EVE General Discussion

Forgive me, but you are missing my point. It is not the effect the lack of killing would have on the people living in highsec. It is the chilling effect a safe space would have on a single-universe, competitive PvP sandbox game.

Players are not stupid. They will gravitate to where the best risk vs. reward option is on offer to make their income in this game. If you make highsec safe, that by definition makes it have the best risk vs. reward option as there is no chance to be interrupted while grinding resources into the universe. Why would anyone ever mine/mission/rat/explore/industry anywhere but highsec? They will all move their vulnerable operations to highsec leaving low, null and WH space empty of content. Only meaningless, consensual fights would be left.

This is not an opinion - it is a fact. No safe space can exist if you want to have a persistent, non-hyperinflating economy and non-consensual PvP. Removing wardecs alone wouldn't break that as there would be suicide ganking to keep things somewhat in check, but you said "HiSec 'could' be made entirely free of ship to ship PvP and still have PvP of the resource type" which is wrong. Not only is it wrong, it is directly against the founding principles of this game.

Of course I never said that. I said that the last time CCP looked at wars they thought there were not enough of them and made changes to promote their proliferation. Perhaps there are now enough, or perhaps they have changed their minds, but the current system was designed to increase the number of wars. So we have more wars than before. So what? It is what CCP was going for.

I also never said that Eve is boring if things are easy. I am not even sure what statement I made that you are misinterpreting as that, nor did I say the fights are suppose to always be unbalanced. I maintain that in a PvP sandbox game like Eve, almost no effort is made to balance the sides of a fight. That means fights are often unfair, but that is not mandatory.

Wardecs are the same. There is little built-in mechanism to try to balance the war. Any corp can declare war on any other corp, and they can do it for any reason, because... sandbox.

Ah, we have another space samurai. There is no such things as "real" PvP just like there is no such thing as "real" fights. There is just PvP and fights.

Pirating is an intended profession and activity in this game. Pirates do not fight fair, nor do they necessarily care about the fight itself. They are interested in the loot. The booty. Those sweet ISKies. CCP has spent much effort to enable this play coding CrimeWatch, security status and other mechanics to allow players to play in New Eden as criminals, extortionists and ISK-obsessed mercenaries. You can look down on them, but they are very much intended to be there.

Regardless of your personal eBushido code, CCP is not going to remove wars. The whole game is centered around the concept that the other players are the content. Citadels are clearly designed to put highsec corps at more risk, not less. I do support some sort of social corp or other protection for those just messing around for fun, but real corps, corps doing real industry and affecting the overall economy of New Eden will always be vulnerable to hunting by the "Poachers" as you call them in some form or another.

People want all sorts of things, but that doesn't mean such things actually exist. In Eve, there is a bunch of sand and a bunch of players with as many different motives to play the game as there are players.

You can moan and complain about how every doesn't play for "gud fights" like you do, but that thankfully doesn't matter. Players can play for whatever reason or goals they like, no matter how much your sense of honour disapproves.

The fun is in the hunt, the kill, and the delicious loot. Defeating your enemy and taking their stuff through guile and superior play is quite satisfying, don't you think?

He didn't say there were no "fair" fights. He said there's no such thing as "real" PvP. And I agree at least in so far as it doesn't make sense to discern between "real" PvP and ... false PvP I suppose. Either it's PvP or it's not - it's that simple.

However, my guess is, that most fights in Eve aren't fought just for wanting a "fair" fight. People fight to claim territory, to defend territory, to pillage, loot and plunder, to prevent someone from doing something, to get someone to do something and many other things. In all those cases, a fair fight is typically not the goal for either side. Since most people have a goal beyond just fighting, they are in it to win it, and how do you make sure you win? You tip the balance in your favour in advance. Those fights are typically not fair, but they are all fights nonetheless. They aren't "false" fights, but just fights.

Don't get me wrong - In my book, when it comes to having fun fighting, fighting on even odds is great. But typically, fair fights tend to happen only for the sake of having a good fight and have no meaning beyond that in the context of the game. There's nothing wrong with it, but that's by far not all there is to fighting in Eve.

As someone said before - if a fair fight happens, it's usually either staged or at least one party made a mistake.

"What's best in life, Conan?"

"To meet your enemy one on one in in honourable combat, to make sure they have a fair chance and to hear the praise of the court ladies."

...

Wait... I don't think that's how that line went.

No, but I blame people romanticizing (ha) knights to that point.
Knights were assholes of the highest caliber and you would frequently have reason to question if they were a mutual enemy, or just an enemy if they came upon you as a peasant.
Its one of the major reasons killing a knight made you a knight, that and being the graduate requirement for a squire was to defeat a knight.

Me?
I go with supersonic ammo, explosives in a planned killbox and a plan to immediately disengage, all while using drone surveillance.
I here I can get a DARPA grant for this now

I mean it does make sense, part of the fun is actually testing your skill, its no fun to go to a judo competition and find out somebody is wearing an exoskeleton and nigh impossible to have sweeps and throws used on them, much less the immense pain from hitting the metal struts.

Course in EVE, we have duels, and the general hope that remote logi won't be used, or if it is, others will kill it within the minute of vulnerability.

wardecs turn highsec into nullsec without all the pesky bubbles and command destroyers ruining station camping.

Its clear that not everyone cant agree on what the solution is, but every one agree is not working. So perhaps on that note there will never be a right or wrong way everyone will be happy with.

However I do wonder about CCPs logic in what highsec is supposed to be. You kinda say its safe space and put things in place like police to make it a little safer for the general capsuleer. However in the other hand you put in mechanics to completely overcome those restrictions like War Decs. Which for 50 million at least is pretty damn cheap in order to create quite safe pvp in high sec. Why?

You might as well just make highsec the same as low sec then, because its so cheap to get round the mechanics of it all its not really a deterrant when its so easy to just wardec someone.
you have 3 options

1) So either make highsec actually safe and remove wardecs altogether
2) Make highsec the same as low sec so that people can shoot others but with stricter criminal hit
3) or make people think about wardecs and make them meaningful by charging at least 500mill as a starter not 50 mill and ramp up, instead of allowing wardecs to be a cheat way to pad your killboard with no risk.

No, not everyone agrees it's not working. I do missions, industry, and hauling all throughout highsec, with alts in and out of player corps. I have zero issues with the current wardec system.

FYI, that 50 million isk price tag you say is so cheap? Yeah, that only applies to very small groups. If you want wardecers to pay more to wardec you, try joining a larger group. Oh, wait. All the nerfs to highsec PvP that CCP's done over the years has only forced the wardec groups to get better organized, thus becoming even more of a threat than they were to begin with.

You sure you want another nerf? You do realize that the net result of all those nerfs hasn't actually reduced the wardecs, right? All it's done is force those willing to adapt to become better at the game, while the carebears still continuously bleat about on the forums for just one more nerf.

Or, 4) Leave wars as a risk for player corporations to balance the increased rewards player corporations provide.

Wars are fully intended to make highsec more dangerous for player corps. They are indeed designed to make highsec more like lowsec, but the fact you get a warning of a war, and a list of the players who can shoot still makes it significantly safer than lowsec.

Highsec is not suppose to be safe and never has been. I don't see why you think now, with so many years into the experiment that is Eve, that CCP should throw out a key aspect of the game design.

Highsec, even with wars, is much safer than lowsec. Further, wars and corporations are completely optional for players and they can leave the corporation at any time. Eve could use some more social tools for players who want to be part of a group, but not deal with the increased risk (and reward) of a true player corp, but otherwise, it seems like everything is working as intended. More risk, for more reward.

The new structures are about to give more meaning to wars, and additional reasons to fight for groups that may not use the mechanic now, so I expect even more wars in the future.

If this is indeed what you feel the problem is, then I would suggest that War Dec's are not the tool to be used for what you are doing.

Despite what has been said by so many people, the only thing I can find from CCP is the constant statement that War Decs are for corporations to engage in combat in HiSec. This would also include Mercenary actions as Merc corps are acting as paid war agents of other corps.

This would mean that one corporation wants the turf/assets of another corporation in HiSec. If the other corp packs up, docks up or avoids the war, then the corp declaring the war has had their fee paid off. They have free run of the other corps area and resources. In essence, they win by default. If the other corp starts back up as another name and tries to wrangle back in, they get war dec'd too.

So, I'd say it's working as designed for the purpose of Corporate Warfare in HiSec, even if one side runs away from the War. The side declaring war has no reason to run, you don't declare what you can't fight.

Now, where this doesn't work is for Poaching, or what I'm now seeing as HiSec Player Resource mining (an EVE PvE style of activity) by other players who would prefer to shoot at other player assets rather than NPC ones. Yes, the targets of that just dock up or change corps or AFK cloak taunt and the Poacher/Poacher Corp just loses out.

That may also be by design, but since CCP has been pretty silent on it, I guess we'll never know for sure. It's just a theory.