Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This is incorrect. You have several options available to you, which have all been covered ad nauseaum in this and other identical threads.

Actually, it's you that isn't understanding.

You say you want it to be more expensive to wardec those who don't want to PvP. What you're failing to realize is that, as has been pointed out repeatedly, making it more expensive to do so won't have any effect at all. In fact, making it more expensive will only make wardecers become even more consolidated and organized, pooling their resources and abilities. You're talking about making things more difficult for an entire segment of the player base that thrives on overcoming obstacles. If there's a way to keep wardecing the same as they do now, you can pretty much guarantee they'll find it.

In essence, your idea would have the opposite effect you want it to. Wardecers are currently much, much better organized and better trained than the carebears they prey upon, and you're suggesting ideas that would force them to become even more organized.

Oh, and the comment of the wardecers only being after easy kills has been debunked so many times already. There are many, many reasons to wardec a corp in EvE, and easy kills is generally low on the list of reasons.

Lastly, if you only play games as a way of "chilling out," you really couldn't have picked a worse game for that.

History proves you wrong. The current levels of cooperation and organisation displayed by wardec corps can be directly attributed to a 2400% increase in wardec costs in the past.

In a similar vein the organisation displayed by suicide gankers can be directly attributed to their chosen profession being hit repeatedly with the nerf bat.

Whether you accept it or not the easily predictable result, one that I'd bet real cash on, of what you suggest is that wardec corps will adapt, become more organised and pool their resources, just as they have in the past.

You haven't explicitly said it, but your posting implies that it would be a desirable outcome.

While most people would agree that wardecs do need some attention, the majority of people proposing to make it harder to wardec others, via price increases or other means, are the self same people that can't be arsed to use the current mechanics that are universally available to mitigate them.

Pretty much everything in Eve is PvP, CCP classify the game as a PvP game, and there are no PvP free zones, ergo PvP is the raison d'etre of Eve.

While I don't shoot people in the face, I certainly indulge in PvP through less explosive mechanics; in fact I can't think of a single activity in game that isn't PvP. Everybody that plays Eve is involved in PvP of one kind or another, that they don't recognise it is entirely their problem.

The difference is that the wardec corps are willing to put in some effort to their gameplay, certainly more effort than that which is required to ignore/ refuse to use the tools at your disposal and then whine when an unfortunate explosion happens to you

The only safe way to avoid PvP is staying docked. As soon as you undock you can be attacked. Period.

How motivated, elite or organised i or anyone else may or may not be is irrelevant.

You dont want to pile on to people who dont play like you but thats precisely what you propose. You've made it pretty clear that you think people who make wardecs are 'bad people' and should be further 'balanced' when they wardec for reasons you dont like.

Not safety through effort or sacrifice. But by doing nothing and letting the game make you harder to dec whilst you still get to enjoy all the benefits of a corp.

Since this thread is already rolling here, I'm not going to start a new one. However, I also want to get away from what I'm seeing as a highly negative vibe going on and let everyone try to gain back some objectivity.

Seemingly counter to that, I'm going to start with my most outrageous game mechanic point about War Decc'ing and how it should NOT be as sacred of a cow as it's given.

It really comes down to 2 different uses (prior to the watchlist vaporizing, and that only really created a minor third use of them which we can address later):

Corporate Warfare - companies need to be able to fight for turf wherever they are allowed to do so (this is an important point)

Ship to Ship PvP anywhere - or almost anywhere. Poaching/Merc play styles are popular and should be allowed to remain.

So from a game mechanic perspective, War Decs aren't cutting it well in either case for a variety of reasons which have been beat to death by now in a dozen threads.

I want to focus on a set of possibilities that might work given some consideration:

Can EVE live with removal of War Decs as they now exist entirely? Yes, but would have to have some pretty interesting changes to keep the two uses still viable and return War Decs back to what they were:

1. Concord/Local Response would have to change. To have the Merc/Poacher play style live, they'd have to be slower out of the gate to let PvP happen in higher Security areas. Some ways to still protect PvE must also remain so Poachers/Mercs don't have a serious advantage over the PvE'ers.
1.1 Possibly adding a MidSec (Medium Security) space would work. Let HiSec be 1.0 - 0.9 and MidSec be 0.8 - 0.5. HiSec response wouldn't change. This would mean Carebear or small corps only wanting to engage in PvE could basically be restricted to HiSec. No more than 5% of New Eden could be HiSec. No Corporation with real holdings outside of HiSec can be headquartered there, only 1 office in HiSec would be allowed, no Holdings. This would keep the bigger corps from ruling HiSec.
1.2 Police response in MidSec would be random from 1 to 5 minutes. HiSec would remain 10 seconds.
1.3 Rewards for Resource Activity in HiSec should drop by about 10% with resource availability dropping by 75%, Combat Site Activity by 50%, and Exploration Activity by 25%. This let's PvE still happen but would force more competition for scarce resources in HiSec, creating a higher Resource PvP point. HiSec becomes a little less comfy cozy but still works.
1.4 MidSec would stay about the same as it currently is, maybe a slight boost in ore grade and type with some more WH and Exploration activity available.

2. Material Warfare Licenses (MWL). This would be War Dec II. Corporations should be allowed to engage in material warfare if they pay to 'clean up their mess' with a fee to local authorities. Not a bribe, but a contract that allows company staffs to attack and hunt each other without Police intervention. Neutrals cannot be attacked or harmed during the conflict and loss of neutral property will be reimbursed so the conflicts don't go nuts, Police will still not respond to neutrals loss, but neutrals will get 110% value of loss reimbursed from the offending corporations bank account. If the corp account is dropped below zero, the MWL is suspended until the neutral is reimbursed. The starting MWL fee should be reasonable but not so cheap that it's super easy to start a fight.
2.1 It might be possible to not have MWL's exemptions go to HiSec. This way the smaller corps or Research/Industrial corps in HiSec that eek out a living there would be relatively immune to MWL's. They really aren't what should be targeted anyway. Not sure about this though since MWL's are only needed in Secured space, it would slightly devalue MWL's.
2.2 The fee for the MWL should be able to be paid for by both sides (Mutual War) or a single side with a caveat.
2.2.1 If the MWL is mutual, it remains with a weekly reapplication of the license cost shared by both sides until one calls it quits. If one side does but the other doesn't, it falls into a single sided MWL as outlined below.
2.2.2. A single sided MWL has a cost escalation. First week, standard cost. Each week thereafter, 150% price increase. This way single sided MWL's won't last forever and at a point, won't be profitable.
2.3 Restrictions:
2.3.1 HiSec only companies cannot be MWL'd. They are player equivalents to NPC corps. Low threat and not expansive.
2.3.2 No company can be MWL'd again by the same company for as many months as the previous MWL existed. So if two corps were at war for 3 weeks, they could not go to war again until 3 months for cooling off happened. They can still beat each other senseless in Null or LoSec (under LoSec restrictions). They can try to stay in conflict in MidSec under those rules, just no MWL protection.
2.3.3 There cannot be a disparity of more than 200% in corp membership enrollment and bank value between a company requesting an MWL and the target of an MWL in a single sided MWL. Mutual MWL's have no size restrictions. This prevents larger corps from routinely taking smaller corps to war and trouncing them. If the big corp wants to take out the little guy, they need to play within the system rules.


The above is not my only ideas for War Dec repair/replacement, but I think it shows that even elimination of the current War Dec concept can be done while still returning it back to its original purpose.

Sorry if it's TLDR. I'll try to put my next idea more succinctly.

I'm not sure what are you trying to say, but in order to do that you obviously need to be in space, and that obviously makes you vulnerable to direct intervention. This possibility alone changes a lot about your decision making on what/where to fly and what to do.

"While most people would agree that wardecs do need some attention, the majority of people proposing to make it harder to wardec others, via price increases or other means, are the self same people that can't be arsed to use the current mechanics that are universally available to mitigate them"



Lol you did make me chuckle over my morning coffee Jonah :)

All that happens when we do use game mechanics to mitigate the war is get slagged off and insulted.

Using said mechanics to avoid loss, or provide easy kills gets me what?

Coward
Pussy
Carebare
WOW is that way ------->
Runescape is that way <-------
HTFU
GTFO
You have no place in EvE
Sad (new addition)
etc
etc

There's room for all players in EvE, sadly a subset of the player base in HS believe that their game is spoiled if the other part don't become a willing target or participant in that part of the game to provide them "content".

I'll reiterate what I said in another thread...Wardeccers loss 50mil isk, my loss 0 isk. I win :)

It is a way to avoid wars. Enabling a corporation to earn a flag that makes them immune to PvP from other corporations is nothing but avoidance. If we are in a war, and you beat me fair and square and blow up my war structure, there is absolutely nothing I can do to to retaliate. You have a way to end, and thus avoid the war.

How is this not clear? I understand you want to dangle this ability to avoid war as a carrot to get players to fight which is a position I don't agree with but at least can understand, but somehow claiming that this is not avoiding the war is disingenuous to say the least.

The point isn't 'effort' or 'risk' it is ability. How can anyone defend a beacon from a Goonswarm blob? They cannot. Thus no one will be able to pursue a war against Goonswarm as they can opt out at any time and blob the structure. Furthermore, how can anyone attack anyone stronger than themselves when the defender can force a straight out fight? They cannot. Thus wars will be useless against anyone who can field a more powerful force than you.

Don't you see how broken that is?

Take a look in the mirror. You are lobbying here to have the game changed in your favour because of some misplaced sense of fairness or some other personal reason. You are the one asking to have the game changed because you personally don't like it, not the war deccers.

Have you no shame?

Eve's rough and tumble, and non-consensual PvP has attracted and kept thousands of players to the game. Many players play primarily for that and CCP has explicitly sold their game on that feature for over a dozen years. Yet you have the gall to come here and say wars offend your sensibilities and ask CCP to take that away by neutering wars so they are pretty much useless against anyone stronger than your group. Of course some players aren't going to like that, but it is you who is trying to change the game, not them. By all means, if you have some idea to make the game better please float it, but to accuse players who resist your proposed changes as being overly sensitive and having hurt 'feelings' is laughable. They are playing the game as it largely has been for over a decade while you are asking CCP to make major game changes that will nerf or even remove their primary game activity just to make your gaming experience (what you think will be) better.

Talk about self-absorbed. Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean thousands of other players don't derive enjoyment from this game play, nor that CCP doesn't think the risk (and persistence) of wars is good for the game overall.

No wardeccers are here asking for changes to make wars easier (whatever that is). It is only you and other carebears who continually come to this forum and propose some idea or another that effectively removes or neuters wars. You are literally guilty of what you just accused those that disagree with you of, asking CCP to change the game in your favour, to give you a mechanism that you think you can use to remove the risk and effort of fighting a war so you can get back to whatever PvE grinding you desire, safe from attack by your enemies.

Wars are intended to exist. CCP wants you to be at risk in highsec. They are not going to give you a way so you and your corporation's structures can be made immune to the other players in the sandbox. I tell you this not out of self-interest, but in hopes you can understand why things are the way they are and why the proposal you are so fixated on has no chance of being implemented, at least with structure mechanics they way they currently are. I know you don't like that fact, but calling other players names and casting aspersions on your fellow players isn't going to accomplish anything other than to paint yourself as a hypocrite.

This is precisely the point I'm making.
You assume it's avoidance because protects 1 single entity from another single entity for a short amount of time.
However, you ignore the fact the it requires them to actively engage in the war to do so.
Action is not avoidance.. Staying docked up until the war ends out of boredom is avoidance.
I also believe it's one of the leading causes for players not returning to Eve.

You can sit here and preach about avoidance, but until you know the actual definition of avoidance, you're words are meaningless.
Avoidance is staying docked.
Avoidance is docking when a red comes into system.
Avoidance is not playing for the week.
Avoidance is joining and/or staying in an NPC corp.
Avoidance is also wardeccing a target with no intent of fighting them, only picking off targets of opportunity. Those players are avoiding the war aspect of wardecs and instead using it to farm KMs.


Do you see how broken it is that a very small entity can harass major entity and are using the safety of HS to avoid any retaliation.
Those entities doing the deccing are susceptible to very little risks, and those risks are only associated with undocking.
They can effectively run and hide from ANY retaliations; To which the defender cannot burn them out of their hole.

If you want to avoid the use of a war structure in order to dec goons, it is as simple as taking SOV over a single null sec system.
As part of my proposal, a SOV holding entity can wardec another SOV entity for FREE.
Find an ally that will let you take SOV of a system deep within their space and you're good to go.



My main is currently part of a wardec alliance.
I do not post on him because my views and opinions do not represent anyone but myself.
Regardless of how much fun it is to blow up other people, I also see the contradiction in it.
Wardeccers come into the forums all the time complaining about the safety of HS, NPC corps, the price of wardecs, the ally mechanic, and whatever else they can complain about.
I for one am not blind to the contradictions that wardeccers bring to the table.
On one hand, they're saying that there are all kinds of actions to take in order to avoid wardecs.
On the other hand, they're complaining about those abilities and name calling those that would use them.



Those players get their enjoyment at the sacrifice of others.
If we removed wardecs entirely, there are thousands of players that would get plenty of enjoyment out of that, and likely more so than there are deccers.
Therefore, your point is moot.
Your enjoyment is no more important than that of other paying customers.



I for one take no issue with always being at risk.
However, what I'm wanting to do is design the mechanic in a way to where all players are incentivized to pvp with each other as opposed to staying docked at all times.

My intent is to make wardecs somewhat enjoyable for those who wish to defend themselves, thus leading to the betterment of pvp within Eve.
Wardeccers like to come into the forums preaching about how they're here to save Eve and teach HS players that Eve is about pvp.
Well.. Put your money where you mouth is and take your own advice.

The flaw with the dec mechanic is that it sets players set on a path of avoidance.
Incentivize action and players will become less risk averse, as they will see the positive benefits of pvp.
As of right now, there are no positive benefits for pvp'ing in HS if you're on the one that started it.