Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This is not so much a fully formed idea that I am trying to sell, it is intended more as a discussion post. I want to hear your comments and ideas about the purpose of player corperations in high sec.

I would love to be proved wrong, if you can tear this concept apart and show me that I have somehow missed the point entirely then please do, but try to do it in more than one sentance.

Now, onto the point, I knew there was one here somewhere.

In highsec you have the majority of players, most of them do their own thing, relying maybe on a few alts, but essentially playing solo. I know there are exceptions to this, I am describing the majority.

Why do they do this? I see it boiling down to a few reasons.

No benefits;
What does being in a corperation gain you?
For new players you benefit learning from older characters, but after a few months you no longer need the tuition.
Avoiding the 11% NPC tax, well if you run missions anyway, mining/trading/exploring dont get affected. So mission runners will form a corp for themselves and maybe a salvage alt with 0% tax.
Socialising with friends, really no need to form a corp to do this, not with local and public or private chat boxes.
Roleplay. Like it or loath it, this is just about the only viable reason for being a proper corp in highsec.

Any highsec corp will at some time get war decced, gain enough people and you become a target, this is a fact of EvE.
There is little point fighting such a war, so most will try to bail or go inactive during a war, some never return. Playing possum and not letting the deccers get thier tears/killboard points is the best option .... pretty ****** from a gameplay perspective IMO.

Now I know there are corperations that operate in highsec, small, medium and large, even a few alliances, however they are the exception to the rule and they work despite the drawbacks not becasue of the benefits.

What I would like to see is viable reasons for forming official groups of players in highsec, a reason to team up to work together for a common goal. There is a massive pool of very capable pilots living in highsec, but there is currently no reason for them to team up, they can achieve everything solo.

As for what can be done to improve the situation, well that is where I want to see ideas, and opinions.
If you are/were part of a properly functioning highsec corp/alliance, what kept you together, what did you gain form grouping up that you could not achieve solo?
If you play solo now, what would you like to see that would encourage you to join up with similar pilots?

I, myself have been a member of a number of highsec corperations, (and a few lowsec) I have always wanted to build a community to be a part of something bigger, but it is hard going convincing people to accept the drawbacks when they realise that they are better off flying solo.

If you take a look at the large corps that function, they are almost to a one, low/null sec, for the simle reason of herd mentality, they group up because blobs win prizes. There is no such incentive in highsec.

If you read through all that, congratulations and a cookie for you, please post your comments, good or bad below.

Its true hisec is the most solo-friendly place. The benefits offered by a corporation can vary widely however. Sometimes people just want a social group to chat with while they more or less do their own thing, and this is enough. Sometimes having a corp hangar stocked with random t1 named modules can be a big help to a rookie pilot. But more often a successful corp needs to be organized around something in common. Lots of things benefit from teamwork. In particular, hisec mining, wardeccing, hauler ganking, WH day tripping, POCO management all require or at least benefit greatly from teamwork. You can also be a pvp corp based in hisec that goes on lowsec or nullsec roams. Also, lots of activities that are soloable in hisec can benefit from teamwork when you're training new players (something most corps with ambition are willing to do).

I don't think that hisec (or hisec corporations) suffer from a lack of team-based content, although I do think they are hurt somewhat by the limitations of the role management system and the way that hisec poses are managed.

It's simple.

Change PI to match dust districts in how you claim space.
Make PI fit like a ship, where you decide to focus on resource production, manufacturing, or defence. Balance between the three etc. With various trade offs depending on the focus and a decent module range.

Then as PI space is limited, PI now requires a corp, leave a corp into an NPC corp, and someone else can claim your district. And you can take out contracts for a Dust attack to be made on that PI installation.
These Contracts 'might' need a war dec, or they might be independent of the war dec depending, however if they need a war dec, you would have to lock them from corp transfer at that point, same as POCO's become locked so they can't avoid the war dec for ever.

Then you have a timer, and a series of dust matches which would use the random public dust matches on your planet. Or could possibly allow the EVE corp to nominate a Dust corp to defend/attack respectively. And if no corp is nominated for a side then it is random pubs.
Possibly with a couple of reinforce timers along the way to allow for some strategic re-evaluation from the currently loosing side.

Then treat orbital bombardment like the Dust FW matches. No automatic OB's, and they are earned EVE side. So you now have a reason to fight in space against the War Dec. As there is something valuable to protect. There should be a decent number of hours in order to allow good fights to happen. Rather than just a single battle. And since you can fit for more defence (I.E. the friendly MCC would have more armour, more clones, and maybe give some other benefits somehow Dust side depending on fit of the PI) you can influence the planet side fight for your own property as an EVE pilot quite well at that point.

Now, how to stop the goons doing what they did with POCO's and taking everything, that probably requires a reversal of the war dec system. Where a War Dec costs based on how many pilots are in your Corp/Alliance instead. And any allies joining in have to pay Concord a war dec fee also (Or you pay on their behalf) based on how many pilots they have. (To avoid work around exploits)
This makes it expensive for the Goons to war dec a 5 man corp, but the goons can afford it if they really have a reason to care about the 5 man corp. But it means the 5 Man corp can later manage a cheap war dec to try and retake their one POCO & planet with PI, rather than the Goons getting the crazy cheap wardec while the 5 man corp has to shell over bucket loads.

This then creates some real things to fight over in High Sec. And from the presence of real things (assuming the PI has value), you will then get naturally forming entities trying to fight for it.

Null is where the sheep go to be slaughtered. Your take is hilarious.

As far as the OP's topic, I've long thought that wardeccing should require some kind of act of aggression by the target first. I have never understood the logic behind carte blanche wardeccing, as it seems to completely circumvent the purpose of Concord. If someone ganks you in high sec, kills you in low sec, or attacks your property in low or high sec, a "war right" should be created allowing you to declare war against them and their corp/alliance for a week. This would address the lopsided wardec costs for large corps (as a war right would cost nothing or only a token amount to activate) and would also make forming high sec corps more appealing (as you will only face wardecs if you act aggressively).

High sec POCOs and POSs would need to be made an exception though. So that setting them up basically leaves you open to wardeccing in a form more or less identical to what we have now.

Or it might be because you are new and still learning, but way to go perpetuating the negative stereotypes of EVE players.

or said carrot would be abused by dual/muliti boxers in 1 mans.


TBH about the only carrot that would make this work is empire "SOV". Its all 0.0 has imo. Join the better blue blob, get better rewards.

I have known "solo" pirates quite content to hunt in low sec lone wolf style. "Solo" relative as maybe a link alt online at the time (but link alts dead common at this point, its SOP damn near). You can get NPC 0.0 dwellers who pick up thier pirate lp's here and there and shoot sleepy ratters once in a while. Lone wolf works for them pretty much as even in a real corp if say pl cares enough to go dynamite fishing on you...unless of somewhat equal size solo or corped up you are screwed lol.

Problem with this is then you give the blobs reason to care more about empire. That goons, russians, etc would have a interest in making empire homes officially theirs I don't think we can argue would not happen.

And the problem of what empire "SOV" would even give ofc is another issue. I know I'd like to see maze in empire if ihub pirate traps got 10/10's in empire. The difficult part is getting to and from it in 0.0 really after you learn to work it well. Just not seeing his happen.

Or even if it did...still no need to join the corp really. 0.0 ninjya ratting an old tradition in eve. Corp/alliance pays for the sov, you sneak in and reap some of the rewards. 0.0 ihub pirate trap mods aren't picky. They don't care what color you are. It pulled in a 10/10 for the day, its public access to any who find it.

One issue with eve online is the ease of making a corp. Firstly we must ask if one man corps add value to the game. Secondly is there a bottom limit to establishing a corp ie 10 people must sign up at creation? Thirdly should wardecs be allowed at one man corps. should players be allowed to default to npc corps? Should players be allowed to stay in starter corps? Are activities suitably hard to necessitate using more than one player? Should certain things take more than just "more guns"?

and finally - should highsec be changed somehow to get people out of it?

First off, Eve is not for everyone. When I joined, nearly seven years ago, it was with a group of friends from another game. Our corp did what most new folks did in high sec corps - we ran missions together, did a few mining ops, gave advice to our new members, threw our mission loot into the corp hangar for people to share, etc. Then one day we got wardecced by a one-man bitter vet corp (think his name was Eug316). He pretended to have two members in his corp so he could do the "good cop, bad cop" thing with us. We experienced the best and worst of Empire war - a couple of us got ganked, we managed to catch him on a gate and kill his Myrmidon, we almost got his Navy Apoc, but he managed to deaggro and dock, we learned a lot about the meta game, etc. Mostly, we got hunted for a week and played a lot of hide and seek.

The most important part, however, was each member's reaction to the war dec and the feeling that in Eve you were never safe. Some people quit right away. Others didn't undock for a week. Others chafed at the station games. Some really wanted to fight. Others said that we had to avoid giving him fights and kills and he would get bored and go away. Most just wanted to be left alone and go on mining and missioning. We thought about hiring mercs, but didn't trust them to do anything. In the end, it tore our corp apart. Those of us who wanted to fight soon found ourselves in 0.0. That first war dec tore off the training wheels. Even though it was a terrible alliance, it was good for us to get out and experience more of Eve. As much as I hated him at the time for picking on us, since he had more SP than our entire corp combined, Eug316 did us a favor. He showed us what we were made of and he taught us what Eve was about.

Since then, I've kicked around all over Eve. I've been to 0.0, back to high sec for solo mission running, done FW, dabbled in Incursions, and back to 0.0. Those who sit in one-man, Empire-based, mission-running corps are missing out on part of Eve, but it's their game. It would be nice to rip the training wheels off them. Some would crash and burn. Others would get even more addicted. I'd like to introduce more people to the good side of 0.0 life - the sense of teamwork you get from being in a good corp, building, maintaining, and defending space together. Raiding your neighbors. Spending an evening sitting on a gate together BSing. Looking out for each other. I recognize many are turned off by aspects of 0.0 life - the long, Tidi fights, the never-ending deployments, strat ops, politics, etc. Some people like all those things, but for me, what keeps me playing Eve is the people, not the benefits package.

Rather than simply saying "Nerf high sec!" people should be encouraged right from the start to join corporations. Not by economic incentives, but by the desire to interact with other people.

Unfortunately, this is Eve. The second rule is "Trust no one." We have to assume that every "new player" who wants to join us is actually a hostile spy. The hardest part for many new players is simply finding someone you can trust and want to hang out with. In my opinion, what CCP really needs to do is encourage a few more "training" corps to enter the field. Eve University should have some competitors. The tutorial should introduce new players to a few different options - corps that could be trusted not to scam new players, but would also open them up to more of Eve. From there, players could figure out what to do next.

If not in the tutorial, I'd suggest a pop-up advertisement every 30 days for all newbie corp members. Something suggesting that folks get out and try something new. Suggestions to go check out X-training corp or links to the recruitment channel and forums. Advice on how to make your own corp, or what to look for in a good corporation. Etc.

Who's to blame: the shark or the swimmer?

Here's a tip: stop going to Jita. You can make more money in the lowsecc markets and with similar degrees of risk.

I think the game mechanics that encourage the wardeccing of small noob corps are to blame personally. For Jita wardeccers the fee is nominal, and the opportunity for easy kills is too good to pass up. I personally think such individuals should at least have to work and/or pay for their kills a little bit.