The assist mechanism in Eve now does not allow you to offer a assist without the defender being ‘open to assists’ on the specific war.
This does not allow for us to offer our services very well within the current mechanic. This was not mentioned in any of the patch notes, or in the change discussions over the last few months.
Can this be fixed and put back to the way it was?
Not many people know in a war dec they can get support so they are unlikely to open up to assists. To close this off seems to limit what CCP was looking to achieve in the new War mechanic changes.
It was also used by other groups as a source of income (ie. offer assistance for a fee).
Even if it was just used by the previous “Big 5”, if it helps drive content for them and in the process, assists wardecced groups, there doesn’t seem to be a downside to that. Is there one?
True and that can still be done via comms but would require exchange of payment.
While every pond needs its sharks, the problem with piggybacking with assists is that it stiffed the little guys ability/desire to Wardec if the defender was just going to let one of the five ride along. People in general attack similarly sized opponents but the old system made being the aggressor a disadvantage.
Not saying the Big 5 were flying shoulder to shoulder with the defender but they really could effect the aggressor’s logi, moment and will.
That’s not our experience, but I can see how that might be the impression.
If you check our Alliance killboard, you’ll see we’ve been using structure wardecs for some time (before the war eligibility changes came in) to generate ISK for our normal pvp habits. We have never really seen any problem from the previous large groups stiffing us, even when they allied into wars we were conducting.
Previously, their focus was on the trade hubs and routes (and that still remains to a large degree) and our small group just never needed our mains to go to the trade hubs. That’s what our alts do.
Since the war eligibility changes, none of that has really changed. They still have a number of members that focus on humping the trade hubs and if they could go back to offering to ally into a war, small groups like us won’t really be affected by that.
My guess is that this change was specifically targeted at the big boys that primarily stalked the main corridors looking for targets they have piggybacked on. EoL doesn’t have that same focus as the big guys who really just trolled HS and the WarDec process…
It will be interesting to see this change as it might just encourage smaller corps to start fighting each other over the limited resources in HS…(lol, I kid I kid…)…sadly CCP needs to now give corps something to fight over as it sure isn’t resources…
Most of the comments here show you don’t understand what I’m saying. Lol. You think this is salt. Not really. I’m pointing out that if the little guy wants support, it is now harder to get it.
Thinking about it a bit more, whenever we were wardecced in the past, we’d receive 2-3 offers of assistance each time. There was always a suspicion that at least one of those offers was from an alt group of the wardeccers, just looking for a fee to cover the cost of the war.
Don’t know if that was ever true, but I know we weren’t the only ones that saw the potential for that “scam” (ie. effectively we’d be paying for the war to be declared against us).
Maybe that has to do with this change from CCP, but it seems like an unnecessary change.
Would be better if groups had the old mechanic back again.
War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
Smedley Butler(1933)