if anything. This is how war in the real world works, and is fundamental to the nature of war, and is a reflection of the costs of Offensive Mobilization. Such costs can be the only justification for anything other than a flat Fee.

How, in any kind of logical sense, does a 25 man corp run up fees in the billions simply to take a fight to, say, Goonswarm?
how does that happen? it cant. Your wardec costs in fact can exceed the entire assets and hangars of smaller corps.

It is clear that the fee has no basis on any functional reality, but rather is a new ISK sink, and is simply another issue that CCP has identified as " OOh, look here, if we make Wardecs cost morethen we can suck money out of the economy" That is another issue altogether, and the manner that CCP is going about trying to drain up ISK.( It's very reminiscent of recent US programs to suck money out of the taxpayers wallets, and for similar ends, I might add )

Basically, CCP is raising the status of corporations to the status of " states" and CEOS to dictators.Now small corps are to be " non state actors" denied the privilege of waging war on larger corps. Many wars are started IRL by a small group waging war on a larger group and it then escalating to include other parties. This is part of the fundamental nature of war. Anyone can pick up a sword, or gun, announce his intent, and go to town.

Now, CCP will deny you the privilege of enforcing your intent, and the ability to act even as a terrorist. Large corps and alliances are now immune from all but major mobilizations by other major actors. Doesn't sound to me like something that promotes a " sandbox" playstyle, even as CCP attempts to conjure up new ways to take ISK out of the pockets of players who made them fairly and excersised their right to save it for a rainy day, or a cap, or whatever they wanted.

Does not bode well for free will and a player driven game.Granting DeFacto protection for large corps only, in high sec, not by the corp actually protecting its assets, but by having CCP shield such assets from harm by making the cost of attacking them prohibitive. Prohibition now becomes a large part of CCPs protection scheme for major alliance assets.

FIGHT PROHIBITION!!!

Does CCP feel these large corps NEED this protection? if not, then why implement it, if not simply as a scheme to be another ISK sink. Go back to CCP ISK sink man, and explain to him what is war, how it works, and why EvE will no longer be able to be played as a wargame, and should be renamed " spaceship mafia". or have him find another ISK sink. Or, better yet, come up with features that will promote PvP and have the people spend their money on ships, to replace ones that get blown up, as opposed to introducing a mechanic that minimizes PvP (as small corps dock, or go belly up, or get Borged into larger ones) by making it a luxury of those who need it the least, whose status is only threatened by war, whose ISK faucets are only threatened when their Haulers enter high sec. Instead CCP gives them protection.


CCP claims that these changes will make war a more viable option, and bring about a period of conflict Like that of Rome during the end of the republic and the birth of the Empire, as they fought all foreign nations, and house fought against house withing themselves.

I think instead they will find that all they have done is brought about is a Pax Mittania.
Magic Crisp
Amarrian Micro Devices
#495 - 2012-04-02 08:42:31 UTC
If you are messing with killmails, why don't you make an XML killmail available over the API, without item names, just with item IDs?
Whenever you are going on an unholy renaming spree you mess up all the killboards, and causing problems for all the killboard users, which are a lot. If the killboards could work using itemIDs, then you could rename modules on a daily bases, and we simply just wouldn't care, becase our killboards were working per normal. (Also person/corp/ally/system ID might be a good idea, and later on some unique id for the killmail, for authentication avoiding faking).
Karim alRashid
Starboard.
#496 - 2012-04-02 12:11:20 UTC
Chokichi Ozuwara wrote:

Right, and how do you earn money? By griefing carebears right?


You sound as if this is something bad to do in-game.

Pain is weakness leaving the body http://www.youtube.com/user/AlRashidKarim/videos

Tairia Lor'than
Stellar Excavations
#497 - 2012-04-02 14:21:27 UTC
The Why

Somewhere I am happy about the upcoming changes, and somewhere i am not.

The main reason behind i like it, is that it allows having pvp easier for players who like it. And sadly this the same reason for my disapproval. I still find it ridiculous that, while shooting ones property is forbidden and met with retaliation from the authorities, if you have filled out a from before it, and payed an equally low fee, you can do it legally.

Then what?

For this reason I'm not supporting it. This makes no sense at all. Not even the most liberal government would allow anyone to destroy the property of others if you pay ahead. Well, not without a good reason.

If you are trying to implement a system that eases hiring mercenaries, and implementing pvp as a profitable profession, i would also like to see 'casus belli' system implemented.

What do I mean? I mean that one should not be able to declare war on another entity without a reason for war. If someone in corporation A does anything harmful for someone in corporation B, then B should have casus belli against corporation A. In this sense harmful can be anything from broken contract, pact, theft, kill in high/low-security space, scam, whatever which can be tracked by game mechanics. In this case the war should be free for the duration of a reasonable timeframe.

I am aware that not every war goals can be justified by these casus belli. For this reason, if the war is for simply extending territory, gaining custom offices, stations, POS locations etc, then the war should have a seriously higher cost, which can't be farmed by doing a simple mission a week. I mean hundreds of millions.

Additionally I am also aware, that this would mean payable fees for corporations/alliances operating in low/null-security space. This system can be varied by introducing limited wars. A limited war would be effective in a single, or a number of regions, null-security, etc. If the limited war is effective for 0.0, then it should be free. If it is only effective for a low number of regions, the price should be reduced.

A limited war means that palyers are not allowed to shoot each other outside of the marked high-sec regions. I am aware that some people would just flee the effected region. However, this still would mean easy achievement of the wargoals, because the war target is unable to defend its properties in the effected region.

Additionally to boost demand for this, casus belli should be tradeable via contract, which allows third party corporations to declare war.

Summary

In my opinion, this would allow somewhat peace for law abiding citizens, and would give reasons for war for those who want to wage war. Additionally trading casus bellies would ensure an endless stream of possible wars for corporations, who want to wage wars. I can see a thousands of reasons for one corporation to trade off a casus belli for free, just for the reason to make the other one suffer.

In the end, this makes more sense, than the legalized, reasonless destruction for a ridiculously low fee.
Rashmika Clavain
Revelation Space
#498 - 2012-04-02 15:45:09 UTC
If you're neutral and start remote repping folks involved in a war, that war should extend to you.

However I'd be happy with 48/72/whatever hour killrights <3
Chokichi Ozuwara
Perkone
Caldari State
#499 - 2012-04-02 16:31:35 UTC
Karim alRashid wrote:
Chokichi Ozuwara wrote:

Right, and how do you earn money? By griefing carebears right?


You sound as if this is something bad to do in-game.

Griefing is bad. You have two subscribers, and one is being force fed to feed the sociopathy of the other.

Concensual PvP is great, but from a business perspective, non-consensual PvP is a barrier to growth.

I am getting more into PvP, but when I want to do my PvE, I just want to be left alone. It's not that I don't like danger, but that there is an interaction forced by someone else where I have nothing to gain and everything to lose.

That said, if you know anyone who suicide ganks miners for money, I am hiring. :)

Tears will be shed and pants will need to be changed all round.

Letrange
Chaosstorm Corporation
#500 - 2012-04-02 17:31:19 UTC
probably too late in the thread to get an answer, but:

1) Ok basically my understanding of the war dec mechanic (lore wise) is that it represents a bribe by the attacker to concord to simply look the other way while they attack the defenders ships/assets. If so, why is there no counter bribe method? I.E. Attacker bribes concord then within the next 24h the defender could counter bribe concord (with obviously a higher amount) to make the war not happen. and so on... I mean come on, wardecs are pure isk sinks and I know dr. E is looking for other isk sinks. You have to have at least thought of this...

2) Positing that war decs could possibly represent something other than a straight "look the other way" bribe, why is the no casus belli system with consequences for not having a valid casus belli in the first place. Not to mention casus foederis and all that "fun"? Or would that be too hard on the poor attackers?