They’re crap because the people in them make them crap. At the same time, giving people more ways to self-segment and isolate themselves only means giving them more ways to funnel themselves into giving up on EVE because they don’t have any emotional investment—no social ties.
Ideally, the starting corps would provide ways for people to move through different parts of the game, and used to help people hook up with others in their racial faction… but now, and especially with FW specifically structured to encourage people switching sides… that doesn’t happen at all. Most people in Empire have less and less attachment to the race they pick starting off, and while that’s good for places like null… it’s bad for getting people invested.
I know they are already there. That’s why I said just formalize the NPC-equivalent social corp and be done with it. Won’t change anything other than perhaps save some grief for some newbies who shouldn’t be in a competitive corp to begin with.
The real game of Eve is a PvP game. It says so in the original design documents and explicitly in the New Pilot FAQ. It is a sandbox PvP game however, and I am totally cool with players play only as prey items who do everything in their power to avoid PvP and play the game (gathering resources, socializing, min-maxing PvE, etc.) as they want.
What is not cool is completely isolating said players from the greater sandbox (AKA the “real” Eve game) while letting them influence the game economically with their activities. Setting up the rules of the wardec so they get free money by not playing is inane and you know this. You are just being argumentative.
There absolutely is a “real” game of Eve. It is the single-universe, full-time PvP sandbox we all signed up to play. There are many ways to play that game - nullsec empire, lowsec pirate, highsec mercenary or combat-averse resource gatherer to name a few. But don’t claim that somehow expecting to play Eve as a single-player game immune from other players is somehow a legitimate or realistic expectation based on the core concept of this game.
Frankly, if they want that to have any weight at all, then maybe it should be in Part 1, ‘What is EVE Online?’ and not some 20 pages later in Part 7. Personally, I agree that EVE’s a PvP game, but not because some document says so. CCP could put out a document saying EVE is a Clown Simulator, that wouldn’t mean the execution of it bears that out.
The reason I think EVE’s a PvP game is that every activity feeds the PvP. Even missioning does, because of drops, item rewards, and ISK. Mining is competition for rocks. Market trading is competitive against other players. Those are all PvP, and PvP isn’t limited to ‘blowing ships up in space’.
But no, I’m not saying give people the money for not logging in to be argumentative. I’m saying give them the money for logging back in. You can’t get it if you don’t log back in after the war dec. You can’t use it if you’re not playing the game. You’re not rewarding people for the avoident behavior they’d be exhibiting anyway. You’re rewarding them for returning to the game when they might otherwise have walked away.
The whole point of alpha clones was to get people logged back in, because that’s the basis for all the other interactions we do. The point of this idea would be to get people logged back in who otherwise would be simply gone.
No you are not. You are just incentivizing them to win by not playing. Who would ever log in to fight a war if they knew they got a paycheck for just playing PUBG for 7 days?
I maintain it is much better to just let those that don’t want to fight a war yet still be in a social group to opt-out of the war in first place (like they can do now by staying in the NPC corp) rather than pay everybody to sit out all wars and have the game declare them winners for doing so.
You seem to be laboring under this impression that you’re going to get them to fight back by making it ‘easier’ to do so. It’s already easy to fight back. THEY DON’T WANT TO FIGHT BACK. They’re not going to play PUBG. They’re going to play ST:O, or Stellaris, or break out the updated MoO. Maybe they’ll go back to WoW, where they can PvE with friends safely. But they’re not going to fight back in EVE.
THESE ARE NOT PVPERS. They don’t WANT to PvP. You’re not going to force them to PvP. You know where the miners are who want to fight back, who want to PvP and kick your butt when you come to kill them are?
They’re in Rorquals in Delve.
So, let’s break this down to a simple question:
There is a segment of the population who, when war dec’d, will dock up and log off for a week. When this happens too often, they stop coming back.
I know. So let them opt-out of the war before the fact with a social corp or something similar. Don’t change the game to pay everyone for not fighting. You don’t need to incentivize them to do anything if you don’t expose them to wars in the first place by giving them a lower-risk, social group they can be part of.
Geez. While I do find your squirming to get out of the corner your painted yourself into amusing, I think the inanity of your position is clear for the world to see by now. I’ll let you get back to agitating for CCP to re-jig the game to declare people winners for not actually playing without further comment.
Do you really think that if you set up social corps that can’t be attacked, you won’t see a lot of the people who do fight back right now joining them? That’s what will happen. Everyone in highsec who fights back when pushed, but really wants to focus on PvE will just opt-out of your game-play.
Or, you put in place a mechanic that dis-incentivizes bullying the weak into quitting. Because that’s the other half of the escrow mechanic: Are the war dec corps going to keep throwing money at picking on the ‘littler kids’ if all they get is a bill, and no fun? You’re worried about paying people to not fight, but it’s the players who’d be paying them. Do you really think they’ll keep paying them to not fight? Or will they go find someone who does?
Edit: I mean, this is pretty basic behavioral science stuff. If you set up a one-time ‘never have to worry about this’ button, people will use it. Or you can provide carrot-and-stick incentives to encourage the behaviors you want and discourage the ones you don’t.
And driving people to quit should be a behavior we don’t want, right?
The Mercs weren’t the only ones that used the watchlist.
Make some limited tools like a delayed heatmap/limited watchlist (open to ideas here) available to them so that they feel somewhat empowered.
I already Know how to get that Intel .
They’re left wondering if I’m behind every other gate.
If they’re able to make informed decisions regarding how much threat they’re actually under at any given time we might see some progress.
Currently the assumption is I’m waiting on the other side of every gate , always.
My usual answer when wardecced was to hand the corp to an alt and go NPC for the week. Of course, that’s because I don’t own structures, and the abiility to avoid wardecs is one of the reasons why i don’t own structures. So in the event of a wardec, I would just disappear as a war target and remain neutral.
In a way, in a perfect EVE, a perfect CCP would had considered this kind fo behavior as a sign that some players need structures that can’t be PvP’d, similar to what NPC stations are, and so would had implemented those cosmethic strcutures with lots of customization options so PvErs grinded for their customized “space cottage”. Obviously, those structures would have null economical value so their only functions would be docking, storage, fitting and cottage customization. Also they would be limited to one per account, would be movable for a “tug fee” and prior to be deployed they would require a “placement fee” so once unused for 6 months, they would be “stored” and their contents moved to the player’s home station. This would prevent clutter and abandoned structures and would act as a ISK sink. In a even more perfect EVE and CCP, CCP would look for “nice views” out in space and would sell them (for PLEX) as “restricted placement rights” so players enjoyed awesome backgrounds for their space cottages. And in the EVE that should have been, those cottages would have customizable interiors to walk in them, just cherry on top.
But alas! As Arrendis would claim, developing those cosmethic strctures would totally break the whole Upwelll system and would send EVE into a death spiral. PvPrs would be outraged for not being able to shoot them and CCP would suffer a identity crisis by treating all players and game styles as equally valuable since they all pay the same subscription (because, in a perfect EVE, F2P would have been out of question as PCU and subscriptions remained aloft rather than sink).
Well, first, there’s no expectation of privacy involved in how you manipulate CCP’s property within CCP’s servers, so ‘privacy concerns’ are right out.
Next… unless you’re setting up a gank on the undock, that trap scenario’s pretty unrealistic. Even if you are, they can see you’re in-system when they log in. And they can just redock before you can lock them, if they undock and see you. So as traps go, that’s… uhm… a pretty bad one. It might work for a gatecamp out of a dead-end system, but that’s a lot of work to go to for one kill.
This isn’t true. There are corps in hisec that, when war decced, bang the drums, rally the troops, handout the shitfits and want to go out fighting. Players get pretty excited about it. What often kills that excitement is docking games. I couldn’t even count the amount of times I’ve seen enthusiasm die because the attackers wont commit to a fight and have no soft/stationary targets to force/encourage a fight.
People aren’t always interested by roams for luls or null bloc warfare, but they still wanna put up a fight when people come knocking.
‘a factor to consider’ doesn’t mean there’s any legitimate expectation of privacy. You’re logging into CCP’s server, voluntarily, in order to manipulate CCP’s data, in CCP’s tables, through CCP’s client. They can decide ‘we want this opaque to other users’, but that’s not a privacy issue, it’s an opacity issue: what information they want us to be able to access about one another. No matter how they dress it up to hit the reddit buzzwords.
This is where a ‘relatively’ weak structure for the attacker comes into play. (where it is is one of the fiddly points)
If the defenders take it out, the war is over, and they won.
The attacker ‘wins’ when they stop renewing the war, if the structure still exists. (They don’t gain anything, but they don’t lose anything except the initial fee, getting the escrowed isk back.)
