About wardeckers in High Sec and solution

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
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The problem is not not necessarily with the war dec mechanic itself.
It is a good thing that any player corp can declare war on any other player corp for any reason.
It’s rather how they are used (yes, there are exceptions and those are fine):
Mass deccing of random corps doesn’t lead to meaningful gameplay because neither side has incentive to do anything. The agressor doesn’t have to be aggressive and the defender has no need to defend anything. The result isn’t war (which was declared), but rather a legitimized, selective high-sec gate camp catching the unaware and unlucky while most people on the defender site keep doing their stuff with little to no interference at all.

The problem is based to some extend on the lack of ingame mechanics that can be reasonably used to pursue war targets. I guess, most of us agree that CCP should do something here that re-enables targeted war decs.
Another part of the problem is the shift in the game culture. It seems that players become lazier and less willing to invest time and effort into their content (in many areas of the game, not just the “merc” business): mass war decs became a thing even before the watchlist changes and the effort in picking war targets is non existant.

Broken is not that this can be done. Broken is that it seems to be “necessary” to do.
Ok, maybe not really necessary, because I’m pretty sure, if there would be some more effort put into choosing war targets, the aggressors would probably get the same amount of killmails with significantly less wars.

As I said above, there is simply no incentive to do so. But it’s the same for the attackers, no need to move out of the comfort zone where you can reship and ping for reinforcements. Sometimes, it happens nevertheless, which is a good thing, but people are normally rather risk averse.

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CowQueen MMXII, you really do get it, great post.

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I agree that mass wars tend to be impersonal. What you have to account for is that in those 100 wars there are plenty of wars that might be getting a personal touch. So you have the general dec everything you see in SOE hubs and what comes in and out of Jita, but then you have the guy that you scanned carrying 20b in a freighter and you want to try to stalk and catch him unaware. You have the group mining with Orcas and freighters in the belt that you will end up running locates on and stalking. No doubt the trade hubs and pipes are major feasting grounds, but there is genuine hunting and actual fights that happen. I can’t speak for every group nor, but only my experiences in VMG.

I think you will be hard pressed to find people that actually like being at war. Sure this may be because wonky mechanics, neutral logi, and all those tactics that the aggressors use but the honest truth is that most people want to be left alone to either farm, build their corp / alliance, or bring goods through highsec. Listen to the vocal majority here and on Reddit and you see people that just want an easy and unimposed highsec where they can do their thing.

You also have instances where you see random decs where we never show up, but consider that we’re waiting for the right target. We may have dec’d you and are waiting for you to undock that officer fit golem and run mission. Think of it like this: if we dec you for a month and you never see us, on the 5th week would you maybe get brave enough to undock and fly around? That’s exactly what we want in many cases. Getting killed or what is effectively “ganked” is probably never going to be fun. I just don’t agree with defining what an actual war has to accomplish. Maybe sometimes I want to dec you just to see you squirm and stay docked up.

What you may be considered broken, others may consider more opportunities to shoot at people.

Highsec pvp is out there if you want it. If you want to try your hand at killing VMG and showing everyone were just some station camping noobs, there are tools and strategies out there for you to use. Who knows maybe if you show us up bad enough we will think twice about dec’ing you. I would be lying if I said that these discussions didn’t take place where we weigh pros and cons of decs.

Be the hero you were born to be!

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People in this thread can go on about what they do and the current system, it’s pros and cons ad nauseam, the mechanics are not really the issue, it is the players that are the issue.

Anybody who has spent time looking at war dec alliances such as VMG know how you operate, it is not exactly difficult.

It is not really a case of trying to define what a war is trying to accomplish, but we know that wars tend to be more fun and better if there is a real tangible target. But here is the rub, in null sec a war has something that concentrates the conflict, such as ADM’s to keep up for sov, the sov structures, moons, citadels and IA’s even those ESS’s. Most of your war decs don’t have anything like that, so they end up just being ganks on dumb people.

I cannot see anyway to push war deckers to be more selective and I think it will be wrong, however what I did find in my time in hisec is that no one felt that they could find an effective or meaningful way to fight back and this is at the core the issue of the lack of content for both sides.

That being said I do like it when every so often a null sec or WH alliance comes in and curb stomps a hisec war decker and I am sure you guys enjoy it. Did you enjoy the Citadel wars in Perimeter for example?

Solutions are what is key, how to bring in at the core something meaningful, I have suggested an IS to give watch list like intel on a per constellation basis, which enables people with a bit about them to resists by shooting them. Another suggestion is a corp owned hisec citadel which can house mission agents.

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Many fights can be considered ganks, but that isn’t really the problem. There are measures to counter that, either by avoiding those fights or by better preparing for them. Avoiding isn’t that hard for the most part, only requires a little knowledge and some behaviour adjustments. Preparing to fight back is a lot harder, but also not impossible.

As long as you try to accomplish anything that is directed at a specific target, I consider the war dec totally fine. The goals and reasons should be up to you.
I have nothing to say against your examples, they seem all valid to me and if all decs would have such reasoning behind them, we wouldn’t have this discussion.

I can understand why they want such a thing. However, it is quite shortsighted and definitely not good for the game. The safer high sec becomes, the more boring it also becomes and the less value all high sec activities will have (both monetary and in sense of achievement).

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Well the wars fought in Nullsec are things that effect mechanics directly tied into sov. I’m not deeply rooted in sov null but I can’t remember the last time I heard of a war going on that had some neat reason that was driven by some old feud. Like literally the last one I can remember was about some anime argument?

That said, there are no conquerable spaces in highsec. There are no mechanics to defend or attack that change the outcome of where someone can live or what they can do. I have friends that live in null and they have had campaigns where they do nothing but harass their enemies ADMs. That’s not a real war in how most people would define one, but it’s very much the same kind of gameplay that goes on in highsec.

I just don’t believe that you should ever have a say what the contents of my war against you are. My goals, objectives, and gameplay are mine.

I think that first huge fight against PH was a real eye opener. The highsec age of Citadels was just starting to open up and it was very interesting to see the players step forward. In the end there’s only so much n+1 you can handle, and while multiboxing dps and multiple logis works well for us under normal circumstances, a force that large is just a lot to deal with.

I think everyone did enjoy the curbstomping and we learned a lot through it.

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Problem is I’m just one guy in a large group that is speaking entirely for himself. I can’t tell you why Joe Blow corp 1648 seems to have a war history of 600 wars with no kills. Some people just use them as a grief tool I guess.

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Actually the war I am in at the moment, no one likes Tri…

You don’t need conquerable space in hisec, but you are hitting on what I added in my edit above, I have two things in mind to try to change hisec behaviour, the first is a citadel that can contain a mission agent, perhaps linked to your own corp, it has real value. The other was to give back something you guys need to hunt but also enabling people to disrupt it if they are up for it.

The ADM stuff works really well in nullsec, we had PL going for us at one point and I was doing ADM stuff and they were trying to stop us, was funny as hell, but you cannot really do that with level 4’s…The ADM’s are not the same as hisec, for you yes, but not for the hisec player, in nullsec I do the ADM’s to keep my sov with good timers, but in hisec what do I gain, just ISK in the wallet which I can easily lose more of if I undock in my mission ship.

You might have noticed that I was focused on the negative aspects of what you do on new players and new corps and dog pile and strangle at birth some entities that could have become quite interesting mainly because war dec entities were desperately looking for someone who was prepared to fight, apart from that I am totally cool with what you do.

Good, now how the hell do we develop this so there are hisec entities able to offer that type of content?

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And since there isn’t any real incentive to fight back most of the times, people don’t even consider trying. It can be done and it doesn’t take too much - mostly someone who can put some reasonable fits together and lead a fleet and some people who can press f1.
Next thing you will encounter is someone saying something like this: “They are so much better at this than we are, so why should we feed them killmails?”

At least they have to move out to the opponent’s space and start aggressing in some way. But you are right, the resulting “wars” are often not very satisfying either. The underlying problems are somehow similar: no incentive to really fight back and a sense of helplessness.

Sometimes, the griefing works. Being a random target means that you couldn’t have done anything to not become one. Being a target repeatedly can have some significant negative impact on some players and their corp lives. Without possibilities to mitigate being decced, many will feel treated unfairly - which I can understand to some extend.

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You are correct about this.

Wars lack meaning because both corporations and highsec lack meaning. There are no highsec objectives to fight over (aside from the market citadels and POCOs) so wars largely lack purpose in highsec. A few still are used to push people out of systems or regions and explode structures, but mostly they are just used to explode the complacent and unaware now that just hunting someone for fun or to shake them down for profit is over.

What is desperately needed are some conflict drivers in highsec, and the rest of the game for that matter. Reasons to fight over things and each other. This strategy of taking a hands-off approach and make up our own reasons isn’t working. If you stuff highsec with infinite ore and missions, delete casual piracy, make corporations basically all equivalent and provide no unique resources or bonus to fight over, all that is left is making up flimsy reasons to generate content which many players are quick to label ‘tear farming’ or ‘griefing’.

There is a pervasive (and content-killing) psychology of players to bring some real-world moral code into the game and plays as ‘honourable’ and not attack other players without reasons. Some players are too tied to this eBushido code to ever be an aggressor, but most get this is just a game and will take the role of the aggressor if there is a concrete objective or reward to fight over. As it is, players join the game in highsec, spend months building up resources and getting ready to compete with the other players, only to find out there is nothing to compete over in highsec, so they either move to nullsec and join one of the bread-and-circus wars there to keep the line grunts entertained, try out the problematic Faction Warfare, or just quit out of boredom.

Highsec has so much more potential. All that is needed is to give some small, even token things to fight over, and some things that give limited (and thus desirable things) that you have to defend. Then wars suddenly have meaning, and mercenaries will find themselves with more things to do than just deny trade hub access to corporations and gank the ignorant. Don’t get me wrong, ganking the lazy and ignorant is an important service that is essential for a competitive game like Eve, but it really is pretty one-dimensional space combat content and objective based fights would or at least could be much more interesting.

One might have hoped the new Resource Wars would offer something to compete over given it has ‘Wars’ in the title, but no, it appears to be a purely collaborative and safe group PvE environment much like Incursions are, but with perhaps a more new player focus. That might be good for the game, but a conflict driver it ain’t. That leaves the also new Pirate Forward Operating Bases as a potential conflict driver, and although we haven’t heard any details on them, the description isn’t very promising again being focused on collaboration against NPCs rather than something to drive competition between player groups.

I have no idea why CCP seems so afraid to add some true conflict drivers to the game. Until they do though, wars are largely going to just be mass declared for no reason other than someone rolling the dice that you will not notice or do something stupid. I mean, with no compelling game reason to ever declare a war for the vast majority of corporations, why would any game designer think they would be used otherwise?

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I agree, I wanted to do just that but could not find enough people with the right attitude in my TZ.

In truth that is a real hurdle and one that you will struggle to get around, any entity has to grow and develop to get good, what I noticed was that some people did try, but they got dog piled because they started to fight and then got strangled at birth so to speak.

I will also admit to having that attitude of not wanting to feed killmails because morale is an issue, the key part is if you do that you must at least get one good kill otherwise your people lose heart and drift way. It is a major part of the issue which is why I said above to avoid VMG, Public-Enemy and P I R A T until you get good enough to actually get that one juicy kill.

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A number of players have suggested something that gives better yield, special missions or even allow you to house SOE agents in your own Citadel, this creates something worthwhile and a reason to join in and then to defend it. CCP needs to stop ignoring hisec and do this, because a lot of the merc players were highly committed players and seeing them like this annoys me intensely, just as much as seeing most of hisec made up of one man corps and the indy alts of null sec players.

Thanks for your post, this part nails it.

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To start, I still consider myself to be a highsec merc at heart. I spent time with Marmite, Complaints Department (when they were around), and a short stint with I Know Right. At some point I would like to return to highsec and continue living out that lifestyle.

These alliances all operated in different sects of highsec, which should, theoretically, imply varying types of content. However, unfortunately, (especially after the removal of the watchlist mechanic) it eventually just turns into the same. I don’t mean to say that it isn’t fun, because I still enjoyed myself, but it gets very repetitive.

I have always wanted to join VMG because I know without a doubt that they get the most content out of the english-speaking merc groups. A lot of times I will look at their killboard and see these glorious freighter/JF kills in the most random of systems. This tells me immediately that, even after the changes, they still have dedicated groups of content hunters. Yes, they do in a lot of ways ‘control’ the Jita region, but no one does anything about it. Why? Because, frankly, no one cares about highsec except newbros (and rightly so, so they may learn the game) and the mercenary/pirate crowd. Why does no one care? Because, as stated by many aforementioned posts, highsec really doesn’t have a lot of meaning.

To me, it really doesn’t make a lot of sense. A group like Goons or any of the other nullsec alliances could easily bring great fights to VMG or any of the other merc groups if they wanted to. The higher-ups in the nullsec alliances, however, clearly don’t care about the many losses incurred by these wars.

So, really, the solution to the problem is not to fix the merc groups, the people in them, or wardec mechanics. Nor is the solution fixing nullsec alliances and the people in them. The solution is bringing value to highsec other than trade and mission hubs, or at least give more capabilities to find pvp in highsec. If nullsec groups actually had something to lose in highsec from the wars, they might care about them and bring the fights that many people, including mercs, want.

I myself am going to try out wormholes for a while after I return to the US and have a solid internet connection. Wormholes provide a level of unpredictability and also a reasonable certainty of content, win or lose. However, I almost certainly will return to highsec at some point, hopefully when CCP finally realizes how important it is.

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467

The sad part is that everyone here can go round and round on why we think our individual ideas and visions are best for the game, but all that really matters is CCP.

Not trying to be a negative Nancy but they haven’t exactly proven to anyone that they are ready to do good. Look at all this NPE stuff and events… to me this is something they should have hammered out before Alpha clones.

Look at all the things they push out with known bugs and issues, and we’re stuck with them for the better part of a year before anything is done. CCP should really be ashamed of themselves as they have a game that is so unique in nature, and it’s hard to tell if they actually care about it or the future of some shitty VR game.

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If you saw the Warzone trailer for Valkyrie, you can clearly see where they’re aiming… especially when you compare it to the Harvest update (or whatever it’s called)

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Only a few of us understand that we are playing one of the most epic games in the history of mankind.

Ultimately we have a virtual universe that has rules, we can control the game to an extent and create our own content. In the gaming world this was previously unheard of until CCP came along.

CCP has delivered 100 times over from my perspective,

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Welcome to Eve Online everyone, where people create threads & reddit posts crying instead of taking action.

Mechanics are fine, we don’t roll with 30 guardians everywhere we go, we can easy be picked off and make mistakes (Our losses are proof were not this invincible force).

The issue is the people here whining, Jennifer En Marland kills our pilots solo. What’s your excuse?

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I agree that we have a really great game that CCP has created for us to play in. I can’t think of any games like it… which is why it’s very disappointing to see them stagnate and obviously shift focus.

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Oh a crying type of post, how new and exciting…, do you want to take over from Teckos as the belle of the ball…

The sensible part of your post, but easily, nah, it is a challenge above most of what is in hisec is able to do.

You just mentioned one of the best players in Eve, Jennifer En Marland so bonus ball to you mate, I acknowledge without any issue that Jenn is a far better pilot than me. Is that an excuse? Only if you want it to be tiger.

As for whining, you are whining about people whining, perhaps now I am whining about you whining about people whining. If you just want to chest beat post on the VMG thread and slap Dom around on there while you are at it, have fun…

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Hm. Where to start?

Ah. Yes.
I miss the personal touch.
Bringing flowers for you special lady.
Sitting in the tree outside her window with your binoculars.
Hiding in the bushes and waiting for 0915, when she comes out to get the morning paper every day.
Stepping out with blasters hot and devastating the ship when it comes though the gate.
Premeditated, motivated personal service.

Hunting made the game fun for me.
Keeping it sporting made it exciting.
No blobs of t3’s to deal with a cruiser. An assault frig, or faction frig. Maybe one of them t3 dessies.
WT caught missioning in a battleship? Fine, grab a couple buddies and drop some frigs and dessies on him. Surprise the bejesus out of the poor bastard.
This kind of stuff died when they revamped one mechanic without taking into consideration how much other mechanics were dependent upon it.
Still no word as to when locator agents will be made useful again.
That said, we called it when it happened.
The thing. That thing everyone seems to have their jumblies in a bunch over.
500 wars?!? pipe camping?!? ehrmagherd!
Welcome to the law of unintended consequences rearing it’s ugly head.
Sad thing it that it was predictable.
They wanted it that way tho, so that’s the way it is.

Now there’s basically three types of war… structure bashomatic, shotgun pipe camping and the very close and personal long term war.
The first two types are practical for the agressor, the last… well, not so much unless there’s something more than ISK at stake.

Spent the summer in Null. Moving back now.
Murderhobo will be looking for work soon.

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