Wardec and suicide ganking

[Daichi_Yamato]

@Dracvlad

I would not disagree with that at all. Cheaper option but heavier penalties in terms of ability to re-start the war after a loss of such a HQ. I certainly think that 100m is way too much. I would do 10m.

Agreed.

And if you and me agree on it, that’s got to count for something.

[Dracvlad]

@Qia_Kare

I do not encounter a lot of complaining from those who suicide gank, and I am of the opinion that wars are prohibitively expensive, and very limited in their application.

I have, they always go on about nerfs and never mention their buffs and there has been so many buffs.

@Qia_Kare

Ideally, yes, I would like to see more ‘balanced’ fights, but I think that making wars more difficult and expensive has done more to harm that than to help it by making life harder for small groups to go to war. It’s small groups fighting other small groups that would make for a more balanced fight. The larger groups of players are going to be able to afford to wardec whomever they please unless the costs become ridiculous.

The issue is that as soon as CCP made using neutral RR a criminal offense and thus blocked allies from doing any repping they screwed the ally system over completely and effectively blocked people joining together to defend each other.

In any case wars are never fair from the off.

@Qia_Kare

I have heard CCP speak of how wardecs negatively affected retention. That activity levels dropped and did not return after the 'dec was over. I believe this is the case, but I also believe that these players who never return did not understand the game they were playing to begin with.

I am not sure I agree with this, because they did not mind the odd war, but when it became all the time it was a big turn off. Why impose that sort of stuff on mainly casual players. It is all well and good for people to moan about a lack of players and all that, but killing the player base at the starting level is not wise.

I suggested that each entity can war dec up to four entities without the need of a war hq or structure. Of course it would be abused, but it would enable smaller stuff to happen and would not be a total free pass.

@Qia_Kare

I am personally a big zero in the PvP department. I don’t like it. Even the idea of winning the engagement does not appeal to me. I want to be nice to people, and I play Eve because I have the opportunity to be nice where it is not required of me.

I know you, we met in game sort of, but when you do PvP you want a chance to win, I do have some knowledge of PvP so I have been trying to help some people along, but at the core level you want to fight people that you have a chance with. For example me, having a war dec with PIRAT would see me picking them off, it is easy to do and I have developed the characters to do it, however I don’t really want to face them, that is not my objective.

@Qia_Kare

What I do have going for me is a stubborn quality. On the occasions someone would wardec, I would do what I wanted to do anyway. Granted, it was harder, but not impossible. That I can survive being at war and a gank target makes me very suspicious the people declaring war or ganking are a problem. I think the problem is attitude, and an unwillingness to adapt or face a problem/setback at all.

I would agree with you based on how I am, I did the same as you, war decs were a joke to me, but then again I have two accounts that I have subbed all the time, some accounts I can use when I want to and the three characters on my main accounts all have a lot of skills. For me getting around such stuff is easy. But a new causal player, no, they have their eggs in one basket…

@Qia_Kare

When I think about Eve, and my accomplishments, it is my friendships that I’ve made that I’m most fond of. The people who think well of me are my measure of success. Since it’d be hard to take these things away from me with war or ganks, that, too, could be the reason I do not find them threatening or problematic.

I think you are a great player.

@Qia_Kare

Anyways, those are some of my opinions, and what I think my biases are that may be affecting my judgement, the crux of which is that if you elevate war requirements out of reach of small groups it shouldn’t be a surprise that wars are only used against them and that they’d turn to something like ganking instead, and that FacPo and CONCORD make exacting your own payback so difficult people complain it is risk free because destruction of the enemy is assured and they’ve accounted for that.

I think with the war HQ system CCP should cut the war dec fee to 10m, it makes no sense at all to be at 100m. But lets be blunt a Raitaru is not exactly a highly expensive item, but it does hurt small newer players in terms of getting into the game so a smaller less costly war HQ would work too.

@Qia_Kare

I preferred war as it was. I felt I had options in the form of allies and I was willing to go out and be at risk to provide content for my retinue, or, indeed, for the wardeccer. The changes have just made it harder for me to offer content to people who would have wanted it. Maybe they were good for the game as a whole and I’m missing the bigger picture because I’m a small potato, but it doesn’t seem that way to me.

I juts helped in a war which was very successful for us in the end, it is doable and it can be a lot of fun.

The key thing is to move this away from the bling fitting farmers and into small groups kicking ten bells of hell out of each other and having a lot of fun. To me blanket pipe hunting and trade hub hunting war decs are so meh!

@Kezrai_Charzai

I think this is the key issue that CCP has been missing for so long. For years, CCP pushed players into the bigger corps, the bigger ships, the Null donuts and farming grind, because they seem to think it’s the “big battles” that “make headlines” that drive EVE. (And of course probably because their metrics tell them people who head that direction spend more money.)

The average player, however, benefits from reasons to log on and interesting things to do every day . The big battles occur a couple times a year. People need reasons to log on every day. “Every day” would imply small scale activity - small corps, small gangs, solo fights, solo players who can join a larger activity (sort of like FW or Incursions if they were more accessible).

In the early years of EVE, there was a lot more opportunity for interesting smaller scale action. I think that is one of the reasons it grew faster back then. Once people moved into the big ships, the giant alliances, the null donuts… things really bogged down.

This is really what we can develop in hisec.

[Daichi_Yamato]

It was a progression thing.

So you start out as small group and gradually get larger as you take on more members or join larger groups. (and players would stop where they were comfortable).

But recently it feels more polarising. Pushing people into big groups on one end with nerfs to wars and big focus on null sec. And on the other end enabling solo play with more safety and abyss space etc.

[Kezrai_Charzai]

@Daichi_Yamato

It was a progression thing.

Well yeah, of course. That’s the thing. A game starts from nothing, and everybody works their way up, and the environment of everyone going through that process provides a certain set of opportunities and behaviours.

But then people reach new plateaus and the environment changes. It was one thing to small-gang hunt in low sec when you encountered mostly other small gangs, solos, and a few bigger ships. It’s another thing to small-gang hunt in low when half the people you run into can cyno in a capital group if things go poorly. The environment has changed even though ‘the game’ has not. (Just an example, not saying this is a common or important issue.)

When you look at your game and say “Hmmm, activity X is important to the game, but power creep and player progression has made activity X much less viable”, then it’s time to re-design certain features of your game.

CCP has, by and large (IMO), lost sight of the ‘small scale’ game in order to focus on pushing players towards the end-game and larger expenditures. But without the small scale game, very few people are finding EVE interesting enough to even bother considering reaching the end game.