Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hi there!

About a year ago Tora Bushido & Jason Quixos started The Wardec Project as a platform for discussion of wardec mechanics in hopes of trying to collectively propose better systems and mechanics - something I'm hoping to continue with a public reboot. I don't want to see discussions dominated by one side, as the Wardec Roundtable turned out to be, and my hope is that some constructive discussions can come from a larger, more drawn out project.

For those interested in joining in these discussions, they are being hosted on our public discord and player proposals and discussions of interest will be added to our online document for the sake of recording these ideas. There are also a couple of CSM members (Jin'taan & Bobman <3) that have joined us for the discussion and are happy to answer any questions that may pop up.

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to ask.

Toxic

You are still missing the point with Wardecs. The Mechanic is fine.
Where the problem is is in the highsec corp mechanics, and how CCP are nerfing all the structures for highsec pilots.
Remove 90% of high sec stations. Make High sec structures have the same bonuses as Null sec structures (Obviously low gets them as well), since they can't be torn down to avoid wardecs. The ecosystem will then grow significant high sec corps itself without needing further artificial intervention, and the current wardec mechanics will actually work once there are numerous larger corps with assets in space to care about and defend.

Where to start on this one.
Ralph King-Griffin has the easy mode answer so read his last post first.
To his response I will add that any mechanic that forces players to gather into large groups, spend billions of ISK a week and then hang around station un-docks and jump gates in an effort to get the kills they believe they deserve to get because spending billions of ISK per week is well to borrow a line from another computer game "broke as hell."

Removing 90% of the high sec stations is only good for two groups of players, the station camping war dec crowd and the gankers for everyone else this would be a really bad idea.

The ecosystem in high sec especially the war dec mechanic itself will not allow for large crops to make a return to high sec. The corp this character is in used to number more than 250 characters and we used to love war decs because it was usually very easy to continue operations, defend yourself AND give those among us that wanted it the opportunity to go shoot other people. And then CCP changed war decs and screwed things up so we broke up into a series of smaller corps and here is why.

1. the single large corp was a magnet for every war dec group in the game, smaller corps are not as likely to be war decced.

2. it is easier to work around a war dec when your operations are decentralized. Shutting down one small corp temporarily and moving players, resources and all the rest that we do is easier when the corp is smaller.

3. by decentralizing you minimize the risks due to loss of structures, ships and resources / products. In fact the way we were forced to change by the current application of the war dec mechanic has made it so that loss due to ganking is orders of magnitude harder to deal with and has a significantly greater affect on us than the war decs ever did.

3. even if you want to stay together as one large corp as a friend of mine did by time you have a corp big enough to defend itself from any and all high sec war decs you are big enough to move into low sec or a worm hole and eliminate the pesky war dec groups entirely from the equation since the vast majority of them are to risk averse to pursue targets buried in low sec.

I wlll leave it to those on the other side to discuss the broken nature of the current war dec mechanics from their points of view, I will only state that most of them cite the current allies mechanic as one of the worst.

Last comment, actually an observation and my opinion.
The landscape of computer gaming has changed significantly since I started playing EvE in 2009. With a wider variety of offerings to choose from it is harder and harder for CCP to draw in and maintain a solid core group of players large enough to support their operations and continue development of the game. What CCP needs to do is accept this, make one constellation in each of the 4 major factions space a nearly 100% safe area for players to spend time. Yes there would have to be significant restriction on these areas and that is a part of the idea thatr would need to be worked out. How does this benefit the rest of us, in simple terms real cash money to pay for devs.

What people complain about are the consequences of the entire ecosystem having no driver for high sec corps, not a direct function of the War dec mechanics. Ok, and the lack of ability to tell if someone is online now, which is easily fixed by a locator agent change which doesn't directly touch war dec mechanics.
Yes the Ecosystem has major issues, but War Dec mechanics are not where the problem currently needing fixing is.

What is needed to change things is to actually provide real incentives for high sec corps to stay intact, and to grow to at least some size. CCP had the right starting idea with the new structures, but then they gave them nerfed statistics in highsec which killed that as a Highsec driver. And when there is an average of something like 5 stations per system, there is also no drive to maintain your own structures. A station every two or three systems, with some systems having two or three is all that's needed. Not fourteen stations in some systems, that's just silly levels of overkill.

Without the driver for corps to stay active under a wardec and do activity in space, no change to Wardec mechanics will ever succeed, because people simply won't stay under wardecs (for the most part obviously, you'll still have the oblivious and the few exceptions). Once you have corps staying active and engaging in structure defences at least in order to keep operations running under a war dec, you have a much healthier High sec, and if there are then still systematic issues going on you can then consider additional steps.

Trade hub camping will continue no matter what goes on of course, because it's just part of the standard life cycle of gamers to devolve to some degree.

There are a few bugs related to Citadels that need fixing but the issues with war decs are mostly peripheral to the mechanic itself. Docking games, locator agents not updated with the change to the address book, local as an intel tool, mechanics around alliance membership, and the relative ease of alt logistics/money making.

The last problem is essentially unsolveable (though Zimmy's idea may be touching on something interesting) however the rest are definitely addressable and would impact the game positively far beyond the war dec mechanics itself.

The war mechanic itself, pay a fee so you and a target organization can shoot each other up, is relatively sound. Some of the suggestions proposed in the doc like risk/cost free "social" NPC corps (which will damage the EVE ecosystem by allowing untouchable ISK generation and organization) and a "war structure" (which will permanently and irreparably make large alliances safe from risk of attack) have been repeatedly debunked.

The only good and mostly mutually agreed upon point that has ever come out of the horde of threads on this topic is that the mechanics are not fine.


After that they all 100% without fail devolve into pointless walls of text.



Good luck with CCP being able to fix that, because it's impossible to have an honest discussion about it without everyone and their brother crying over their gameplay possibly getting nerfed. There isn't a single solitary fix for war decs. 'Fixing' them has to by nature affect every aspect of high sec, and by extension low and null, but no one is willing to get their gameplay stepped on to fix it.


Lock the thread and be done already.

I may just be tired of seeing the topic come up over and over again and the same posts get posted over and over again, usually by the same people.



Unlimited jump drive was bad for the health of the game and had to be dealt with. It was, and made a large swathe of people annoyed in the process. It's being fine-tuned as we go, but the core problem was addressed.


Several aspects of the current war mechanics are bad for the game. They need dealt with. But we can't get anywhere in dealing with them because some people's gameplay will be stepped on. CCP needs to buck up and draw a line, like they did with jump drives, and then fine tune from there.

I'm done here.

I disagree obviously but historically your fears are unfounded. With every step CCP has taken that has made high sec space safer in years past the war dec, ganker and PvP(traditional shoot other players definition) have claimed it would be the death of EvE, and yet the game it still here and so are most of those doom and gloom specialists like you.

Not sure I will still be playing when it does but having nearly 100% safe areas for the casual gamer to play in will happen or CCP will have to shut this game down because of the lack of cash to pay the bills. There are to many offerings out there in online computer gaming and the wants / needs / desires of the game players themselves is changing. Alpha clones are the first major step in this direction but they will not be the last.

Why yes of course that would happen. Smart corps will create complex money laundering networks.
That's just some more content added to the game, maybe even an entire career could develop around illicit earnings and black money. And since a golden rule of EVE is "Where there is money, there will be betrayal", we can expect the whole money laundering thing to become a conflict driver of its own.



I'd expect this to happen rarely.


Actually, yes. I 'd expect merc contracts to skyrocket.
I'd also expect that many carebear corps would do shoddy research with their financial agents and set the mercs on the wrong targets (If the money launderers are good enough).
I'd expect highsec to explode in a clusterf*ck of wardecs and counterwardecs, miners against miners, mercs against mercs, everything shalll burn.
So in short, the kind of content rich highsec most of us have been dreaming of for ages...



Agreed.