Tora! I don't think you should be doing this

… and I don’t actually understand why you do it …
… and seriously don’t agree with it AT ALL …
… but nonetheless …

R.I.P. Marmite

o7

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Why? they just gave more incentive then ever before to form mega groups and made it all about N+1

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Yes.

Sorry for asking questions back:

  1. Why would anyone believe doing what CCP wants you to do is a good thing?
    1a) How is it not dumb to do what CCP wants you to do?
  2. Have you thought about how this is going to work out in a year, or two?
  3. When, in EVE history, did PvPers in highsec grouping up forming bigger blocks actually benefit from that in the long run, not getting hit hard yet again by CCP, who created the situation in the first place?
  4. How is this going to make anything better for actually anyone, including PIRAT?

The more people they gather, the less diversity there will be. The less diversity there will be, the easier it will be for CCP to just nerf it into the ground yet again. Remember that the changes aren’t meant for mercenaries at all, but are aimed at the “mainstreamers” and “little guys”. No one at CCP really cares about the mercs.

  • How can less diversity be a good thing?
  • When everyone who’s skilled joins the big block, they won’t have any skilled enemies to fight.
  • The bigger they are, the less likely people will want to fight them.
  • The bigger the group, the more wannabe-tough-guys will join it, because big groups attract low life losers.

Based on EVE’s history, they’re just going to get starved of content and quit eventually. If they’re incapable of figuring out a better option than the most predictable one then it’s going to be inevitable that - eventually - they’ll be blaming CCP about the crappy situation they themselves created.

This isn’t real life. In real life I’d agree with grouping up, because there’d be evolutionary pressure. In the game, though, there is no such thing for them. They’re already big enough to be unstoppable. It’s not going to end well, and I will shove an “i told you so” right into everyone’s faces in a few years from now.

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First off CCP aren’t getting their end goal by this. This is a predictable reaction to increasing difficulty but one CCP fails to ever see coming. Its making the system even more oppressive for structure owners in highsec.

As for the rest we are consumers. Its not ours to fix design flaws. When the game no longer suits we move in to one that does

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What’s their end goal, according to you?

That’s nonsense. There is no way that they don’t know what they’re causing. You’re mistaking their willingness to do things you believe to be stupid as actual stupidity. The saying that one should not attribute malicious intent to something that can be described with stupidity is backwards, only helping those who have malicious intentions.

Of course, “malicious” is a stretch here, but the point stands nonetheless.

They know EXACTLY what they’re doing, what the outcome is and how to move forward with that. You’re also completely ignoring that they’re having all the time in the world to look at how things develop and can react accordingly to their long term goals.

And here’s where you stop thinking. Instead of stopping, do what I do and go draw further conclusions about what’s going to happen with that in the long run.

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I’m building a clock here; my point is in the last block.
CCP’s goal is to maximize value to their customers while maximizing their profit. To accomplish this, CCP’s product, EvE, must be of the highest value to its consumers in order to maintain their business and attract new customers without sacrificing profitability. CCP’s product currently appeals to a niche of spreadsheet and risk loving gamers while technically competing for the same customer base as Elite Dangerous, Star Trek Online, and Star Citizen. These games, however, do not feature the same kind of hostile atmosphere as EvE. As such, they are not direcy competing for the same customers that EvE uniquely appeals to. Every change that CCP makes which dilutes their product’s unique appeal invariably shifts its target audience composition to be less the specific group it appeals to and more the gen pop of spaceship mmo’ers. This is dangerous, because EvE is not as good of a game as Elite Dangerous or Star Citizen. They are widely considered to have more engaging moment to moment to moment mechanical gameplay.
What keeps EvE interesting in broad strokes is the ever present risk of loss. Every change that CCP makes which dilutes this risk of loss is a change which shifts their target consumer base to intersect with E:D and S.C.
This is stupid.
In the short run, the change to make wardecs a game of citadels will pressure wardec groups to consolidate to cost share while changing their targets exclusively to citadel owning corps. Taken together, these two changes will lead to a cabal of citadel destroyers clearing highsec space of all citadels not owned by groups capable of fighting off the cabal. This would lead, I think, to a highsec populated by a few large groups able to field the numbers necessary to fight off those groups.

If CCP’s motivation for the wardec changes was to make highsec safer, then that is stupid.
If CCP’s motivation for the changes was to prevent small groups from being competitive in highsec, I would say that is also stupid because it lessens the game’s value to the individual consumer.

I cannot envision this war change as anything other than stupid, whether from motivation to make highsec safer or make it exclusively the playground of massive powerblocs.

What do you see happening in the long run? Why is CCP doing this?

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I like to say that people know what they want, but don’t know what they would be happy with.

You can’t sell a product on the basis that a customer will enjoy it in actual fact. That sounds reasonable, but it is not actually possible. What you can do is sell a product on the basis that a customer believes they will enjoy it, regardless of the actual fact of the matter.

The structure wardecs are pretty clearly aimed at having war targets on the field for both sides that can’t be squirrled away when the war goes badly. Both sides have to commit something as a potential loss. I do not disagree with this notion outright, but I don’t think that the change has much practical benefit for either side, while still significantly increasing the barrier to entry for highsec PvP.

The risk adverse will always be risk adverse. Starting with a body adverse to risk, every time you increase the required risk, you’re intensifying the aversion to taking that risk.

Highsec mercenary groups are the bane of my existence (in Eve), but I am none the less disheartened at the potential loss of a familiar face. There are too few identities in Eve as it is.

At least, I hope CCP reconsiders requiring structures to join wars as allies. I think new groups need some way to cut their teeth on PvP in highsec for little to no cost. They have little to lose and so less fear to lose it. These are your players who are not yet taught to be risk averse, and I think key to rebuilding that interesting war torn game people would like to play, even if they don’t yet know they’d like to be playing it.

Pleasing people is a very difficult thing when you can’t please them in both their present and future incarnations with the same decision.

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I really don’t think you’ll need to wait that long.

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I completely agree. Most citadels in high sec are not much more than a novelty item. I sold my Azbel when the war dec changes took effect and moved my operations to an npc station. I produce around 30 bil of products per week and to be perfectly honest, it’s not a great difference cost wise.

The time to manufacture items is what hurts the most when using an npc station, but considering I can set 30 day production runs in complete safety, I don’t mind.

Bashing and exploiting citadels in high sec will get old very quickly, then what are these big war dec corps going to do? They will wither away from boredom is my bet.

Structure decs were never a good idea imo, it just pushes wardecks into who’s got the biggest most active group and leave basically all the new guys with even less experience of life and death in eve online. Doesn’t create any sort of niche gameplay, just more of the same.

Its like having a sandbox with two grains of sand and telling people ‘‘hey, you can pick which one to play with, but you gotta share it with 300 people’’

Also neutral reps criminal timer is an annoyingly short sighted, crappy “fix”.

Honestly starting to think if CCP can’t be bothered to come up with a decent, well thought, dynamic sort of mechanic they may as well just not bother at all and shut down the server.

Maybe a bit harsh… but still…

The neutral reps change needed doing. It gave too much advantage to groups with lots of alts to game high sec.

The war decs… structures is good, but there needed to be asymmetric win conditions as well. such as continuing to mine while under wardec. (which then gets ships out in space also who are war targets to get shot, yay people taking risks).

No, it isnt; it doesnt do anything except relegate the whole thing to one side of highsec. It does nothing for the game in terms of new player development or fun and it fails to address any real issues with highsec pvp highjinks.

And no, neutral rr didnt need to be taken out completely - if they can do scaling reps with fax im pretty damn certain a well paid programmer can do the same for highsec neutral logistics.

TBH i probably couldn’t stress enough the things these people COULD do but arent, i mean the folks at ccp have got to be some pretty smart cookies… even if they aint firing on all cylinders.

Hardly anyone in nullsec wants to bother bashing structures, and they can use bigger fleets and bigger ships - i dont think hs pvpers are much different for the most part.

Like making the shield vulnerable all the time and putting in a low power mode too, I think you were calling for that?

Well actually this is a predictable move by the war deckers, however Sol seems to have detailed reasons why this is not going to last which is exactly my view.

Because CCP listened to people saying that you have to fight to defend your stuff in hisec and that one man corps was wrong and Eve is a team game. And that carebears need incentive to fight, you got what you wanted. However will the carebears pay ball or give up. Looking at my own attitude as a guide, those NPC stations work for me…

Very much needed, you get it.

I think you are right too.

You got to where I am, NPC stations work fine.

That is my bet too…

Just for the record, while in the war dec I never wanted to limit the war decs just to entities who own structures, but I pushed the concept of all entities having the ability to do five war decs without having a structure. To have more that five would require a structure housing a Concord office which would give locator and online statues similar to the way that locator agents work and allow unlimited war decks. But if the citadel housing that office was destroyed all but five war decs end.

I foresaw what the issue would be, but many people in the war dec discord were unable to see why I suggested this.

I agree, I explained to Brisc why this was not a good idea for hisec defenders as they should use this to be able to combine against war deckers, and Brisc actually picked up on it and went back to CCP.

I am sitting here with a wait and see told you attitude…

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That is not a good reason for neutral reps to be left alone.
For Neutral Reps, you are dueling, I turn up and shoot you, I am criminal, Concord kills me. Why should I not also get killed if I apply reps instead, why are reps suddenly less significant than DPS, considering a Rep ship can counter several DPS depending on the targets resistance anyone would think reps are even more important.

Yes, Defenders need ways to work together, but that is an edge case on the whole atm, not the primary use of neutral reps, which is by attackers or baiters.
Maybe this change can encourage people to form larger corps rather than a tiny alliance, then they can form a temporary war alliance with other defending corps. And then they can share reps just fine. Yes it does mean a defending alliance can’t join another defending alliance. But on the whole, anyone making an alliance should treat it as a declaration of size and independence.

Rep ships might = 3 or more DPS ships however neutral counters to rep ships = 3 or more of those rep ships. Seems pretty balanced to me and what station games revolve around. The more prepared wins

No, the more alts wins. Which is not good for the game. And needed fixing. It was too easy to screw over people using the loophole because ‘reps aren’t as bad as DPS’. Now Reps are regarded the same as DPS.
I don’t get why this is such a surprise to people, shooting people has always been understandably criminal in all these cases.

Yes, a few holes get left where reps would make sense, like 2 defenders vs 1 attacker in a war dec, but those holes are better to have than the old holes, where the defenders still get screwed over by their logi going suspect anyway, and everyone who isn’t a 10 year guru of EVE gets screwed over by surprise neutral reps and 20 alt players.

It is a good reason if you want to make working together by separate defenders part of your goal. Which is what I am on about.

I am not interested in duelling, only war decs in terms of defenders.

Making it so allies have to have a structure plus removing neutral RR with CONCORD screwed up easy low impact allying for defenders. If it was me I would have left neutral reps as was and have consistently said that.

Yes I think that is the hope of CCP, but as you quite rightly point out numerous times in other threads and I love you to bits for it that structures need beefing up in hisec in terms of defences and bonuses to make it worthwhile. At the moment they are not.

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It won’t fix it. I promise in the first implementation there will be a work around because the people doing it are the same ones who find every work around and dirty trick

You can’t design a system around only one sub aspect of the entire system. Most defenders already would not cross rep because of going suspect. It’s unfortunate yes, it is an area that CCP need to look further into, but neutral reps needed their current treatment for all the other areas.
Allies needing a structure was needed to prevent hiding everyone in a safe corp and only allying in when you think you can save the structure. It’s unfortunate but this is EVE, people abuse everything.

I am disappointed they put only PvP objectives in for the defender rather than PvE that places them at risk from the wardeccer to win as well. That aspect means not much will change.

At which point they get banned for finding an exploit to work around a Concordable offence. Which is a bannable thing now, finding ways to evade Concord. A criminal flag is a very clear, simple thing, not easy to avoid.