EVE General Discussion

The watch list changes are here, and those of us who dwell in high sec have seen the repercussions first hand.

The changes have, as an effect, significantly increased the prevalence of war decs in high sec. This means one of two things:

1. All of the high sec war dec corps have decided to "test the waters" and see how things are now, all at the same time, or
2. The dearth of information about war dec corps means indy corps are in for much more war deccing in the future permanently.

We won't collectively know how the meta game of this will play out for about 3 weeks, after which the information will bear out whether we are in a new normal or whether war decs will return to their pre-patch frequency.

However, if 2. proves to be the new normal, then CCP overlooked something highly fundamental to their game (or something even bigger is going on, but I need to be careful not to violate the boards rules). If we suppose that the changes to the watch lists/buddy lists have permanently altered the risk profile of high sec war dec corporations, that means the price of war decs should have raised.

Right about here, the TL;DR crowd will hop off the train and ctrl-c, ctrl-v some anti care bear rhetoric. Please, feel free to leave such feedback, its good to have statistics on how many of you are out there.

For the rest of you that are interested in commentary, not crying, allow me to explain (frankly, I don't care about these changes pro or con, I was making the move into J-space anyway. I am more interested in looking at the big picture).

Lets suppose a highly over simplified model. War dec corp "alpha" sets a war dec to indy corp "bravo". For the sake of argument, alpha has about 20 members, and indy corp has about 50, with a regular load of about 5 at any given time. The cost for alpha is 100 isk. Prior to the patch, bravo could set up watch lists fairly easily, only 20 guys to track. Activities could be scaled depending on the load of alpha, establishing a risk profile associated with the odds a large gank fleet could show up ( and yes, all of this interacts with alternate scouting techniques and is not this simple, but I am working with a model here). Let's say that if this situation happened 100 times, alpha nets 20 isk, so their investment pays off.

Now, you change the meta. It is more difficult for bravo to asses risk, ergo, one of two things happens:
1. Alpha makes more isk from "easier" or "more frequent" kills. (think 'I have to go to market, I will just risk it, is 1030 am on a weekday US' and you blow up your interon V as a result where you wouldn't if a lot of war targets were clearly online.)
2. Bravo will reduce activity, reducing their income.

Either way, the risk profile has changed, again, without any change in investment by the war deccing corp.

I submit this is not feedback to the watch lists, but rather, a new discussion about the new meta. While I would not petition for changes (and I do have some ideas), it is worthy to discuss this in terms of the most fundamental concepts of eve. Eve is built on "risk versus reward" and "Don't fly what you can't afford to lose". The risk profiles have changed, and that implicitly affects the golden rule of eve. Or, all of this may be moot because things will "cool off" soon and be back to normal. I suppose only an analysis of kill boards will bear out how things have changed, and if the changes are here to stay.

TL;DR: War Declarations should change price because, and only because, the risk profile of a war declaration has changed.

I don't fully understand your argument. Are you saying the cost should increase because the perceived amount of risk has changed? That sword is a double edged as the risk you say from not knowing when your aggressor(s) are online also means they don't know when you're online; i.e. the aggressor has to work that much harder to find you and get lucky enough to catch you with your pants down. I would argue based on that the cost should decrease as the risk has gone down significantly. They can't track your every movement without physically being on and watching you when you're on.

If anything, this new meta should have always been the norm. In the past, highsec wardecs just meant you logged on to find out you've been wardeced. Then someone in your corp checked on EvE-who and sent a mail with all wardecing corps members and told everyone to add them to watch list. Then you logged on the next day to find out that there were 10 guys or so from the wardeccing corp already logged on. This led you to make the judgment call there was too much risk to undock today since the boogey man could get you so you just logged off and/or stayed docked in station all day watching netflix.

Now, both parties have lost that part of intel through the loss of watch listing. This means that players should have less perceived risk and that wardecs should start to actually function as they were originally intended to do so; get people engaging in PvP while in highsec. This should hopefully have the benefit (big assumption here to make, but I'll make it) of getting the so-called merc corps out of the trade hubs; read station camping, and the pipes; read gate camping, and more actively out and about hunting their targets. Again, that assumes the wardeced corps are smart enough to use a neutral alt while shopping and hauling; i.e. they avoid the easily gankable areas and make the aggressors do work to get their kills. This should ultimately lead to people to get into impromptu fights where you don't have 15 neutral log and a nestor ready to undock (big assumptions I know, but hey a man can dream).

TL:DR The watch list changes should have a net positive effect on highest wardecs assuming the players grow a pair of peanuts

Meh, pretty much everything about the wardec system is broken, not just the prevalence of them... there needs to be some system of requiring a set objective.... as not having them sign on for a week is not a positive gameplay experience.

Pushing the envelope sometimes results in the envelope being cut.

I think fixing War Decs is like trying to patch a hole in a sponge. No matter what you do, it will not work out like you want and will just have more holes to patch.

Honestly, War Decs probably need to be re-engineered into a couple of different game mechanics. I'm not sure how they will look or play out but I do know what they need to address:

Material Corporate Warfare - Corporations must be allowed to engage in actual combat in order to control areas of space without intervention from Policing forces...

Ship to Ship, PvP in any area of space - There should always be some risk to flying, either from NPC or PvP activity. It is a staple of the game. Elimination of the Poacher/Merc play style shouldn't be an option, too many people get their kicks and ISK from this.

Whatever the solution, it needs to address both the above and my take is that it's going to take something other than what we have on the table now.

By the way, this is just another War Dec thread so don't be surprised if it gets closed...

I am really trying to have a productive and useful conversation. This is NOT a "nerf war decs" conversation. Heck, when other indy corps get scared out of Jita, that reduces supply, increasing pricing, right?

I am just trying to illustrate how the threads are actually connected, in a useful way, to elicit useful conversation from the war deccers who will admit "yes it is easier" or "no, its harder", or "meh". There is about a 30% chance by mid april, this is a non issue.

An arbitrary limit on the number of decs is just bad and lazy game design. An enterprising wardec entity should be able to dec the cluster if they are so bold.

The problem lies with having any actual consequences to that, as wardeccers have no skin in the game. Eve is supposedly balanced around higher risk ~ higher reward. High Sec allows near perfect intel and essentially zero risk for their gate and station hugging ways. Any or some of the following would make biting off so much require more careful calculation:

A)All members of aggressor entities in wars are always suspect flagged.

B)All members of aggressor entities cannot receive remote assistance from players who do not share a dec.

C)All members of aggressor entities cannot dock or use gates while pointed by a member of the defending entity.

D)A structure based solution such that the aggressor actually had to defend something during a time of the defender's choosing, where losing the structure means the war ends and cannot be reinstated for 1 month. What's that, you can't be bothered to defend a structure during another corp's prime? Maybe you shouldn't be wardeccing them!

E)Allow covert cynos in highsec.

F)Allow counter-bribes to CONCORD.

On one hand yes, it allows much needed danger in Hi Sec. On the other hand this danger, due to the lack of tools and the ease of hiding behind mechanics, isn't really shared equally by all sides, allowing the aggressor to avoid risk almost entirely. That is very un-eve like.

As long as player base is completely polarized to hunters and prey, HS wardecs will be only enjoyable as the hunter. I believe that no change to game mechanics will fix this feature of human nature.

A) This can't work, why would they be suspect? If they aren't at war with somebody, they shouldn't be able to be shot at without consequence.

B) Could work, but would have to be inclusive of both aggressor and defender. Otherwise its way to lopsided.

C) Nope. Station games suck, but that again flips the tables way to far for defenders.

D) This ideas been floated a lot lately, interesting, but as it stands its not fleshed out enough to do anything other than cause more problems while solving very few.

E) Sure why not.

F) Eh? Wars aren't really bribes....

*edit for poor typing skills.

Once you peel back the rhetoric and meaningless examples, we can easily see the true purpose of your post stated above.

And you should also be aware that the price for a wardec corp to operate has, indeed, risen. It costs 5x more to keep 50 wars going than it does 10.