Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Becoming a "hub humping degenerate" is a decision that each individual makes, no other person in the game and none of the game mechanics "force" one into that play style.

Now to those nerfs to players ability to shoot one another, in a game that is about shooting each other they simply do not make sense. And yet if you look at them from the perspective of a gaming company trying to protect what must be a significant portion of it's cash flow the changes make sense. Essentially what I am saying here is that these repeated nerfs are essentially a signal from CCP that your activities are risking our cash flow and principals of the game be damned we will do what we have to do to protect that cash flow. And based on this I predict that we will continue to see more of these nerfs to war decs until such time as the war dec community changes their ways. War decs were always about the ability to shoot other in high sec without Concord intervention, I do not believe they were ever intended to be simply about putting kills on a kill board.

The problem with wars isn't picking on defenseless people - the option to do that is at the core of EvE and should never be changed. The problem with wars is there's no meaningful way to fight back.

A)Allow the use of Covert Cynos in HiSec. Suddenly the perfect intel wardeccers live off isn't so perfect, and an element of risk is introduced.

B)Require Wardeccers to have a citadel or other asset in space that can can be destroyed to end the war(s) they are currently waging. No one should have a problem with picking on easier targets, but the fact that even if they did mobilize or get allies that could fight back, wardeccers have no tangible assets to fight back at. Risk and reward are supposed to be tied together in this game - wardecs are one of the huge disparities.

The watchlist nerf was a forced issue, I know this because the guy that forced it, CCP Foxfour, told me so to my face.
The effect it had on the viability of targeted and direct war in Empire was collateral damage and in no way a specific
and direct game design decision.

If anything we weren't even given a second thought.

Ultimately, the problem the "carebears" are trying to solve isn't that they get wars thrown at them. That's a fact of life in eve, and people can deal with it or get out. The problem is that well-funded groups are literally slinging wars at everyone who passes through a highsec trade hub or a choke point in highsec (except the npc corp players, of course).

The solution being sought is, simply, "How can we stop wardec spammers from randomly throwing wars at literally everyone they see?" One way or another, it'll have to be a mechanical change, and, ideally, it'll be a mechanic which would let them keep doing that (if they really want to) while having a disincentive to keep doing it.

Wars used to cost 2m, yes, but the economy was much poorer back then. We have groups slinging billions of isk per week on the war fees to roll the dice for their chance to get kills on freighters and soft targets who don't harden up or turtle. Relatively seldom is it two groups who actually want to duke it out.

Several thoughts I've seen and their immediately apparent repercussions:

1: The odds of loot dropping from wardec targets could be reduced or removed entirely.
--- That'd just shift these players into ganking rather than making war. Bad choice? Maybe, maybe not. It'd adjust the cost ratios of getting kills and change how PvP players organize.

2: Reinstate the hard cap on wars per group (attacking or defending).
--- This would make the large groups take their PvP alts into smaller groups and split their attention between multiple wars on multiple accounts. The watchlist nerf has made this playstyle nearly nonviable for the casual highsec wardeccer (merc or otherwise), and they'd be forced to attack well-established groups who aren't likely to move away from a home location ... thus also encouraging habitually-defending groups to also fragment and sending the highsec wardec community into a death spiral

3: Have a hard-coded war goal (kill the target structure, destroy $X isk of stuff, capture the flag, etc) either with or without an escrow function.
--- Highsec wars aren't about territory, and the people who declare wars in highsec have no reason to fight over territory. They're in it for the isk and the tears, plain and simple. Either they're making isk from their kills, they're suppressing you from making isk, or they're getting their sweet sweet tears out of some poor guy. It'd be a fun system, to be sure, and could be set up as a mutual wardec where both sides agree to that kind of tournament style play ... but it wouldn't do well en vivo. The only viable part of this whole idea would be that Concord could see a no-kill war as ... I don't know ... excessive aggression or something in a lore-friendly way and, thus, instigate a longer inter-war cooldown than we currently have.

4: War cost & war timer adjustments.
--- Maybe the cost to declare war on somebody you keep attacking could go up over time because the cost to pay off the right people in Concord keeps going up in the way bribe prices tend to keep going up? This would just keep a single war from going on forever unless there were also a mechanic where the cooldown period were directly related to the length of the war. If this were put into place, then you'd just end up somewhere in the neighborhood of alternating weeks where you are/aren't at war with a particular group. There are a bunch of wardec spammers around, so it'd really only reduce the number of war targets somewhat while not really allowing PvE-centric players the chance to just not be at war sometimes.
--- Maybe the base cost could go back to the system where each additional concurrent war (as multipliers on the part of the attacker's & defender's total number of wars in relation to the total war cost paid by the attacker) would cost an attacker ever-increasing amounts of isk ... except the highsec wardec community pretty much pushed that out once and it wouldn't likely stand up again after being knocked down. Wars were determined to be too insanely expensive, and the watchlist nerf would make it even more nonviable than it was before.

5: Remove war from highsec and make people do war outside of highsec.
--- It'd be understandable, in a lore sense, that the empires have had enough of capsuleers asserting themselves. This suggestion assumes the highsec war community is, itself, toxic and in need of removal. While that's an ongoing debate in some circles, using this suggestion would be a sea change for the majority of players in the game and should only ever be considered if there's 100% concrete data-based conclusions which show the game is dying because of a toxic community the game itself has encouraged for its ENTIRE LIFETIME SO FAR. If this were needed, then it'd have been done years ago in order to keep the game alive.

(Continued below)

An NPC alt with no killboard posts a thread like this? Ignore the troll, stop feeding him and let this thread die as it should.

I hate the watchlist change as much as you do, but picking one single item does not mean that ALL of the changes to war decs were "collateral" damage brought on by changes needed in other areas of the game. In fact the watchlist change is the only one made for other areas of the game that has had any real affect on the high sec war dec mechanic. In a sense you are incorrect the watchlist is just one of thousands of times where changes have been "forced" on us because ultimately whether we like them or not all of the changes made to the game have been forced on us.


Typical overly simplistic look at a complex situation.
In the past the majority of war decs were about players actually looking for fights with the kills being a secondary but natural extension of the activities. Over the years things have shifted and today we have a situation where the vast majority of the war decs are not about the fights, they are in fact about people looking for the next easy target to curb stomp so they can add to their kill boards and fights are routinely avoided by simply taking the carebear practice of docking up to be safe. In the former were kills were a natural extension of people pursuing other activities the kills on a kill board were not all that relevant. In the current where those kills on the kill board are the sole reason for the activities they are not such a good thing.

In the past it was rather rare to see a larger war dec group declaring war against a smaller group because we all knew that it was not conducive to the fights we were looking for, today it is common for large war dec groups to declare war on 1-5 man corps and then complain when those smaller groups will not un-dock and fight.

War dec players love to blame the carebears, however that ignores the fundamental reality that CCP is a business and they must make money to stay in business. CCP further complicates that with the stated intention that you are not safe from attack anywhere or at anytime. Shift things to far to the safety side and you risk losing one group of players and their cash, make it to dangerous and you risk losing a different set of players and their cash. Given the way changes to war decs have gone over the years with increased safety it is clear that there is more cash to be made by making things safer. In this regard it has always baffled me, the obvious and logical answer to this dilemma would be to make one high sec constellation is each region 100% safe from attacks by other players in exchange for significantly reduced rewards for your activities. With this "safe" place for those who do not want to face the risks set aside CCP would be free to re-balance the risk versus rewards for the rest of EvE and stay even more true to the ideal that you not safe anywhere. However this is an extremely unpopular idea which in my mind only serves to further cement the idea that for the most part war dec players do not want fights, they simply want easy targets they can curb stomp onto their kill boards.

Using wars to validate high sec combat and ganking is a bad practice and prone to being used as a form of harassment. It is the bounty and kill rights system that should be fixed to open up avenues for individual combat, rather than using wars.

First off, Wars should not be about individual player kills and loot so much as it should be about Asset conflicts. I would be perfectly fine with only allowing highsec wars between entities that actually own player structures in High sec, and introduce Lowsec wars between entities that own structures in Lowsec. (Lowsec wars still being able to spill over into highsec and perhaps relaxing Faction police response in systems with war targets). The reason for this split between high and lowsec wars is because high sec corps do not really have access to Capitals like Low/Null corps do, so pitting a Lowsec asset vs a High sec one is a lopsided conflict when capitals can be dropped on you.

That said the cost to start a war should be dependent upon the relative size of the entities (max size during the duration of the war), and isk should not be the only currency used. Standings should also play a role, and losing too much standings should remove functionality of their player owned structures.

Starting a war between similar sized entities should be a fairly negligible cost/loss. A smaller entity starting a war with a larger one should cost extra isk, but small standings investment. A large corp starting a war with a smaller one would also have some increased isk cost, but would also require a larger standings investment/wager

The defending Corp instantly wins and ends the war if they destroy any one structure of their opponent. The attacker wins, if within the week they destroy a structure and have lost none themselves. The aggressor takes a small standings hit if they don't win, and a large one if they lose.

Additional features that I think would need to be added would be the ability to change the vulnerability timers of an opponent. Without this it is possible that a corp can never have enough pilots active for an assault during the designated time. Also I would like to see a 'Capture' option for these player owned structures implemented, and at the end of the war the choice to occupy, self-destruct or ransom the structure back would be given to the new owner.

*watches sadly as the dead horse gets beaten with a stick yet again*

Poor horse.

(I added numbering to your post to make it easier to reply)

1) Easy to solve potential abuses after war starts
a) Player joins attacking corp => fee increase, to have total fee as if the war was initiated with this many players, applied the moment person joins. Not enough ISK in corp wallet = person cannot join corp.
b) Player joins defending corp => no refunds.
c) Player leaves attacking corp => no refunds. The attacking corp gets a free player slot, as they already paid war dues for N+1 players.
d) Player leaves defending corp => no fee increase.

To solve max exodus of defending corp just before war auto-renew (which would royally screw up attackers - higher dues and less targets): Wardec is paid, 24h delay to war start. Then, 48h-24h before war end dues can be paid manually with option to auto-renew at 24h point. If dues aren't paid, 24h "winding down" of war.

With same min cost of 50m (paid in case defending corp is same size or bigger), this should even work on attacking side.

The issue is on defending side where it makes more sense to be a single player corp and only informally a member of a bigger group. Which can be solved by tax.

2) No idea what would bounty pool even solve tbfh.

3) Instead of locking corp membership (which is indeed a stupid and broken idea), you could make wardec persist with the leaving player for the week (and have this personal war with corp XYZ visible, like how corp wars are). Want to live peacefully and ignore all wars? Well, this is EVE, you can't.


---

4) However, I believe the greatest war problem is that you can't do anything against players in NPC corps, except gank them.

A pretty drastic solution: NPC corps and even factions should periodically declare all-out wars on each other, with longer delays between announcement and war start (say at least a week for corps and perhaps 2 for factions), and with meaningful NPC fleet combat included too - so a gallente roaming gang wouldn't be able to enter deep in caldari space, as caldari police will shoot them. FW corps join the faction war as well obviously.
Want to leave the war? Leave NPC corp in favor of player one.

Which will yet again make a 1 man corp the way to go.

5) Trivial solution: Make it cost X/month to have corp registered. Not paying dues = corp is defunct and members get thrown to NPC corporations. Previous CEO can revive the corp in a month. After a month everyone can claim that corp name.

The problem with your suggestion is mining and hauling - it would be hard to tax them. But yeah, suggestion could work to a degree, at least against industrial players. Not sure about mission runners - I was under impression most already are in player corps (or alt corps) for the existing tax.