Assembly Hall

Simply not true. If PVPers need something they can simply buy it off the market at fair market prices and be done with it. Why would a PVP corp pay an indy corp to mine and produce stuff for them when they can get their ships and equipment from the market just as easily (and cheaper to boot). Indy corps do this too, don't make the mistake of thinking that just because a corp is indy they produce EVERYTHING themselves.

When you propose that an indy corp should 'just hire some help' you're effectively saying that on top of being harassed by a PVP corp looking for easy targets, the indy corp should also PAY for ANOTHER PVP corp to get some targets. And those hired guns aren't cheap. 200m for what is essentially protection money. Paying that sum every time some griefer corp wardecs you will quickly drain your wallet. Not to mention the lulz that ensue when griefer corps find out you pay a good 200 to 400 million to hire protection every single time they dec you for what, 50m? Being the griever corp I would laugh my ass off and dec that same corp over and over and over again just to see them spend the money. Or better yet, work together with whatever merc corp gets hired by the target and share the profit. Ironically hiring help in EVE Online is actually counter productive to what you, as a target, want to accomplish (ending the war), which is why no-one ever does it. On paper the 'assistance' mechanic looks interesting but it's absolutely useless against griefer corps.

Anyway the thing that all big and mighty PVPers seem to be missing is that EVE Online is a video game that people play for their own amusement. Some entertain themselves with PVP, others are more drawn to the industrial side of the game. Both are fine. But you need to understand that you can't force someone to do something they don't want to do. PVP players want to shoot stuff, but they would rather log off for a week straight than spend more than 2 minutes in a mining ship if given the choice.
On the other side, industrialist like to mine and produce and would rather log off for a week (which they often do, leaving no force to fight with in the first place) than spend a week flying around in PVP fleets and ultimately getting their asses kicked if they were to try anyway. Because let's face it, most indy pilots have sh*t PVP skills and have no interest in training them. Which is subsequently the reason they get decced in the first place, because they are easy targets that probably won't shoot back, making for easy laughs for the griefer corp.

War dec mechanics are currently broken because they are used to grief. A corp is wardecced not to spark a fight or to measure who is better, but to embarrass a target corp. If they dock up and hide the deccer laughs at them and feels good about having disrupted their operations. If the targets forms up and fights they tend to get their asses kicked based purely on experience, which also makes the deccer laugh and feel good even if they lose because 'content'. If the target ignores the war and keeps doing what they are doing they get their mining or mission ships blown up which just about makes the deccer cream their pants.

Once again I feel the need to state that war decs should always exist in some form and that the high sec care bears should never be 100% safe. But if some huge PVP merc alliance wardecs a small 30 player industrial corp that has absolutely no PVP skills, things need to be balanced enough so that the small inexperienced corp has a realistic chance of winning and thus ending the war on their terms. Not just the terms of the attacker. And yes that would still mean that the small target corp would have to go out and fight, but they would be able to fight for a purpose instead of just serving as cannon fodder for a week.

I won't pretend to know what kind of changes or new mechanics would be fair and balanced to both parties, but I do know that the current system is extremely biased towards the attacker which is not a good situation no matter how you want to look at it.

So where do the PvPers get their money to buy that stuff from the market?

Oh, that's right. They PvE, do industry (the high-margin stuff), or farm/harvest.

Very few PvPers can say that they earn money from pure ship-on-ship violence. Those that do are more of the exception than the rule.


True... most indy corps don't produce "everything." But they do produce what they feel they will get the most out of.

As for PvPers and PvEers that attach themselves to each other... once you leave the confines of High-sec this becomes a lot of common than you think.
PvPers want stuff that they use for cheap (stuff on the market usually sells for 5 to 15% higher than the material value... more if you are far away from a trade hub). Indys want potential attackers to be discouraged from attacking in the first place (it won't save them if they are caught on a gate, but it may help save their POSs).



EVE is based on the concept that you can affect anyone and everyone for whatever reason even if they do not like it.

I, as a PvPer, am affected by industrial people and PvEers. I am "forced" to spend my money on stuff they build/earn because if I do not... I have no way to play the way I want. I do not enjoy it. I have no means of avoiding this without also getting into industry/PvE.

So why should I not be allowed to affect an industry player in a way they dislike as well?
At the same time, why should industry/PvE people not have to learn the basics of PvP the same way I have had to learn the basics of indsutry/PvE?


Oh that's right... because no one should be "forced" to do anything.

In that case I propose...
- that all building materials, ships, mods, equipment, ammo, etc. have their prices automatically set to "zero" (or something close enough to that)
- every time I lose a ship, that ship should respawn in my hanger so I do not have to buy anything.
- I get paid large amounts of ISK by CONCORD for every player kill I make. That way, I do not have to do PvE or Industry.

It's only fair after all. Because I do not want to be forced into doing things I do not like to do. And Industry players take away from that by forcing me to buy their stuff (which requires me to perform other activities that I do not enjoy; like PvE).


See what I did there? It's the same argument.
As long as Industry "forcefully" affects me... I am allowed to "forcefully" affect it back.


So what arbitrary mechanic would you propose to force people who do not want to fight to fight people who want to fight?

The issue here is that you are running into the conflict between different human natures that the game is predicated on!

People who want to fight versus people who do not want to fight.
People who produce versus people who want to destroy.
People who want to be left alone versus people who want to affect everyone.
People in all of the above points have to find ways to make their side win using the mechanics to their advantage.

You can't have "I-don't-have-to-do-anything-I-do-not-want-to-do" mechanics while staying true to the "everyone can affect everyone else in any way" theme.

Both concepts are mutually exclusive of the other... both literally and in essence.


Then again... it is this conflict that makes the game SO interesting.

Got to admit that this rings true. It is a shame because there should be good and enticing options available for all types of play. I never understood the war dec mechanic in isolation of a reciprocal option, perhaps to bribe CONCORD to kick them out of highsec for a while.

Is there a more inventive means? If you have one please put it forth.

The reality is that Eve is a competitive sandbox where everyone's actions, both combat and industrial, can affect everyone else. Therefore there needs to be mechanisms where players can disrupt the activities of other players, especially large, organized groups of other players. Wardecs are one of the few ways to do this in highsec and as such need to be in the game in some form.

You seem though to have an issue with the concept of risk vs. reward. This idea doesn't mean that each player has to be at the same risk - that an aggressor has to be at the same risk as a defender for example (in fact, the actual wardec mechanics are heavily biased in favour of the defender). It means that if you are engaging in an ISK-making enterprise, then you are the one that has to be at risk. Ideally, the greater amount of ISK you are trying to make, the greater the risk should be to you. If your opponent is not trying to make ISK/resources, why should they be at equal risk to you if it is you that will get all the reward?

What is needed is a way for players to tune the amount of risk (and reward) that they want to expose themselves to. If you are a small corp, say just running missions with a few friends, you should be at much less risk than a large industrial corp trying to put billions of ISK/month of goods into the economy. One way to do this is to have "opt-in" mechanisms, similar to the current POCOs that were mentioned, that increase the income (reward) of a corp but make the corp vulnerable to attack. There should be similar deployables for mining, industry, missioning, etc. that increase corp income and are moderately tough to install and expensive, but are not able to be taken down in the event of a wardec (like POCOs). This way, corps can decide to earn the reward of using them in exchange for the risk that they might be attacked and this would motivate those attacked to defend their assets.

Also, I think there should be a "social" tier of corps that can opt out of wardecs (and intracorp aggression) completely. They would have no benefits of the current corps (no taxes, POSes or the like), but would allow casual players to play the game albeit with less rewards than a true corp that is taking responsibility for defending themselves against other corporations.

There is already an opt-out mechanism for avoiding wardecs. Its the NPC corps. Players who want to not be wardecced can simply (and automatically) move into an NPC corp and never be wardecced again.

Now I know this will not satisfy the OP and his supporters. They want their POS's, their POCO's, the taxes of their poor underlings pouring into their coffers. They want to "make a name for themselves and eventually move into nullsec" as countless highsec corporation descriptions have read since Eve began. But that is a misunderstanding of the nature of this game.

If you can't protect your organization and the people in it your corp has no right to exist. The PvPers are culling out the weak. They are showing the leadership and membership of those corps what the reality of their organization is. That they are weak associations of players with no group loyalty who's main purpose in joining said group is to profit individually off the labors of the others. Since by admission of their leaders they get NO protection and, as miners and other PvE'ers, provide no protection in return there is no other reason for them to be there. As always, they are there because they think they will be paid for it in some fashion.

The membership of PvP organizations WILL fight for each other. The members of PvE corps only stay as long as they profit and, if called to make a sacrifice, will bolt at the first opportunity. For the health of the game, these corps MUST be destroyed. The individual PvE'ers fill a useful niche as the bottom of the food chain so they can stay. But their "leave us alone" corps?

No.

But not just NPC corps. You can also avoid war decs in player corps, it just takes a little more work in some cases.

It really boils down to this. If you want to avoid consequences, then that comes at a price.

Eve is PvP centric. Even though you like to look at some pilots as 8 years PvE veterans, they are actually 8 year PvP ones. I guarantee that they have done PvP for the vast majority of those years.

Certain wars may not mean much to you, but they may mean a lot more to those making them. But it is up to you to try and make them mean nothing. It's all well and good running to the forum looking for hand holding, but how about some corp action to make them wish they hadn't bothered decing you? This doesn't necessarily mean all jumping in ships and fighting, it means thinking outside the box and doing what Eve players are good at. Screwing over other players. So screw them over, cost them ISK, make them regret messing with you.

The beauty with Eve is the fact that we can affect each and every other player in the game, to some degree. No one should get special treatment against that aspect. Including those that think they are PvE only, when in fact they are mistaken.

Are war decs broken? Damn straight they are, they are too damn easy to avoid.

They do PvP. They are PvP veterans. PvP is not exclusively ship to ship combat and almost every aspect of Eve is PvP. Even ship spinning.
As much as you wish Eve to have a PvE only environment, it's not going to happen. You could always play on sisi, it's the nearest to what you are after.

War decs are easy to avoid, you just have to work at it a little. Or you can fight back. (this is also not exclusively ship to ship combat.)

They specifically exist to circumvent the loathsome presence of CONCORD.




There is an answer to making wars worth something.

And that answer is not to screw over PvP players like you're trying to do.

It's to make player corps worth defending. To do that, you have to take away a lot from NPC corps, which are too attractive in comparison.



There already is one. You get to shoot back, for free. If you choose not to, then it's your fault that your opponent has no risk. Your risk aversion's consequences are not the fault of the game mechanics.




Why should people's desire to find people to kill be made "pointless"? Their playstyle deserves to exist as much as yours does. Moreso, since they're actually interacting with other players.

SO you agree theyre just used to engage in high sec to avoid the criminal system no other purpose or objective.




Why are we screwing the PVPer over it would be making the war more active ....moreso if the indi corps and pve corps where able to actually get on with what they prefer to do...your ships, ammo..mods everrthing would become cheaper....making pvp more affordable...plus your pve mains could go about their business too....most high sec pvpers we encounter don't pvp they just gank solo miners , haulers etc turn out a fleet and they dock and jump back to a trade hub.



Maybe that's an answer remove NPC corp options..but how do you make a player corp worth fighting for? currently most effective way to end a war is not log in! how can that be right?




again why shoot back its partly what the purpose of declaring war in high sec is about...to get fights theres nothing to motivate the indi/pve pilot to do so




The suggestions make the kills have a purpose moreso by the war actually being about an objective a true victory with some means of reward each kill or defense means something ...

This, so much this. It's what all these types of threads are about.

I dislike many other activities in Eve, such as mining, industry, markets etc. People are constantly beating me at PvP in those areas. Sure I make a bit of ISK now and then in the market, but no where near as much as many others.

Should I complain to CCP and ask for changes to those fields, so I can compete? Or should I look for other ways to avoid heavy losses that may require a little more work?

Well it will not be the former, simply because I know the game is PvP centric. All players compete in everything in the game. Just because I'm not good at a certain aspects of the game, doesn't give me the right to ask for those parts to be nerfed in my favour.

So like I said. You and they, see themselves as 8 year PvE veterans. But I guarantee they are 8 year PvP ones.