Player Features and Ideas Discussion

War declaration is a necessary mechanic and when used appropriately a good one. I like it.

War declaration when abused is annoying to the corporation decced and just all around laziness by the group of full-time high sec war deccers we see proliferating. They don't serve any purpose except to chastise people lazier than them, which isn't really fair. Not fair, because if those people are to be chastised it needs to be done properly.

The new players/industry players that are the majority of the targets for high sec war deccers should learn something from having a small group of PvPers hunting them. Currently they don't learn anything, they just get the general feelings of "This is unfair." "These people are a bunch of taint-flakes" or "This game is broken, this shouldn't be allowed, I quit."

General lessons learned from having war randomly declared on you should be, in my opinion, along the lines of: "There is more than one way we can fight back." "We should learn more about our enemy and consider our options." and "Things in Eve can be unfair, but for them as well as us."

There are a lot of things that need to be changed about war declaration in order to make it work as well as it is intended to work, but trying to fix them all at once is likely a recipe for disaster. I'm only going to suggest one thing, which is a fairly small change in the scope of things, but will help push a lot of players towards the mentality needed to reach the inner dialogue mentioned above.

General consensus is that the fee paid to Concord to declare war on someone is a bribe. That's great, but if Concord takes bribes, why are they only taking them from one party involved? Let the defender up the ante and bribe Concord a larger sum to nullify the war declaration. If the aggressor decides it's worth it, they can increase their bribe further. Let this bidding war continue for the 24 hour grace period, with a 5 minute extension if any bids are received within the last 5 minutes of the grace period.

High sec war deccers will have to use their best judgement to determine how much a group of war targets is actually worth. Defending corps will be able to effectively make war deccing them cost-inefficient if they are willing to spend the money, assuming they don't want to be declared against and fight it out for some fun. They must also judge the cost efficiency of this practice, as there will become a point where they are spending too much on avoiding wars and will need to just learn to deal with them. Having the expense of their preferred lifestyle increased, high sec war deccers will have to do something other than declare war against 50 different alliances, camp a pipe and wait for people to stumble through. In order to make money they'll have to declare less wars, pick their wars more judiciously and pursue those few war targets more enthusiastically, making things more interesting for everyone.

But the ultimate goal here, above all else, is to encourage people to pick targets who will not bid against them. Cheap targets that will not be actively evading you under all circumstances, because if they did not make a counter-bribe it means they want to FIGHT! And if they continually throw ships into your lap you're earning more than you would by random declaration.... Unless you throw your ships into their lap, in which case pick your targets more carefully next time...

And that is good for everybody involved.

Oh, and of course like any good police state that is willing to accept monetary negotiations, regardless of who has the highest bid Concord keeps both offers at the end of the bribing period.

Just one step on a long path to making this a fun and efficient mechanic that encourages good habits. Any opinions or suggestions?

To add to this; corporation membership should be a factor. Large corporations can only go after other corporations of equal size or at least within one level to a set number of level(s).

Honestly i dislike this idea.

The problem isn't the wd mechanics, it's the players mindset... "This is just unfair" "i cannot beat this" "must join npc corp"...
People seem to believe that because they mine or produce stuff that they have no way of fighting back, and what you're saying is you can pay with the wallet instead of actions.

People already have the option to get a war invalidated, and that is by contracting the opposing corporation/Alliance, and making a deal.
If the wardecees don't want to do said thing it's their own fault for being at war, and not playing for a week.
If you really have the opinion that you shouldn't be at war because you're not flying combat ships (which seems to be a popular opinion), then maybe Eve is not for you.

My personal opinion as one who wds a ton, is that there's already mechanics to avoid wardecs, there's no need to add an isk sink because of an isk sink, it'll just end up in people buying plex to avoid wardecs.

I agree, war deccing is being abused by griefers.

Let me translate this bullcrap into what you REALLY suggest.


- Anyone under war dec is not allowed to play eve until the attacker gets bored. So, basically, you want war dec to be one-way unsub ticket - because you hate people who dare to play eve without your permission.

- Anyone should just make a new player corp every time the old one is getting war dec. But since they already unsubbed because somebody decided they needed their permission to play eve, I guess it doesn't matter.

- Fighting a war dec is obviously impossible for indy corps, and there wasn't a single precedent where they could at least cover their losses while doing so, which proves the point. That, and the deccer usually has no assets to be hit, which makes war dec zero risk activity "elite peeveepeers" are fond of.

Aside from the obvious question "What's wrong with afking in a station?", I can write a piece of software simulating random mouse activity at random intervals faster than it took me to write this post. So what's the point?

Got any real suggestions?

Well to be truthful, what real gain is there in a high sec war other than "E-peen" for all your 1337 hauler/miner kills?
And those happen all the time without wardecs. Its not like HS has any limitation in resources, and miners are hiring people to wage war on other miners.

All HS wardecs effectively allow players to do is remove POSes/POCOs without concord intervention.


Then on the case of "making wussy carebears fight back"
Well, carebears will be carebears. Most of the HS wars I've talked to indy corps about just end up with the indys just leaving for a week or so, or switching to l2/3 missions instead of their regular mining/hauling.
At least on occasion, the carebears WILL fight back in HS/ continue to operate, even though there are "hostiles" around, whereas pirates/nullbears whenever anything shows up in their territories and interferes with their ratting/anoms they all run and hide like little mice.

Possibly the stupidest ideas ever conceived, adding null sov structure grinding and defense mechanics to hisec wars is idiotic to say the least.

What if people actually enjoy running locates and hunting war targets off the beaten path, rather than babysitting a f#cking beacon in a home system in a perpetual 'my fleet is bigger than your fleet' grind with re-enforce timers? Stupidity at its finest on display there, as the answer to fixing war mechanics (and the null sov grind) isn't to introduce more structure grind.

What about your proposal prevents pansy's from from just quitting corp and either re-creating a new one or hiding in an NPC corp to duck wars completely? This is another big existing war mechanic problem today that you completely failed to address in idiot troll fashion. Either wars 'mean something' or they don't. Today they don't because they can be easily ducked, this needs to be fixed (but sure as hell not by your lame ass ideas).

What about your proposal fixes the AFK cloaking issue that besieges all regions of space, and AFK dockers who artificially simulate a presence that isn't real in game? Nothing, while they chew up server resources, and TiDi remains an ongoing problem. Also, your assertion you can just 'script something to auto-move your mouse' and avoid the proposed auto-loggof timer is idiotic, the EULA and existing botting detection code might have something to say about that.

Whats clear is you simply have no real experience or knowledge of todays war mechanics and its existing issues. My ideas try to address the issues, yours are an exercise in bringing null sov grind pain to hisec and trolling. GTFO.

ps.
The Devil's Warrior Alliance Declares War Against Pasta Syndicate
From: CONCORD
Sent: 2014.02.20 18:43

The Devil's Warrior Alliance has declared war on Pasta Syndicate.
Within 24 hours fighting can legally occur between those involved. If war is due to a corporation at war joining an alliance, then the war starts immediately instead. For your convenience we have included the appropriate CONCORD War Rules:

1. Anyone war decced can play as much eve as they want.
war deccers rarely hunt outside high dec so low , wh and null are open.
war deccers rarely leave pipe systems so most of high sec is safe.
lots of pockets of systems exist in high sec so normal play can continue in these areas if you use a scout to watch for war targets.
i have never known a war target to try and stop my high sec exploration in out of the way areas.

What you mean here is that you have to make more effort to protect yourself or to explore a different activity in eve and you don't want to.

2. Fighting back is always an option. everyone can fly basic frigs. everyone over a few months old should have basic combat skills. in drones if nothing else. If these guys are deccing hundreds at a time is it so hard to form a joint fleet with some of the others dec'd?

3. Have you looked for assets to hit? Or are you just guessing?

4. afk cloaking and station sitting are fine if people want to do that why should i care?

also OP's idea benefits older players over newer (as richer) and also larger corps/alliances as it is easier for them to gather more isk than small ones. It is awful on number of levels

Of course not everyone wants to fight, if carebears had their way there wouldn't be wardec mechanics at all, hisec would be a 100% risk free land of milk and honey and stealth nerf-wardec threads like this wouldn't even exist...I see you carebear, your use of the term 'griefer' is a dead giveaway.

Wardecs exist, they should *mean* something, not be a broken mechanic that allows carebears to duck them as they do today. Either CCP supports the notion of non-consensual combat or they do not, they should either BUFF wardecs, or remove them entirely -- but make the friggin call, rather than letting carebears whine for a death of 1,000 cuts to the axioms of HTFU that made EvE great.

This stealth nerf-wardecs thread should be summarily closed, and all carebears blasted from existence for their constant heresy.

F

I concede dealing with the AFK (cloaky or otherwise) issue is not central to fixing wardecs, but however remain convinced defenders should be incentivized to come out and fight. Putting the aggressors wardec fees in a pot that a defender can claim based on aggressor ships killed at least creates an opportunity of that, contrasted with status quo of said isk going in a CONCORD black hole.

If you combine this war-bounty proposal with increases to NPC corp taxes and add a stasis period to those trying to duck wars entirely, you are really cooking IMHO towards fixing the obviously broken existing war mechanic. Again ultimately CCP needs to sh!t or get off the pot, either wars are supposed to be bad nasty things (like in real life) with real consequences, or they should get rid of them entirely; not keep f#cking it up with the death of 1,000 cuts sourced from mewling nerf-hisec carebears...

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