I’ve been on both sides of wars and every single time was a poopy experience. So good riddance. I’ve had my own personal corp for years and never caught a wardec, so I guess wars just didn’t seem like a big problem to me.
fwiw If you have a specific target in mind ganking always seemed like the stronger option as you don’t give the target a bunch of warnings like you do with a war. Far easier to catch them out in space with their pants down than wardec and give them advance notice to log out for a week.
I think this is more “making eve more appealing for people to actually play is generally a good idea” vs log off for a week to get the aggressors to leave you alone
Thanks for these first changes. I have had many friends have their fledgling corporations (3-person to 40 person sizes) die off due to war declarations while they were trying to provide beginning homes for new and returning players.
Future change suggestion for corporations and alliances who “graduate” into becoming war eligible
Situation
Structure attackers in high-sec can set up fleets with logistics support from others who are NOT part of the war declaration. When the logistics support does aid attackers of an Upwell structure, the structure defense cannot target suspects with its defensive equipment…
Impact
This makes unbalanced wars (ones where the attacker greatly outmatches the attacked) – particularly leaving high-security defenseless against the logistical arm of the attacker
Response
Simply allow the defender to attack suspects with Upwell structure defenses as well as with ships.
Comment
This still allows war declarers to roam high-security in fleets made up of war participants with logistical non-war “phantom” allies looking for likely targets. Defenders in high-sec can set up similar fleets, so there can be some balance. However it would be useful for CCP to monitor the activity of dual war fleet activity in high-security, versus simple gangs of war declarers attacking only the most vulnerable targets.
“You guys” would be who exactly? I mean, clearly you have someone in mind.
And the “majority paying the bills” doesn’t change that the majority are not game designers and never should be allowed anywhere near game design choices. This shouldn’t be a difficult concept to grasp.
When what a small number of people are doing impacts the entire health of the game and the game developers bottom line, they’re going to take action to fix it.
This is the first step in doing that.
I’m sure we’re going to have rage posts from all 200 people who were actively using the war dec system to impact the bulk of the player base, but the reality is this change will be an effective band aid until the complete war dec revamp is finished next year.
And it’s better than doing what I noted would have been justified by the data, which is turning the whole system off until the complete revamp is completed.
Only provided it is just a bandaid. How it is described in this dev blog, though, seems to be with the idea that this is the first part of the coming changes, rather than a stop gap to hold people over until a true revamp.
“You guys” = folks like you who use the war dec system to kill shuttles and freighters.
The game designers are trying to build a game that people want to play. The current war dec system discourages people from playing because the best solution, as was noted in the Dev Blog, is to log off for a week.
This starts to change that. Now the best solution is to not have structures in your corporation. Meaning folks can learn the ropes, be social, join corps, and not have to worry about getting war decced by groups that out class them until they’re ready to fight, or they can’t avoid it (nothing will stop ganking).
I’m sure that there will be some structure component to the final plan, because most of the plans for war dec fixes I’ve seen have had structures as part of the proposal.
I am not willing to accept this band aid as the final solution, however, and I’ve been very vocal that this can’t be the only change. There has to be a complete rework of the entire system. This doesn’t fix the entire problem.
This, pretty much. There was no real data on this issue. No questionnaires, no actual knowledge about why they stayed away. If the issue was just the wardec, they’d be back when the dec was over. Clearly there was more to it, most likely the simple fact that a week out of the game made them realize they didn’t miss it in the first place.
If the game isn’t actually good in highsec, no amount of ‘safety’ is going to keep people playing. I’m willing to bet the wardecs weren’t the actual reason for most of them, but merely the catalyst or reminder that allowed the real reason (highsec bear gameplay is dull as dogshite) to shine through.
You’re not very good at reading killboards, are you? Good grief you really are worthless and incompetent.
None of this makes the game worth playing for them, if a single week offline was enough to make them drop the game permanently. If the actual highsec gameplay isn’t engaging enough that they’ll return after the week is over, then it’s not appealing enough to make them stay long-term no matter what. This is not a solution, or even the beginning of one. It’s a knee-jerk panic move tailored to make it look like something substantial has been done.
In this iteration, yes. (Although suicide ganking is always an option.)
That’s why they are planing further iterations down the line.
Overall tho this iteration is a vast improvement over the current state of affairs, removing by far the biggest issue with the system that was negatively affecting a huge amount of players.
This is the wrong step in trying to fix this system. The first step should be to make being able to see who is at war with you and their war targets and see if there are common corps that you can coordinate with easier. The way it is now it is not very easy to know you are war dec’d a week after if happens unless your corp is putting it in the MOTD as a reminder. It comes on a little notification saying it is coming and never mentions it again until its over. It doesn’t even come up that fighting has start or has started. Its up to you or your war targets to figure that out.
But being able to coordinate with other corps against say high-sec mercs that are all war-dec’d should have been the first start. There is already an easy way not to be war dec’d; stay in the NPC corp. I’d even be okay with having NPC alliances that your corp can be a part of as long as the tax rate was the similar and the corps in the NPC corps could tax a rate in conjunction or not at all on top of the alliance rate. Player owned corps get created mostly to get away from the NPC tax rate. Because of that they should be able to be war dec’d. They pay that NPC rate for the protection of not being war dec-able. That’s my viewpoint on this.
The interface in how you navigate the war dec tab should have been revamped should have been the first step. Maybe the idea of NPC alliances that have an alliance tax rate comparable to NPC corps would be another step. This doesn’t really solve the problem. You will find random low power structures in unoccupied corners of EVE now.
