Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Wardecs are used to facilitate conflict in highsec between the players of this competitive PvP sandbox game. They serve the function of limiting the types of engagement and providing warning and preparation time to highsec residents before unrestricted spaceship combat can occur. That is all.

If you show up to a hockey game, you have to expect for the other players to try to put you into the boards and score on your net. Similarly, if you set up a corp in Eve, you are announcing to the other players that your organization is trying to carve out your share of New Eden, so you shouldn't be surprised when someone takes issue with that and tries to stop you. If you aren't trying to compete, then just stay in the NPC corp where you are completely immune from wardecs like the developer's intended when they designed the game.

Being "helpless" or "unwilling" to fight cannot be allowed to be a defense in a competitive PvP sandbox game. Otherwise, everyone will make themselves weak, or turn off the combat flag so they can generate resources and do industry in safety. Then what you have is a one-dimensional, lifeless economy like in Elite: Dangerous where nothing has any real value since resources can be produced in complete safety by everyone and their cousin.

Of course there is, you are just too focused on your ISK/h to see it. First, if you engage someone and win, you weaken them (like scaring off a rival corp from an ice belt) and can secure more resources for yourself - your PvE will be more lucrative. Second by engaging someone and beating them you can take their stuff - you are doing PvE by proxy and taking the fruits of their efforts for yourself. Third, by standing up and defending yourself, you will establish a reputation as someone willing to defend themselves and might make some friends along the way. This will reduce future predatory wardecs and allow you to call on allies if someone tries to mess with you in the future. Spending time and effort on defense is a long-term investment in the future success of your organization.

There are many reasons to prepare for your defense in this game. You always have the choice to log out and/or continually evade conflict, but you will find you that not the optimal path to resources and power in this game. That is by design though - the game has specifically engineered so that conflict can and will take place and is rewarded. Hiding your head in the sand every time someone comes after you is not going to provide you with much power or success in the sandbox.

It kind of would. Can you imagine a wardec-free highsec where there was nothing but invulnerable citadels and POSes littering every highsec system. You would have a massive part of the player base doing nothing but grinding resources in near complete safety and building unassailable sandcastles in the sandbox. There would be no conflict there, aside from odd ganker picking off an AFK miner or hauler, so nothing would ever get destroyed. Eve would just become another grind-fest of a building game, where the PvP was completely consensual, and thus meaningless. The economy would start to wobble under this overproduction, and then collapse turning Eve into just a spaceship combat simulator/FarmVille grinding game. Gone would be the player-driven economy, and the living universe is that is New Eden, and you would instead have a dated, themepark MMO which would not be long for the world.

CCP is not going to let this happen, at least not under CCP Seagull's watch. If you don't want to compete, go play one of the other spaceship MMOs that don't require that. But realize, you will lose the unique draw of Eve that this risk of loss and competition produce that give meaning to the activities of the producers and industrialists of New Eden.

What?
How is is prepping them for unrestricted combat? A wardec is unrestricted combat.

I'm also failing to see where "preparation" PVP is hindered by introducing a system that allows the defender to force the aggressor to fight, if the defender themselves is willing to fight.

That's my biggest concern with the current wardec mechanic. It allows the aggressor to dictate when and where the combat will occur and even though it's their war, they don't have to fight if they don't want to.
On top of that, they can leave you wardecced for as long as they wish. Even if they don't engage, they still put a damper on your gameplay because you have to take measures to avoid unnecessary loss.



If I show up to a hockey game, I expect both teams to be in the same league.
By your analogy, it's like watching a match between a peewee league team vs a pro league team.
However, there are no nets and the pros are hiding in the penalty box until they catch one of them off on their own, not paying attention, and check them into the boards.

Yes, those new corps are trying to carve out a share of New Eden. However, those shares are not presented until they're prepared enough to take them in Null/low/wh.
Also, the intent of the wardeccing entities is NOT to stop your from claiming part of their share.
You have been wardecced simply so they can kill you. They could care less whether or not you'll ever pose a threat. All they know is, right now you pose no threat and are easy pickings.

If they gave two craps about stopping entities from carving their share, they'd be battling it out with entities that are actually trying and intending to carve something.

This is exactly what most wardec entities do.
They use unknown alts/mains to run missions/incursions/mining in order to fund their ongoing wars.
So, those times that I speak of where they're unwilling to undock and take on a credible threat, they just log onto those other toons and safely make isk without a care in the world.



That would easily be fixed by not allowing player structures in HS, wouldn't it? (rhetorical)
I'm not against that option at all. As a matter of fact, removing player structures from HS would actually give players a reason to leave HS.
And those ganks you speak of as if they're few and far between, happen everyday, all day.

And also. LOL for pointing out your intent by stating that consensual pvp is meaningless.
You are here, shooting down wardec related suggestions that don't favor you, because you don't want to have to face people that are willing to fight back, which is exactly what "where the PvP was completely consensual, and thus meaningless" is saying. With this comment, you're saying that null, low, and WH space are meaningless because they revolve around consensual PVP. By leaving HS, you are consenting in PVP and most entities prepare themselves for this.

Perhaps if CCP provided some incentive to leave HS, and conflict drivers that made everything outside of HS engaging enough to draw you into life out of HS as opposed to roams, then perhaps the conflict would counteract the stability of HS.

But that doesn't suit your agenda of easy kills with little risk and no commitment, so you'll likely disagree with that as well.


Just like they wouldn't allow the purchase of isk with real world cash? - PLEX
Or wouldn't change the NPE to make it easier? - They have and are.
Or wouldn't remove learning skills? - They did
Wouldn't make wardec more expensive? - they did
Wouldn't allow players to remap SP or buy SP? - It's about to happen

I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone say on these very forums that CCP wouldn't do something, only for it later to happen.

I've seen a whole lot of complaining over the lack of incentives to exist outside of HS.

It has been expressed in MANY threads wanting change to draw the crowds back out, as many people seem to be packing up their stuff and heading to HS.

I've also seen it used as a reason to make HS less safe, to force people out of HS, which only makes things worse.

Basically, the incentives outside of HS are PVE but with more isk payout. However, people are become aware that it's not enough.
It's a case of "great.. Lets go defend yet another system that serves no general purpose, other than to allow portions of our entity to have somewhere to PVE."

You're there to battle over production materials to make more capitals to go somewhere else, to battle over more materials to make more capitals to go battle over blah blah blah.

Now you have people thinking they can just go live in HS and go on roams in low/null whenever they want pvp and/or wardec low risk targets for easy PVP.

I don't pretend to know what to do about it, but in its current form, the only purpose for null is to fund null. A bit redundant if you ask me.

Those being wardecced get 24 hours notice that they will be subject to unrestricted attack by known set of opponents. That is what wars are suppose to do.

That is one of the points of wardecs - to provide risk in highsec. Those "measures" to protect yourself are not unnecessary - they are the cost of doing business in a competitive PvP sandbox. CCP has designed the game so that you have to defend yourself - you are never 100% safe. You are the one generating resources or doing industry, so you are the one that has to protect yourself - that is standard PvP game design.

If you don't want to compete with other players, then stay in the NPC corp where you are free of wardecs.

But I am all for wardeccers being encouraged or mandated to use structures to the defender can bring a counter attack. That might generate some more interesting fights and player interaction.

You can't compete for the league trophy by fielding a team with medical certificates that say their opponents cannot body check them. That isn't fair nor balanced and would just lead to every team finding doctors to provide similar notes for their players to secure that immunity to body checking for their players. If you don't want to compete, then stay in the NPC corp, or hopefully someday a social corp.

You seem to know a lot about what motivates other players of this video game. Wardeccers declare wars for many reasons, including just to kill you, but also on contract, to take your stuff, to extort ISK from you, to drive you from a system, and for fun to name a few. All of these are competitive activities intended by CCP to be in the game - you are not entitled to be safe from them because you are small, new, scared, incompetent, or because you managed to destroy a structure. You have to learn to live in this environment with the rest of us.

Highsec cannot be safe, especially considering how lucrative it is. The whole point of the game is for you to find a way to thrive in such a harsh world. That means some corps will fail and some players will be destroyed. C'est la vie. That is not a failure of game design, rather that is a feature of Eve Online.

Yes... and the aggressor is attempting to stop me from generating resources.
If I take measure to ensure I never lose a ship during the length of a wardec, than I have still lost the war, because those measures have cut back on my production.
Meanwhile, any aggressive efforts I have taken to push back don't have to be met with any action.

The structure mechanic allows me to force the aggressor out of their hole.

My incentive to fight is getting back to generating resources.
The aggressor has no incentive to fight, thus they can fight whenever they feel like it, and whenever the situation is heavily in their favor.
The structure gives me the opportunity to change the dynamic.


Lots of wardeccers use alts safely tucked away in NPC corps to fund their wars.
So, they compete with other players at their leasure, and log onto their alt when there isn't a situation that suits them.


But they can at least put nets on the ice, so I at least have the opportunity to sway the fight in my favor. Whether i can or not, isn't the problem, but I should at least have the ability to do so.
This is what a structure does.




Wait... You're willing to have structures mandated, but you don't want that structure to have any merit in the war?
Why would anyone bother attacking it, if it has not value to them?

You can't have it both ways.
Either destroying the structure allows me to stop the war, or there is no structure.
Without the structure, we're back in the same boat of, you want to kill me at no risk, I want to force you to fight but have no means to do so.

I already have plenty of structures already thank you. I really don't need any more arbitrary crap that spams notifications for one guy to shoot at in a bomber.

Also why should the defender get a magical artificial objective to shoot at which wins them the war, when no approximate structure exists for the aggressor to shoot at?

The entire concept is stupid, structure bashing is un-fun gameplay and 99.9% of the time the defender would be unable to do it successfully anyway, moreover it would just make the wardec club even more exclusive by limiting the use of the mechanic to people that can defend some magical structure that has no other apparent benefit or purpose.

Because the defender just wants the war to end. You can't make the war end by fighting, and a magical structure that made the war end would give them a reason to fight. The aggressor declared the war for whatever reasons they had, and presumably already have a reason to fight--- though in most cases it's just a sadistic desire to ruin gameplay for others.

There is currently no point in a PvE motivated player or corp to fight a war.

PvP ships are either disposable trash, or sufficiently supported by logi and boosters to ensure they won't die to the force the defender is generally able to field--- so you can't weaken the enemy or profit that way.

You don't get a reputation for anything except a sucker who will take the bait. Rather than discouraging predatory wardecs it just encourages more of the same.

You can't force the war to end. All you can do is win pointlessly, or lose things you actually care about. That's what EVE PvP is, and why the game is in decline.

It's more like low sec. Except worse because neutrals are a thing. Null has bubbles.

That said, if your corp is wardecced, just go to lowsec. Most seem to cling to the idea it's a deathtrap, literally nothing could be further from the case.

I've been under all manner of wardecs. You know how many WTs I have seen outside of highsec in my entire eve career?

0.

Not a single one.

They will literally never come after you, the minute you leave highsec.

If PvE isn't going to be supported then it should be removed, and every mechanic that relies upon it adjusted so that it isn't required.

No more industry of any kind...all ships and modules seeded to the market, ISK removed from the game. All miners, exploration, etc... Just take it out.

It is disgusting that sadistic malcontents are catered to by tricking people into PvE professions in the games marketing.

Or we could... You know... Be realistic about what sandbox means.

Oh look another wardec thread,


*See the walls of text.*


Wow, yeah no. >.> Time to cherry pick! =D


You're really complaining about 155 decs? Like for real? I've see it go over double that multiple times. CCP didn't fix it then, they are not going to fix it now. They are too concerned about Null Sec.


Oh and the OP responded once and hasn't bothered since. The other white knights that jumped on his bandwagon. White Knights who rally for nerf after nerf wanting a perfect playground.


But it's a sandbox... Not a playground.

Highsec isn't meant to be 100% safe.

I'm at war with Razor Alliance hardly would consider them newbie and unable to fight back.

If someone doesn't want to fight back then he's playing the wrong game.

Go back to Wow.

1v1 me at the glory belt.




Did I cover all the bases?