EVE General Discussion

People already run 1-man corps to beat the tax, they still can do that and run L4 even if they were not allowed to in NPC corps. What would that accomplish? It would put thier income source back into the sandbox where it was already suppose to be.

But you know what? I am not married to the idea. Let NPC corp members run level 4s - just as long as a member of a one-man corp makes significantly more doing the same mission than a NPC corp member. And that a member of a large, established corp makes even more. It's the relative income difference that matters which will drive players into larger corps. And the other thing that matters is this augmented income is subject to disruption by other players as the basis of a revamped wardec system.

Sure there would some power given to the CEO's of corporations that had unlocked or constructed the equipment that would augment highsec income. But unlike nullsec, there would be no scarcity to it so anyone could access these bonuses if they team up and work together with enough people for long enough. If you are worried, you could even build in a decay mechanism or something so CEOs need to keep their members happy or they will leave and the corp would lose these bonuses over time if players stop contributing.

Here we go again with the "yeah its pvp because its a player"sorta thing

That's because that statement is objective truth, even if it doesn't fit into your pre-concived notions. you don't have to like the truth, but not liking t doesn't make it untrue.



The bolded part is otherwise known as pvp.

Am going to throw out my thoughts on this. Incoming wall of text so beware:

First of all, the current mechanic is indeed b0rked beyond salvation. There is no way in hell that CCP is going to be able to tweak the settings in such a way that it will satisfy both those who don't want to wage war and those who do. There are just too many different factors that work against each other.

On the other hand, EVE is all about players interacting and dealing with situations that other players create and in this regard I must say that this is something that peace lovers will have to accept as this feature should never be compromised. So sorry high-sec industrialists/missioners or whatever. If you are in a corp then you should be open for wardecs. That is the way EVE is and should be.

Finally, the current mechanics give "defenders" too much of a disadvantage to deal with said "interactions" most of the time. Aggressors will (rightly so) go for enemies that they (think they) can deal with. This is how it should be. On the flip-side this obviously will result in strong entities always go for weak ones just because they can.

Thus, my suggestion is this: trash the whole current wardec mechanic.

Instead, introduce a "value" system for each and every corporation out there. It should take into account everything from number of members, their age, allies, value of corp assets etc etc. This value is dynamic, changing constantly depending on changes that happen within the corp. Small corp with 5 members: value of 10. Huge corp with 1000 members and tons of assets: value of 15000 as an abstract example.

Second, attackers also need to run the risk of concretely losing something of value. This will be the fee that the attackers pay to initiate a war. It will be based purely on some fancy mathematical magic which involves the targets "value" versus the attackers "value". This fee is then added as a kind of bounty on the attackers that the defenders can collect. Should the defenders manage to eat through this "bounty fee", the attackers will have to be forced to pay up again in order to continue the war. Otherwise it is their loss. The reason for attacking someone is to destroy their assets. Defenders need something to weight up for that. This is it.

Third, on top of this there will be a need for a separate "rating" system for all corporations. It will keep track of a corporations wardecs and rate the corp based on the value and rating difference between said corp and it's targets as well as dedication to the war and results of the war. If a corp only attacks other corporations that are deemed weaker all the time then this will impact on the rating and pretty much show everyone that this corp is just hunting weak game. The kicker should be that this rating ALSO plays a part in calculating the fee that has to be paid when declaring war. The worse the rating in relation to the target, the more expensive it gets overall, translating into a much bigger "bounty" for defenders. Of course, because the corp value is dynamic, it means that the rating gain or loss can also change during a war. Allies may join, some people may leave or join etc. Apart from that, there is no limit on who can attack who. Sometimes a big entity has a reason to attack a small one. That is just the way things are sometimes. But they will then have to take the hit for doing so. Or choose not to attack.

Defenders will of course also be rated, all depending on whether they fight off attackers or decide to "run" (leave). Quite a setup for some interesting David vs Goliath stories, no? And of course not to mention the obvious e-peen competition that this opens up for.
The best part: corps with overall positive ratings could be awarded small perks somehow. Stuff like reduced office costs and so on perhaps. Small things worth striving for basically.

Fourth: the rating system for the corporations should be an average value derived from all active members. So that means that when a player is in a corporation and participates in wars for said corporation, it is the player who gets a rating increase or decrease which is tied to the corp (and as such should obviously be displayed in the employment history). The player will then basically have an average rating based on his employment history which is immediately taken into account when he joins/starts a new corp. The rating tied to a new corp will always start at 0 (plus/minus the current average rating). Leaving a corp should result in a specific rating loss. Being kicked out (CEO should have options here) should yield various degrees of losses depending on reasons given by CEO. It could even be an honourable discharge which gives no rating hit at all. Again, all of this should be reflected in the history.

This will effectively discourage players from running away all the time by disbanding/leaving corps during wardecs. It will also discourage corps from attacking weaker corps. It will certainly always be possible to do this but it will come with appropriate consequences in the end.

Blah!

Nerf NPC corps, Ra Ra Ra!
Nerf concord, Ra Ra Ra!
Nerf Hisec, Ra Ra Ra!

~snip~

Too many variables, and thus too complicated. Maintaining a multi-faceted ratings system opens it up to be gamed beyond its intent.

Like many things in Eve, wars are arbitrary. It is best that, in a sandbox game, they stay that way, and if you're getting mad at wars, you are in effect getting mad at basic human nature... and no amount of synthetic mechanics will change that, and if people are forced, then you diminish the sandbox.

"Too many variables" you say yet you play a game in which combat has more variables and scales than anyone could possibly keep track of at the same time. Try again, please cause that made me laugh out loud :D

Please do tell me how accessing a few readily available database values, applying a couple of formulas to get a couple of new displayed and very easily understood values would be more complex than EVE combat to a player!

Same can be said that the game "revolves around building ships", since no ships built = no combat, thus the building of ships comes first and combat second.
Both would be lies. The sandbox is not built around anything.


I am fine with the risk. You talk as if I've never been decced before (ask the devil's warriors present in this thread, they already decced me for my position on the said matter, and I had some fun giggles about it), and I never rolled corp anyway. So go ahead by all means, I'm not blaming the decs themselves nor do I blame ship-to-ship interactions, mind you.
Now as we're dealt with the "entitled to feel exempt" part, let's get to the actual issue. What I complain about is that the rules in current war decs are biased towards one entity for no good reason. The current rules have a "meaningless" part in them and "unbalanced" part as well. I want them fixed and balanced, which is all I need.


This is not where the issue lies. The issue is in the fact that aggressor takes all the benefits at no risk, while defender takes all the risk with no benefits. Once again, I'm not feeling entitled to be left alone and you're welcome to "interact", but I want you to lose your right for risk-free interaction with only benefits for you, while being certain death risk with no benefits for me, this is unbalanced, and there should be something in it for me as well if you want to make me actively interact, instead of taking completely rational decision to not interact due to no gains in said interaction.


Current war dec mechanics is a grief dec. There may be such a thing as an unbalanced war, true, but there will be no such thing as long as one party is not willing to take part and have options of not doing it. What you and your friends want to achieve is making "unsub" the only option available, and I oppose that for clear reason - everyone of us is sharing cost of the game with the ones you force to use that option, and none of them really deserved to be driven out by the unbalanced grief decs. At least not that easy as it is now. Balancing is in order - there may indeed be no way to create "balanced" wardec as you say (though I don't believe that), but there is definitely a way to create "more balanced that it is now" wardec, and no good reason not to.

Just FYI, there are still people in this game that will engage without obsessing about the odds.

Winning is cool but losing isn't the end of the world; the pure enjoyment of a good, hard fight is the reason several of us log on.

ofcourse nobody is forcing them into the mining ship but the mining ship is an option and an option they choose, if they dont want to fight you because they enjoy other things then whats the issue, go somewhere else where other people will be willing to fight as there is plenty of systems where good fights happen, you dont want to be forced to go somewhere else to get your content so dont try and force others to engage in your game if they dont want to.

i didnt refer to pvp as "fair" i referred to it as 2 or more players engaging each other.