personally i think the war dec system has been in need of an overhaul for a long long time, since the watch list went (and lots said before it went we’d see mass decs) the mass decs started, i don’t blame them, what other tools have CCP given us to replace the watch list? nothing!
yea you can deploy alts to the sytems your targets usually hang out in, and wait, but the work load to do so is pretty unrealistic given the size of new eden, which leaves hanging out in trade hubs making the combat 2 dimensional.
before it’s said, yea the targets could gang up and help eachother, some do, but most don’t, crazy i know and perhaps CCP hoped the high sec community would band together to deal with it.
or maybe these people would pay other mercs to attack those attacking them.
didn’t really work out like that now did it.
there’s a degree of lazyness in all this, but that’s also to be expected from the more casual player, he or she doesn’t have the time needed to avail of merc services or be bothered to do so, much more easy to just log for the week and not care or totally avoid the trade hubs.
then there’s the war dec scam, a corp gets decced by a corp and they open it to allies, then the offers pile in from 2 man corps looking for isk to come save ya
lol
corp a decs
corps b, c, d, e, f offers to save ya, for a fee 
corp a owns corps b, c, d, e, and f lol
still going to say the player numbers could be better but they are not as bad as some would like to make out and i’m not at all convinced war decs or PVP in general has anything to do with people not liking the game or not sticking around.
people will like it, love it or hate it, it’s that simple.