Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Ok, so I've been thinking since yesterday I didn't have any solutions to the issue we've been discussing. What we need is incentives to get people into PVP while not discouraging newer players from getting invested in the game to begin with - all the while keeping high sec PVP viable. More social interactions and incentives to group up with others is also always welcome. So what about a tiered corporation system? I thought this up in standstill traffic so bare with me.

Similar to security status player characters have something called notoriety, which only effects the player corporations they join. Corporations would have a notoriety rating (comprised of the ratings of all its members to avoid abuse) which effects the corporation in several ways,

A lower notoriety:
Cannot have as many active one sided wars levied against it. There could also be a cool-down on Wars from the same corps for the first 30-60 days from when the corp is created. However you get little to no bonuses for being a part of that corp. So if you chose not to get involved in PVP. You can still have a corporation and you have some protections, but you're at a disadvantage to a corp that does get involved - overall it's not much better than an NPC corp.

A higher notoriety:
Which can be raised by your kills/ losses, maybe how old your character is, the quality of your kills, the amount of mutual Wars your corp gets involved in, etc. The higher the rating larger a corp can grow, the more active wars it can be involved in, the more attention it attracts and the more bonuses become available, could be across the board - maybe a 5% increase in mining yield, decrease in market tax, loyalty points, mission rewards, etc.

Additional protections from abuse can also include cool-downs after quitting corporations frequently to prevent people from corp hopping.

Advantages to this include:

•People will obviously want to increase their corp rating regardless as to what their corp actively does it for nothing else but the bonuses.
•Small corps that are still learning will have some protections - but not immunity to larger corp war decs.
•It incentivizes people to group in larger corps instead of solo play - could be a negative for some.
•It encourages people to get involved and learn pvp.
•More targets for everyone.
•Gets people invested in corps and out of npc corps - which provide nothing but protection from war decs.
•More incentives to do PVE - more people to hunt who are doing PVE.

Some negatives:

•It can punish people who want nothing to do with PVP and solo players.
•Possibilities for abuse? Needs more details.
•?

It's not perfect, but you catch more flies with honey. Imposing ridiculous restrictions doesn't help and doing nothing is just as counterproductive. So what do you people think? Too much? Too complicated? On the right track?

Issue : mechanical restrictions encourage conglomeration of PvP oriented players into large scale , unassailable professional millitary entities. Mechanics limit said entities ability to direct wars and thus encourage massing in and around tradehubs and choke points. Further conglomeration follows to facilitate ease of operations and to absorb costs.

Add more restrictive mechanics, see what happens.

As of now a small gang PvP Merc corp has to be able stand pressure from a targeted war from someone like us or a blanket Barr from the hub's from someone like vendetta or pirat, if they don't they then get ground into the mud.

We need an environment where by those small gang groups can operate and grow because those are the lads you can beat.
Those are the lads you can slap about without incurring the wrath of a group whom you have no hope.

No one rules forever, the large groups will break up with time but if the parts that fall off can't operate autonomously they will just form a new big group.
We've seen this time an again year after year.

One thing you have to take into account is the inverse of the malikanis law, any and all restrictions you place on larger groups, effect the smaller ones.

If you're looking to restrict us, you do so to your own ability to wage war upon us,
whom would you suppose can leverage experience , internal structure, motivations and determination to addapt and optimise ?
We do so currently, and there is a big gulf between dedicated Merc community and the average corp as it stands,
take care not to widen it further.

Cool downs can be abused too as I pointed out. I'd deliberately dec my own corp/alliance, let it expire boom, war dec free cool down.

Trying to balance wardecs on ISK has not worked. If anything it has helped create the larger wardec alliances and yet it will cause some corps to impose limits on corp membership. What you are proposing will most likely take the form of a "step function" and as such various corporations may decide to stop at a given step.

Frankly, removing wardecs is a possibility since Malcanis' thought experiment with the war bond shows that the problem is that there are those who want to PvP and those that don't and never the twain shall meet, as the phrase goes. Neither side would agree to something like the war bond. However, I would argue you need to provide for another mechanic so that HS PvP would take its place. Less HS PvP is likely going to be bad for the game.

Personally, if we could (and I don't think we can go back to this), they way things were before the wardec changes (say 2008) were not too bad. There was not as much mass wardeccing, there were alot more 2, 3, 4, etc. man corps engaged in wardecs. Those getting decced had a much easier time, IMO. You could find some allies and go up against these smaller guys and hope to "win".

Now...now you got these wardec alliances with like 150 pilots. Even if they have an average of 3 alts that is 50 guys. And chances are there will be 5-10 guys on at a time, and with 3 alts (assuming 2 are combat capable and/or logistics capable) that means 10-20 pilots online. Now a 5 or 5 man industry corp is pretty much screwed. And trying to find enough allies is a daunting task. No, really. People in HS wardec corps/alliances might scoff, but if you read about the logic of collective action this is a problem.

War dec corporations are already well defined cohesive groups. Your targets are not. So they have to organize, but each one has a strong incentive to let "the others fight for them". That way they incur minimal losses and get the benefits. The larger the group you have to organize in this manner the harder it is to organize.

In short, we are looking at nice plate of CCP **** up...uhgain.

War deck corps who have most of their kills in jita or other trade hubs should be charged more; empire factions wouldnt want to see other peoples dirty laundry on their doorstep let alone in public view on the gate, its bad for business. Maybe some sort of tax based on a percentage of how many people visit jita as a type of bribe; many here would likely say bad idea but i think were all a little tired of the "elite wardeck pvper'' who basically runs for cover when anything even remotely challenging comes along. To be quite frank i think its a bit bad for the game to have some guy sit on a gate with 5 or 6 accounts and half of his fleet cant even be attacked or countered because thier not at war... yes i know i can do the same but.. target will deagress and jump gate springs to mind and it is by far the most irritating kind of warfare. Most camps on the pipe will have at least two neutral logi hanging around, that means a solo player has to put out an extra large amount of dps.. and he cant even start by shooting the primary targets (logi).. its rather annoying you cant bounce them off gate with a command destroyer i must admit..

I'd love it if you could use a targeted script for that module, much like with a hic, so you can grab a valid target by the scruff of his neck ,drag him away from the undock and do unpleasant things to him.

Again we are seeing the point Malcanis has raised. Some people just do not want that kind of PvP at all. So you might as well come clean and just say you want to change the fundamental nature of this PvP-centric game--i.e. you no longer want the sandbox.

I would be curious to see how many of these "we've been perma-decced" are in fact feeding their war targets nice kills on a routine basis.

I do.

Have an attitude like OP's.

Ahhh the fine art of diplomacy...