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This thread truly delivers.

It's interesting that the one CSM member who is against the change is the one who is negatively impacted by it. Guess that means the CSM DOES lobby for their own personal game, not for the good of the game as a whole.

It's also interesting that Jade can't accept any change to the current system that limits allies. Guess you should quit, and give someone (not me) all your stuff, eh?

Seriously.

A year ago we were raging that CCP never iterated on content, and now you people are raging because they are iterating, just not the way you want.

Now you know how the Titan pilots felt, and the Supercarrier pilots, and the null sec logistics folks - the three groups I can think of off the top of my head that have had changes they didn't like go through iteration (oh, and I shouldn't forget Incursion runners).

I for one see beyond the point of view of Honda Accord and Jade Constantine - unlimited allies is stupid. It ruins the concept and delivery of true mercenary corps who can actually deliver more than additional hisec targets for null sec alliances.

Oh, and don't forget to like Punkturis' posts!

I think there are several of us that do. Jade just happens to be very belligerent in his vocalizations. Can we haz legitimate mercenaries, please?

Since when could any highsec entity just jump into a war and fire on enemies without beeing part of the wardec?

While I agree that Eve is not meant to be "fair", a "fun" game needs to be balanced. Giant alliances beating up on small ones is not fun, so with that limited argument there, Jade is right. That is what Jade has been repeating over and over, and it is a problem.

The problem that CSM and CCP are trying to fix is another one: in comparably sized wars, the defender has an enormous advantage by being able to hire infinite allies for free. That then again turns into one side being hopelessly outnumbered and getting beat up on, and is again unfun. Ed: Weaselior thought I should make it clearer that this solution also makes merc corps for hire viable (or more viable) since they no longer have to complete with "tons of numbers for free".

CSM/CCP have chosen to fix the latter at the expense of the former. Their reasons are their own, but some hard analysis and numbers would perhaps be nice for explaining why. Stuff like:

• In how many wars does the aggressor end up hopelessly outnumbered once the defender hires allies?
• How much of the Eve population suffers from the above?
• In how many wars is the defender hopelessly outnumbered by the offender unless a ton of allies are hired?
• How much of the Eve population suffers from the above?

I assume (or hope) that CSM/CCP have used this kind of objective analysis in order to implement the proposed solution, and are thus picking the lesser of two evils. I invite any CSM or CCP to post the reasoning behind the trade-off being made (reasoning for why the trade-off is acceptable, not why one problem or the other is bad; in other words, why one of them is more important).

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Now, Jade, you have proposed an amendment to the proposed change to even things out: charging money only for the defenders that outnumber the aggressors. It's a good initiative, but I personally think it is a bad idea for a few reasons:

The first, and largest, concern is that it opens up a large can of worms with metagaming corps/members joining/quitting, and encourages non-combat defenders to quit their corp. I leave it an exercise of your imagination what kind of numbers-dickery can be played.

Second, numbers do not necessarily determine strength. If someone wardecs you, hiring a single 100-man corp who know what they're doing might do you much more good than hiring 20 50-man corps who just want to camp undocks for shuttles. This mechanic means that, given a limited amount of available ISK for hiring allies for defense, the defender will need to pick between a) arming themselves, b) hiring one or two focused merc corps (that charge fees), or c) hiring a ton of raw numbers who just want a free war. The proposed mechanic establishes an actual tangible bottom line cost that mercs can use to price themselves against. In other words, "why would I hire xXMercXx when I can just hire 1000 noobs and arm myself for the same price" is no longer an option.

Lastly, due to the prevalence of alts, basing anything on member count is dumb. This includes the wardec formula itself, but that's another topic that I won't rage about here.

Oh, my bad, the problem is that Goons wardecced -SF- and are now swarmed by flashy reds. /s

Explain the problem as you understand it, then. I have been known to be wrong.

Bolded the important part. I get that the proposed change also makes merc corps more viable, and that Jade's proposed compromise... er... compromises that.

My apologies for not making it clearer in the first part of my post. I will edit it to rectify that.

QFT

And the 1.1 proposed changes will do nothing to fix this, while unnecessarily widening the advantage between big/rich/vet and small/poor/new.

Congrats, Alekseyev, by agreeing with Weaselior you're now a frothing goon fanboy. Or something.

I am very curious what you think of the new "allies" system, Alek. I realize that it's better than what we had before, but I still don't rightly understand why there isn't just a "mercenary marketplace" window where anyone can browse through mercs and hire them for negotiable prices and durations regardless of whatever is currently happening with current wars (or the lack thereof.)

This current system seems very arbitrary and wonky to me. I'd like to get your take on it.

The contract system that would rectify this issue and many others is not ready.
CSM when might we see it. Before the damage is game threating. Please.

Can we please spit this thread so we can get back to talking about features and bugs that are currently on Sisi