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Wardec rebalance reviewed
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Starrakatt
Empire Assault Corp
Dead Terrorists
#61 - 2016-11-05 21:33:09 UTC
Donnachadh wrote:
John Yatolile wrote:
I don't need war in war decs, I get my pvp elsewhere

Then one has to ask why do you care what happens to war decs if you do not need them to get your PvP?

I could ask the same of you ,as as you state Wardecs doesn't affect you in the least - In fact you get your own brand of fun at the expense of Wardeccers?

Join Celtic Anarchy!

Sneaky bastard.
Vimsy Vortis
Shoulda Checked Local
Break-A-Wish Foundation
#62 - 2016-11-06 11:12:45 UTC  |  Edited by: Vimsy Vortis
Corraidhin Farsaidh wrote:

The allies mechanism would need to go though. If another corp wants to help you they should also wardec the opponent. This makes being an ally a real decision with associated risk and cost.

The ally system is a difficult beast. On one hand it is an extremely heavily used mechanic and is extremely useful for actual mercenary work, on the other hand it is both incredibly powerful and totally in favor of the defender.

There's three things that are really wrong with it:

1. It completely bypasses the costs associated with declaring a war and essentially allows anyone to declare war against someone who have themselves declared a war for free. Even if you have enough players to max out the cost of declaring war on you, someone joining as an ally in a war you declared is free. This pretty much obliterates any attempt at balancing war costs based on any kind of logic.

2. The wait time on joining a war as an ally is only 4 hours vs 24 hours for a war that you actually paid for, which makes joining a war as an ally objectively better as a means of gaining a war than actually declaring a war of you own. The difference in timers also leads to situations where people can intentionally manipulate timers to their benefit.

3. There is no approximate way for the aggressor to respond to someone bringing in allies. The defender can escalate a war by bringing in of thousands of pilots as allies completely for free without any risk of the aggressor doing the same thing back to them. If the aggressor wants assistance in this situation their allies would have to declare war on not only the defender but every one of their allies individually.

I don't think the ally system should outright be removed, but I think that right now the impact in has on PVP in highsec is overwhelmingly negative, it's used as a tool by large, established mercenary groups to crush new and smaller ones, it puts weaker aggressors in a position where they tend to suddenly find themselves faced with overwhelming opposition and generally creates an environment where everyone is incentivized to join very large mercenary alliances so they don't have to deal with constantly being at war with those same alliances.

You could fix it by making it actually have reasonable costs associated with it, by it having the same wait time as a war declaration and by making it so that if a defender chooses to bring in allies the aggressor gets to do the same.
Donnachadh
United Allegiance of Undesirables
#63 - 2016-11-06 15:49:53 UTC
Starrakatt wrote:
Donnachadh wrote:
John Yatolile wrote:
I don't need war in war decs, I get my pvp elsewhere

Then one has to ask why do you care what happens to war decs if you do not need them to get your PvP?

I could ask the same of you ,as as you state Wardecs doesn't affect you in the least - In fact you get your own brand of fun at the expense of Wardeccers?

That would be a valid question and unlike you I will actually answer that question instead of dodging it.

I care because I have witnessed far to many people leave the game because of a war dec they wanted no part of.

I care because the system is so one sided in favor of the aggressors that it is ridiculous, leaving the various dodge tactics as the only real option for the majority of the players who are in the defenders role.

I care because as Vimsy points out the current allies system is broke as hell and to be honest it can only used by those who have large sums of ISK they are willing to spend. For those like the corp this character is in that have little to no ISK the allies system is worthless.

I care because war decs used to be fun for both sides, you know back when the aggressors were usually the same size as and often smaller than the defenders. Now the aggressors size usually makes it a fools errand to try and fight because you are hopelessly outnumbered at every encounter.

I care because the vast majority of the war decs are not about war in the traditional sense, you know fought over territory, access to resources, structures in space etc they are in fact simply a license to kill. See the next why this license to kill is a potentially bad thing.

I care because of the continually declining number of characters that are online as seen in my primary game time, down from a high of nearly 40,000 on a weekend to the point now where there is rarely more than 15,000 on the weekends and that drop in just the last 2 years. Wars are not the sole cause of this, but they are a factor despite what CCP says and the fact that the CSM and by extension CCP are looking into ways to change war decs are all the evidence needed to prove that.

I care because the feed back we see from those on the aggressor side of the issue varies so widely.
One side wants to have immunity to war decs for some corps based on restrictions including but not limited to no structures in space. The polar opposite of this is the group that wants CCP to freeze the corp roles for the defenders making it impossible to drop corp. To counter the I will not play for the week this groups wants CCP to change the game so it forces players into space if they do not un-dock every X number of hours. Taken as a separate issue these alone indicate that there is a problem to be dealt with.

In the end and despite what some may think I am not against war in high sec, even if those wars are declared simply to make the members of the defending corp legal targets for kill board padding. What I want is to develop a system that works better than what we have. A system that keeps both sides on a relatively even footing when looking at number of characters involved so the defenders and aggressors are willing to get out and fight. A system that gives defenders a real and tangible reason to get out and fight. A system that does not punish the aggressors simply because they want to retract a war dec 2 days after it goes live. The list goes on but I will stop for now.