Devblog: War Declaration Changes - The War Adjacent to Christmas

As a noob who get’s dunked on quit often, I’m a 1 man corp and was just wardecd for the first time. Here are my thoughts on the system. If this were actually a ‘war’ I could do more then just defend but I have 0 idea where any of the corps structures are. I spent 2 days looking. All around where their corp office was registered to where Zkill shows most of their major spots of activity, clicking every structure in every sector. I roamed those spots for another day looking for any activity from them. Nothing. Having to look around for someone who you’re at war with doesn’t seem like war, nor is it fun gameplay.

Wardecs seem to have little to no risk for the attackers in the current system. You can declare war on whoever you have advantage over with little chance of reprisal. Your structure location is probably hidden and unless players are online when you attack their structure (they’re attacking my Athanor) or they happen to run into you, the defender really can’t go to war.

I don’t have a lot of experience with the system but if CCP wanted to promote fights and put some actual risk into war for the attacker, the location of their nearest base or structure should be made known to the defender. Otherwise it’s just the defender waiting for the attack, knowing it’s probably coming sometime, by a much larger group. And from my perspective that makes it seem more like gate camping then war.

I understand that in playing Eve online people are going to come into my sandbox and kick sh*t around. If you’re going as far to declare war though it’d be nice to know where the other sandbox is so at least you have the option to do the same.

Who was it that said, “These changes won’t be enough, they’ll ask for more”?

Because that guy deserves a beer.

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No, that person doesn’t. Because there is always going to be someone who asks for more, on both sides, no matter which way a change goes.
It’s an old tired meme to say that, and it does nothing but draw divisive lines of “us vs them”

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Your error is thinking, that you somehow are able to defend your structure as a one man corp. Against any competent corp, you really have zero chance of fighting back or defending. It is working as intended.

You either write down the Athanor as a cost of operation and move somewhere else, or you start to recruit/join a bigger corp.

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Blockquote Your error is thinking, that you somehow are able to defend your structure as a one man corp. Against any competent corp, you really have zero chance of fighting back or defending. It is working as intended. > Blockquote

Yes I understand that and it wasn’t my issue.

My issue was that the attacker should incur some actual risk in declaring war by having the location of their nearest structure revealed to the defender. That way both parties can engage in warfare instead of just one.

Adding structures to locator agents has already been suggested many times.

The December changes where just the initial/bandaid rework of wardecs in general. So we should still expect more changes in this area.

However, it’s CCP. Changes are implemented very slow and there is no communication on the direction they wish to go. It being CCP, there is also the chance of no additional changes hitting the live server and the rebalance just being abandoned for some shinier features like skins or irrelevant events. Just look at what happened to module tiercide.

Solo is one of the root problems with EVE.

People have unrealistic expectations. Can’t count the number of times someone suggested they somehow had a right to survive in a many versus one fight.

After losing some ships to 1) being an idiot and 2) ganks, and being frustrated of not being able to wardec non-eligible corp-hopping folks, here’s an idea:

Force safety to green/yellow for people in non-wardec-eligible corporations (including NPC corps). You get red safety if and only if you are actually willing to fight.

Make war eligibility follow pilot: if someone in a war eligible corporation joins a non-eligible corporation, that second corporation becomes eligible for a certain amount of time (say, two weeks). (If they join an NPC corporation they are safe, but the effect only goes away after that same amount of time. Or just get rid of NPC corps for non-rookies now that wardec eligibility is a thing.)

Setting safety to red allows me to gank in high sec, a very important tool in high sec mechanics. I only gank 1 or 2 days/month (for giggles) and wouldn’t be worth my time to set up a structure.

Ganking is the outlaw/wild west version of pvp and should not have many rules or structure to how or where it is performed.

My suggestion was you should still be allowed to do that if you also allow people to wardec you. When your argument for ganking is wild west and safe nowhere, it becomes kind of lol you want to be able to do so from the safety of avoiding wardecs.

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Why would someone need to war dec me to still be able to gank in high sec? I spend 75% of my time in low sec, no war dec needed and come fight whenever you want. Making someone set up a structure just to protect high sec carebears from being popped a few days a month does not make sense. Unlike CODE my ganking is VERY unprofitable and setting up a structure would not make it worthwhile at all. Your suggestion leads us one step closer to a pvp free and a much, much safer high sec.

Encouraging more people to be wardeccable leads to less pvp?

Ok.

What evidence is there to suggest this would increase the number of people doing PvP and not decrease it via fewer gankers, and a higher barrier of entry to ganking. Since anyone -5 or worse can be shot first anyway and a lot of gankers end up there very fast.

As much evidence as there is to the fact that access to ganking in the long term leads to more pvp, instead of just the occasional gank. Which is to say none for us. (CCP might have numbers about how the wardec changes have affected e.g. wardecs against gankers, but I do not have it, obvs.)

Personally, I do not really consider ganks the kind of “pvp” that EVE should primarily encourage. I am fine with ganking opportunities existing and I am not saying I haven’t ever done it myself either :wink: , but as a whole, it is a minor, and kind of boring part of pvp in general.

If it were the case (as it might be, though I cannot prove it) that the ability to always dec gankers back would lead to somewhat fewer ganks BUT more explosions in general from actions against the gankers who still had the guts to do it even if it required exposing themselves to consequences, I’d consider that a fair trade-off.

We have clear evidence it doesn’t lead to more explosions. Code have been hanging out in citadels in alliance for months at least. (what a surprise there were just some ganking exploits closed around citadels). There have not been explosions happening around those structures.

What it will do is close off things for smaller groups and newer players who just want to have a try. Exactly the people who don’t cause systematic issues with their ganking are the ones who would get hit by it.

I am not sure you can use CODE as proof that there would not be more explosions between smaller groups if it was possible.

But it sounds to me that you think people should be able to gank because hisec should never be safe even for newbros, but they should not be wardeccable because newbros need to be safe when they gank. I find that logic kind of funny, to be honest.

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Except it’s not about them being safe. It’s about you putting several walls in front of them saying “if you want to gank in a 2 million isk ship you have to invest all this other effort”.

Why shouldn’t some guy in an npc corp be able to just jump in a destroyer and kill the other venture mining that bumped him or called him names. Why should he have to go and spend hundreds of millions and make a corp leaving all his friends in corp to do so.
These are the important questions.

The question for me is why should someone just be able to go gank people without any provocation, and not be vulnerable to a come-back / escalation? Most ganks are just for fun, and the victim did not start it.

And the war dec eligibility = red safety is just one idea how to organize the possibility for retaliation. If it sounds too steep for some (which sounds a little funny to me, tbh, but I take your word for it), fine. You could alternatively handle it by “if someone in your corporation aggresses and kills someone you are wardec eligible for the next month”, and limit safeties in NPC corps only.

My point is that if you start pvp, you should be willing to also take it. Being able to start things and then run into safety in your non-eligible corp is nonsensical. If you don’t want to fight, then just don’t.

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In what way are they not vulnerable to come back. You get a kill right. You can gank them all you want in return also. No one is safe from pvp unless they don’t undock (or do market games). So your requirement is already filled, they can be shot.

And why shouldn’t they be able to gank someone without provocation. It is EVE to be able to kill someone because you felt like it.

This just sounds very much like someone ganked you and you don’t like losing a ship randomly when it’s not part of a story or planned fight.

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Crime already does this. If commit criminal acts you quickly become free to shoot to everyone via security status and are open to retaliation via kill rights. The latter means no matter what you do, whatever corp you join, you can have your CONCORD deterrent switched off. It is like a permanent personal wardec that follows you so I see no need for something more.

This game is also not about safety. Nowhere is safe on purpose so even without this, you are open to attack by other players whether you are a criminal or not, or whether you are in a Corp or not. Everyone should be prepared for PvP at any time as that is how the game is built. Removing the ability to commit crimes for solo players will just limit content and reduce activity is this game yet again, something this game doesn’t at all need right now.

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