Assembly Hall

Hi-sec statistics:
Five standard deviations,
Five dead Mackinaws.

:facepalm:

1. Who should be (suicide) ganking in high-sec?
Honestly....anyone its EVE.

2. Who should be ganked in high-sec?
Again this could be answered with anyone but it really depends on the ganker's choices and preferences.

3. Why should these people gank and be ganked high-sec? (especially when economic considerations are disregarded by the aggressors)
Usually Economic considerations are disregarded by the aggressors because there aren't enough consequences when you gank. For example: you gank a hulk which is worth upwards of 200mil depending on its fit it could drop atleast twice the amount in loot of what your gank ship cost. Not to mention salvage. So you loose a cat worth maybe 2mil big deal you just killed a target worth more than 200mil.

Again if the guy wasn't paying attention to what they were doing then by all means gank them eventually they will learn.

However, the consequences are minimal when you think about how easy it is to get around them. So you have an alt that took you all of 10 hours to train in to a gank fit destroyer that now has horrible sec status and is killed by concord constantly, has a crazy bounty and tons of those miners that you ganked now are making iskies off you selling their kill rights on you. Oops deleted the character created a new one WAHOO GANKING SPREE!!!!. I bet a lot of inmates in today's correctional facilities wish they could do the same. But heh its a game gotta have fun some one right!

Should wardecs exist outside of RvB and giant null-coalitions settling scores in trade hubs?
Err last I checked they did already.....however the war dec system is flawed big time. You have one side saying that there should be a reason behind the decs based off a game mechanic of some kind (Usually carebears or players that don't want to participate in PVP) then you got the other side that doesn't want to pay a dime to dec someone else. I see both sides as both destroying and helping the game. In all honesty I would rather keep what we currently have but add on the ability to dec NPC factions........mmmmm.........carebears.....tastie......not to mention all the botters etc. etc.

4. considering that many people avoid pvp like the plague, and the prevalence of dec avoidance,
lol well ask yourself do you avoid someone trying to kill you like the plague in real life? I understand its just a game but heh some people don't like to get killed in a game. Just like some people like to kill others in a game. Its that whole moral mental thing that shrinks have been studying for years and trying to explain yah-dah yah-dah.

5. considering that anyone with half a brain-stem would commit aggression when there are favourable chances of winning,

yeah.....

6. noting the outrage over the infanticide of vulnerable corporations and alliances,

okay...

7. Who should be deccing whom?

Anyone could potentially dec anyone. This is where the whole war dec balancing comes into play. The game would be dec fest if there was no cost to decs or limit to the number of decs you could potentially have. In the extreme after maybe about a year or so, the only mining and traffic you would see in high sec would be people in NPC corps. Low would be as empty as it is today. There would be a couple of large Null sec corps that would either all be friendly with each other or all be at war with each other. I believe it would be very difficult for new players.

8. Why should they be in wardecs? In a structureless, sovless high-sec, does there even need to be a reason?

See this is where ya lost me. The main factions have Sov in high-sec and they create something like the UN (concord) to police those systems. Hence why you need a Dec to attack with out concord involvement in empire space.

9. "Stronger Corporations and Alliances should not be able to harm weaker Corporations and Alliances in high-sec." I assume that no-one would even consider this notion in low or null-sec, but is this statement valid in high-sec?

its a Bullshit statement by a carebear, the strong prey on the weak. Its how the world goes round. For those of you that don't understand this look up Nature Followed by Carnivore.

9b. If a null-sec entity launches a vicious propaganda campaign against another null-sec entity, noone really cares.
But a high-sec entity launches a vicious military and psychological campaign against a weaker high-sec entity. And this is called, bullying, griefing, new-player and new-corp infanticide, etc.

Don't think I've seen this one

So as we all know the war-dec system is flawed. There are a lot of different views on this arguement but mainly its two extreme sides. One side is "no decs, no cost, free-for-all" the other side is "high cost, must have a reason based off game mechanics, must have consent of both sides for war". Both are well extreme, I believe that either one would destroy the game. If you have a total free for all it would be difficult to attract new players. While the game might receive a few, it would shed more players then gain and in the long run the lower number of players would mean fewer engagements which would mean more players would quit because they were looking for a fight and didn't get one. If we swing to the other side, we would end up with a game that was all hunky dory and basically a space version of the classic fantasy MMOs we have today like WoW, Guildwars, and Final Fantasy with out the colorful PvE storylines.

So what should we do

Well balance is the key to everything...Lets Feng Shui the War-Dec system lol

First off things that I believe are currently wrong with just the War-Dec system

- 24 Hour waiting period
- Fixed Dec length and pay period
- Cost
- No Market Warfare abilities
- Can't Dec NPC corps/Factions
- Unable to counter

I am going to try and stay as focused on the war-dec system as possible being that I don't want to get off on some tangent about PVP and other systems that have flaws and could be better perfected in my opinion.

Anyway the 24 hour waiting period before the war starts is kind of a moot point. I understand there needs to be a cool down period otherwise everyone parked outside jita would dec any freighter pilots corp then proceed to pop the freighter with out concord intervention. However, the 24 hour long waiting period is a little excessive I believe it should be more like 4 hours. Because in all honesty you declared war to fight correct so why not fight in the same day and not have to wait till the following day or later to begin that fight. Also 4 hours is more then enough time for an "active" corp to put up defenses or send out information to its members. If its members are running bots, or are alts etc. etc. that do things with out reading eve-mails, notifications, or checking corp/alliance chat then they deserve to die.

The fixed dec length of one week then having to renew it every week is so annoying. So you dec a corp/alliance you pay for the first week and you are stuck in it for a week. You could potentially renew every week however the defending side knows all this and can just log off for a week thus screwing you over. You have to then decide to dec for another week or not. So you choose not to they all log back on and a week later you dec again same corp. Same thing, this time you go for another week maybe three same thing one or two pop on to check if they are still decced. How annoying is that eventually you don't dec them again, and they still cause you problems. So why not a day by day payment period. A slider would work well here under the war tab in corp menus. It could go from say 1 day to 1 month and you pay accordingly. Then at the end of the period you could choose to renew and continue the war or cancel it. Choice is yours.

Cost now here is a big problem. While a lot of people believe its cheap still others believe its super expensive. Especially when deccing larger corps. Personally I believe it shouldn't be a variable the whole idea of a war cost multiplier is well demeaning. A corp should be able to dec as many corps as they wish of any size they wish. So a one man corp can dec 100, 1000 man corps if they can afford it. I did believe back in the day when corp to corp was 2mil and corp to alliance was 50mil was a little off. I do like the fixed flat rate of 50mil across the board corp to corp or corp to alliance etc. However I never did like the dec multiplier or the new member multiplier. It should be a fixed amount and as stated above the corp or alliance should have the ability to adjust how long they wish to dec.

This is a big one, currently we have no market warfare abilities when a war dec is issued. You could undercut orders but how do you know your not undercutting allies. You could buy out opponents but how do you know your not funding your enemies. With Trade Warfare abilities you could impose embargoes, tariffs, blockades and other Trade Sanctions. This could destabilize and potentially harm the defending or attacking corp more than killing ships would. However I'm sure there would have to be a mechanic involving some sort of isk value be paid to cover these sort of actions.

The inability to declare war on an NPC corp or Faction would seem to be the most frustrating of all the flaws in the war dec system. I mean think about it, the factions can attack each other why can't a stand alone corp or alliance attack the factions. In so doing you could declare war against Gallente and gain major standings with Caldari for it. This while a small tangent would effect not only the war-dec system but the faction warfare system as well. You would have to move new players into un-decable factions such as Concord, or have them with out corp or faction. This way you could declare war even against concord. Wonder what the out come of that would be. Dec Concord and you Dec all of eve? hrm....sounds fun!

Now here comes the balance. Money talks, if you want to counter a dec you have to pay for it. Why not have the ability to pay concord protection money. Basically if your corp or alliance has a overall positive security standing you can pay concord to void any wars that come your way. So if Corp A wants to Dec corp B who is paying concord protection money Corp A doesn't loose any isk and can't dec corp B. However if Corp B's Security Status drops below positive or under a certain amount say +5.0 Then Corp B can dec Corp A.

This. I do believe however that CCP is making these nerfs to ganking and wardecs in order to help new players. There's a lot of power differential between someone who can barely fit a frigate and someone who has everything maxed after 5 years, not to mention actual pvp experience.

If you can't understand that new players being slightly coddled is a good thing for the game, never ever become a parent. You'll never understand why a 2-month-old baby shouldn't be working a fulltime job while going to university!

Highsec needs to have high security and high consequences for belligerent actions. However anyone who stays in highsec beyond 1-2 years is admitting that they don't have what it takes to move on to low or null.

I'm still very new to the game and I understand this.

It's good that EVE has a learning cliff, however the frustration curve needs to be managed to be slightly less than the reward curve, for player retention.

A friend of mine started the game, was told that faction warfare was a great way to learn pvp even if you're just 3 days old, and left the game a few days later because he can't even go through a gate by himself without his ship being blown up. He was extremely frustrated to not be able to do ANY activity in the game if his corp didn't have a fleet up, and have to leave the fleet without any reward because his ship was always among the first to go. Without a hauler alt it was a huge hassle to reship all the time, he'd take forever to put one together and it would be gone in seconds. It wasn't about the isk, it was simply being unable to undock and get a rewarding experience for himself in any way.

His corp had to give him isk to replace his ships. He wasn't able to make any. He wasn't able to undock without knowing that at least 4 other corpies were there to roam. If he undocked alone he lost his ship before making any isk or even being able to shoot at the people who killed him, because they had the skills trained to shoot from far away.

I was told that it would take 6 months to be equal to others in frigate skills. 6 months. He didn't want to be dependent on others for 6 months before being able to have a chance.

Although that's not highsec wardecs it does demonstrate the new player experience in this game. Either stay in highsec where it's safer and run boring missions for very little isk, or get blown up repeatedly without having any fun because you're simply too new to do anything useful.

I blame myself because I hadn't tried fw and had also been told it was a newbie friendly way to go. A nullsec corp tried to recruit him at a week old... but he'd been told fw was better for new players than null, and had enough isk rewards to replace your ships. He didn't want a carebear life in highsec so he just left the game.

What do you do when the fight finds you? With expensive assets in high-sec, it becomes a very logical place for war and aggression, the mentality of the victim not withstanding.

Exactly...

And as for expensive assets. I have very little and would usually just jump onto my alts anyway. Although occasionally I do like to head out into lowsec and nullsec for a "break" but it's rare.