War Mechanics Need to Be Reviewed

Uh, sure… if you’re assuming all war deccers solely want to engage in the industrialized perimeter-gate-camp model.

Of course, only an idiot would make that assumption.

Are you an idiot?

Wars have never really been very well structured at any point in Eve, but, “Hurrdurr it was necessary becuz pirat” is just dumber than dogshit when you look at the end result. That may have been the impetus, but if the intent was to “solve” pirat, it was clearly a flop.

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So let the wardeccers wardec PIRAT until CCP is comfortable with the numbers. Not my problem. I’m only presenting you with the reasons behind why these changes were made. Don’t like it? Wardec me. Oh wait, you can’t. Thanks PIRAT!

Yeah, we know why they were changed, it’s just weird that you’d be parroting the “why” as if it were a sound rationale in the present when we know that it was ineffectual at solving the problem it was purportedly intended to solve and, if anything, exacerbated it.

It was a kneejerk reaction to a problem CCP felt needed to be immediately responded to. Was it the perfect solution? Of course not. No one is claiming that. Maybe someday they will come up with something that is. In the meantime we’re stuck with the solution that groups like PIRAT forced on the game through their overzealous use of previous mechanics.

And if only the wardec change had happened entirely in a vacuum, that might be informative, but it didn’t, so it’s not.

We do know that the actual state of high sec wars continues to be a ■■■■ show, however.

CCP Hellmar himself said that, but he did not claim any connection to wars. He did claim that the increase was related to changes that happened not too long ago. The war changes happened long before that. It was the fanfest where he and CCP Burgler sat at the stage.

There was not a single day of evidence that the war changes has increased the number of players. Either Brisc is fooling us, fooling himself or is being fooled. I find it astonishing that someone like Brisc would believe CCP Hellmar, who is pretty much well known for literally lieing through his teeth when it comes to changes to the game.

Do I call CCP Hellmar a liar? Yes, yes I do! For good reasons, too!

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No, the reasons are something else. You just assume you know the reasons and jump to a conclusion and you lack the intelligence to ask. Instead you don’t. You’re not intelligent enough to understand that you do not actually know the reasons.

I’m not like you, so please don’t think I would behave like you would.

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No, I’m saying it’s not quantifiable because it didn’t happen in a vacuum. Do feel free to quantify it if you think you can, though - you’ve always been a dishonest enough poster that I wouldn’t be surprised to see you actually have a go at it.

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Exactly that.

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Seems to be working as intended to me.
https://zkillboard.com/related/30021407/202004112000/o/{"A"%3A["99009044"]%2C"B"%3A[]}/

We know, lil guy. We know.

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You know what, you’re right. Have a good one! o7

I said it was ineffectual at curbing industrialized wardec activity. Like I said, you’re just perpetually dishonest. Or illiterate.

And, we do know that, because the actual result was that existing entities merged into a larger, even-more-industrial entity.

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Yes, if we manipulate the context by removing what I was actually replying to, we have… Lucas Kell lying again. ■■■■. Ah well, it was a good effort. Back in context:

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.

Given that this is the context in which I said that and, no, it did not solve that problem that the person I am directly responding to claims it was intended to solve, we’re right back to what I said before.

So you’ve taken that comment, shifted the context such that it appears to be a response to your own comments instead of to the guy I was directly replying to in an effort to manipulate context. Standard Lucas Kell ■■■■, really.

And saying that someone who is continually dishonest, is dishonest, isn’t a personal attack, Lucas. It’s an observation.

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But I wasn’t referring to what CCP intended to solve. I was referring to what the person I was responding to was asserting it was intended to solve. With quotes and direct replies and everything that would normally clue someone into the fact that X comment is in reply to what was said in Y comment, and not to What-Lucas-Kell-Wants-To-Claim-It-Was-In-Reply-To.

It’s like you don’t even understand what “context” is.

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Because according to the guy I was replying to, it was purportedly intended to ‘solve pirat’ (to reduce the claim to its essence). Tada, context. Funny how that works.

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If that was the hope, then the changes have really missed the mark, which makes the outcomes even worse.

It’s easy to target a specific part of the community and blame them. Nullsec groups for blue donuts and stagnation, lowsec groups for fewer fights when they drop capitals anytime they look like losing, or [insert particular thing to target].

In all cases, player choice is influenced by mechanics. They aren’t separate things, simply because players want to enjoy the game when they login. Play is influenced towards choices that allow that to happen.

If you ask the top end of the nullsec groups why is there stagnation, the responses (which we’ve seen on multiple discussion platforms for a few years now) focus on sov-wanding, structure spam, resource abundance, reduced ability to project capital fleets and capital umbrellas. All of the reasons are mechanics based, influencing enjoyment of the game and player decisions.

Ultimately players make their own decisions and that can’t be taken away. However, CCP’s game development has a huge influence on that. So if the idea is that target selection was “terrible” before, then they’ve only made that worse now.

This has never actually been the case, but it is certainly a perception that has stuck.

Unfortunately, every part of the community has someone else that sees their choices as wrong, so the only thing to do is try to influence CCP to make better designs and not worry about this sort of childish criticism.

Thanks for responding and yes, it is clear that CCP didn’t really have this statement (from the first devblog) as a true goal:

we intend to continue to improve the war declaration system with the long-term goal of encouraging wars that have real risks and rewards and are engaging for all sides.

This is the difficulty of relative changes when the numbers are small. To take that to the fullest extreme, 1 to 2 is a 100% increase. But when the dataset is 40000, it’s not a significant change.

Whether 1600 to 2449 out of a pool of 40,000 is considered a great outcome is obviously for CCP to decide, but that still leaves 37500 out of 40K (16 out of every 17) wars with no defender engagement.

On the surface, that still doesn’t seem like much engagement at all, and certainly not a significant change, despite CCP’s stated goals.

Yeah I probably didn’t represent that well. 3 groups are responsible for 48% of all wars now.

The landscape has become less diverse at the top end. That’s ok as a sacrifice to reducing the loss of player activity, but now that they’ve achieved that, why not actually design something that meets all of the stated goals and not just one?

No one has ever asked for that, so that’s good if that never happens.

I’d counter that there has been a drop off in both nullsec and lowsec small gang activity in recent years, because small gangs can’t just drop capitals. The umbrella makes it oppressive at times to fight with regular enjoyable content.

There’s nothing fun about getting into a good fight that both sides can enjoy and then being sledge hammered by Capitals. It happens to our group every single week now. Without fail.

Wardeccers are small gangs. It’s rare for them to reach anything beyond 1-2 full squads (under the old fleet squad limits), and just joining a block to have the bigger capital sledge hammer when it’s needed, isn’t what a large part (not just wardeccers, but beyond that) of the community want to do.

But mechanics influence decisions and no single set of mechanics stand alone. If CCP want to just go with the view that “most people who want to pvp aren’t wasting their time in high sec” (implying that highsec pvp isn’t worth getting right), then they should probably fix the problems of lowsec and capital proliferation.

I don’t think they can fix that second issue though, so they’ll be stuck with parts of the community that find more engaging content in highsec focused pvp, because at least people can compete against larger groups there.

On the first issue, I don’t think any current CCP devs have a good heritage in lowsec, and they haven’t had a good sounding board on the CSM for that since Sugar Kyle. Suitonia is probably the closest, but his knowledge is solo pvp focused. I have doubts that CCP will be able to get lowsec changes right, but I hope I’m wrong.

There are 259 groups with 10 or more wardecs in the last year (and a total of 2253 corps/alliances that have declared at least 1 or more wardecs). Most of those groups are just small gang pvpers that do account for a few thousand players. It’s not just about P I R A T and Hell Dawn. They account for the most wars, but not the most players.

Yes and that is the lament of my previous post.

There is a vibrant community beyond 3 groups that have had their gameplay changed by changes that were, in CCP’s written word at least, targetted at making the game engaging. It’s had the opposite effect.

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There are fights all the time, and that is what a lot of wardec groups are looking for.

So if you can actually point me to some statistics that prove that wardec groups “actively avoid declaring war on groups able and willing to fight”, then I’d love to see that.

But those statistics do not exist.

This post is just too stupid to believe. I cant Wardec the people that are weak and cant fight back cry. If only their where a place you could hunt and attack people freely. Highsec Wardecs is a joke and now because they changed it so you cant go after the weak noobs you cry. Come Wardec the big boys and play in our Space.

There was?