EVE General Discussion

Yes, though the difference is semantics - mutuality or a reason to fight - it boils down to the same thing in the end - if there's a good reason to fight it's effectively mutual.

As far as I'm concerned, there's always a reason to fight,equally, there is little point in leading the charge of the light brigade over and over to no appreciable end. That is, imo, why many people avoid them.



Edit: @TheGunslinger42

I didn't say I agreed, but I can see the standpoint, if you take a step back and consider the wider metagame/playing experience.

However, how on earth do you propose 'encouraging' people with minimal/nil combat skills to undock and try to bring the pain in a war? It's not even possible never mind practical. Hiring mercs still leaves them sitting in a station/playing other stuff.

It isn't a question of the availability of PVP, it's a question of the availability of non-consensual PVP. A big part of the EVE culture has been that while this is a sandbox, and you can build your own castle, someone else is allowed to walk up to your castle and take a swing at it. If you don't want them to do it, you have to defend (either on your own, with friends, or with mercs - it doesn't really matter). Otherwise, tough ****.

The biggest concern is that if CCP takes this route, it means that a very large portion of EVE will be virtually immune to any form of risk, unless they agree to participate in a mutual war. The only forms of stomping someone else's castle will be suicide ganking (not remotely efficient and quite cumbersome) or corp ganking (very limited in scope). Do you really want to acquiesce and allow for people to just stack their bricks forever with no way for anyone to effectively interfere? Do you realize the potential impact this has on the EVE economy?

Furthermore, I would like to raise the question regarding the problem of so many decs ending in so few kills. First of all, I highly doubt that many wars end with 0 kills. If you read the notes, Solomon "wagers" 70-80% of the decs end like this. Actual metrics would be nice rather than a random guess. Second of all, I'm not sure there is a problem with that. While decs with no losses may not be as entertaining as wars with many kills, they often still serve a purpose. Sometimes, the goal is to simply disrupt operations for a week. If you can blow stuff up along the way, great. If not, you still impacted someone, and created content for them. They may not like the content, the content may adversely affect them, but it was still created for them.

One other concern that was raised was that of large corps going after small ones because they were weaker. While this certainly happens, it is my experience (as someone who is heavily involved in both the griefer and merc communities) that it is often smaller groups going after very large numbers of targets, just to have enough people to shoot at to keep them satisfied. Not only that, but defenders now have a plethora of advantages over aggressors - even particularly well prepared aggressors. With the introduction of the ally system, defenders can literally have half a dozen PVP entities join their wars for a paltry sum of ISK. Sure, some of them will be dead weight, and some of them might charge a fee, but the reality is that a very large number of groups will take "defense" work for free, just for the free targets. Then you add on the fact that for what are relatively small quantities of ISK, defenders can hire very competent mercs to crush the aggressors, and you have a pretty healthy system.

Frankly, the biggest blow to defenders was the way in which CCP made mutual wars useless. By making mutual wars instantly retractable by the aggressor, they prevent the defenders who are capable from actually punishing the aggressors. Had they instead made it so that declaring the war mutual required the defender to pay a war fee (basically turning it into a reversed war dec) they would have allowed defenders to trap aggressors in a war, so long as they were willing to pay for it (solves dec shield problems as well). Then, to allow for "truly mutual" wars, such as RvB, they could have added in a "confirm mutual" button for the aggressors, which makes the war free for both parties, and end-able via surrender offers only.

Hopefully, CCP will realize that the removal of non-consensual decs not only covers a very large portion of players in a blanket of near immunity, but also greatly reduces the tools and options groups have to strike out against those who stand in their way. For example, a common contract is for null sec entities to hire mercs to disrupt other entities' supply chains in HS (decing their JF corps). No JF alt corp (nor null sec entity with in-corp logistics) will agree to a war dec. Situations like this show that removal of non-consensual decs will not only hurt high-sec PVP, but also adversely affect the ability to engage in warfare in other parts of EVE.

New players, fair enough, but non combat orientated groups already have the means to protect themselves in the event of war, it's called hiring others to do your fighting for you, though tbh a non combat orientated group should accept that Eve is essentially a combat based MMO and plan accordingly by having combat capable pilots to protect their interests and assets.

If you won't protect your interests and assets in Eve, by planning ahead, or taking advantage of the existing mechanics involving allies and mercs, then you deserve to lose them.

I agree to your point, focusing on new players now, how would we assist them getting a good foundation of experience during a war-dec without

A. Losing the motivation to play the game based off of forced inactivity.

B. Gain interest in the fun gained by high-sec wars and let them parcipate on a artificial equal footing.

C. A resoultion which cannot be exploited by players who aren't new to the game*

The second part is more difficult to decided because time has created the gap by which new players cannot be expected to compete with old players, especailly in a pvp sense.

I fundamentally disagree that new players cannot compete with old players. I started PVPing when I was less than a month old. Sure, I only had a rifter, but I quickly learned what I could and could not take on in it. I then picked fights where I wouldn't get instantly slaughtered and went from there. I did this without any older players guiding me. No older players backing me up. Just me, and a couple of other newbies killing dudes with T1 frigates. Sure, once we got bigger ships and more resources we could compete with that many more people, but the reality is that you can get into a near maxed out battlecruiser (T2 everything, good support skills and BC 5) in less than six months. Hell, you can get into a maxed out T3 in less than six months. The fallacy that you have to be 5 years old and have everything at 5 to PVP remotely well astounds me.

Sure, a couple of noobs in T1 frigates can't take down entire groups of faction BSes with boosts, implants, and logi. But if those same noobs choose their fights well, they can and will succeed in PVP. They keep it up for a few months, and those cute T1 frig pilots will be mean son-of-a-bitches in BCs, HACs, or T3s. All it takes is a bit of intelligence, and the will to succeed.

As a side note, I've found that most of the newer players that end up getting killed by myself of my alliance (which invariably happens in decs) are the ones most interested in improvement. These are the people who convo me asking what they did wrong, how they were beaten so easily, and what they should do to get better at EVE. In my experience, it is the older players who brought out their bling to "put us in our place" but had no idea what they were doing that rage quit - not the guys still enamored by the thrill of EVE.

Trying to fight in that situation is difficult, but definitely not impossible - especially not now with the ally system. Get some good pvp allies and instead of staying docked and letting them have a fight, they could tag along with them in cheap low skilled combat ships. They'd get a bit of experience with pvp, they'd be putting themselves out there on the field facing the aggressor, the extra ships will definitely contribute, they may even have fun.

There's not really any mechanical reason why they have to stay docked, and they're certainly not at such a great disadvantage that we should discuss making all wars purely consensual. Which is why I think it's more of an attitude problem than anything else. Then again, eve is a sandbox, and if they decide they don't want to take part at all and stay docked up, that's fine. But that's a choice they consciously made, if the consequences of that are "I cant do anything :(" then too bad, they made that choice, so I don't think we need to change war mechanics based on them choosing that

I agree, but the trouble is from CCPs business/customer experience standpoint - that may not be a sacrifice they are willing or able to make.

I don't know, of course, but many here seem to forget/overlook that they're running a business and that will drive their decisions even if some don't like it much.


Edit: To add for clarity, I don't have issue with the current mechanic, but am simply trying to understand the comment and see it from their point of view.

This is exactly why I think they need to actually collect real metrics rather than changing wide reaching game features and design philosophies based on wagers and gut feelings.

I am not blaming you or your corp. I am blaming the game mechanics.
As long as it is more beneficial for a corp to stay docked and not fight at all, people will do exactly that- which will impact new player retention heavily.
CCP needs to change war mechanics in a way that makes it desirable even for the most carebearish miner corp to fight instead of turtling in their stations.
Should there be no way to fix war mechanics, the other route would be to limit the number of utterly defenseless newbie corps and allow new corps only if they are part of a larger alliance.

Zimmy ... this fits in context ...

I've asked HippoWhisperer to talk to his superiors
about putting my corp into a mutual wardec with both sides of RvB.

Not sure if they approve, but a few supporters could help my cause. ^_^