This is directly contradicted by the discussions I had with both PIRAT pilots and high-sec pilots who’d used defensive mercs, on TiS discord. Those high-sec pilots only knew about it as an option because they’d been playing the game for 5 years. But yes, there are mercs to hire. In fact, PIRAT can be hired for that (apparently they don’t get along with Marmite, for example).
Ok, this sounds a lot like you doing all this. You, someone who already knows how to get this information. Someone who is not part of the wardec’d group. You’re doing this. Your actions matter here. And that’s great. But it doesn’t solve the problem. What if you’re not around?
A systemic solution cannot be dependent on one or more people outside of that system intervening. That’s a point of failure that will inevitably be hit. So the question remains:
How do you give them a way to feel like their actions matter? Like they has decisions they can make, on their own and without someone else coming to them first, that can have a real impact? Because…
This is exactly the flaw in your plan. Your actions matter. They feel like theirs can’t.
If you are playing Eve for just fun you don’t need every last percent reduction on your industry. If you are competing economically with the rest of us, you need to be vulnerable in some way to disruption by the other players. There has to be advantages for players to be induced to take risks and offer themselves up as content.
That’s how a single-shard war/economy game like Eve works.
But if you want to mine together with your friends and build some ships so you can go fight the evil NPC pirates together, that is totally possible using NPC stations.
Structures should be fought over, not “saved” by earning NPC protection. I am all for Propaganda structures being vulnerable to counter-attack and used to inflict damage and generate a killmail against an attacker, but turning structure fights into who can game the NPC protection the most effectively seems terrible, unintuitive gameplay.
No. In fact it is the only way I can see to solve the issue. Again, the issue is groups not responding to the war mechanic and staying logged off. For these players, any solution must give them a way to play the game free of wars. Adding more vulnerabilities around wars may help a small fraction of players who are able to fight back but don’t have a real reason to and have a backlog of Steam games that are more appealing, but there still are a huge number of corps that can’t fight back at all even if they were willing.
Give them a place to play the game. With that change, we can also include some other changes that may provide more reasons for other who are able to fight back but choose not to, but that alone isn’t going to fix the problem noticeably.
Wars are not imbalanced at all in favour of the aggressor. They are nearly perfectly symmetrical, with the only mechanical imbalance being in favour of the defender who can access free allies. The imbalance we see in the reality of many wars reflects the fact this is on open-world, sandbox PvP game where everyone is vs. everyone and you can be attacked by anyone at anytime. That is hard on smaller/weaker/newer groups but it is also the core idea of the game. There is no war mechanic that is going to fix that.
The only switch you can reliably add to the game to address this is a binary one: a group is immune to wars, or is open to wars. That switch already exists in the game for individual players, so why not give it to groups?
In an open-world PvP game like Eve, such a corp is always going to be at the bottom of the food chain. Eve is a competitive and social game, and while I think we can make space for such players via a protected-tier of corp, they are not going to be as successful as if the played with more allies, more aggressively, or took larger risks. Rewards come with risks and by outplaying your competition, so if you want to sit in a protected corp in highsec with a few friends, you limit your potential to succeed compared to your braver, bolder and more connected peers. That’s fine - many people don’t want to compete at all and are perfectly fine flying their spaceships around highsec building things and shooting hapless NPCs. Others may want to play more competitively but don’t have the time right now or experience yet, but still we can make a place for them to enjoy themselves and stay connected to New Eden.
Some of these will grow and step-up to compete with the rest of us, while others won’t. Either way, hopefully they stay around longer than the current situation where many choose, or were told, not to login for a week because someone declared war on them.
There are a few people who have defensive contracts with the so called mercs, that corp I detailed to you is one, but for most people the prices are stupidly high and the service consists of them just holding the pipes or hubs. They do the odd structure defensive driving off attackers. But their main income is through protection rackets and they are the ones war decking structures in the main.
You have to create a coalition of willing people with different leadership for TZ coverage, it is not going to be easy.
The entire objective is to create a player run defence and adjust the current imbalance.
Because their actions do matter, or their actions should matter.
No, their actions matter, they will do it just as much for themselves and this vulnerability I have suggested is the only way to break that feeling that they do not matter.
The risk is too great, they cannot defend them.
Well they leave then and who can blame them.
I feel the same way about the way war deckers are farming easy prey.
I am going round in circles with you both, so I am going to stop here for now as I have stuff to do in game. Will continue this answer later one. I have made my point, it is up to CCP to decide what they want to do.
And it’s not going to be sustainable. Or effective. Once someone’s out of the wardecs, they can’t keep helping. That means the only consistent members you’ll have will be the people who keep getting wardec’d—the people your system doesn’t help (because if it helped them, they wouldn’t be wardec’d).
The problem with that objective is that, again, it’s not reliable. The current condition of wardec imbalances, on the other hand, is. It’s pretty basic human nature that drives the ‘I want to matter’ urge toward bullying. Incidentally, those same wardec pilots indicated pretty strongly that it didn’t have to be negative interaction with other people. They didn’t even feel like they needed it to be a win. But you can’t pay the bills as a do-gooder if nobody knows they can hire you to do good.
The solution needs to be a game mechanic. It needs to be a game mechanic because relying on the players to provide and maintain that solution has already failed. Player-driven defensive options existed in HS back when you were in Vlad Mining and Industry Inc. They still exist (in those same merc corps). But they’re not doing the job, are they?
Even if the solution is ‘give the players more info so they know they have more options’, that’s a mechanical solution. That’s a systemic solution.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s true, it only matters what I can prove.” -Every criminal lawyer ever.
In this context, the issue isn’t whether or not their actions do matter. You, me, pretty much everyone here knows they have options. They have ways they can take action to evade the wardec or fight back in oblique ways. But they don’t know it. They don’t feel like their actions matter. And you saying ‘they matter!’ doesn’t convince them.
They can’t even hear you.
So how do you give them this awareness and feeling of agency, in an automatic, ‘the game does this so it’s not reliant on people having the time to do it’ kind of way?
I see no way the game mechanics of an open-world PvP game can accommodate player-owned structures that 3 dudes can expect to always be able to defend against all the other players. Again, the only solution is complete invulnerability and for that there is the NPC corp and structures.
There is nothing stopping those 3 dudes from grouping up with 10 other groups of 3 dudes and creating a meta-group that might be able to defend it from at least most highsec threats, kinda like the game is suppose to work. But if 3 guys just want to play Eve as a co-op single-player game, then structures are probably not a reasonable part of their experience.
They do? According to the data we are discussing they are leaving because they are wardecced and unable/unwilling to undock, not that they don’t enjoy playing the game by using NPC stations or running highsec PvE together.
Fair enough. Mass wardec spamming and hub/pipe camping is arguably terrible game play. Certainly much of it is seems like low-meaning, unbalanced PvP which CCP may finally be ready to address.
I still don’t see why you don’t want to let most of these groups “being farmed” as in your words just opt-out of wars though. Even if you want additional changes to wars to make them more meaningful and appealing to other groups, a tool like a war-immune social group would be useful to make space for non-competitive players.
There you go, you hit the nail on the head even a tenfold increase will not be able to defend the structure. I am sorry that I can’t give more complete answers as I am doing stuff, your replies are worth better replies and more detail.
PL was unable to defend their structure against TEST. Even a thousand-fold increase will not be enough to guarantee the safety of a structure in highsec.
I am not sure why you think 100% safety is suppose to be a thing though. Like everywhere else in Eve, you can reasonably expect to defend your strategic objective against a group smaller than yourself. But there is always a bigger fish, or group of fishes, that may be able to take you down if they want to spend the time and effort.
Objectively, highsec is full of structures, many of them even low-powered and they are not attacked often. They seem safe enough, and like ships, they are effectively disposable in a game about building and then destroying things. Just don’t deploy anything you can’t afford to lose and all that. A medium structure is like half-a-month’s game time. It’s nothing. It is isn’t going to break the bank for most established players, let alone groups, to lose one, meaning only the smallest, newest and most casual groups are structures unrealistic for.
I don’t think I have ever suggested 100% safety, do you have to start projecting like that? So why do you think CCP changed the system in terms of nullsec? The same applies to hisec too you know.
That was hubris on their part, I was on holiday for a part of that, but was involved in the early part and the late part of that campaign. PL were a shadow of their former selves, my alliance had already destroyed their AU TZ over our space in Catch, a war which I really enjoyed. PL are not a good example, they were living on past glory…
You are making my point for me here, mass numbers and anonymity is the only defence, ho hum, great gameplay. It is not the structures, it is the rigs…, it is like you don’t even listen.
Well, 3 guys can defend against another 3 guys. With such small numbers more factors will come into play, but it it is certainly possible. I am always confused by your expectations from the game. You seem to be only willing to accept zero chance of loss, or at least declare the game broken when there is no foolproof strategy to avoid loss, which is impossible in an open-world game where group size is so critical. Even the largest group can be ganged up on by the other groups (see: Casino War/World War Bee).
The fact it is possible to lose to another player or group of players is not a problem that needs to be fixed. It is a feature of a competitive game like Eve Online.
That’s Eve. Numbers and agility used to evade are two major strategies to get ahead.
Rigs are optional and come with additional risk (and cost) for more reward. Small groups that can afford to risk structures, but not rigs, can do so.
Having a risk progression of NPC Station < Player Structure < Rigged Player Structure is perfectly fine. It allows groups to set their risk tolerance and play the game in the style they want.
Bringing this back to the social corp, the current problem is that groups playing in the safest way - living out of NPC structures - are still open to wars. This seems less-than-ideal since many, if not most of them, have no interest in, or ability to fight. They get “farmed” needlessly or worse, just log out. A social corp or equivalent would give them the space they need to play the game in their hyper-conservative, evasive way as a group.
I am saying there is currently no competition against the top war deckers, PIRAT and CODE in terms of citadels. Never said anything about applying zero chance of loss, that is your perception. You realise that the old SBU type system was changed to give smaller groups to be able to defend in their own TZ. Previously all the battles over sov occurred in the TZ of the attacker. CCP changed that and I can be blunt my current alliance which is primarily AU TZ with a growing US TZ and a non-existent EU TZ would not be able to hold sov in the previous system.
Except when it is not, hence the change to the current sov.
The only way you can get close to compete with nullsec manufacturing actually. It is a throw away statement. Great game play to look up to, so what you are saying is don’t bother, and people don’t bother.
At the end they want to do something more interesting like compete with production and they can’t they will leave the game. CCP have to realise that they need to cater for those casual players and leaving them at the mercy of entities like PIRAT and CODE is not going to help them retain players. Especially those that tend to pay for their subs.
When I asked for making some anti blob mechanics to equal chances, you had some issues with it.
Now you are asking how people could have a chance in a fight…
In PvP there is no equal chances now in EVE. Its innately unbalanced system when you add people. You would have to invent arenas and some rules and make people train in them and do wars by those means.
If you want to compete with production, you actually have to compete with production. You don’t get to have all the bonuses as someone who has spent the time and effort to build and defend their infrastructure. It’s a main point of the game.
But you are dragging us off topic. There is no ‘activity data’ that the CSM has seen that says people are leaving the game because highsec industry isn’t “interesting” (read as: ‘profitable’) enough. The problem is corps are being wardecced and responding by logging off, or maybe even logging off and not returning.
Wars are never going to make all the people who are playing the wrong game happy. Even if we give them a safe, social space to play with us in the sandbox, some of them are going to complain that it isn’t “fair” that the people who take risks and offer themselves up as content get more reward then they do playing in their risk-averse, conservative way. It’s been this way since the beginning. The best we can hope for is they stick around and eventually learn how to deal with loss, and decide they want to compete with us for power and resources and grow as an Eve player, or perhaps find a way to enjoy the game in their content-averse way. There is no way to reward them equally as those playing the risker PvP game that Eve really is without completely gutting the competitive game that is Eve Online.
Social corps don’t do that though. They just uncouple the social elements of corporations from the competitive elements. They are perfectly compatible with a functioning PvP game. Invulnerable citadels, and highsec industry equally efficient to nullsec are not.
You can cater to casual players and should. Content should be very accessible, but rewards need to scale with risk. That is how the game must work and how it always has. Incursions pay more in lowsec where someone can shoot you with very little penalty. Industry is more efficient in wormholes where you can be evicted in a weekend and lose everything.
But CCP cannot give give everything the larger groups have had to carve out for themselves to the perfectly safe highsec casual, even if that means some percentage of the casuals are going to quit. They can give the casual players more content and space to play the game, but it has to come with lesser rewards and always will.
CODE, PIRAT and a few others are the top dogs of highsec. The dominant alphas of that region of space. Someone has to occupy the top spots in an ecosystem, and whoever is at the bottom of the food chain is going to be at the mercy of those at the top. That’s the reality of a competitive game like Eve. I say this not to claim that no change is necessary - iteration on the war/corp mechanics are urgently needed - but the fact someone is stronger than someone else in an open world PvP game is not a problem CCP needs to address.
Players who cannot deal with the fact that there are players or groups stronger/better/richer/bigger than them are not likely to be long-term Eve players. Maybe some of them who purely want to do PvE or immerse themselves in the lore can find a place ignoring the larger competitive game around them, but those that are trying to compete, but unable to accept the fact there are players higher up the ladder than them, aren’t going to last. There is nothing CCP can do to make ‘everyone a winner’ in a competitive PvP game like Eve and that is going to turn off large numbers of players who are used to having games declare them the ‘saviour of the universe’ and feed their egos.
And believe me CCP has tried. They have nerfed out so much of the competitive game in pursuit of these non-competitive players but to little avail, especially in highsec. Yet highsec is more lifeless than ever. It’s hard to definitively conclude what that means, but I think it safe to say that CCP’s attempt to straddle the line between a competitive game and one with mass appeal that makes everyone feel like a winner has failed. I’m not saying there isn’t some way to cater to both expectations in a sandbox game, but at least I will conclude that CCP hasn’t found that yet.
Wars need to be improved. Too many small fry are being needlessly chased out of the game. But that game is largely a competitive one, and is always going to favour the most organized and numerous groups. CCP cannot change that reality without throwing out the core idea of the game and risking a complete and total failure cascade.
No. Just the opposite, in fact. They want what literally everyone else wants. Why do people like killboards? Because it shows they did a thing. They had an impact. They mattered, even if for a moment. Why do people go out to null and get involved in empire building? Because by attaching themselves to that identity, they get a feeling of being one of the people who made things happen out there.
Large chunks of our lives aren’t anything we control. That’s been true of humanity from before we were humanity. What impact any one of us has on the world around us is diluted by the impact of 7.4b other people. Most MMOs computer games bank on that by letting you be the center of attention. You’re the hero. You’re running the sports team. You’re the guy with the gun (even if eveyone else is, too).
In almost every case, it’s a lie. You’re the hero… in a scripted story. You’re running the team… but when the season ends and a new one starts, you’re back to 0. You’re the guy with the gun, but wins and losses are ultimately irrelevant. Persistent rankings and the rise of professional e-sports changes that last one a little, but not much. There, the real sense of agency comes from the fact that what you do in the game matters outside of it.
In EVE… what you do matters. Full stop. You may be a tiny little piece of the puzzle, but every single player has the potential to be the next Mittani, or at least the next Sort Dragon. Your actions have consequences in an open-ended storyline that has no script except for the one every player is writing a piece of. That’s EVE’s whole schtick. It’s the essence of ‘EVE is Real’ and ‘I was there’, to say nothing of ‘The Butterfly Effect’.
So no… they’re just like everyone else.
Think about it: Why do you do what you do in EVE?
I do what I do[1], in large part, because it needs to be done. It needs to be done because it is something that directly affects the QoL experience of a lot of players, and I’m enough of a rampant egotist and control freak to not trust anyone else to do it right. I don’t want it screwed up… because it matters.
Relevance. It’s something we all need.
No, I’m not. I’m not asking for mechanics that radically change the nature of EVE by limiting fight sizes. I’m not even sure they could work, really. I’m asking for options that make what you do matter.
That doesn’t mean ‘you can win’. Maybe the best you can do is get some kind of concession from CONCORD to lower your taxes and fees for a period equal to the length of the war. Maybe what you can do that matters is just keep coming back afterwards so you get a payout for denying the attackers their kills and objectives.
There’s more ways to have an impact than just winning and losing. And if you don’t believe that… ask Leonidas. Ask Davy Crockett[2] and Jim Bowie. Ask the crew of the USS Arizona. Ask Stanislav Petrov, who never won a battle in his life, but may have been one of the most important people alive in the mid-1980s.
Relevance isn’t measures in wins and losses.
Almost forgot this: that ‘it needs to be done and someone needs to do it’ is why I started anchoring logi. Hell, it’s why I started flying logi. It’s why I built Repswarm, to teach other people to do my job. It’s why I agreed to join the fitting team, and ended up running it: because the line needs people who can do a good job on doctrine design. These things matter.
I originally had this as Daniel Boone, which was a derp on my part from their black-and-white TV shows being on right after one another on UHF tv when I was a kid in the 70s. Old age. Just because it’s better than dying doesn’t mean it’s fun.
For people to fight with each other they have to have will to do it.
Everyone is a bit different, there are only ideas that lead to common goals that are keeping people together. If these ideas are leading to goals that are unreachable, nobody will follow the idea. Propaganda leads to spread of idea but people still see what is the goal and how feasible it is. People are not stupid. Only they cant see everything sometimes. But with something like EVE, when you know the guys who you will be dighting with, theior killboards, their corp, its stupidly easy to check who is who.
So you have to give equal chances and make it consensual.
Why do they want to fight with each other? Why is there that will?
That’s the question I posed to PIRAT and highsec pilots alike that took me down this trail. ‘Why PvP in the first place? If it’s the excitement, could that be simulated with a good enough AI?’
Turns out, no, it can’t… because it’s the human contact that makes it important. It’s the ‘I mattered to him, just for a few moments, and he mattered to me.’ And that was true even when the attacker lost.
Again the wrong argument, even with the rigs you cannot compete, but you get within touching distance. I am stating that you cannot even do that.
Then you are going off topic for pushing the social corp as solving the issue, it does not as it is much deeper than that.
So the war deckers continue with no real risk, is that what you are saying. It is not about fairness, it is about game balance.
That is an opinion, and the issue is that war decs are killing player retention.
And social is not what rocks the boat of a lot of hisec players. It will make little real difference. I have never asked for invulnerable Citadels and I think the balance is correct in terms of the difference between indy bonuses, except that very few can get anywhere near that bonuses due to risk.
Never said otherwise.
Again never said otherwise.
Except that hisec is not the same in terms of mechanics and population, and yet the balance is so skewed againt the player base in hisec. Hisec is not supposed to have the same level of competitiveness, but in fact in a real sense its worse.
Totally disagree with this, Lucas Kelll in a thread closed down by the ISD explained in detail that ganking was a lot easier then it used to be, and I agree with that. And in fact those so called competitive players, and I would say they are not really competitive at all, unless you want to define 100% able people playing football against people with no feet as competitive. No they have a very easy life of it.
In effect letting ganking and war decs get so out of control has destroyed hisec. Hisec should not be a part of the game where people can farm casual players so easily and with such little risk. That is the issue and something that CCP needs to think about. I want to apply more risk to war deckers with this Propaganda Structure which will enable people to fight bvack and end the war decs not on the whim of the war deckers. It is something that will change attitudes.
Of course, but hisec is not really supposed to be the ultra competitive part of the game. I am not throwing out the core values of the game, I have pushed for the war dec system to largely stay as is, and that there is a strategic vulnerability which people have to blow up to end the war dec. Nothing I have said in terms of this is against the core value of the game.
