There’s really nothing further to discuss. Everyone agrees the wardec system is broken. Solutions ( some good ones ) have been proposed. Its pointless getting stuck in the invariable never ending circular argument with the few who seem to think wardecs should not even exist. The discussion is about ‘fixing’ wardecs…not ‘ending’ them. And in that respect I have said all that needs saying.
I would imagine so, yes. But there was also a lot of atypical PvP with the Winter Nexus event in the combat anomalies (suspect baiting and so forth). I might look at the September numbers so we have a better frame of reference for what’s “normal”.
Not a manifesto so much as a proof-of-concept. Later this week I’ll post the proposal for a Wardec re-write. It’s not meant to be the one true way to do Wardecs in EVE, it’s meant to show there are other ways to address various design problems with the Wardec mechanics.
I’ll put some of the design thinking here to cut down on the eventual post size (which will be large).
The primary problem with Wardecs is that the choices/agency are all on the side of the Aggressor. Aggressor chooses when, where and what targets to attack. So if there is a potential profit to be made, and/or the costs are not very high, then Wardec corps can abuse the mechanics by deccing anything and everything that’s unlikely to fight back successfully. Thus they have the ‘content’ of easy kills, potential profit from drops, and no real downside. Even high costs are easily borne, either through loot profits or just because it’s not that hard to make billions in EVE.
From the Defender side, this means they’re regularly forced into putting aside their own gameplay plans, and forced to either adopt an uninteresting/unrewarding play style (to them), or the more common option, just stop playing and blueball the wardeccers.
This re-write is intended to show that Defender corps can be provided with options that allow them to make their own interesting decisions and choose to resist the Wardec with gameplay options that are more suitable for them. It should (hopefully) result in mechanics that shift the balance between small and large corps so they are more competitive with and against each other.
It will also include win/lose conditions that make the result of a war less predictable for serial wardec corps, and set up the potential for defender corps to actually make tangible gains when dec’d by an aggressor corp.
The primary change involves shifting wars from simply ship-and-structure killing, to “Activity Interdiction”. In other words, wars are not fought simply to rack up kills (which always puts the defender at a disadvantage due to aggressor target selection), but more like “Cease and Desist” orders where the aggressor is trying to curtail the activity of the defender, and the defender’s goal is to carry out its’ own choice of activities. And win/loss is decided by who’s better at carrying out their goals.
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Always appreciated!
“It is to weep.”
My conspiracy theory is still the whale’s control CCP’s pocketbooks. Meh…
And that’s the entire point of the war dec system. This behavior should be encouraged against the whales of the system. The huge groups should be easy to farm, while huge groups should pay a hefty price to do the same against much smaller groups.
The “whales” have and always will be null-sec.
Not when you are the defender.
You are the defender because it is profitable for the attacker, and Eve being a negative sum game, this means it’s a loss for you.
And that’s the issue. People who play in HS mostly do it because they can’t cope with the “savanah simulator” BS. It’s a sandbox, don’t pretend your way of thinking is what other people should accept. Get down your high horses, you(=the people who pretend they are playing the game the right way) are just a human playing a submarine-in-space simulator on internet.
And therefore, a situation where players can’t play because there is nothing to win, everything to lose, makes them leave the game, and is therefore bad for the game. That’s why the wardecs have been nerfed so much : the storytelling of “jungle simulator” is more akin to “desert simulator” where you have scorpions at every dune and nobody wants to live there. Having active players, and so having a balanced state, is more important that the dogma of Eve being a PVP game - which it never was.
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Golf is an expensive game. And I am useless at it. Is it therefore ‘bad for golf’ that I am not clogging up the fairways ? No…I leave the game to those who can cope with it.
The entire ‘makes them leave the game’ rationale is fallacious…as there will always be people who are simply not suited to any game. I have Steam games ( including the original Wolfenstein ) that I gave up on after 15 minutes…even though I love FPS games.
Why on earth should wars be profitable for the defender ? Is there a single game in existence in which the loser profits ?
Another fallacious argument. There is no ‘right way’. There has always been ‘what you can get away with’. Sometimes people get away with things that were not originally intended by the devs, and in the worst cases those are called out as ‘exploits’. But wardecs are intended gameplay and CCP has now had years in which to determine whether wardecs are ‘right’ or not.
The wardec system is broken. Nobody would dispute that. But there is a huge difference between ‘broken’ and ’ totally the wrong way’.
Yep. “If a fight is fair, the attacker screwed up.”
Abandoning the citadel and continuing play elsewhere is just more profitable and fun.
Besides… don’t attackers love chasing players back and forth across the galaxy? 
I can see that perspective, and as the perpetual Little Guy myself, it should resonate. But still, I just think it can’t be made too cheap and easy to wardec even the big groups, otherwise the system will be abused.
Something is being sorely missed in all this. I think the missing of it comes from seeing EVE purely as a bunch of disparate ‘playstyles’ that just happen purely by chance to be in the same universe.
A corp sets up a station. WHY ? They want to make stuff. Why do they want to make stuff ? They either want to make ships, modules, etc or to make ISK. But what is the end goal of all that activity ?
EVE is a pyramidal war economy, in which the end state of all activity is war. There is no escaping it. There is no ’ leave me alone…I just want to mine…I’m not involved in any of those wars '.
This is THE primary thing people need to grasp. All activity in EVE ultimately funnels into war. Someone setting up a station is a fundamental part of that…and should in no way be immune from the consequences.
For way too long we’ve had people spouting ‘playstyles’ nonsense as if everyone was living in a separate and unrelated universe, when EVE is actually a symbiotic ecosystem in which everything is related to everything else.
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The current wardec mechanics aren’t perfect, but at least they prevent the seal clubbing that the old mechanics encouraged.
Standings are something that could be implemented for high-sec, ie: You need a minimum standing of 5.0 for that Empire in your corporation to wardec another corporation. And corporations with a 9.9 Empire standing or higher are not eligible.
Note that I’m referring to Empire (ie: Caldari State) and not corporate (ie: Caldari Navy).
No? Not everyone sets up stations to make stuff or profits, at least not as their main goal.
A beginner corp often just want to go the next “step” in group evolution after having learned the basic activities to make some cash, having skilled into some ships, rented a corp-office at some NPC station and filled the hangars over time with ships and equipment for their members to use.
And at some point the group just wants to try to build themselves a “home” that they can fit, skin, experiment with, control and use as their base of operations. Something they can call “their own”.
It’s a step into building a group-identity, a motivation to work on a joint project, keeping players busy, entertained and motivated for weeks or months. Different people donating money or resources (which often can be a LOT for a newbie, even if it seems peanuts for a veteran). But it’s meaningful for them. It is one step towards their dream or vision when they joined EVE after having seen some trailers and read some articles about this great and vast universe in which everyone can try to build their own little sandcastles and empires.
I have spoken to so many new players, even whole groups that tried to enrich the EVE universe with stations in remote systems, offering services to others who couldn’t afford to build a station. Free compression, free cloning, very fair indu prices. And they were all taken down. One after another their stations got razed. Not over “conflicts” or “disputes” like being said on the EVE homepage. No, for the profits of already super-rich veteran groups. And so these guys quit. Many of them don’t play any more. And thats a huge loss for EVE, because many of them had potential. Instead the current mechanics promote veteran-monopolies that make the game dull, boring and minmaxed for profits instead of promoting a rich variety of concepts, opportunities and chances.
HighSec is the starting ground for many who come to test EVE. It’s like a kindergarden for new players, a source of future loyal players. It needs protection and support for new players, weak groups and mechanics that simply makes it highly unlikely and extremely unprofitable for veteran groups to attack those.
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You keep making these nonsense statements as facts. It’s like saying “the entire African ecosystem only exists to feed lions, leopards and crocodiles”.
There are plenty of options in EVE that don’t ‘pyramid’ up into war. There are plenty of endpoints for items that don’t involve wars or PvP. Regardless of all that, you keep trying to invent some moral standpoint in which everyone should be subjected to extremely unequal PvP at all times and make it their own ‘fault’.
It’s stupid, it’s bad for the game, and it’s literally been stated by CCP as not their intended goal. EVE is a game and a CCP is a business, it’s not whatever strange justification for dickhead behaviors you’re trying to work out in your head.
It’s possible to support wars and even PvP without needing mechanics that obviously do substantial harm to the game, to no practical benefit. I’ll have to chop some detail work and get a proposal posted asap. With any luck then we can get back to discussing ideas and improvements and dial back on the self-involved justifications.
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Maybe your corporation should only become eligible for a wardec once it reaches a certain size (even if you have a structure), ie: 25 (etc.) members maximum.
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Then vet groups would abuse it by holding invulnerable stations in 24char altcorps.
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Yep. Any mechanic that can be gamed, will be gamed.
EDIT to add:
Sidebar: This is far off the topic of wardecs, but I wonder if there’s something that could be created to fill this particular niche. Not a different structure, but maybe making the corporate office or HQ in an NPC station more than just a checkbox? Perhaps a skinnable hanger interior or something?
Nah…you just don’t like them because they ruin your senseless narrative of independent ‘playstyles’.
The ‘playstyles’ nonsense is the failure to see EVE as one large symbiotic ecosystem. I’ve increasingly come to see it as one of the most insidious things on the forums…as it encourages an entitled ’ leave me alone…I’m doing MY playstyle ’ mentality and now even leads to the further absurdity of people discussing ‘non-consensual PvP’.
No…there aren’t. Sure, a person can place a station and never actually use it for its intended purpose, but then that’s like buying a car and just leaving it always parked in the driveway. Mining and manufacturing stations are for mining and manufacturing the products of war…no matter how much you are in denial. Well over 90% of all the ships in EVE are combat ships…there’s a big clue there !
Utter nonsense. Do I need to post the trailer video for EVE yet again ? Tell me…does the guy in this video look like he’s in snowflake ’ Oh…I’d better not spoil anyone’s playstyle ’ mode ??
The person spouting nonsense from their docked up ivory tower in which they have never done any war, don’t look as if they have ever done any PvP, and thus haven’t the faintest idea what they are talking about…is you.
Please spare us the agony of further ‘solutions’.
People should not be placing stations unless they are able to defend them. Its as simple as that. Why would things be any different to the invariable ’ don’t undock what you can’t afford to lose’ ? How is it that everyone would regard me as silly if I left a totally unguarded 3bn ISK Golem sitting in some 0.5 system and went AFK…yet anyone can plonk 2bn worth of Raitaru in the same system and the attackers are the silly ones ?
I do agree that stations themselves should have far better defences. I’ve even suggested long range and long duration neuting devices just for stations. But I would never concede to any notion that stations…anywhere…should simply not be attacked.
Don’t undock, or place in a system, what you can’t afford to lose !