War Mechanics Need to Be Reviewed

[Faylee_Freir]

@Lucas_Kell

Why? To the player at the end it’s the same. Whether I’m in a corp paying 11% tax and not interacting or I’m in a corp paying 5% tax and not interacting it’s not really that different.

No it’s not.

Let’s say everytime you take a breath you are charged some sum of money. The money automatically vanishes from your bank account and there’s no leader or figure head to explain what it is used for or where it goes to. You just chock it up to the cost of breathing.

Next let’s paint the same picture except this time instead of automatically vanishing from your bank account, your supreme leader makes an appearance, holds his hand out, and takes your money. The money is clearly going to another person yet you have no idea what is happening to the money. It’s clearly being used or hoarded by someone.

The answer to questions like are important: Where does the corp tax go? What is it used for? Why is there no transparency? Why does it appear that leadership is keeping ISK for themselves while doing little to help mold and assist me as a new player? Why am I even playing this game?

They are questions that a player in an NPC doesn’t have to ask.m because as it’s been said, the ISK vanishes. The example I’m painting is one where being in a shitty and terrible corp based on mass recruiting new players to exploit them for personal wealth while providing little in return is a reality. It’s been happening in Eve Online and it still is a thing today.

Please explain how you justify these predatory actions of those that are often first contact for our new players?

[safira_jomita]

@Lucas_Kell you forgot to mention those who shoot stuff in trade hubs and call themselves ELITE PVPERS xD

[Faylee_Freir]

@Lucas_Kell

you are throwing a tantrum about is that you don’t get to wardec new players as much as you used to. Go play Fortnite or something.

I’m not interested in killing new players at all.

[Commander_Kane]

Why do all threads with Lucas in it devolve into pointless tit for tat discussions. Granted he is not the only one… there a few people on these forums that has to have the last word, no matter how little people care.

I am out of this thread.

[Knowledgeminer]

@Faylee_Freir

The example I’m painting is one where being in a shitty and terrible corp based on mass recruiting new players to exploit them for personal wealth while providing little in return is a reality.

FWIW, this was actually the least of concerns in the recent case of ICANP. The nature of the game and the ignorance of many players, especially (and understandably) newbies, makes it incredibly easy for someone like Sabus Narian to manipulate them for purposes other than merely scamming them in game.

There does definitely need to be ways to deal with corps like that, but the good news is that there already are, and no changes are really required to the wardec mechanics for that reason.

[Brisc_Rubal]

@Faylee_Freir

Yes this matters. When the figure at the top cares more about collecting the tax from new players that were obtained by sending out loads of unsolicited mails it is a problem. Are you just posturing for the sake of it? There’s been plenty told publicly about these groups.

If the players who join these corps would prefer to send their taxes to the guy at the top than giving them back to an NPC corp, I see zero wrong with that. Nobody is holding a gun to their heads.

@Faylee_Freir

Except it does matter when the structures cost peanuts and there’s systems littered with them.

This is a fundamental problems with citadels, not with the war dec changes or these social corps.

@Faylee_Freir

Does that reflect on the quality of the experience or rather that within minutes of creating a pilot, a new player find himself spammed with a mail telling him he should join them. It would be great they say! Lots of things that new players want to hear!

The members of those corps can decide for themselves if they are getting a quality experience. It’s the height of hubris for us to say “these poor newbros are being taken advantage of” because they joined a corp that we would never join.

@Faylee_Freir

If you look at the average player count, there’s no way that the first mentioned group is helping CCP retain new players. I will be the first to say that Eve Online isn’t a game for everyone, but it’s real comical how we had this revelation that wars were driving new players away… yet here you are presented with an alliance that exhibits predatory and neglectful behavior, but you choose to make an exception and praise them.

What the predatory behavior? That they’re mass accepting recruits? Yeah, Horde does that too. That they’re being neglected? I have no evidence of that. If folks are being neglected, then they’ll leave. Like I said, there’s no one holding a gun to these guys heads.

[z0ra_Berg]

@Commander_Kane

I am out of this thread.

By doing so you’re silently supporting his toxic behaviour and nothing ever moves forward. You don’t need to run away, you simply need to stop eating the bait.

[Elaniera]

@Brisc_Rubal

Go watch the show and you can draw your own conclusions about whether I’ve faithfully represented what they told us.

Just to put a slightly different view forward. CCP missed the mark in the wardec changes.

Not the aspect of introducing social corps and providing a safe haven for players that want to be immune from wardecs. That is perfectly fine.

The pre-change wardec mechanics were broken. But aside from the safe haven, has much changed, to make the mechanics engaging for those that want to engage in that playstyle?

Prior to the changes, CCP Larrikin pointed out 4 major statistics:

The impact of the affect on activity is highlighted by your own comment in the CSM minutes - “Brisc Rubal noted that the numbers here were so stark, it would justify immediately removing war decs as a mechanic and promising a fix after the fact.”

However, in the 39974 wars up to a couple of days ago since the changes started in December 2018:

• Wars that involve a defender kill: 6% (just 2449 wars)
• Number of corps/alliances responsible for 50% of wars: 6 (3 groups alone are almost the full 50%)

P I R A T is the one at the top there.

The current 50% of all wars breaks down at:

Group	Wars
P I R A T	7389
Hell Dawn	1589
Hog Hitmen	993
Pirates Of New Eden (P I R A T)	897
Marmite (P I R A T)	811
Hell House (Hell Dawn)	672
WeR4	653
Pirates Of New Eden 2 (P I R A T)	591
Jedi knight Meditation universe X	527
Jita Holding Inc.	424
The Clown Show Crew (P I R A T)	374
Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse (P I R A T)	332
Danger Gnomes (P I R A T)	331
…
…

R I 0 T is the next group, and they are dead now (no active wars since April 2019). P I R A T represent almost 1 in every 3 wars by themself now when you sum up their different groups (that join and leave the alliance for different contracts, etc.)

Some of the previously active groups have left the game all together.

At the same time, defenders aren’t taking up the “if we have a reason to fight, we will” message that was a big talking point of proposals and part of CCP’s stated aims in changing the wardecs, as mentioned in this devblog and the others:

One of the constant frustration points among both sides of war declarations has always been the lack of conflict seen in many wars. As much as possible we want to encourage the types of wars that will generate pvp rather than one or both sides staying docked.
…
The most significant and expansive of our upcoming changes are currently planned for the May release. The May changes are intended to provide clearer and more specific goals for defenders in war declarations,

Plotting the wars against kills:

• 1 in 3 wars has an aggressor get a kill (lot’s on 1 kill structure wars)
• 1 in 17 wars has a defender get a kill (and far fewer kills)

Those wars with lots of defender kills are related to the Perimeter games between nullsec groups and not highsec kills for the most part (eg. Goons v Horde war resulted in 24073 kills for Goons v 16018 kills for Horde and >90% of the kills were outside highsec and just normal pvp activities).

So eliminating as much of that as possible, the ratio of attacker kills v defender kills hasn’t moved. It’s still close to 105:1

The only real affect of the changes has been the contribution towards player activity and retention. That is good. I’m not knocking that. Just lamenting that the focus was stated to be about overcoming “constant frustration points among both sides of war declarations”.

It’s only done that for one side. It’s arguably left the other side more frustrated than ever.

There’s still a lot of room for CCP to actually deliver on what they stated were the full goals, but now that they have moved onto other things, wardecs just get the tick in the box - that’s done, next project.

Meanwhile, the landscape of wars will continue to receive complaints because the hub humping hasn’t really changed for the most part, and the mechanics work against smaller groups and hunters, that used to offer good services to corporations, and engaging gameplay.

Hopefully it won’t take another 8 years for CCP to actually design something good.

[Nicolai_Serkanner]

@Commander_Kane

Why do all threads with Lucas in it devolve into pointless tit for tat discussions.

That’s Kell for you.

[Faylee_Freir]

This, pretty much. Your post sums up how lots of people feel in the Wardec community. My fellow forum warriors here and donkey-brain’d Redditors seems to skip over or not care when “one of us” says what you posted.

[Faylee_Freir]

@Lucas_Kell

The wardec community bring it on themselves. If you want decent gamplay, don’t play like a douche. Pick a few targets that actually fight back rather than a thousand targets with no interest in wars. The wardec community tears basically come down to “we want to kill noobs but they don’t want us too, make them have to be killed by us”. Just grow a pair, learn how to actually fight and take on targets with a similar thirst for blood.

True I agree that a lot of problems are self-created. The problem is that you outgrow where you operate as you have more and more success, and in this case where do Highsec mercenaries progress?

For a lot of us it isn’t that we enjoy killing new players. We enjoy the mechanics of Highsec. Being able to have a 100b scrap in Battleships over a structure timer isn’t something that would ever happen in the Eve Online of today in any other area of space (maybe except wormholes). In Lowsec and Nullsec we couldn’t fight in Frigates without being overwhelmed by Capitals and I’m just not interested in that.

That’s why I am an advocate for a healthier and better pvp environment in Highsec… to draw in players and groups that can contend with us.

[Faylee_Freir]

@Lucas_Kell

You’re not really highsec mercs though, that’s the problem. You’re not being hired to have thousands of wars against people with no interest in fighting, you’re doing that because it’s easy gameplay. I would say that if your goal is to be a merc then you should be aiming to be hired for specific goals, in which case the amount the enemy fights back is irrelevant, and if you’re just looking for fights then going after targets that actually matter and will be defended would be a good choice.

True, we don’t get paid for most of our wars. Tell me though, if we only put wars in on contracts were paid for… do you think there’s be a reason to login daily? What would our activity and content look like?

@Lucas_Kell

Then stop deliberately targeting them. Honestly, you’d get a lot more positivity from the rest of the highsec community if you didn’t for the most part wardec groups with no ability to defend themselves.

We aren’t deliberately targeting them. Point us to the wars where we are deliberately targeting them.

@Lucas_Kell

but there are also things like market hubs which people do care about.

Market hubs worth fighting over aren’t targets for us as we are blue with the owners.

@Lucas_Kell

But that’s not what you’re demonstrating here. Here you’ve pointed to a large alliance who are not interested in fights and said they should be forced to either fight or split up because they aren’t feeding you content.

That’s not been my point at all. I don’t recall ever saying that.

[Brisc_Rubal]

@Elaniera

The pre-change wardec mechanics were broken. But aside from the safe haven, has much changed, to make the mechanics engaging for those that want to engage in that playstyle?

That really wasn’t the focus of the changes.

@Elaniera

The impact of the affect on activity is highlighted by your own comment in the CSM minutes - “Brisc Rubal noted that the numbers here were so stark, it would justify immediately removing war decs as a mechanic and promising a fix after the fact.”

This was related to the impact of a war dec on player retention - and it was never about the retention of the people doing the war decs. It was retention of players being decced.

@Elaniera

• Wars that involve a defender kill: 6% (just 2449 wars)
• Number of corps/alliances responsible for 50% of wars: 6 (3 groups alone are almost the full 50%)

From 4% to 6% represents a 50% increase - that’s pretty good.

From 5 to 6 represents a more than 10% increase - that’s also pretty good.

You are never going to get sudden, massive shifts towards everybody suddenly become war deccers. Why? Because most people who want to PvP aren’t wasting their time in high sec, navigating cumbersome rulesets when they can go to lowsec or nullsec and get as much non-consensual PvP as they can find.

@Elaniera

Those wars with lots of defender kills are related to the Perimeter games between nullsec groups and not highsec kills for the most part (eg. Goons v Horde war resulted in 24073 kills for Goons v 16018 kills for Horde and >90% of the kills were outside highsec and just normal pvp activities).

So eliminating as much of that as possible, the ratio of attacker kills v defender kills hasn’t moved. It’s still close to 105:1

Why eliminate that? That’s still using the mechanic. It’s not using the mechanic the way some people want, but when you go this route you’re essentially cherry picking the data to prove a point.

@Elaniera

Hopefully it won’t take another 8 years for CCP to actually design something good.

It will. The only reason this issue was addressed in the first place was because it was driving players from the game. Now that this is not happening, it’s not a priority, especially over other areas of the game that need more work (faction warfare) or impact more people.

Even with these changes, what’s clear is that war deccing is a very niche gameplay style, so you can’t expect significant resources being thrown at it every year, especially when there are other areas that deserve a turn that arguably involve more actual players.

[Faylee_Freir]

@Lucas_Kell

I don’t know, that would entirely depend on how good you were at securing contracts

I don’t think our ability to secure contracts is lacking. I definitely think there’s a lack of need or want from the general population of Highsec to see structures destroyed. Otherwise we would see them doing it themselves or they would hire a Mercenary outfit.

@Lucas_Kell

Like, most of your wars? You wouldn’t be engaging in loads of wars at the same time if every one of them were full of pilots willing and able to fight back, because you’d get overwhelmed. You can engage in the volume of wars you do by ensuring that as many as possible are soft targets and those are more often than not going to be corps with inexperienced players and leadership.

If they aren’t willing to fight back then they can make themselves ineligible to wars as other groups have. Not every player in a Badger or Dominix is a new player.

During WWB groups like ours were paid by the HBC to interdict around trade hubs and pipes as well as hunt Jump Freighters. Is it somehow griefing now that we’re not paid to do it?

@Lucas_Kell

Stop being blue with the owners, problem solved.

If we weren’t blue with Test there would be no way to contest them in a game of N+1. There’s also likely a lack of other groups of their size that could provide any real threat to them as they are also cut into the market dealings of the market consortium.

@Lucas_Kell

Clearly you are not pleased with alliances being big and not choosing to fight you.

Yes, but not specifically I pleased that they aren’t willing to “fight” us but rather that they are keeping 18k pilots in Highsec where there’s no reason to be even slightly invested in any sort of metagame that Eve Online is known for.

I personally don’t see value in 18k players missioning or mining because they add very little to the storyline of Eve Online other than seeding markets. They are a disconnected portion of the population. I’m not saying they need to be knee-deep in Nullsec drama (does that even really exist anymore?) but it’s just my personal opinion from observing and reading testimony about these groups that it’s a sub-par experience. Just my opinion though.

[Faylee_Freir]

@Lucas_Kell

Or the costs aren’t low or transparent enough, or all the targets people care about are blue to you so you won’t take contracts on them.

Not sure. We can speculate all we want. Historically ours costs have been “reasonable” in my opinion. Like I said the amount of structures littering Highsec that aren’t attached to any meaningful conflict or content tells me that there’s not much of a reason for Industrial Corporation #4639 to care about the destruction of their neighbor or market rival.

@Lucas_Kell

If you choose to attack someone with no interest in fighting back you should not be shocked that they do not give you fights.

Heh. Not the case really. How do we know that the large war eligible groups aren’t interested in playing with us?

@Lucas_Kell

and using that to build up to a stage where you can threaten TEST.

We can’t compete in their N+1 game. It’s futile. It won’t result in a “good fight” either.

@Lucas_Kell

killing rookies like NPCs do.

lol

[Faylee_Freir]

@Lucas_Kell

Experience. You know which groups would actually be a threat and seek to avoid them because it would be a problem if you were at war with a group that fielded competent fleets.

Not true. No one really brings fleets to fight us regardless. DT and Inner Hell have been the only ones as of late.

@Lucas_Kell

You can’t if all you do is sit around declaring it impossible

It’s not that it’s just said we can’t do it. Go ask Gobbins how our fight against them in Perimeter went when Citadels were first released.

In the end there’s little that 20-30 humans can do against 100+ which is fine and just if we picked the fight.

[Faylee_Freir]

@Lucas_Kell

You must be so amazing at combat then that noone in the universe wishes to engage.

No. There’s no reason for many people to care about Highsec.

@Lucas_Kell

Why do I need to? TEST are not an unstoppable force. Asking someone else if they quit trying isn’t going to change that.

Do you know how to count? It’s a serious question.

@Lucas_Kell

so do to highsec what null blobs do elsewhere and dominate it.

That’s the name of the game though that you seem to be missing (probably intentionally)… in the end it’s a game of N+1. It’s a system built to benefit blobbing, so again enlighten me on what would be your strategy to have a group of 20-30 individuals defeat or even have a reasonable chance to fight 100+?

This is going on in circles and Kane is right. We both seem to want the last word. I’ll let you have it and reign supreme on your misunderstanding of what is being discussed. Enjoy your day!

[Lord_Kalus]

@Sexually_Chocolate

This has really ruined part of the game.

Per CSM 13 Winter Summit Minutes (available on page 8 here):

In the EVE Leadership meeting the CSM was presented with numbers resulting from research
into the state of war declarations in EVE and those numbers quite starkly showed how
asymmetric the situation is, and how war declarations allow a small number of players to
negatively affect a huge number of people, with low risk.

They looked at the numbers and saw that groups like PIRAT who wardec hundreds of corps at a time had an outsized impact on the corps they went to war against, with many of those corps being unable to do anything in game for weeks at a time and a large portion of them collapsing or going stagnant as a result. Ruining your fun was apparently the lesser of two evils that was preferred over having dozens of other players quit the game.

You were too good at doing what you did and now you’re paying for it. The wolves who eat all of the sheep starve when there are none left.

Let some CSM members explain it:

Jin'terviews - Merkelchen on the CSM 14 Summer Summit

[Haulie_Berry]

@Lord_Kalus

They looked at the numbers and saw that groups like PIRAT who wardec hundreds of corps at a time had an outsized impact on the corps they went to war against, with many of those corps being unable to do anything in game for weeks at a time and a large portion of them collapsing or going stagnant as a result. Ruining your fun was apparently the lesser of two evils that was preferred over having dozens of other players quit the game.

You must have missed the bit where the industrialized wardec “business model” of PIRAT/etc. has, if anything, been promoted by the wardec changes.

[Lord_Kalus]

@Haulie_Berry

promoted by the wardec changes.

Then I guess the OP has nothing whatsoever to cry about and should shut up, right?