Player Features and Ideas Discussion

maybe it would help if you also add something interesting for the attacker and not just try to add an easy way for the defender to end the war.

Highsec structures currently either can be taken down with 100% certainty evading any attack, or if of the new Upwell type, drop next to nothing, sometimes less than the cost to declare war long enough to explode them. The new ones are an improvement sure, but as to reason to shoot them, they are quite lacking and in themselves are tedious to shoot. The only things that that provide anything at all limited to actually fight over are POCOs, the market hubs in fortizars, and perhaps shared industry indexes for engineering complexes. POCOs get fought over on occasion, and the market hub causes citadels to die at least in Perimeter (although the two-weeks of invulnerability they enjoy seems to make it futile to try to control the market there undermining the market hub as a conflict driver) but largely there is no game reason to shoot them.

As Vic said, until you give corporations things of value to fight over, wars will just be used to take from those weaker than you and settle personal scores, uses that many players are quick to label "griefing". Real wars would need actual objectives to fight over and those are lacking especially from highsec, but from the game in general.

As Ima said, what is needed is to give something interesting to the defender that they want to have but also have to defend from the attacker. A real objective to fight over that both sides want. The most obvious would be some sort of structure or structure module that provides an exclusive, and thus desirable bonus to certain highsec activities (or access to a highsec activity) that players can really fight over. Alternatively, you could make shooting them directly rewarding somehow (AKA loot drops) and perhaps a little less tedious. However, making the attacker defend a useless beacon just to maintain the ability to interact with another group is only going to stifle conflict, not stimulate it.

CCP seems to be fine with taking a hands-off approach to letting us come up with reasons to shoot each other. If they aren't going to provide mechanical conflict drivers, then much of the violence that results is going to be random, opportunistic, and fall on the smaller and weaker guy who can't defend themselves, well much more violence never happens at all as players just build things and never have a game reason to use them to shoot other players. I think the game could be much more healthy if there were clear objectives to fight over and real reasons for wars to take place.

But alas until then wars are working as intended. If someone declares war on you can evade them or just opt-out by changing corp if you don't want to fight. They are purely consensual so at worst they represent a small nuisance of paperwork you have to deal with. Just like everywhere else in the game if you don't want to fight, no one is forcing you to undock, but in highsec wars you have the additional option of making the war end by dropping corp. That's just how Eve works.

I think you all are looking at this the wrong way. Instead we need to add structures that if left ignored can cause the attacker or defender to gain a advantage....It will give an incitive for both attackers an defenders to put time an effort in finding them an destroying them/buying and defending them.

It isn't easy to attack a large and capable defender. Doing so tends to result in ship losses and little gain. What is easy is attacking a large and incompetent defender, the kind of corp that has lots of individual PvE players floating around obliviously on their own separate farming goals but little organization or ability to fight back. And that should continue to be easy because incompetence should be punished.

At which point one of two things happens:

1) Someone sets up a list of all the war dec structures, and the "security through obscurity" plan fails.

or

2) The structure remains genuinely hidden, in which case your new mechanic adds nothing to the existing system and there's no point in including it.



IOW, it allows bad corps/alliances to have an objective, instead of punishing them for being bad. If you're giving up easy kills in trade hubs then the problem is not the war dec mechanics, it's that you suck at EVE.

If you don't like the people who list the (player-found) wardec structures, then wardec THEM instead? Or track the people who access the war-thingey? Have each war-thingey store access logs, so wardeccers know who could have accessed the info? Sure, they'll do it behind the safety of alts, but that's a separate problem, one pretty inherent in EVE.

It provides an option. The option to track down a structure and interact with it, and the people interacting with you. Since when is having options a bad thing? It could possibly be a bad thing for people who like to declare wars, but only if they don't actually want to fight the people they just declared war on. And let's be honest, most of them don't, and just dec for easy targets with minimal personal risk.

My argument is that people who can only "PVP" if they pick easy targets in hisec might be more "bad" than their preferred targets. This would provide content, as the structure would use the reinforcement/vulnerability timers to provoke a fight during wardeccer prime time.

I think your problem with that, is that the wardeccers might not win easily? Or be able to just dock up if they start to lose?



@Toxic Yaken: I only have access to my point of view here. I'm sorry that you apparently can't "think critically" about an idea and state your own conclusions.

I do think it would cut down on some wardecs. But I think that the surviving wardecs would have more fighting. Fighting during wardeccer prime time, even, as the structures come out of reinforcement or become vulnerable. But less trade hub camping of people who are chosen for their perceived inability to fight back. Mercs could be contracted with a clear goal in mind.

That would be a completely separate idea thread, please.

This one is about adding a kill-switch to wars that requires attackers to actually fight (at a time of their choosing via reinforcement or vulnerability) the war.

Instead of attackers who dec people, gank, and then dock up at the first sign of actual resistance.

Arguments I've seen so far:

• People who get ganked are bad, and deserve it.
• People can dodge war by dropping corp.

I think the first is a fallacy. MANY people are bad, people lose billions to terrible decisions, and sure, individual players do some boneheaded things. Suicide ganking fits this niche fine.

The second is a good way to drop population, if the more casual (and easier target) players get forced away from their social group, and stop logging in. Yes, ragequits feel good, but less monthly fees being paid is bad for the devs, which is bad for the game.

But far more people look for corps who don't focus on PVP, and dec them for easy kills. This is defended by the "they're bad and deserve it" line, and rationalized by saying they can hire mercs or disband. But if the defenders do pull together and get a fleet that actually threatens the attacking corp, those ships are obviously just going to hide in station or play docking games.

Attackers have nothing at stake besides the sunk cost of the dec. Defenders have the threat of superior OOC attacker intelligence, plus attackers tend to PVP-specialize, plus PVE ISK-making is disrupted, as those OOC scouts will be looking for any mining or mission stuff.

If wardecs were people looking for real fights, this wouldn't be a problem. But let's be honest, most wardecs are people who just want to camp trade hubs and be able to attack without CONCORD interference. The attackers can retract anytime from instantly to indefinitely, as long as they pay some ISK.

What this idea would provide, is the ability for defenders to decisively respond. Hire some mercs to come in, pop the wardec thing, and done.

This also provides a fight for the attackers. You paid good money for a fight, right? Well, show up during the vuln window or at the end of the reinforce timer for your fight. If you just wanted to clear a moon or POCO, you can drop it on a director alt in the boonies, and the process should take long enough to accomplish your goal.

But if you just want to sit in trade hubs all day, trawling for easy targets? ...You can still do that. But the defenders would have an option that they've never had before. It's not even a great option, it's to literally search every hisec (and losec?) system in EVE for a single deployable, and attack it during attacker prime-time.

If the attackers can't handle that, I'd argue that they are the ones who are bad, and should feel bad.

Except the current wardec strategic objective is "Kill everyone, who is alone, if they are not dock up." "Bonus points for getting them to leave EVE"

Apart from the .001 percent of the time it isn't.

First one is kinda simple. It's still more interaction and in game activity to have the defending side shot a structure to close the war than have them bail out of the corp or stay docked for a week. It's not a perfect option but it had to what might happen. Again, it is definitely not perfect.

2nd question, ganking is effectively unaffected since you do not need a wardec to gank someone. As for wars being force closed by larger corps, you can always either not declare war on them if you think you have no chance of winning. You can also setup traps or find allies.

3rd, I truthfully have no idea how wardeccers would react to this. Defending structure is a bit boring but at the same time, if your enemy want to close the war, they have to show up there. Actual wardeccers are ebtter placed to give their opinion on how they think their business would do with such new mechanics.

4th, CCP clearly does nto provide much about it relying on the player base to educate newcomers. While this is not a bad system in itself, it's widely open to bad teaching from people who are bad at this game or flat out don't understand it enough to teach correctly. The new guy will follow whoever teach him even if the teacher is wrong because he can't tell that the teaching is wrong from day 1. Corps that keep recruiting new player and teaching them to bail away from wars sure as hell don't teach how to fight a war but at the same time, ditching a corp probably is the most efficient way to deal with it since corps in HS are for the vast majority just a tag and a tax reduction.

Jumping in a bit late, admittedly, but on this point I have to disagree. Something in EVE is only as easy as the other players make it. If the other side makes the war "easy" it is that side's problem. This is the same flawed thinking when people complain about the rewards to suicide ganking freighters. Yes, there are large rewards, but that is not a game design issue at all because those large rewards exist because players created those large rewards. Who put all that cargo value into the cargo hold? A player...in fact the player who is flying the freighter.