Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Ill bet the first post will be don't be so salty but everyone even the groups that do it know that the war dec system needs some love.

first and foremost. What is war for?

Currently its about how big peoples epeen is.

According to Sun Tsu the purpose of war is to advance the goals of the state.

Von Clausewitz said it was to achieve an end state different and hopefully better than the beginning state.

So lets go back to current what is it for. We have groups that sit in trade hubs and war deck for the sake of killing people. (that is not war that is genocide.) the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation. I'm sure someone will argue it would only be genocide if these people all had something in common. They do, buy in large the wars are against industrial and new players where the aggressors are significantly more skilled.

Lets also look at this from a new player perspective (my corporation hires new people in all the time to help them learn.) they get into a corp and the first thing that happens is a war dec where they are helpless for a week and frequently get slaughtered. Now I've been playing for a while but I can tell you that doesn't sound like a good way to get new players to continue to play the game.

so this adds to a systemic issue with the game. here is part 2 of the issue though. Eve is a game of specialization the first 3 week of eve are getting into a barge to make isk. these characters have 0 ways to defend themselves and are struggling to get started as is.

Ill openly say I'm not sure how to fix this but simply put wars are fought for a reason. Expanding boarders, new resources, control of people. not because "these newbs will be fun to kill"

Idea to improve. have wars have a specific target, SOV, PI offices. moons. Some achievable goal other than cause we want to.

Now for the onslaught of our actions are justified and other rhetoric.

Even though you pseudo-intellectualise your post with completely out-of-place quotes from the likes of Sun Tzu, the basic flavour of your message is very clear: salty, salty tears.

As a new player (well, six months in right now, but I feel like a complete newbie) who often logs out because of the frustration of not being able to find someone to actually commit to a fight, I disagree. Being at risk of being shot more would make me log in more often, not less...

My point was not all new players are alike. I'm six months in and can't fly a mining barge.

I started playing this game because it was advertised that anyone can PvP any time, I was actually surprised at how safe I was to start...

For a corp that doesn't own anything its not able to be war decced if you own something like PI offices SOV, citadels, etc then that opens you up to it. for example Goonswarm wouldn't be safe under that logic. I'm pretty sure that's in the idea up top. under wars are fought for a reason / control of something.

I rather like the recent proposal that the war-dec is linked to a POS, if the POS gets destroyed the war-dec ends

Plus there might be an issue with the price of the wa-dec, as someone from Marmite suggested on a recent podcast

Beyond that I dunno... in a way the issue is not the war-dec so much as the structure and organisation of the defending corp

While the war dec system is not perfect it does what it needs to do. People like Marmite don't sit in trade hubs and travel choke points to commit "genocide". They sit there war deccing because they see people undocking in blinging PvE ships and hauling billions of ISK is a freighter or, worse, a blockade runner. They war dec because the see the value in the targets and can, by scooping the contents of the wrecks, further fund their war efforts.

The issue with further limiting war decs is this: how do you determine a war dec as "legitimate". Additionally, how to you now prevent people from fishing for targets given your proposal:

Congrats, you now have given every war deccer the ability to scope out the targets assets without ever needing to undock to search for them.

Lets say you limit it a specific target: kill PI offices; kill POSes, does the war deccer get to shoot the war target whose assets they are trying to remove? Then how does this prevent them from declaring a war to remove a POS only to camp you in station? There is a certain person who suggested that unless a corporation has assets in space - such as a POS or POCO or Mobile Depot, the target should not be war dec-able.

Ships are gankable. Freighters and Blinged BSes don't need to be war dec'ed to die. CODE. and their likes prove that day in and day out.

But war decs against corps, even without assets in space, should not be removed: sometimes you want to drive someone from your area. Sometimes driving a corp to pieces is the best method to get rid of the competition.

Here's one simple fix for that.

Make Mining, Industrial, and other non-combat ships off limits. If attacked CONCORD will still respond.

If your problem is no targets in a war dec then you need to train target selection to level 5 and you will get better results.
Or simply roam around high sec and look for those with suspect or criminal flags and have at it. I see them virtually everywhere I go in EvE. Good luck finding them other than as an entry in your local chat though they are very good at hiding in plain sight, are you good enough to catch them?

There is no doubt that war decs need some attention, however the real problem is what changes are appropriate when the war dec players themselves cannot even agree on what to do. Just one example that comes up around here is the social corp that is immune to war decs in exchange for restrictions. Many war dec players cry foul and say this is bad because it eliminates their ability to war dec whoever they want, whenever they want. And yet this idea is usually mentioned as an option by some of the war dec players themselves.

In the end analysis I agree with your basic assessment that war decs are broken, yet I there seems to be no way to balance them that does not risk alienating a large group of players on one side or the other and either way would be bad as it would risk loss of cash flow to CCP.

The game does not understand 'borders' in hi-sec. Nor can it fully grasp all the possible reasons one corp can have to wardec another. Best way to keep things sandboxy and incorporate everything from vengeance and hired hits to territory and even genocide, is to allow corps to wardec for whatever reason they want. This is a PvP game after all.

As a side note, by starting a Corp you are consenting to wardecs. It is not the wardeccers fault you dont know how to defend yourselves. This is what im talking about when the 'blind are leading the blind' and how corps like yours can hurt New player retention.

Did you know your Corp can mine together just as they can now without actually being in a Corp? Drop to an npc Corp and make a common chat channel for you all to use. Call it 'corp chat' and form fleets together without the risk of wardecs.

But seriously guys, social corps should be a thing.