Hopefully CCP will show us the player attrition stats they showed the CSM, so we can discuss the problem and potential solutions as informed.
I donât disagree with this. EVE has been set up a certain way for a certain audience and those are the ones who stay. The ones who leave are actually looking for âa game that isnât set up the way EVE is set upâ. They may like many things about EVE, but the core mechanic of âThe strong eat the weakâ central to EVE isnât their cup of tea.
The issue in the actual OP I read (a thread in General that got merged to here) was that âwardecs cause activity to drop off and stay away, for goodâ. This was a CSM issue with data from CCP. So yes, it IS wardecs and it IS new players, at least in some cases. And the EVE mechanics are set up to support this. The NPC corp tax rates are set high enough to consistently push new players (who need to gather ISK) away from the NPC corp. And once they leave the NPC corp they are fair game for anyone who chooses to target them.
My closing point was âyou either want to keep the new players, or you keep the dog-eat-dog structure of EVEâ. But in general you wonât have both because the majority of new players, or MMO gamers in general, are not entertained by being taken advantage of by those stronger than them.
It is a dichotomy, the CSM/CCP data apparently show it to be - although anyone who has played long-term didnât need official data for that.
The best you can do is find ways to alleviate the bleeding - because in the long term, EVE needs every player it can get, and really canât afford, as a business, to be saying âWe should routinely chase off a significant portion of our potential audienceâ.
You could add a new skill that reduces the tax rate paid to your corp (or NPC corp) to something less than the 11% currently charged by NPC corps. You could simply set NPC corps to 6% tax and not try to push new players out of it. You could have a new type of âplayer created, Concord licensedâ corp that pays a tax to Concord for protection. You could make changes to the WarDec mechanic, or you could increase rewards/benefits to the targets of a wardec so that being declared against wasnât such a one-way proposition. You could make it so that anyone who is targeted by a wardec has an easier option to attract a âWhite Knightâ to fight on their side to turn the tables on the original wardecâer.
First, any decision on WarDecs (or other mechanics) needs to flow from the base design choice of âDo we want to keep the HTFU, fight or leave, if youâre not hard-core enough for EVE then go!â atmosphere, do we want to be a âkindler, gentler EVEâ that is more friendly to new players and PVE (for larger potential audience), or are we going to walk some middle ground where we try to maintain and channel new players towards the full PVP experience of EVE, but also leave some workable options for those who simply will not accept that style of play.
No it doesnât. Any decision must be primarily based on whether it will support a long-term, compelling game. Trying to attract new players is great. Trying to attract new players by compromising your existing gameplay and driving away your current players is not. At best such a move is a massive risk, and at worst, suicide (see: SWG, Trammel expansion of Ultima Online).
This kerfuffle is neither of these though. Wars are harsh on new/small/casual groups most of which choose to turtle up instead of fighting - everyone has known this forever including CCP. We can easily fix this without making highsec perfectly safe or whatever radical surgery the alarmists are calling for because âthink of the children!â
Highsec, and all of New Eden in general has been made safer and safer over the years and yet I see no evidence any of those new players the carebear apologists promised have materialized. âJust make the game a little safer and they will comeâ they say, yet I see no evidence of that having worked at all. In fact. I have seen the once vibrant highsec erode under all these anti-content changes over the years. The stats donât lie - highsec activity has declined substantially and yet it has never been mechanically safer.
That said, I see no obstacle to making highsec safer for new players while still preserving the player-driven game play that is the core idea of the game and keeps so many players. Claiming that wars must be deleted immediately or the game will die is just being hyperbolic and alarmist. The game has chugged along just fine with wars, including during the periods when it grew the fastest. Wars need change, and I am really glad people are finally talking about fixing them especially so they are not as punitive on smaller, newer and more casual groups, but expecting CCP to delete them tomorrow is just setting yourself up for disappointment. They arenât going to change the core idea of the game this far into the lifespan of the game.
Player attrition is normal for EVE, care bears who donât have the emotional fortitude to die without crying regularly sign up for EVE and then leave in tears.
That doesnât mean we need to cater to cry babies.
Sure. A corporation can elect to be immune if it wants. Fine. But those that decide to put up a structure, either knowing the potential consequences or not, will find themselves in an N+1 situation. For those opting to put up structures we are back where we are now. Is this an improvement? I guess, but it isnât a big one and it is little different than staying in an NPC corp.
The latter has been EVEâs philosophy for quiet some time (well you have turned it into a bit of a caricature with that parenthetical. And the game did pretty well. But some players complained bitterly about the war decs as they existed back prior to 2012. One of their complaints was the cost side. You could war dec a corporation for 5 million ISK and an alliance for 50 million. Two or three guys could handle the corporate war dec costs no problem. A minor bit of grinding and you could have 50 million and launch 10 war decs. And with the watchlist this was a way to âget lots of targetsâ. But people felt this was terribly unfair. So CCP changed war dec costs. The minimum cost is now 50 million ISK. Now if you are a 2-3 man war dec corp that costs has increased by an order of magnitude and now requires more grinding. This change provided an added incentive to join larger war dec groups. And the costs for alliances and larger corporations was even higher.
[Okay an aside is in order here because I am sure some one is going to write, âYeah butâŚâ Yes, large war dec groups have existed pretty much forever. My claim above is not that they did not. That is a straw man. My claim is that changing the war dec costs provided an additional incentive to group up for small groups that did not want to group up.]
And then there was the removal of watchlist. Now if you were a small(ish) group that took on a few war decs often for a clear purpose and possibly at the behest of an employer your game got seriously nerfed. So if you wanted to keep playing and keep on shooting stuff, one of your options was to join the groups that were largely comprised of hub humping degenerates as Ralph likes to call them.
[Time for another aside: Yes, this kind of thing was always in game, my argument above is for an increased incentive for players to move in that direction. That was not the only option, but it was indeed one. Yes, players who did HS âtargetedâ war decs could move to NS, LS, and wormholes and some probably did.]
Another argument put forward is that with the decrease in players online, there was additional incentive to âgroup upâ and hump the hubs. And that maybe true. But, even if this is true, it does not negate the positive effects noted above. That is if CCP had not made the above changes and this âdecreased playerâ argument is true the large-mass-war-deccing-groups issue would be less of an issue. Maybe still a cause for concern, but still the above changes by CCP at the behest of those who donât like war decs were likely a contributing factor.
Now noting the above may be of limited help aside as a cautionary tale of making changes to mechanicsâŚi.e. the law of unintended consequences and all that.
But trying to preserve EVEâs dog-eat-dog/sandbox and having war decs is going to be an issue. Some players just do NOT want to participate in that kind of PvP. And maybe the social corp is the best solution we can have given these constraints. Players can join up and play together. They can have a chat channel and a logoâŚand thatâs about it. In economics this is called a âsecond best solutionâ and that is when the first best is simply not feasible. The constraints simply do not let you get there. This shields players who do not want to engage in this PvP from being totally over-whelmed by a 500 pilot alliance. It will limit structure spam. It limits the PvP shielded players from being the most efficient at things like industry and manufacturing. And CPP needs to really work on cluing in players what it means to go for a âstandardâ corporation in terms of the consequences. That you may very well draw the attention of a 500 pilot alliance that will dec you and shoot your â â â â . CPP could even be better at providing information on how to evade war decs or minimize the risk of a war dec. Such as not going to the major trade hubs on a character in your corporation and instead going on an alt who is in an NPC corp.
But the idea that there is a magic unicorn in terms of mechanics is IMO simply a waste of time.
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The CCP and the Falcon had their chance to do something but they have only sung HTFU HTFU HTFU HTFU HTFU HTFU HTFU HTFU HTFU HTFU HTFU HTFU HTFU âŚ
PA is now in charge and has already begun to draw strong moves.
Pearl Abyss, the carebear saviourâŚ
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Yes and PA is here to stay.
Dream on, PA trying to turn Eve into something itâs not is like Ford buying Ferrari and making Fiestas at their plant.
PA is here to stay.
Thatâs a given, theyâve spent a shitton of money to acquire CCP, that doesnât mean that theyâre going to change the product that CCP makes in any significant way.
They are already started.
Can you provide evidence of this, or are you just another shill?
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You can see it by yourself, you do not need my help 
Thatâll be a no then to the first part and a yes to the second then.
Begone.
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Begone yourself, this is new Eve Online, and new Eve Online do not need someone like youâŚ
Bye 
Oh please do tell. What sort of person/player am I?
This should be both interesting and amusing.
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Taxes is significant, it is huge.
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It is absolutely game changing, the entire face and scope of game play in highsec will drastically be altered. Currently highsec corps and alliances are being oppressed by wardec predators, once the predators are restricted to structure only wardecing then highsec corps and alliances will finally have a means to become a reality.
As nullsec has shown, once large groups of people become organized they power to influence all future development of EVE can be profound. Will this happen, I have no idea but even if the power shifts some it could literally change the face of EVE going forward, forever.
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The way I see it now, that tax is your War Dec Prevention Tax.
A slight alteration to the âWars for structure ownersâ idea. Wars allow attackers to attack structures only. Defenders can opt to defend thier structure, either through limited engagement or mutual war. Players can fight ship to ship if they declare war mutual. Allies can only be called in if war is mutual.
This allows for taking down a structure, removes the âneedâ to drop Corp during war, and non-structure owners can still be war immune.
It would still totally screw blanket war deccers that just want to shoot people.
Any discussion that gets the cheap wardec scam to an end is a viable option. We as players will have to toss the details back and forth and with CCPs involvement but the end to the scam should be the prize we keep our eyes locked onto till it happens.