War Dec Roundtable - Saturday, January 5 at 1900 EVE

Council Of Stellar Management Assembly Hall
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You are cordially invited to join me and other CSM members for a round table to discuss potential ideas for the war dec revamp that CCP is currently working on. The focus of this roundtable is primarily on the views of the current highsec war dec community, in an effort to provide some ideas to CCP that will make the new system more balanced yet still retain EVE’s traditional risk vs. reward philosophy.

If you want to join, please join the War Dec Project’s discord https://discord.gg/6MTf4ZY. The roundtable will take place on voice comms as well as on their #csmroundtable room.

I look forward to discussing these issues - the roundtable should last one hour.

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I have a stupid work schedule, is there a way I can submit questions, suggestions or talking points prior to the roundtable?

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Feel free to put them in here.

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If I remember I’ll be there

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I have a feeling this will turn into a ramble, and be mildly incoherent…

Firstly, they need to be comprehensive, i.e., multiple aspects be evaluated before implementation. How will they affect low, high, null and WH corps. (Not that the CSM and devs dont do this, but I’ve seen a lot of opinions spouted off, and in my opinion, this not even appearing to be considered).

What other content generation do we have in EvE that is focused around war decs? Basically, its FW (for high and low sec), and I think this needs to be considered because there is an opportunity to kill two birds with 1 stone…

Perhaps require corps to join a faction if they place a structure in low sec? In theory it should encourage cooperation within FW, provide alternative objectives for opposing factions, other than orbiting sites. Although I’ve never participated in a structure bash, so it very well could be a ■■■■ idea…

I’ve read a lot of people saying the costs associated with war decing are prohibitive, encouraging people to join larger corps/alliances so they have targets, I think that in itself is problematic, because it makes those corps “stronger” in ability compared to maybe the 10-15 person corp they targeted.

Perhaps tie structure placement in space, with size of the individual corp, or whole alliance. Total corp/alliance membership (pilot) over a specific threshold requires their structures to be placed in lower security status systems. This pushes the larger corps/alliances into low/null, and gives smaller corps the opportunity to grow, learn about structure placement in high sec, and fight wars amongst each other… however this would need to be combined with some sort of limit on structures in high sec (not low), so as to almost force conflict amongst the smaller high sec corps over resources.

Again, maybe a ■■■■ idea, but in my opinion there are a crap ton of stations in high sec in a lot of systems, and virtually no reason to war dec to remove them, because you can place one too…

Maybe when a war dec is declared you must select an objective which is tied to cost? It may be mundane, but “Destroy X ships from opposing corporation” or “Destroy X type/# of structure(s)”. Once the objective is met, the war ends, regardless of who achieved theirs first. I think there should also be some sort of “reward” for achieving it as well, maybe a corp wide medal, something to acknowledge they “won” the war.

There should, in my opinion, be a better way of finding war targets as well… do locator agents need to be re-evaluated ? There should be a way for small mercenary corporations to exist and flourish… not 100% certain how the mechanic works, but it could act as a viable ISK sink as well. Say for example someone wants to hire a corp to help, it would cost X ISK per pilot in the hired corp/alliance with a percentage going to CONCORD. This would cause it to scale upward for larger corps/alliances. Again, it may work this way now, but I have no idea… personally I dont see why merc corps would need a structure to be hired anyway, but that could be exploited in a way I havent thought of.

I may think of more, or could help build on a few things of others share ideas, just know this is coming from a player that first started in 2006… has played off and on since then (mostly off), has been the target of a war dec that essentially made me quit, not because of the war dec, but because virtually no one else in the corp would fleet up to fight… I’ve been involved in very few PvP activities, would like to be, but have no interest or intention of joining a large corp or alliance to do so. In my opinion there should be some sort of progression from high sec into WH, Null, and Low sec. Social corps are the start, they get to know one another, probably experience a few ganks in high sec because ■■■■ happens… decide they want to place a structure because they want better refining, or cheaper tax on customs offices for PI… this opens them up to fighting over resources within the system/region they base in, etc.

TL:DR - Create conflict, rather than discourage by setting up some sort of progression that provides motivation for all corps to declare a war at some stage of their development. Resources seem to be the logical choice, but system could be as well if FW is taken into account. Keep the structure requirement, but limit based on security status of system or size of corp/alliance. Allow merc corps to exist as an entity rather than disband or join larger corps/alliances.

Take it all with a grain of salt, I’m still experiencing a lot for the first time but would like to experience it all (eventually), rather than getting thrust into content I’m not yet equipped to handle, as I believe that creates an artificial barrier for newer players, and would like to see the player base grow while maintaining the “nothing is 100% safe” attitude as much as possible.

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ill be there.

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KISS … remove formal wardecs, no artificial goals, instead expand on the suspect/flags mechanics around structures. The target design shall be that fights about structures in highsec work as similar as possible as in lowsec.

We need to leave that road of more and more isolated and anti-sandbox gameplay.

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How do you stop a war if the aggressor won’t engage, won’t accept surrender or will not give terms for surrender?

Please consider escalating war dec fee; first two weeks same price, then escalate. There is a saying in my country, “sh*t or get off the pot.”

Please discuss ways to make the aggressor engage.

High sec mercs; the true carebears of EVE!

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@Brisc_Rubal
Any chance you could have a sticky post for the next 72 hours up in the other parts of the forum to increase awareness and turnout for the roundtable?
How about adding it to the MoTD in general help for the next 3 days and announcements the day of the event?
Otherwise, I think you’ll be still getting the same ideas/views from the same group of people you have been talking to in the wardec discord channel. ( some of which might actually have some possabilities as part of the solution)

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I can ask. In the meantime, tell your friends.

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I’ve put this idea forward a couple times. It’s an escalating non-binary hostility system.

The idea is to 1) allow the hostile group to impose penalties on a target, such as tariffs and sanctions, with the caveat that 2) only the target group would be able to declare an open shooting war.

This would allow a lot of room for dev creativity in the types of sanctions the aggressors could impose. Ideas include economic stuff like penalties to citadels, or combat sanctions like ewar-only wars. The non-binary nature could give a lot more options for both aggressors and targets.

Some other key benefits:
-lots of knobs for balancing the wardec mechanic (different sanctions could have the costs adjusted based on the power disparity of the groups, or even the statistical popularity and effectiveness of the sanction)
-wardec mechanics become useful for non-combat oriented groups
-targets no longer get sucked into a shooting war they themselves didn’t declare
-non-binary nature means the target more options than logging off or dying
-non-binary balancing means aggressors would be incentivized to apply the most effective (expensive) sanctions against targets that would provide the most benefit (killmails, reduced competition, etc.) making smaller groups less desirable targets
-gives a stake to everyone involved, allowing conflict to be more inclusive than the citadels-only mechanic and meaningful for everyone involved

Admittedly this doesn’t necessarily address the how a target can force an end to the sanctions. But maybe that could be done through scaling the costs, or the design of the sanctions themselves such as making them location specific.

I just want to add that I feel the worst thing done to the wardec system was the removal of the watchlist. Not only did it not protect inexperienced targets, it made it harder for experienced targets to fight back, further incentivizing the “just unsub” option. Tools for making the fighting fun (like the watchlist) are also needed, but they should be built on a foundation of the war being meaningful.

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Interesting,

I would be largely interested, but maybe a more neutral ground like the CSM discord would be better?

I say that because I am obviously banned from the WarDec discord and that for reasons that are largely arbitrary in my opinion.

So, I would be interested in participating, but if I can’t join the discord, I can’t.

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I’ll try to make it because it sounds interesting, but here are a couple things if I don’t:

First I like the new “toggle switch” for corps turning on the ability to declare and be declared war on. I say toggle switch because most pvp corps are going to maintain multiple structures to prevent them from being kicked out of the war, and griefing/pirate/mercenary corps aren’t going to blow up small mining corp structures because that would take away their targets to blow up. Structures are purely a toggle switch. But this system will allow smaller corps to grow to the point where they are comfortable engaging in war and taking their corp to that next level.

The one problem I see with this new mechanic is that corps could use the mechanic as a shield to protect their ganking corp from retaliation wars. I mean they could gank all they want from a corp without structures and only have to worry about empire forces and not retaliatory wars.

What I’ve found is a lot of talk is focused on the aggressor. Lowering the war dec fees, making it easier to find targets, allowing the aggressor to set win scenarios. Those things work IF the aggressor is going against another PvP corp, players that WANT to PvP and will ENGAGE in PvP. But lets face it, in my experience in high-sec the majority of wars are mercenary, pirate or griefing corps engaging mining corps, corps that have NO interest in PvP. These mining corps will rather logoff for short wars and leave the game for long wars, yes there are exceptions and they build terrible combat ships that insta-pop to their aggressor, the aggressor might even congratulate them on trying but the mining corp will be both out isk from their destroyed combat ships, mining and industry operations. Rinse and repeat and you can hopefully start to see how high-sec wars become an annoyance.

So if you want non-PvP players to engage in PvP style play then you’re going to have to make the reward for such an engagement high enough to make it worth their while. Else it doesn’t matter if you create “win” scenarios of destroying X number of ships, or Y number of stations. They are not going to bite, because they don’t want to PvP, period.

So what are some of my suggestions?

Over the years what I’ve learned to not like are pointless wars. To me these are the wars which just keep on going and going with absolutely no engagement. So my suggestion is that if there are no ships blown up during a war, the corp gets protection from wars for two weeks. I’d say just from the aggressor but lets face it, they’ll just declare war with an alt corp, because they can. This gives the non-pvp corp time to recoup before having to deal with another annoying pointless war. Of course I’d stipulate that if this non-pvp corp does engage in pvp activities by blowing up a ship anywhere in EVE that timer of protection instantly runs out.

In fact, I don’t see why the corp would have to wait a week, if wars are suppose to add content and no one undocks for 48 hours or no ships are blown up within 48 hours, why should the next 120 hours be any different? Again it’s a pointless war, no content is being added and the war should automatically end as soon as possible for everyones sake.

Declaring war should be a gamble for the aggressor, it is in the real world, it should be in EVE. Sure let the aggressor setup “win” scenarios when declaring war, but if those scenarios fail by the end of the week of the war the aggressor should be penalized somehow and the target corporation protected somehow and those penalties and protections should be known to the aggressor when setting the “win” scenario. With this type of system the cost of war could be lowered.

On a pvp vs. pvp stand point however, if they were to integrate some form of win scenario system when declaring war, perhaps corps could add ISK to a win pot and if the win goals are achieved then the winner gets the pot. That could be incentive for those types of corps to go against each other, heck it might even tempt some non pvp corps to engage if the aggressor made it lucrative enough.

I’m not against wars, I’m against pointless wars and I’m against wars where the only winner even when the loser wins is the aggressor, because normally it is only because the aggressor decided to end renewing the war. If you don’t fight, your corp crumbles over time from staying docked. If you do fight, you peak the aggressors interest and they keep the war going until they get bored. Unless you’re a pvp corp, then it’s different, but lets face it these changes aren’t for pvp corps they are for corps that don’t want to pvp or at least want to avoid it as much as possible while allowing pvp engage other pvp corps at their hearts delight.

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I think you should also have a spectrum of war intensities available to chose from which varies objectives,ship class used, and cost to implement. You will get more people interested in conflict if it is not too costly and, more importantly, fun (or at least not tedious) to do. Plenty of PvE corps don’t want to undock only to face far more talented pilots in tricked out ships who then proceed to destroy the defender corps ships quickly, perhaps removing weeks of hard work by the loser. You offer them a mechanic where perhaps a lower intensity war is declared using frigates and destoyers, a far less asset loss risk to a defender, and you might see more players engaging. Combine it with war mechanics were war victory conditions may include mining amounts, a set number of missions run, or delivering manufactured goods to any trade hub ( including secondary and tertiary hubs) and suddenly these decced corps might see a possible FUN way to engage with the attackers. Offering only the choice to the defender of an almost no win situational war, doing activites that you don’t want to do, while risking much of what you worked hard to obtain or else quit/stay docked is a blueprint for disaster (as your data mining has shown). CCP must offer more choices than merely a binary one.

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Banned for spamming and ignoring everyone you mean?

Afaik, you’re the only person that got banned from there, and there’s been a lot of vocal people (lol)

@Brisc_Rubal I’ll be there, but only listening for reasons :wink:

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I have something on sadly so will not be able to make it, but I would strongly advise you to try to get together a group of defenders or victims to talk about war decs with the view to finding something more engaging and adding to Eve as a game that suits more casual hisec players.

I would strongly advise against forcing defenders to pay fines and you really do need to look at the defensive abilities of Upwell structures in hisec as they suck big time. You might want to keep the idea of being only able to be war decked if you have a structure, but to be able to war dec you must have a structure in hisec which is known to all as in where it is located.

I have given a number of suggestions in the past which I know that you @Brisc_Rubal have read. The idea of a structure that is killable easily by even indy players is something that you need to aim at, something that a fleet of noobs in a load of thrashers can keep throwing themselves at to kill so as to end the war dec. That would be the most optimal way to make war decs engaging for the victims, something they can shoot at any point in time with no reinforcement timer that when it is destroyed ends the war dec.

In that way you can open up war decs to be against all corps and alliances again and don’t be put off by the war deckers crying about this being too easy, it is not.

Good luck.

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Hi there,

I am Lord Alarik.
Playing in HiSec PvP merc Alliance - PIRAT.
here are my thoughts on problem -

Before starting to change something you need to be absolutely sure, what is the problem.
Can you please describe, why wardecs should be changed?
Any clear reason for this exept “OMG my ship was killed in HiSec area!!! I am gonna ragequit this game right now!!!”?
Initially, you could avoid the wars by staying in NPC-corp.
And for this you had your 11% taxes.
Now you made a life of PvE players much more easier - they can stay in corp without structures and enjoy being protected from the wars.
And they do not have to pay any taxes for this.
What next?
Have a special CONCORD ships babysit every carebear in HiSec area?
Limit all weapons in HiSec to mining lasers?
Can you specify, what and why it needs any changes?
And may be, to talk to HiSec PvP players if there is something they want to tell you about HiSec wars?

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Hi Everyone,

Forgive my formatting or other common errors - I’ve been playing EVE off and on for 13 years and this actually is my first forum posting. College, creating kids, changing professions, and many other events have slowed me down and left me inactive for long periods of time. Anyway, I’ve been keeping pace as best I can, but there is one feature I would like to see return - buddy listing without having to ask permission. Us high sec care bears (I can hear the groans - hush for a damn minute) , used to create war target lists as an early warning system as well as to hunt down those pirates who felt so bold. Unfortunately, this was removed and from what I have read, it was mainly removed because null sec cap ship pilots were being monitoring and it was considered “unfair”. I see now that Goonswarm has 3 CSM members all by itself and I think that is not a fair representation either, but I digress. I hope you reconsider adding this function as it could also bolster the whole bounty system too, and obviously war decs. Hard to hunt bountied pilots down if you have to friend them first…kind of ridiculous don’t you agree?

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I don’t understand why you guys don’t leave hisec if you like PVP so much. Pretty much every other game would consider 3 year-old characters ganking newbies to be degenerate gameplay.

The thing about talking to Hisec PVP players about wardecs is that there aren’t any legitimate Hisec PVPers. Just people who like shooting 2 day old characters with their multi-billion isk t3c.

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I do not understand people who like running.
They just spending their time for nothing ending up with wet smelly clothes and some of them are dying from heart attacks.
But people keep running no matter if I understand it or not.
Same thing goes for HiSec PvP.
Personally I like it.
And I do not care if someone understands this or not.
It has nothing to do with Low-Null Sec PvP.
Comparing HiSec PvP with Low-Null PvP is like comparing hunting with army.
In both cases you gonna have your rifle, but there is a huge difference.
As for “T3 equipment bla-bla-bla” - it the same like going to your local hunting club and starting to say - “drop your guns, go hunt with knife and spear”.

Anyway, CCP can you please comment, what is the point in wardec changes?
I do not see any, unless taking into account endless complains “My ship was killed in HiSec, remove wardecs pls”.