Hey guys,
I’m wondering at the current state of the emergent player a month into the new wardec mechanics.
Is anyone still running wardecs? Are there any players left that aren’t in social corps?
Have subscription numbers jumped? Does anyone know?
Troll post count in C&P seems down. Are you guys still out there?
From the statistics we can actually pull up through tracking websites (@Black_Pedro plz linky?), I know that there has not been any significant changes in online player count, though the trend is still slightly negative. The number of jumps in highsec is down by >100,000 in a month, though I’m not sure that is related either.
In short, I do not think mercs have been HUGELY affected so far. They can still dec the large entities and get lots of kills, the one thing they cannot do is target smaller corporations if they do not hold structures.
Eve-Offline shows the decline in peak player counts continues:
Average players:
1y:33k
6m:31k
3m:27k
1m:25k
1w:24k
DOTLAN shows highsec jumps have declined:
November: 2.58M/day
December: 2.59M/day
January: 2.43M/day
Haven’t looked at the war metrics directly and don’t have a sense of how the ‘quality’ of the wars have changed, but top level, it doesn’t seem like there is any increase in player activity in highsec, at least not yet due to these changes.
I have observed wardec groups going about their daily business. Sieging structures and with large amounts of wardecs still.
I have also observed an increase in carebear/pve focused corps advertising in the English recruitment channel.
I’ve seen some new corps with quite a lot of members (like hundreds). I suspect inviting anyone to skim corp tax off of them. One of my alphas has joined a corp 65 strong but at most 6 are on at once and there isn’t much communication between players that I’ve seen.
It’s good to see you Black Pedro. I have posted with it against you many times over the years.
I can’t imagine that everyone who felt the inconvenience of wardecs is not using holding corps. They’re a great way to eliminate most of the risk of war decs.
Anyone from the merc groups interested enough to join this convo?
And…
Just like can flipping died overnight… it didn’t die because you couldn’t do it… it died because it was no longer worth the effort.
Then hunting went away for the same reason… with the death of the watch list… hunting wasn’t worth the effort.
Now, perhaps, it is wardecs’ turn. It’s not that you can’t do them… but I think it’s likely that they will no longer be worth the effort because it’s so easy to opt out.
The question is, if enough risk is eliminated… when does the rest of the game
stop being worth the effort?
The ‘State of Mercs’ is almost entirely unchanged. CCP has yet to release raw numbers on what new player retention has looked like since the change (I wouldn’t hold my breath that they will release that information), so any statements from players or observations is just speculation and posturing.
You are correct in that there have been plenty of changes that have made our particular slice of Eve Online significantly harder or just flat out not worth the time / effort.
What gets me is this whole bandaid thing we have where the outcome is that players are protected from war decs as long as the corp holds no structures. The whole rallying outcry was that wars are bad because they drive new players away, yet CCP even came out and said that according to data new players aren’t targeted by wars. This is all old news I’m repeating, but it just still bewilders me and I can’t seem to understand it all.
The current form of wars is much in the same as it was before the change, just now players can game the system and use a holding corp, thus dodging decs that effect members. The real test of all this is when / if CCP follows through with their war dec revamp and gives us a system that isn’t the same old decayed and dying experience that is either spending exorbant amounts of time doing the legwork for little to no reward, or blanket dec’ing all of New Eden and farming.
I read this earlier to say wars aren’t affected.
I just reread it and it sounds like you guys are better off than I assumed, but still frustrated.
I kind of expected to see Tora or Seeger on here talking about the changes… but I haven’t seen much.
In fact, the post frequency in C&P is shocking in its own right. A few years ago I would have posted on this board more myself than everyone combined is posting now.
Keep doing the good work, I commend your efforts. I wonder what is next…
They won’t. The bandaid is here to stay.
I think the Merc community is split, really. You have groups like Pirat that would solely thrive and enjoy the content of structure attack / defense even if blanket wars were removed and the market hub / pipe camping ceased to exist…
I’m not entirely sure how most people feel, but just talking to my friends that have been in the merc game for years, it just seems that they are bored and tired of the stale content. They are the players, including myself that wish that CCP would shake things up a bit. We’ll see what CCP does, if anything.
I wouldn’t say people are split, most of us (me included) quit when the changes were introduced, believe it or not there was still alot of us that enjoyed hunting even with the gimped mechanics.
Can’t speak for others but my main reason for leaving wasn’t the changes themselves but the fact that CCP won’t and hasn’t listened for along time to anyone in the Merc community.
Instead they listen to people that have a very bias opinion AGAINST wars and don’t even participate in these mechanics (most of csm & few other individuals that will probably get triggered by my post).
Yeah. I can relate to that.
I was a flipper and wardec player from years ago. I loved this game for its depth and brutality.
I’m dabbling in a wh on a low sp char now, but I’ve become a casual. I’m only doing eve because I can do it while I’m watching my kids play (don’t really have to pay attention).
I figure wars are over. Flipping died years ago. Safaris got safetied out.
Ganking is the last PvP in high sec… where 70% of the game population plays exclusively.
I’m almost excited for the final dissolution of high-sec PvP… I think it’s inevitable… and I’ve been waiting years now to see how it goes.
Not true 
I know what you’re eluding to Marcus, and you know how infrequent it is to get a bite. Could you imagine if everyone turned from wardecs to suspect baiting? The overfishing would be real haha.
About 2 years ago, I drove the entire length of the Amarr-Jita pipeline, suspect flagged, in a battle Nereus.
No fights. No yellow boxes.
I even bumped a few stationary boats. Nothing.
I ended up doing the only dishonorable thing that can be done in a battle Nereus… I lost it in PvE. Turns out, it couldn’t tank a L4 mission.
Finding a fight has been hard for the suspect baiters for years. That’s what drove me from Eve probabaly 9 of the first ten times I quit.
My hat is off to anyone still doing it. You are an oak.
I do think I’m experienced enough in that field to say it’s a deeply uncommon playstyle at the point… rare enough to be outside the common PvP discussion here.
But if you are still doing it… and getting fights… I salute you.
yeh highsec pvp is dead, cant get wardeckers to actually pull off a safety point; they rarely operate without neutral logi. Im tired of leaving my nullsec haunt to come look for them only to see them sitting at citadels and… well not doing much unless your in a slow target… then out comes the vindis and bhaalghorns and the seventeen nestors or guardians.
It’s been like that for years, stale is not the word.
yeah thats pretty normal, even in my null sec groups ive been in alliance/corp is pretty quite, just farmers flying around farming
I have to agree and add that the gradual dumbing down of the game by CCP has led us to this point.
I wait in hope that they decide to return to the original concept of the game as that is why I joined in 2006.
Don’t forget that the Merc profession is also now being eroded due to changes and now only a shade of the scary thing it was. (To the recipient of the dec)
I was just working with a merc group that failscaded because people paniced that another merc group got a spy inside.
amateurs
Upon finding out that there was a spy due to the convo between the war targets that showed up, several corps imploded and left, and even had members in their group left, all because the mercs at war with them showed up during a set of poco bashes.
The ceo/alliance leader by morning had all characters in biomass lines.
It was you wasn’t it?