While the changes to the WarDec system in general are good, the fee changes were poorly thought out and it is REALLY showing.
“50 percent of all wars in EVE Online are started by just 5 groups”
There has been apx 250 wars declared this month and just one corp is responsible for about 70% of them. Another corp takes 26%. I’m guessing this was not what you intended. You’ve doubled the price for “the little guys” and made it cheaper for huge sharks. WTF!
My simple suggestion is this: Put WarDec fees on a sliding scale.
First open WarDec costs 25M…Second 50M…third 100M….fourth 200M…fifth 400M…etc. This is a doubling but it could be +25% for a gentler ramping or something fancier.
At some point the number of open WarDecs becomes too costly.
If the goal is to reduce the ultra aggressive WarDec farmers, then you need to make WarDec’ing itself cost prohibitive.
You wanted to temper 5 monsters but you’ve actually made it worse…Encourage little fights by reducing WarDec fees BUT increase the cost for having multiple WarDecs open at the same time.
I’m going to get my asbestos underwear on for what’s about to hit…
Yep…now it’s 100M not 50M AND they must own a station that’s at least 500M. It’s moronic (sorry CCP but this is a huge blunder and the change deserves that word)(I still love you though).
So these little fish are forced to invest 600M minimum (more like 1-1.3B)if they want to PvP in HS…which they wont and will just remain in NPC corps…yawn.
The biggest barrier to small groups is the wardec HQ.
For years, it’s been pointed out on the forum and on reddit that tying wardecs to structures will only lead to more advantage for larger groups.
What have we seen? Marmite join PIRAT and make a mega wardec group that the small defenders will never be able to engage.
Seems the antithesis of what was intended.
I agree on the fees. That itself would encourage the large groups to break into smaller groups so they could dec more groups and access the content they want.
…and ISK rich and very experienced/knowledgeable. All which favor the more “elite” players and not the casuals or to put it another way, it’s a barrier, not a door the increases the divide in HS.
Your point about larger groups breaking-up to get around the sliding scale is the obvious “fix” that they would implement. The good thing though is that a smaller corp would be much more localized and not a threat all across NE. If one of the big sharks WarDes you now, you’re screwed everywhere.
It’s a valid point but the way-lesser of evils IMO.
How about, rather than some robotic, stultified, and rather moronic system that can be gamed, let’s have real people just look at who is doing what and figure out who the victimizers are and ban them. There are reasons for wardecs, and there are people turning the sandbox into a litterbox. Spend some time to actually weed them out rather than come up with mechanics that are only going to be gamed and criticized anyway.
It’ll only take one mass ban of blanket deccers to send a message to the rest.
More than just a fix for them though. Also good for smaller defenders, since the wardec groups as attackers, can’t ally to each other.
So providing incentive for them to break up through the fee structure would still be a good outcome, even if the total number of wars remains as is.
A way around that though would be to hold some of their Corps in reserve, so they could join any of the wars that needed additional people, and then leave the group again at the end.
Becasue no matter what the system, IRL if in a game, you will always have the sharks and the guppies. In balance, that is a good ecosystem but when out of balance, it’s chaos.
Banning then will just open the door for the next round of sharks. Better to just fix the broken system and not alienate a lot of people.
Sure sure. Lets leave it up to the players to alienate other people by gaming and abuse of the mechanics. And the company behind that game can continue to pretend they are not in charge and everything is just an accident or something.
CCP mass banning people would be heard well outside EVE itself and totally run contrary to the sandbox mentality. Whereas a CONCORD change in fee structure is game mechanics and an elegant fix…sure they blew it this time but hopefully a new fix will come soon.
If people cheat or break the rules, a ban is in order. Even-though they are clearly abusing the WarDec system, they are actually not doing anything wrong. Banning would be a disaster for Eve…
The ball is in CCP’s court on this and the clock ticking…
I had the same initial reaction, but then I read the thorough explanation provided by CCP and did some math of my own and found that the new flat rate is better (and well chosen).
Makes it more expensive for the big boys to wardec small groups en masse - totally fair
In terms of the wardec fee (ie. excluding POS upkeep), makes it cheaper for the small boys to wardec the big boys and not be affected by their size. Sure, it might be more expensive after you factor in the cost and upkeep of a POS, but if you’re going to wage war (as opposed to doing PVP in LS/NS or as part of FW or an alliance) I don’t see why this should be an issue financially. I think your inability to field and maintain a POS is largely indicative of your not being ready to wage war in HS outside of FW/alliance/mutual warfare. I think this is totally fair
Apart from mutual wars and FW (which provides large scale PVP anyway), wars are guaranteed to have at least a juicy POS as a potential target - even better.
Perhaps most importantly of all: it makes wars more meaningful, consequential, and fair for both the attacker and defender. In particular, this provides will stop griefing against corps comprised against newbies and non-PVPers. So many players have ragequit EVE over the years because of premature PVP. It’s not that they were carebears, it’s that they weren’t ready, and because of that we’ve lost those who could have been brothers in arms today because we felt like being pricks and griefed them to ragequit over the past few years.
As hinted repeatedly: FW, mutual, and alliance warfare still provide means of lowering or eliminating the wardec cost against multiple entities, some of whom might not even have a POS (including yourself)
You can still have random wardecs, but at least the changes helped cut back on the stupid and griefer ones.
War elligibility has provided options for former defenders to not be exposed to wars at all, but that’s not what this thread is about.
The same groups that had 50% of wars before now have a bigger percentage of wars and there isn’t much at all that defenders can do against them, particularly as CCP bundled into the changes, the removal of the ability to offer assistance unless the defenders set themselves open for allies first.
As part of the changes there has been an increase in the percentage of wars that result in kills (CCP presented stats on that back in January from memory but I can’t find them at the moment). If I had to guess (which is prone to error), I’d bet that it’s because attackers are killing structures and along the way, lots of fighters during the reinforced stages. Defenders haven’t really benefited.
I think a lot of what CCP has done has been good, but the balance isn’t right yet.
In this instance, I think it’s less about the percentage and more about the volume. If the number of stupid/griefer wars has dropped tremendously, I don’t think it’s a problem if the percentage has gone up. In fact, this could be indicative that the defenders have no business fielding POSes (yet)
While I agree CCP should make this sort of thing more transparent or maybe even change the default setting, I also feel like defenders should take the time to look this up and realize that yes, they can flag themselves are looking for assistance. Lack of initiative is at fault here, not a lack of a game mechanic.
I 100% agree with you, but if people took the time to look things up in the first place, they wouldn’t have been dying stupidly for the last several years. Unfortunately it’s already bearing out that behaviours aren’t changing much as far as defence goes.
Changing the default setting to be open to assists to begin with might be the best compromise (in addition to updating the UI/UX to make it more obvious that this can be toggled on and off)
no