Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I've been in my share of war decs and read a lot of the posts from both sides. A common theme I see is that the mechanic is broken or at least needs improvement, yet there is little in the way of ideas to improve it; understandable in it's current state.

Many of the War Dec corps complain that with the loss of intel, it's become a mechanic to simply hunt trade hubs. It's difficult to find targets and even more difficult to find them and get an engagement.

Many of the War Decced corps complain about the inconvenience and lack of reason to undock. After all, once the War Dec is over, it's back to business as usual.

So I wondered how can both sides get what they seek without tipping the balance too far one way or the other?

Add to the current War Dec mechanics a "System rights in High Sec" mechanic.

Much like the concept behind Sov in null sec, a player corp declares in a system. Once declared, the corp that has system rights get a % of broker's fees, refined minerals, etc. in NPC stations and player citadels as well as a % of the rat bounties and missions.

This is a nice feature for a Mining corp or even a mission corp, but the counter is the War Dec. The way to take rights is to War Dec the corp/alliance with system rights. The war continues until one side or the other concedes defeat and gives up their claim to the system rights or after a certain time period has passed should the defender not be active. There is still a cost associated with war deccing to avoid the never ending war dec of an active corp/alliance.

Players in NPC corps remain unaffected.

Players in corps that don't claim system rights continue to still be vulnerable to the current mechanic, but lose nothing by this addition.

Players in corps that do claim system rights get a bigger wallet while at a greater risk of a mechanic that has a target to actually defend. Sitting in station will not end the war dec and conceding gives up that income; not just lost, but given to those that war decced them.

Players in corps that war dec will find their targets easily enough, as the mechanic centers around a system with a target that will either defend it or turn over profits to them. I do believe their needs to be a limit to the number of instigated war decs over system rights, say less than 5?

This mechanic not only encourages a more active PVP merc corp verse miner mechanic, but even merc corp vs merc corp and miner corp vs miner corp mechanic. After all, now the miners have a reason to have PVPers in their ranks and merc corps have to always worry about the bigger fish while also being able to hire themselves out to other corps needing help defending a system.

Picture the big battles this would encourage in some of the larger trade hubs...

I make a 1 man corp that claims broker fees in Jita and never undock so I get to keep the claim forever. Am I understanding this right?

Good point, certainly there needs to be a way to avoid this. Using a method similar to what we currently have with POSs would address this. A central device in space that needs to be defended to avoid loss of the system. Only exposed under a war dec. Sit in the station with one guy and it's lost. On the same token, one guy isn't easily going to fly in and take it either.

The fix to wardecs requires a fix to high-sec, and I believe CCP is already working on it: Once citadels become so common that they can remove NPC stations, then they'll remove NPC stations, and the entire map (high, low, and null) can have Sov, and as much safety as can be provided by the owners of the space.

Basically, it'll be up to players to defend the space and make it a haven for traders and industry, and silly things like Concord, aggression rules, and wardecs will be gone. Each alliance will have its own trade hub, and it'll be up to them to entice "the highsec crowd" to go there and trade.

CCP will never take this path.
All you would end up with is extreme size alliances killing anyone and everyone who trys to grow. Empire allows room for growth to happen so those groups may one day go out and compete.

The op seems to suggest that the Attacker is unhappy because they don't have the edge, and that the Defender is unhappy because they don't have the edge.

If you take that simple view from their story, it says that there is balance.

The goal of the OP (and many others) is to push PvP. In this sandbox game there should not be one single goal. World of Tanks or Clash of Clans would be more of what you want. Just PvP and nothing else.

The game has enough things going on to force blobbing, stop asking for more.

Citadels already do something like this. You set one up, set taxes lower than the competition, rake in the profit. Someone does not like you doing that, they war dec you and kill your citadel.

Maybe that's the answer to wars in high sec: They should all revolve around the new structures. Any corp who does not want wars just does not keep any structures in space.

All wardecs need right now is for locator agents to report if someone is offline when the agent is run. Anyone offline returns the same message that you get when they are in WHs.

I doubt we'll see a complete collapse of NPC stations, there will still be some main ones in main systems.

Also, Empires will be unlikely to collapse and give up their Sov. Concord is a peacekeeping force between the Empires as a story element (unless I've misread something) and is the punishment mechanism for maintaining the Security Structures. If Concord is eliminated, it would be game changing, and I don't see this happening, nor do I see the Security Structures turning into Free For All. That will net total chaos and people leaving the game in busloads. You will have a handful of Alliances taking the place of the Empires and while players can be great leaders, inevitably they aren't stable.

Most players crave stability and predictability, it's why the classic games are so... classic. Chaos is anathema to that state and if you think CCP doesn't know that and is willing to just play 52 card pickup with their main money-maker, I think you need to rethink.

No, this will play out very carefully over a longer period of time.

You might see a 'SuperSec' place that is extremely safe within the main Empire systems made, then a hybrid 'Hi/LoSec' to fill out the rest of the Empire space and NullSec beyond that. The Empires might shrink and expand due to player action, thus NullSec comes into play again but I don't think we're gonna see an entire loss of NPC stations and structures. They may morph into something else like fix-it depots or mission grabbing sites, maybe shelter from total wackiness that some players might think up, but gone completely, probably not in the next 5 years.

I am not sure this makes sense in highsec, but I do think something similar using structures is a good idea.

Structures are, and will be, central to how players compete in New Eden. In highsec, that means wardecs are necessary, and now that you can't trivially evade the wardec (at least if you want to keep your structure) there is means to force a fight. However, what is lacking are compelling reasons to do so which results in the term "griefer" being thrown around whenever someone takes the role of the aggressor and tries to generate content.

To fix this, these new structures coming online should provide unique, or competitive, bonuses that players would want to fight over. More things like the market hub or POCOs which give reasons for other players to object to presence of other structures and attack them. Imagine a rig you could fit to your Drilling Platform that gave everyone in the corporation a 5% yield to mining or NPC bounties, but only one could be fit in a constellation. If you want that bonus, you have to destroy the Drilling Platform that it is currently fit on. Or perhaps it isn't unique, but competitive. There is a 10% bonus to yield that is shared amongst every corporation that has fit this rig. If you want more of the bonus you can deploy more Drilling Platforms, or you can target and explode the Drilling Platforms of your competitors to get more of the bonus that way.

If you move all corporation bonuses into destroyable structures, you can even remove wars against non-structure holding corps. You would have de facto created a "corp lite" where non-structure corps are no different from NPC corps. This would be entirely consistent with risk vs. reward and allow players to tune how much risk they want.

Highsec, and the game in general needs more conflict drivers, especially if CCP is going to continually make things safer and safer. There are just so few good reasons to go to war except for the love of the hunt and the fight itself, or as a legal form of piracy/extortion. That is fine to get people to join drunken small gang roams, or gank industrialists or ratters, but for meaningful and persistent struggles, and to get players to suffer through structure grinding and the pain of organizing massive fleet battles, there needs to be a strategic goals consistent with empire building. That can be large nullsec empires, or it can be smaller corps, fighting over resources in highsec. But it just isn't there anymore in most of the game, and probably never was in highsec.

That is what has been systematically gutted from the game over the last 5-7 years, and why we are continuing to descend into stagnation. Players need reasons to fight and build beyond wanton violence. We are awash in resources (let's not ruin anyone's fun so make everyone rich and safe!) and have no compelling reason to work towards building things other than epeen, or the intrinsic human desire to hoard wealth. Having a nullsec empire should mean something concrete, as should having dominance over a single highsec system, even if that advantage is slight in highsec to support solo, small group, and new players. While I don't think the OP's suggestion is necessarily the best way, I agree with the sentiment as there needs to be scarcity and larger strategic goals to support competition in highsec, and everywhere for that matter.

CCP does not need to force players into violence Pedro. Violent players exist and create violence for violence's sake... that has been proven over and over again.

HiSec players (of the non-ganker / anti ganker variety) for the most part don't like doing violence against other players and because of that, generally aren't GOOD at it. That's why they are in HiSec and as Jenn puts it, whine when bothered. These are the same players that like Minecraft and other sandbox games where they can build and say "Look what I did!", all the while rubbing it in the face of their fellow carebears. That is a form of PvP guys. Then there's the bully that wants to kick that pretty sandcastle down and make a mess of it, that's also PvP. Both those play styles are perfectly valid and means more money (M³) for CCP.

I have been asking for a long time now for all players to broaden their views and accept each others play styles as valid. If we all did this, most of this whining and gaming for our particular play style to be enhanced while other styles get nerfed, goes away. It's a vicious cycle and beyond dumb. Some call it PvP, sure, I can buy into the forum PvP concept but it comes at a price that isn't really the best for the game.

If all the ship to ship, non-consensual PvP disappeared from HiSec, there would be very few major effects on the game itself. It would completely kill a couple of play styles off and for that reason alone I'd oppose it, but providing a couple of perfectly safe islands in HiSec (say Imperial Capital and Rookie systems) wouldn't be New Eden shaking at all. Haulers would still have to venture out, so would newbies, and while it's a perfectly safe haven, it's equivalent to someone being bullied running and hiding in a police station. It becomes a prison in and of itself.

CCP needs to focus on some near term changes to the game, keep up their events but really make them different and unique from each other. They are kind of stuck on the equivalent of the WoW kill quest.

I'd like to see a reduction of the functions of the NPC stations, no clone jumping, market taxes set at 10%, higher repair bills, greater security status requirements (must be in positive with that faction to get docking permission, otherwise denied!), 20% refining fee, etc. But the stations themselves need to still exist to provide stability in certain systems. I'd also like to see the existing stations being able to be 'sold' to players at some kind of auction. That would yank a huge chunk of ISK out of the game as some of the more notorious stations go on the block. They'd just become appropriately sized citadels, but their graphics would look the same.

All these changes could come under the guise of some additional expansion... "EVE, Rise of the Capsuleers!" where the Empire corps start falling economically to the Player Corps and Alliances. Then you have set the pieces up for a Player vs. Empire story arc. Could be fascinating.

Whatever it is, CCP doesn't need to make more chances for player violence, it's just fine in the violence department. LoSec is out there for those that really crave combat. What has to happen is a reasonable review of all the play styles, and see just how healthy they are or have some died off that shouldn't have, and if so, how to breathe life back into them. That is where CCP should be looking.

The game is healthy when everyone CAN play the way they want to in the sandbox. Play does not mean EASY, but it doesn't mean Frustratingly Hard either.