Crime & Punishment

When I heard that CCP was going to be addressing highsec wardecs, my first reaction was trepidation. I'm not convinced that any CCP employees actually do wardecs, or really anything to do with highsec outside of Incursions. I'm not convinced they'll do it right. And with the CEO of Eve-Uni (who couldn't be more harmful to the state of highsec PvP if he tried) getting a lot of face time with CCP right now, we knew it was time to try and put together something to let CCP know the position of the mercs and deccers in highsec.

So, at the behest of Darius III, I put the calls out to some of the most active wardec corps. We wanted to keep it short and sweet, so we limited it to about ten people. We had guys from several different crowds in the world of hisec mercenaries, "griefers," and all those who make their living through ship-on-ship PVP in high security space. These people are representative of large groups of PVPers that do not work together; in fact, their relations have been extremely adversarial and cutthroat in the past, and the many are actively at odds with each other. Many of these guys will disagree with each other just on principle, so the fact that these CEOs and directors of some of the top tier highsec corps all sat down and largely agreed on essentially every single point that was raised is not only surprising, but extremely telling of the state of the current and future gameplay in hisec.

The people in this discussion are:

Alekseyev Karrde of Noir., one of the most stable and longest-running merc corps of all time
Cannibal Kane, can flipper, mercenary, and representative of the independent solo highsec pvper
Lithalnas, director of Privateers, the group that was so OP at one point that CCP had to redesign the wardec system around their tactics
Iam Widdershins of PRONS, known for their shenanigans
Istyn of Tactical Knightmare (also representing Suddenly Ninjas)
Psychotic Monk (myself), CEO of The Skunkworks, known for their work in killing ignorant incursion runners and long-time wardeccers.
ToxicOz, CEO of Double Tap, who are one of the most effective merc corps in highsec today.
TS5P, director of The Orphanage, which needs no introduction

There were a few who couldn't make it, but were included in the discussion before and after the actual round table, and that included Zedrik Cayne, Kai86, and Istvaan Shogaatsu.

Between these players, we represent hundreds of highsec PvPers, have years and years of experience in the game and in this particular arena especially, and, most importantly, have a great deal of vested interest in highsec not just as a source of ganks, but as our home, where we hope to encourage interesting and challanging gameplay. Nobody here is advocating only things that will enable free ganks: we are looking for a challenge, and to create an environment where everyone has a fair and well-defined ability to accomplish their goals.

We had Darius III officiating. The idea was that he'd forward this to CCP, under the hope that someone would actually listen to the dudes that this most effected. I thought I would also release it to the public, since at least that way it's harder to bury and maybe gets a blue box in this thread.

Enjoy.

Warning: We swear. Me especially.

Make clicks in order to listen.

Bump!

E: I linked that discussion in the other threadnought about this--hopefully Greyscale will crawl out of his own arse long enough to listen, and understand.

Bump. Well worth a listen.

The thing everyone at the round-table didn't consider is that these changes won't ruin the game - they'll just ruin the game for you, and 90% of EVE wishes you would just go away anyhow.

Heh, it's so funny when griefers go on and on about risk, consequences, etc etc... but as soon as griefing starts to have some risks and consequences, they cry cry cry.

*snip* That was not needed; please refrain from personal attacks. Spitfire Welcome to EVE 2.0; CCP now cares about the average gamer.

Good ideas, like the wardec stuff - worth to listen.

And I think this has nothing to do with "griefer-tears" or somthing along that line: they are trying to address some fundamental problems in the current mechanics for both sides.

*snip* Was not called for either. Spitfire

EVE, not just PVP, is ALL about risk, consequences, and conflict. Be that ship on ship fighting, or economic warfare. EVE's main, and strongest strength is that everything that happens in the game is caused by people. To bugger about with highsec shenanignas means changing the fundamental core of EVE.

The average gamer doesn't play EVE, because it's too difficult. Honestly, with your viewpoint, you are clearly playing the wrong game.

During the roundtable, we brought up the lack of risk on the griefer side with the current mechanics - because, lets be honest, it is skewed in favour of the can flipper, but there's also the fact that the guy shooting made the concious decision to attempt to kill the can flipper.

If you listened to the roundtable, you'd have heard that our main issue with the currently proposed suspect flag (in regards to this playstyle/situation - i.e. SN's playstyle) is the sec status loss incurred when defending yourself - that doesn't make much sense. CCP Greyscale also made a post recently that you may in fact not be able to defend yourself while you have a suspect flag, something that really is fundamentally against the core of EVE.

The changes being made could clearly improve the current situation, providing they're made with feedback from the people they will affect, to prevent entire playstyles being ruined and high sec changing from 'safer' space to 'safe' space, again something that is against the principles of EVE.

You'll have also noticed, during the roundtable, we actually brought up mechanics currently in use by griefers/war deccers that create seriously one-sided situations and are broken on the same scale as dec shielding - why would we be asking for a nerf of a current mechanic in use by certain people, if we were self-centred bullies who were risk averse?

I do recommend you listen to the roundtable in full, this is not another 'WAAA CHANGE IS SCARY' thread, rather one offering constructive feedback to CCP and the CSM (through Darius) from the people that will be affected by these changes.

You clearly didn't listen to that session, did you.

Especially the part where all present were discussing trade-offs that would affect them negatively (example: The deccer's docking, dropping corp, then instantly un-docking to pew the ones who had aggro to them whilst their corpmates can now do nothing to help unless they want to get themselves CONCORD'ed...)

Typical myopic carebear response.

E: If what "the average gamer" now is, is as worm's-eye-view myopic as you, and that is what CCP wants to cater to, then there will be no "EVE 2.0." There will be no EVE, full-stop, as once the sandbox is compromised that fatally, then all we are left with is....A bad game.

3/10

For those of you who mainly stick to C&P and don't check out other forum sections a whole lot, there are a few major threads in General Discussion that have ongoing debates, including debates with Greyscale himself. They're kind of stuck in no-man's land right now; a whole lot of bears are doing their best to spam "htfu gankbears" as much as possible, and the dev responses are consistently "well we don't know yet, there are some things we have to do, no promises, can't say one way or the other, we need to rewrite code" etc etc.

If you have something constructive to add, check them out.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=84723
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=85002

The current outlook right now is that come Sunday, CCP will announce plans that will severely restrict empire wars. If we want to affect the final outcome, we will need a significantly greater presence in the forums that the devs actually pay attention to.