I think the wardec problem is more easily solved by tiered or staggered costs increasing per wardec you make within a timeframe, much like jump fatigue. Making your 1st wardec relatively cheap and then increased by whatever seemed like a significant number, one price range for corp and another for alliances. If you want to make a living wardeccing, then choose your targets wisely. But I don’t wanna hijack this thread… will wait for Saint’s response
Saint Michaels Soul
A few points I would like to highlight
-Drives a proper car and has wrecked it.
-Is more then willing to consider different points.
-Is a classy gent.
-Trash tier FC.
-One of my personal heros in this game.
-Has a social disposition that leads to him listening before speaking.
-A proper BS pilot.
-The furthest thing from an F1 monkey while still being more then happy to fly the DPS ships.
-Part of the best damn corp in EVE.
-Eats squid for lunch.
-The best Boi.
-Is the kind of player EVE should be represented by.
-Not a Weeb, but allows his friends a Weeb lifestyle.
A Vote for Saint is a vote for Small Gang, a Vote for Saint is a vote for Faction Warfare, a Vote for Saint is a vote for the fun part of this game that does not make you do 15 minutes of work for 9 hours.
@MantelGlobalIndustries This is where your vote should be buddy, and we should be telling everyone that!
Hey, hold on. I haven’t wrecked a car for a while
However, thanks Tristan, I’m blushing
I take your points… I also now want to try the mission loop in some pirate cruisers and see if I can get the same sort of payouts. See if I can practically see/try out the difference your proposal might make.
My thoughts on changing the missions may be more expensive from a dev point of view, but the PvE mission experience is something that we can all agree is not Eve’s strongpoint and changes are overdue.
Incidentally if anyone wants to see the problem first hand Gorski Car created a “how to abuse FW missions guide” that’s not dissimilar to the “How to Krab in FW missions” that any half decent corp/alliance should give you when joining:
Agreed that its a very complex issue and that the life of the HS pirate (or wannabe griefer!) is absolutely as important as anyone else’s chosen role in New Eden. The complexity of the problem is why we’ve been stuck with a system that we all know is flawed and many past CSMs have addressed but without finding a solution that address all issues. Does that mean we should give up and accept the status quo is permanent and there isn’t a a way to iteratively improve the war dec mechanics? I hope not.
I’m going to listen to those, but i can tell you that ALL factions can solo the lvl 4 missions in one of their respective navy cruisers.
But, like with each one, you will eventually get caught.
But, like with each one, you will eventually get caught.
- That would indicate to me that your solution is viable
Oreb’s not far off my thinking here. Keep the initial cost low but scale with the number of decs. Where that threshold should be would require some diving into stats and I’ll see if we can get a ccp graph of the distribution of active wardecs by alliances (obviously without names on). I’d also like to talk to some of the HS experts who are approacble Eg. Tora Bushido and some of the smaller Merc corps to get their feedback.
But how would mercenary groups with dozens of clients if you hard cap, or implement some sort of punitive soft cap operate? One of the major goals of the last wardec revamp (at least according to the devblog) was to make being a mercenary a viable profession and I don’t see how a limit on possible clients is compatible with that. Further, if you cap wars, how would you prevent war aggressors from declaring wars from dedicated one-man corps and just hopping into them if something interesting is happening? Defenders have long used corp hopping to dodge wars, but aggressors are increasingly using it as a tactic to get the drop on targets. Such hopping by the aggressor would easily evade any cap on war number you implemented.
Merc corps could basically require their employer to commit to the wardec and then piggy back on it when they add them as a party. Not too difficult maybe. Blanket deccers COULD keep using throw away corps to do the same thing? I would have to think about that one…
I don’t see dozens of wars as a silly amount (Hundreds? Yes) and I completely agree that a hard cap would be utterly wrong (and easy to avoid). However if the price started going up after the first dozen active wars in a week, you’d have a slightly more punitive system that would still leave in place the obvious advantages of staying in an organised corp. However although I think this is generally a decent idea, it doesn’t address my key concern with War Decs which is that for many corps (HS primarily, sure) the solution is to dock up or simply not play whilst the dec is active. That’s not good for either corp and definitely not for the player count overall.
I agree. The number of wars isn’t a problem - CCP even said increasing the number of wars was a goal in that devblog I linked - but there is a problem of newer/smaller/casual groups who don’t really want the competitive aspects of corporations but do want the social experience being hit by unwanted wars. This causes some of them to logout forever or implode while providing little other benefit to the game.
What are your thoughts on uncoupling the social aspects of corporations from the competitive ones via a social corp, a new social group, or some other way? How best do you see this being done and what concerns do you have of how this might negatively affect the overall competitive game?
While I have your attention, do you also mind commenting in a sentence or two on the following ‘litmus test’ issues?
A) AFK Cloaking, is it a problem?
B) Travel via jump drive, is it too safe or too dangerous?
C) The current balance of suicide ganking, is it too easy?
And finally, if you had to choose your ideal weekend play session, would it be roaming around with a bunch of mates looking for a good fight with another equally matched group, or would you prefer to spend it conniving with your corpmates on how to take something away from your sworn enemy and undocking a fleet in pursuit of that objective?
Many thanks for you time and good luck on your CSM run.
a) Do I think it’s an odd mechanic? Yes, it shouldn’t ever be “optimal” to log into a game and literally do nothing with an full account all day and still have a significant affect on multiple other players. Do I think it should be removed or horrifically nerfed? No. I’ve done it myself on occasion and it’s a method of disrupting larger groups of more PvE focussed players. Do I think there could be some tweaks so that the account might have to at least keep an eye on the client every now and then? Yes. The risk/reward balance is currently misaligned.
b) It is what it is. I was a huge fan of the introduction of fatigue/reduced jump ranges, that’s been scaled back a lot recently and I’m waiting to see what the results are in terms of capital projection returning in a big way. Moving caps, especially through known hunting systems, is still hairy if you’re doing it solo. Like anything in eve the risk is reduced with numbers. By the time you’ve got 200 odd people moving caps, it goes back to feeling riskless.
c) Suicide ganking is much more of a skill than some people give it credit for. Sure it’s a skill that’s based on calculating EHP and having lots of cheap high DPS throwaway boats but (for example) knowing how many Cats to throw at a juicy looking freighter takes a lot of knowledge. Plus the intelligence to identify the good targets takes work. If you’re talking about one pirate blowing up an untanked AFK mining barge …yep that’s easy because of many factors. If you’re talking about hitting high value selected targets tactically and optimally that takes a lot of planning and skill.
Finally, my ideal day in eve will be a mix; Perhaps wandering around the Cal/Gal warzone looking for a couple of solo fights, followed by a small gang roam looking for similar sized groups and finishing with some infrastructure work/conniving
You missed this one, st.
I believe npc corps already provide this social function and ‘easy mode’, however unintended it might have been to avoid wardec’s. In my opinion, npc taxes should be raised by 5% and there should be an annual corp tax for player corporations based on the number of pilots in that corporation. You could take the medium of all the taxes pulled from all the npc corps and see if there’s an average and figure a baseline from that, with discounts of how many stations in null under your possession (10% discount per station?).
You have to include people’s wallets in decisions of you want them to take something seriously.
By the way, Pedro. Did you ever decide on a campaign run after all? I doubt you would have to add much work to all the reading and posting you already do.
No, my in-game experience is rather narrow, or at least more on the niche side. I don’t expect there are very many players who play as I do. There are better candidates with broader (and more) game experience, and who are better communicators/politicians than I. I am content lending my voice to the forums (and a few other places) challenging and discussing ideas here, and hopefully have some small influence on the things that matter to me, rather than delving too much into the messiness and required compromises of space politics.
But I am always glad to see people put themselves forth like Saint here who are up for the challenge. While there is a bit of the expected whiff of a politician here, I do very much like what I see so far. While the last couple CSMs have been responsive and largely effective, they have sorely lacked diversity and I if I could I would replace many of the yet-another-nullsec-leadership CSM member with Saint in a heartbeat.
So I did
Honestly, social structures in eve are pretty well defined and I’m bought into the corp-alliance structure pretty strongly… I love organisations such as Spectre Fleet (although it’s been a few years since I was a regular with their roams - You can’t do it so easily from deep null or when you’re -10 and EVERYTHING shoots at you) and Redemption Road (did a lot of the GreyGal noob roams a few years back to pick up new recruits) and I don’t think there are enough tools to support groups like these. However do I want to see something that competes with the corp-alliance structure in terms of setting standings/permissions etc.? I don’t think we need that. Extension to the newsletter and chat functions and other basic social tools such as in game boards, adverts and announcements? Great.
Although it’s only loosely linked I mourn the passing of Eve Voice but only from a conceptual standpoint as the tool wasn’t fit for purpose. In an ideal world NPSI groups shouldn’t have to fork out lots of RL cash for basic services but I realise that ship sailed long ago.
I actually really did give eve voice a fair run, but there were problems and it was a mess trying to get people’s mic to work. It was distracting and time consuming, yet having the power over who can hear you as much as who is in your fleet is paramount. Something that’s difficult if you don’t host your own Voip server.
Seems full of energy to fix things and be an active part of the community as a CSM. Will have my vote.
+1 here.
No longer in the same alliance as Saint but I genuinely think he would be a good communicator at CSM and would be great at listening to people and feeding back their ideas and concerns without having his own agenda.
I’d vote for him even if this wasn’t a low sec thing.
I’m pretty sure anyone who has had a lengthy conversation with him or met him in RL would see how he has the social skills and personality that would help in engaging with CCP, and for me this is a massive bonus.
People will probably have a platform promising changes or wanting to “fix” your problems in EVE. After years of CSM I thinkn we can see that’s not how it works.
Gets my 1st vote.
So i am going to put this here because i think it is a good question for all of us Low sec people. Are you worried that you are splitting the vote for Low Sec aligned capsuleers?
I would really like to see you, and @Silver_Suspiria have a comparison of your points.