I don’t know. I can only speculate from my own experience. Over the past decade I have grown my corp and place it into hibernation, almost every year or so, one point growing it to almost 90 active pilots. So I’ve spoken with hundreds of players over that time. Sure I had a lot of new players, that dropped to switch to another corp, but many of the players that had been around for a year, sometimes less who crop jumped were tired of the constant no-reason war decs. They were tired of staying docked in fear wars. They ended up leaving the game and they’d say as much in their resignation letters.
But you’re right, my sampling in only a few hundred, but I couldn’t imagine that I was the only corp getting these pilots that were frustrated, that seems also implausible, least to me. But again only CCP knows the true stats.
I could be wrong. You could be wrong. Unless CCP provides us actual stats, we can only work off of what we ourselves have experienced and share our views based on those experiences.
Well done showing you only intend to troll by throwing James tired worn out lines around, congratulations, you can pretend you won this discussion because I’m not wasting more time with you than this.
Past decade… one wardec per year, sometimes less… peak number 90 pilots… spoken with hundreds of players… you had high attrition I would say, but not really my business.
Your story most certainly goes deeper than that, but what I hear now is that you failed to interest people in the game, being one of those CEOs that say “the corp goes into sleep until wardec is over” instead of showing pilots how to deal with the problem, and how to take very rare ship losses (blanket wardecs are usually harmless to those mining/missioning outside of major hubs/well-known systems, again thanks to elimination of watchlist) as the game expects them: “gf in local”.
Anyway, as I said - I don’t doubt your arguments and I don’t doubt your beliefs. I just want to see whether repetitive wardecs are really an issue (and sorry, 1 wardec per year isn’t really repetitive), or people are leaving after the first one.
As a sampling, we had 8 war decs in 2016. No we had a high retention rate, unfortunately my life has been full of ups and downs. Not something I need to share here.
The first couple iterations yes we went into sleep mode, but no, every iteration I came back to the game I used what I learned in the past. In 2016 when I grew my corp to 80 we had a mining wing, PvE wing and a militia to help fight in wars (because by this time I knew it was inevitable) using low-sec roams as practice. But lets see 2016, the year of the grief wars… It started April 1st and ended July 5th, basically constant grief war decs with perhaps a week in between a couple of them. These were from griefing alliances that had war decs on many many other corps at the same time, some wars overlapped because we happened to be in the wrong sector at the wrong time and they decced every corp in that sector, because that is their sole purpose. Sure it is easy to maintain a moral in a mining corp for the first month, but after that people start leaving and then general moral leaves and others get bored with the lack of the 20+ people in chat everyday and they start to leave.
Did they leave the corp, or the game? I see that many of the losses in that period happened in the nullsec, and quite a few of those who lost their ships in that dreaded time between Apr and July 2016 were still playing and killing and losing ships in 2017 and 2018. Looking at corp’s stats during Apr/July 2016 I don’t see many old pilots leaving - the join/leave activity is mainly limited to those who joined the corp in Apr/May 2016 - it is, who joined the corp during the wars (provided they started Apr 1 2016).
Corps losing people is quite normal thing, with or without wardec. Corps disbanding is normal, with or without wardec.
What I am not totally certain about is the idea that in highsec you’re doomed no matter what you do - you’ll be constantly (or at least frequently) wardeced. That could be true, but I still have to see numbers confirming that.
BTW, if you happened to be in a war-plagued region why didn’t you move elsewhere? 3 months is more than enough time to make a decision and change the location.
Quite a few pilots remained with the game, especially those who liked the pvp aspects and spent time in low-sec roams and those who had an investment in the game such as a vast manufacturing system, they just moved on. But we had many 30-40+ who just left the game, I did a massive purge of all the players that became inactive after a few months seeing that no activity was happening. After the grief wars the corp was just a shell of what it was.
True. There are a lot of corps and a lot of factors to all those corps.
And like I said, you could be right, I could just have bad luck But I also might be the norm. And you’re right without CCP providing those numbers, all we can do is make observations based on what we see and who we talk to. And my talks aren’t limited to my own pilots but talking to other corps that I’ve worked with and at times before regrowing my crop joining other corps. It all just felt that everyone was having the same issues with wars.
I’ve setup shop in every empire over the years, no change. In 2016 we moved the corp 2 to 3 times, but not really for avoiding wars, I mean Archetype and some of the other large alliances cover my understanding basically the entirety of high-sec, least it feels they light up red everywhere you try and travel too to do recon when they declare war on you.
But we were a multiple purpose corp, so we had to take in various factors. Such as closeness to trading hubs, easy access to null-sec, access to various mission agents, some pilots had specific requirements that we also took into account in order to bring them onboard, etc. There are only a few places that cover everything we needed. Plus, to me its like paying ransom, which we never did, that just perpetuates the issue and we knew that if we moved else where we were just going to get war decced by some other griefing corp or alliance, because that has been our experience, not just my own but my council and their experience over the years from corp to corp.
Perhaps you have had better luck, which you should be thankful for. Myself, not so much, but as you can see I still keep returning.
I know you ask for numbers. But like any company I’ve worked for, I would imagine that CCP made this change based on specific stats, and those stats probably correlate into losing money by losing players. In order to fix that, I would imagine this change in the war dec system is designed to help turn that stat around. I would also speculate that they would only make such a drastic change after more then a decade if it was a major issue.
Well done CCP!! Ending the War Declaration cycle upon new pilots will have a positive effect. Pilots who want PVP will leave corporations that cannot declare war or have war declared upon them. Most pilots ( proven by EVE ONLINE stats ) stay in High Security space! I would hypothesis most of those aforementioned pilots are like me who work for a living in real life!! Nothing makes my day more the on my DAY OFF logging on and see I am at war!!!
I then look around and see my corp mates have bailed out or start playing world of tanks!!! A tactic I used is I put my alt in a one man corporation. The downside is that creates zero interaction with fellow pilots!!!
So much for enjoying EVE ONLINE!!!
If you think for one New York second I am going to join up with some ginourmous alliance and be ordered to fly this,this way you are nuts!!! Oh and you people who want to flex them internet muscles at me go right ahead! I have worked corrections for 30 years! You want respect show some respect please!
Frankly how hard is it to put up a POS or PACO in reality? Like CCP Falcon said! Let your choices have consequences!! Now if they can come up with some more level 4 missions! We have something.
Its happened to me too.
I joined a corp now, after months being in a npc corp.
Now i have friends to play with and we’re doing an secret santa. This is awesome. hehe
I think a few posters are grasping the idea that the main weak point in this twerk is that it breaks the risk vs reward concept. Which is true also of noob corps anyway.
What if noob corps were the issue from the beginning and not the war system? Everyone got crazy about being dekked because they were put at risk, without any reward compared to noob corps. I guess that made wars frustrating, also because could simply leave the corp and carry on without consequence: why fighting then?
But what if joining a corp in high-sec made difference in income, even if small? I think no one would have complained, the same way people don’t complain (too much) about being shot in low-sec or 0.0.
Add to that the “social corps”, as not war-elegible entities, under the same low income regime of noob corps, and there would have been the right environment for everyone.
Instead, with this war iteration, unflagged corps:
acquire the same safety level of noob corps;
get a potential 10% cut in corporate tax over noob corps.
First ever increased reward for reduce risk?
A few extra bullet points from a dec guy, with respect, only to improve the discussion, hoping everyone is in good faith:
Black Pedro is right, the few war modifications made in the years have encouraged consolidation. I was in a small corp myself (small i mean between 1 and 3 players max). We played local in Khanid. First, the war fee increase made wars not ISK sustainable: as wars are easily avoidable (jump in noob corp, war finished; make logistic with alts or public couriers) we ended up trashing lot of ISKs for nothing. But the real end for me was the watch list removal: good luck finding your targets now. So blanketting alliance it became, but i don’t regret it, being more is often fun and - yes! - more social : D
Don’t get me wrong, perhaps consolidation would happen anyway, as it happens regularly everywhere else in the game, not only in PVP and not only in Empire. But it made it not viable not to consolidate.
To people suggesting increasing the war fees: they are already high, especially if you consider wars are easily avoided without any penalty and lot of people do so. You have a 100% sure expense (war dec fee) but not a guarantee your target won’t simply drop corp, if anything war dekkers should complain about this as a broken mechanic that needs addressing (just we are so few, and not such crybabies). Even more so considering the new solution in place now. With this patch, we are being depleted of maybe the main source of direct PVP income (loot): people who live and generate their income in high-sec. As more and more mission runners and miners will seek the new “social” aspect of the game and flag-out, we are losing targets and income. Tbh, they could just drop corp even before, but somehow many didn’t.
0.0 alliances at 500 mil/week. Sustainable only if you have alts making ISK so that you can make those deks. These wars rarely pay for themselves in any way, because most 0.0 people is indeed in 0.0, or pass through high sec occasionally in travel ceptor, cov-op, astero, shuttle, maybe a t3c with cloak or clocky transport.
Anyway, all logistic is done by neutral JFs.
Good luck catching those. Sometimes it happens, but you dont make 500 mil/week most of times. Maybe if you control Jita 24/7?
Once maybe was worthy. Years ago 0.0 was less profitable and more dangerous for the normal grunt. No 50 anomalies in local, no rorquals, no supercap umbrella, not much insta warp ■■■■, no JFs, no jump-bridges…nano roams hunting you in gang and solo often…at that time, mining or missioning in high-sec could be considered an option after all. And we would kill MR or miners for loot and the fun to hunt. But really, not anmore.
Today i dekked a 3000 ppl alliance more for moral boost (yay, 3000 targets) than real incentive. We will maybe kill 3-4 frig sized targets? Don’t think much more. Much better is entities which live and generate wealth in high-sec, those you will find, and sometimes those also fight back.
Finally a provocation: what would PVPers in other areas of space think or feel if tomorrow CCP announced the possibility for players in their space to temporarely flag-out of PVP to go mine or rat? It would definitely protect inexperienced players as well as make “social” players encouraged in trying low sec or 0.0; probably increase retention. I mean, why should anyone be forced in PvP if they don’t want? And why the pro-pvpers of those areas would even have the need of killing carebears? It’s just easy, and make you a pvp-scrub, i’m sure it’s not happening anyway even now! Go slam your egos with other like minded pros instead! Oh wait, we can help you by giving you some tedious structure timer (or objective, whatever) to grind to make it happen…
Going to have to disagree with you on a few of your points.
I don’t see how it breaks the risk vs. reward. This update adds a new level. Now you can live safe but not have any structures which give you bonuses over NPC structures, vs. deploying said structures to gain those bonuses yet at the cost of opening your corp up to wars. Risk vs. Reward still intact.
I don’t get this statement either. Joining a corp generally makes a difference in income, you now get to go out in groups to PvE, PvP or mine and share the loot, which generally means more loot or more minerals (depending on the mining op setup)
I also disagree with this statement, considering the number of grief alliances/corps that declare war without ever causing damage apart from causing corps to dock. Maintaining said wars for extending periods of time without getting anything potentially in return. From this pointless wars I’d say that the cost isn’t high enough to discourage pointless wars and instead should force corps. But again, I think there are other wars to make the war system better then just increasing the war fee, ways that would actually add content into the game instead of wasting isk to force a corp to stay docked up for a week or more (while they use their alts in some cases, essentially making the war pointless).
Oh, did they remove low-sec, null and all the corps that have structures. Okay that was a bit tongue and cheek, but really, depleted the main source of direct PVP income? There are vast tracks of low-sec space to do PvP to your hearts content and now I’m sure still a number of high-sec corps that are willingly opening themselves up to wars. Must we be reminded that we are talking about high-sec a zone that is meant to be safe for not just new players but those that don’t want to really participate in the more dangerous low-sec and null regions.
EVE will probably retain more social players now, yes, but I don’t believe it will affect those that are interested in PvP. I’d imagine that corps that have a problem with not being able to declare war or open themselves up to war have already begun building structures to allow themselves to participate. You will find new targets and sources of income, unfortunately that might mean going against other skilled players and not new players who have no clue what they are doing or have no interest in PvP.
Well then it will be interesting to see how the dynamics of null change due to the changes affecting the corps in high-sec. If primary characters in null are somehow affected by sub characters in high-sec having to be forced to attack new players or inexperienced players then that in my opinion is in itself a broken system that needs to be fixed, perhaps this update will cause that to be adjusted.
I doubt CCP has any plans to alter the security zones of space. Saying that changes to high-sec which is already suppose to be a secure area is going to start affecting changes in low-sec and null is laughable, again in my opinion. Low-sec and null second isn’t designed for inexperienced players, or players that don’t want to PvP. Null-sec and null are designed specifically for those players, those are the next two levels, null being end game with being able to create your own empires.
Overall I still believe this is a good first step.
Level 1. Corp with no structures. Reward: Safe / Risk: Lowest level of return requiring you to rely on NPC stations.
Level 2. Corp with structures. Reward: Your own structure and the bonuses you can use from them / Risk: War
Level 3. Corp in low-sec. Reward: better minerals and rats / Risk: You don’t really need to be at war for someone to attack you successfully
Level 4. Corp in null. Reward: Best minerals and rats, plus you can control space / Risk: You don’t need to be at war and there is no risk for someone to attack you other then retaliation.
I don’t see a problem with this new structure. I would like however to see further modifications, perhaps not to cost of war for those that can declare war, but measures put in place that prevent a war from being pointless:
Some of my thoughts:
a) No kills after 48 hours, war ends immediately with a penalty that says that the corp can not be declared war on again for x amount of time by the same corp/alliance. Really if no one is actually “warning” what is the point?
b) Corp has to declare which station is their flag station for the war, each side gets to automatically know where the flag station is and if that stations blows up the war ends and there is a penalty period of X amount of time if the target of the war succeeds in destroying their aggressors station.
*) This is a special case, which would be interesting. Where if a corp without a structure blows up a pilot (either illegally in high-sec, or legally in low or null) that the corp whos pilot was killed belongs with has x amount of time to declare war on said corp (like the kill timer after you are illegally killed) and that a special structure would be generated in a special area with a jump gate like mission space for that corp during the week of the war.
Those are just some ideas, I’m sure they have some faults, but at least they’d add some cause and affect to the game not to mention a goal.
Overall I sort of disagree with most of the things you’ve said and I’ll leave it at that without digressing
In itself you are correct, it doesn’t really break risk vs. reward. We have always had the NPC corp and it’s perfectly fine to have a safer, but less rewarding tier of corp. But the concern of some is that a) these war-immune corps are too rewarding, and b) players will cheese the system to get the benefits of being in a wardeccable corp while avoiding the main risk/responsibility being open to war by using shell corps or other games.
While I think this first change is a little blunt, it did create effectively a war-immune social corp which is long overdue. Perhaps the capabilities of war-immune corps are too great right now (I’m particularly thinking of taxes) but this is just a stop-gap measure so there is no point complaining about this now. There is plenty of opportunity for CCP to adjust this when they roll out the permanent changes in a few months.
As for shell corps, personally I am less worried than some. Given that those hiding from wars have to open themselves up to wars to actually defend their structures, there is still a player choice and risk vs. reward going on here. Perhaps I am wrong, and it will be a big issue, but if so I can imagine ways that CCP can make being in a wardeccable corp more attractive and these can be added to the permanent system to discourage this behaviour.
So I think while risk vs. reward is still respected, I can see why some think that there isn’t enough difference in rewards for being in a wardeccable corporation, or even that there isn’t enough difference between being in a NPC corp and a player corp in terms of rewards. Still, I am all for CCP buffing the rewards for being in a player corp that is open to wars to make the risk vs. reward choices more meaningful and interesting, and to make more space for players to choose how they want to play the game.
He’s not wrong though. Sure, the current fees are clearly not high enough to prevent blanket deccing, but they are much higher they were in the past and therefore are significantly less accessible to poors, small/solo players, and new players. As you say ISK is terrible balancing mechanic, or at least there are better ones, but it is possible for the war cost to be too high for some players or play styles, yet not high enough to stop pointless wars by large and well funded groups.
On reflection, the war scaling chosen during the last revamp was a poor choice. I can see why they did it - large groups provide more targets so to balance that the price goes up - but they also are the last ones that need free protection or a disincentive to be attacked. Scaling the other way has the problem that in incentivizes people to stay in small or solo corps, plus would make attacking 1-man shell corps holding structures prohibitively expensive, which is bad, so I suggest they just remove scaling altogether. Bigger groups are more powerful and therefore should be under more pressure as they are more capable of defending themselves. Especially now that attackers have to have something in space that can be counterattacked.
And to finish some comments on your thoughts:
a) This is incompatible with how structures work in highsec. There is at least a 5.5 day lull in fighting during the hull timer, and as much as 9.5 days. You would never be able to explode a structure in a one-man shell corp if they didn’t undock if wars turned off because one side refused to fight. Or at least there would have to be multiple wars declared which I guess might work, but probably would require war costs to be adjusted.
b) This is already the case, with X being 24 hours minus the “flag station”. Of course, the 24h limit can easily be bypassed by using an alt corp, as could any other time limit. As for the exploding the flag station ending the war I am fine with given how wars can be started again so easily, but I really don’t think it is going to be the tool most people hope it will be. As I said, it takes 7.5-12.5 days to explode a structure in highsec. That isn’t the ability to end the war early those salivating over the prospect think this will give them. Plus I am skeptical any of these groups that have fantasies of beating the wardeccers to free them from a war, all but the largest nullsec groups, could actually take the professional highsec mercenaries in a structure fight. But again, how structure combat works in highsec just isn’t compatible with wars that can be turned off. CCP is going to have a tough time shoehorning wars to be both objective-based events and the only way to fight over structures in highsec.
c) Maybe, but this sort of defeats the idea of a social corp. Perhaps if there are three tiers of corps in the final design - purely social, competitive with no structures (no wars), and competitive with structures (wars), it might make sense to have the risk that the actions of your corpmate could drag you into a way apply to the middle tier, but part of the idea of this change is to put the choice in your hands how much risk you are going to take on. If social corps can be forced into a war, then we are back to the players feeling their choices don’t matter.
It’s a complex problem which is why I guess CCP has kept far away for so long. Building a system that lets player actions affect risk that can’t be easily exploited by players to get the benefits, with no risk, is tough. I hope CCP manages to get something that works to make player choices matter while still offering a good risk vs. reward balance.
Tbh, if people don’t have the skin to put structures down, they simy should be restricted from accessing them.
You want to mine all day them get preferential reprocessing rates, get a structure or do it in the nearest npc station.
You want to research your expensive bpos, same thing.
You shouldn’t be able to do any of these things for “free” unless you own a structure somewhere.
These dec-free corps are making NPC corps redundant and useless since they offer exactly the same advantages at lower costs (no 11% npc tax)
It would defeat the point of a “social” corp if the corp wasn’t just doing social things. Thinking about it, the one area I see this new system having a serious problem in is that it allows non-decable corps to either a) become an immune ganking corp (since no targeted corp could declare war on them if they wanted to) b) become immune from corps declaring war on them if a high-sec corp/alliance is focused on annoying low-sec corps and blowing up their craft. Once a corp attacks pilots in another corp, in my mind that is no longer purely a social corp, that corp now includes some pvp and those they target should have the opportunity to retaliate in order to prevent the corp from bothering them. But the only way to do that would be to artificially create a structure, since they’d be using the system to their advantage by not having a structure of their own. I hope that makes sense.
And I see what you mean about the other things you mentioned. Personally I feel like the time between being able to declare wars should be longer, but then again, as you mentioned they could just declare war with an alt corp. I think overall the war system just needs a revamp where wars need to have obtainable goals of sorts, but then again, even that only would apply to high-sec, because low-sec and null do have obtainable goals being that primarily of controlling territory, something high-sec doesn’t have to deal with. There are no real goals in high-sec for wars that I can see that are not artificially created, now this new system sort of provides a goal, but as you mentioned it would take longer then the war to destroy the structure and that is if you know where it is to begin with and if they only have one and not multiple. So it doesn’t really fix anything apart from create some immune corps, which can abuse that immunity to cause new problems as I mentioned above.
The change now seems like a double edge sword, it will be interesting to see where CCP takes it, I wish they’d release more information on this, but it feels like they are throwing this out there to see how things go and then making adjustments as they feel is needed instead of having an actual plan.
B). Drop high decs structure timer to at least that of low or give all structures the short timers of elsewhere. Raise structure bonuses for high (& low) to compensate. This allows wars to remove structures far faster, while also making them more important thus encouraging more highsec corps to use them.
High sec having an equal bonus will not break the game as the other areas of space still have significant bonuses in resource acquisition, and if they want to ship all their resources from null to high as a result, cool more targets and people in space for longer.
Highsec having equal bonus absolutely breaks the game.
Faction police and CONCORD protecting all resource acquisitions and requiring potential adversaries to fork over money as well as give official notice in order to disrupt is an enormous benefit that far outweighs any resource edge found in lowsec.
That it’s possible to run sophisticated industry in null sec at all is due entirely to the herculean efforts by players to establish themselves through conquest, diplomacy, and continued efforts to provide for the well being of those citadels they operate. It is not easy.
It certainly isn’t guaranteed the way automated npcs protect highsec dwellers.
Given that the corporate tax rate applies only to bounties and missioning, two things that have nothing at all to do with industry, I don’t really see how there is anything game breaking here. An industrial minded group will have no benefit over what they had before being an NPC corp, other than the social aspect.
Null gets massively increased resource availability, moon goo actually worth something, massive isk faucets etc, which is fair enough but… They dont need compounding better facilities on top of that. Even if the facilities are equal they still have a massive industrial advantage because of circumstances and resources.
The previous issue was that high was better than null in facilities which was bad. The “fix” swung too far. Each area of space needs its own actual bonuses. And Concord is not a bonus as it brings it’s own disadvantages as well. It’s just a different rule set.
It’s amazing how imbalance is only bad when it doesn’t benefit null.
But I also might be the norm. And you’re right without CCP providing those numbers, all we can do is make observations based on what we see and who we talk to. And my talks aren’t limited to my own pilots but talking to other corps that I’ve worked with and at times before regrowing my crop joining other corps. It all just felt that everyone was having the same issues with wars.