Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Have you freaking read the citadel dev blog? I honestly don't think anyone has any room to complain anymore, those things are going to be beasts, and since you can get even the fuckhuge one in highsec(that being the Large one, which is massive. I pray to God they don't allow the extra large one in highsec), they will be hard as hell to take down to boot.

You are, however, missing the point. The guy was crying that he wants to attack the wardeccers, but he refuses to countenance actually fighting them. The point is that if he wants to inflict losses on them, the avenue already exists by shooting their ships.

The suggestion that wardec groups be forced to own a structure merely to access wars at all is hypocritical. He does not want another avenue to attack wardec groups, if he was actually interested in attacking them he can already do so. What he wants is to nerf them by tying wars into structures, something that wardec groups have no use for otherwise, making it a huge waste of effort and an enormous cost barrier. (which would further handcuff small or emerging PvP groups, which I am sure is not a coincidence)

Have I missed something? I thought it would simply take waving a magic wand and chanting 'Izzy Wizzy let's get busy...' a few times to take down even the largest citadels? This of course ignores defence fleets etc but without going into that side I really dislike the entosis idea.

I was hoping more for a better POS system that still took large numbers of guns to take out but that had a 24 hour take down time, i.e. 24 hours before you could unanchor the citadel. This would have forced those putting assets in space to attempt a defence or lose the structure. The whole magic torch thing is just cak.

I forgot that bit, though that's even more stupid if a significant investment in a huge station can be blown to bits by thinking at it. Can I keep Dr. Manhattan on board as a defence module?

The 'magic torch' is just a mechanism to force the defenders to show up; a "time to fight button". Perhaps it breaks immersion - I don't know as there is much in Eve which favours game mechanics over reality - but it elegantly nullifies stacking EHP as a boredom deterrent to attack structures and sov and forces active defense. The only issue I see is what are all these ships on grid going to do during a siege? If the citadel is manned but vulnerable to attack only by entosis, the attacking fleet is basically just sitting there doing nothing but repping the entosis ship and perhaps shooting some drones that are launched. It would be even more boring than a current siege to sit for 60 minutes doing absolutely nothing while the citadel defender takes useless shots at you. If they can't break your tank or jam you out there is nothing much they can do to stop you so it is pretty binary - you either have brought enough of a force to tank the citadel defenses or you have not.

The weapon systems of the citadel will have to be balanced around supporting an undocked defending fleet so the attackers have something to shoot at if it is to drive interesting fights. But this is all off-topic. Wardecs are the topic at hand.

Wardecs are an important part of the game. The best part of EvE, arguably, is the various forms of PvP. That includes ship/ship fighting, structure bashing, roaming for targets with friends, backroom diplomacy, etc. Wardecs are necessary to introduce new players to the very best that EvE has. They could use a bit of strengthening, but such tweaks would have to be very carefully implemented and well thought-out.

I understand many of the frustrations on both sides of the wardec issue. I've been on both sides of them, more on the receiving end than giving. But even so, I want to see them strengthened in some fashion. That said, I do want to quote one thing.



Be careful what you wish for.

Strengthening of wardecs is certainly in order, but punish harshly? You cannot escape one reality of this, no matter how much you try. People opt to engage in this...I cringe to call it a game and would prefer to call it a complex space-borne social and economic simulator, but that's a mouthful, so I suppose I'll stick with game. It's a game. A game where people have to invest time and resources into it to be able to get resources out of it. People have to want to play it.

Listen to me. I'm on YOUR side, Kaarous. PvP is the best part of EvE, and players need to be introduced to it, and I'd rather it be through a wardec than a gank (since there's a larger possibility of teamwork in a wardec), though either will work in the long run.

Intervening in other player's goals is a prime part of the game and should be encouraged. But how do we encourage people to have assets on the line and defend it? Once they have to defend it a few times and really get engaged with PvP, I'm sure they'll see how much fun it is and want to declare a few offensive wars themselves. But the crucial first step is getting people to work together in a corp and invest in it enough to want to defend it. How do we do that?

Solve that, and everything else falls into place. Easily said, hard to pull off. We need incentives for players, and I don't pretend to know what the magical answer might be.

Due to size constraints, I'll omit my personal experiences with wardecs unless prompted. For now I'll just present my summation; it is my opinion that wardecs are a good thing(tm) but most of those who are prepared for them already have moved out into areas of space that ignore war mechanics, making the issue look lopsided when it really is not.

I have an alt that is ready for PvP, but due to scheduling issues, she cannot participate in the eight or so defensive wars declared against the corp she's in. It is for that reason that I am training up a ganking alt. Because damn it, I want to explode things and explode myself meaningfully, and if that's what I have to do to do it, then I will. Because I'm getting stir crazy and something's gotta give.

But if you plan on heavily penalizing or punishing the average player who drops corp to avoid a wardec, be ready for dropped subs. Team Fortress 2 learned that the hard way when they tried to force people to stay on re-balanced teams. That everyone just stopped playing forced them to reverse that decision in like, two or three weeks? It wasn't long. Valve has other income sources though, what does CCP have to fall back on if trying to force people in a sandbox to play your way, backfires? You can't do much to penalize people avoiding wars. I assume CCP looked at their data and determined this to be so, which is why they probably removed dodging as an exploit. I have to assume this was done with some sort of information they had to make an informed decision, it doesn't make sense any other way.

Some penalties are in order. Perhaps having to wait at least one week to re-form any corp or join a new one (regardless of if new one is at war or not. To my understanding, currently you're only prevented from re-joining a wardecced corp)? Maybe if you drop corp mid-war, you're still a valid target for 24 hours just like if a war was made to end. Maybe if someone is really just annoying you, use ganking to get them instead since that seems to be the proper tool in some occasions. But you can't punish too harshly without pushing people into using alts and rendering the wars completely meaningless anyway.

Also, for the record, I'm totally for nerfing Concord protections back to levels they used to be at. However as I said, I'm training a gank alt, so take that opinion as possibly biased. Pulling wardec fees back might also be helpful, to make it at least on-par with the costs of re-rolling a corp.

So you say war decs making people quit is a lie.

Linking a post that says people staying in NPC corps is one of the big reasons for people leaving as proof.

And then you say to just stay in NPC corps because war decs ...

Hopefully the ability to anchor anywhere in system (relative compared to today, at least) will promote this a lot.

No need to grind existing stuff down due to limited placement should hopefully attract more people.

Considering the qualifier was made that the capability and will to fight was equal, your stepping outside of the hypothetical I set up and further seemingly pretending it wasn't there. The question was clearly, should a group with a permanently vulnerable asset be considered to have as much risk, as was suggested by the post I responded to, as those that have no such assets. It's fair to say that there need be no parity, as that was an answer, but the rest kind of ignored the question and went into the normal tangent.

Fundamentally eve is about parity though, as that provides a measure of sorts risk, reward and the balance of various tools and methods. Numbers and tactics needn't be equal, as they provide room for good vs bad gameplay, but encounters and force are things to be considered when creating a mechanic, else that mechanic tends to fail or be abused.

A group with permanently vulnerable assets is at more risk than a group than has no in-space assets who when logged-off (or docked) are invulnerable. This is self-evident though, I am not sure what your point is.

This is also intended (and good game balance) as the in-space assets are providing a benefit to the corporation that owns them while those that do not have such assets are not receiving such benefits.

I have no idea what you are trying to say here. Are you saying game mechanics should be balanced to promote interesting game play while respecting risk vs. reward? If so, I agree 100%. If you are saying that everyone should be on risk parity regardless of risk vs. reward, like making aggressors assume risk for no actual reward, rather just because they are attacking someone, then no, I do not agree.

Those receiving benefits are the ones who assume the risks. The risks they assume should put no constraints on those that wish to attack them - the attackers are already subject to the risks that are determined by their own game decisions.

My apologies for not being clearer. Yes, it is 100% perfectly fine for two adversaries in Eve to have unequal risk in a conflict. Provi was just invaded by the Imperium, which was at zero risk of losing structures. An operation to evict someone from a wormhole has the residents at risk of losing everything, while the evictors are only risking what they bring into that hole. An untanked Hulk in a highsec belt is risking a much more expensive ship than the lone Catalyst that it takes to gank it.

In all these cases the one with the higher risk is receiving benefits (holding sov, farming lucrative WH PvE, high yield on ore harvesting) for taking that risk that someone might try to take their stuff. There is no difference for wardecs and in-space structures. If you are receiving the benefits of reduced industry costs, compression arrays and so forth, you have to accept the risk that someone will try to stop you.

It's just simple risk vs. reward.

Just because you assumed risks for a benefit does not mean that the attacker should be forced to accept some arbitrary risk to attack you - that just stifles conflict. That said, I am not adverse to ideas that might promote increased conflict, or more balanced conflict (players should be capable of defending their stuff), but this notion that somehow other players in this game should be forced to assume risks, risks that come with no actual benefits, for just daring to attack someone who did assume those risks is a silly one.