I don’t think EVE will appeal to everyone even with help from an experienced player and a big improvement in the setup process.
That doesn’t mean I believe players who try EVE and leave forever deserve to be insulted in the forum though. No game suits everyone. I wonder how EVE players would react if a few hundred thousand Fortnite players dropped in and told them they’re not tough enough to play a “real” combat PvP game
But EVE definitely suits some people. Not “tougher” or “better” gamers of course - EVE is complicated, but not “tough” by any objective measure.
But even though not everyone will stay, I’m confident that there are people who try EVE and leave quite soon who would stay much longer if the startup process wasn’t such a PITA. Probably still a lowish proportion of those who try EVE, but significantly more than currently do so.
The people in social corps aren’t ‘weaker starter’ players. Daichi Yamato is in a social corp.
How does making the defining point of a war eligibility structures help ‘weaker starter’ players compared to it just helping carebears be more carebeary.
What about ‘weaker starter’ players that want to use wardecs to try out pvp?
What’s the point? Thousands of reasons are given. Every dec could have it’s own reason for being made but the nay sayers won’t believe it.
‘its just grief dec’ but with no evidence to back up such claims.
Probably. Design by comittee and accountants probably explains a lot. The thing is, many of their changes look good on paper, in isolation, but when you have no vision, development is going to trend towards banality. Between trying to make things more accessible, and going with expedient solutions (like deleting something that isn’t working instead of replacing or revamping it) leads to an empty game, or at least one lacking interesting game play.
Player activity has trended down exactly as they deleted stuff or nerfed it into irrelevance. It is therefore not unexpected that “improving” the wardec system largely by just raising the bar to use it failed to increase player activity. It’s probably still to soon to conclude anything, but just deleting gameplay has never increased player activity despite what the safebears will promise you. We need to properly run the statistics, but if CCP wanted to spread around who was participating in wars, this change failed spectacularly. Forget about 5 wardec groups declaring the majority of wars, now there is just one or two declaring an even larger majority of wars. Again, CCP took the expedient route fixing the real problems largely by just deleting and limiting game play, instead of expanding it or reimagining it, and less people are playing as a result.
Take this decision, and add about a decades worth of similar ones of, and we get to where we are now - a much more lifeless and less interesting version of Eve. Cutting things, reimplementing things, monetizing things, instead of actually focusing on new gameplay or a larger vision, at least an attainable one, is the root of the current malaise. Sure, there are challenges that are going to face a persistent PvP game as it ages as well, but CCP seems to lack the resources or interest in addressing them.
But to the OP, maybe we now have a more functional wardec system then before, but without actual reasons to use it, the major complaints about wars will continue. What good is even the perfect war system for Eve if there is nothing to fight over?
Well, let’s let this settle down a little more and we can do a proper retrospective and see how these changes performed. Some form of social corp is a good thing, even if imperfect, but I am still not very optimistic there is much left in this game to keep people playing. So much player interaction has been jettisoned in favour of trying to bribe players to stay by making them a winner through excess safety and wealth, there is only a barely functioning skeleton of a real game left.
Now if you ask me I would guess that part of the way wars and especially the hub humping is a result of starvation of conent (as in players in low sec). I would bet that a lot of people who camp stations in trade hubs would not have gone down that route if low sec still would be the target rich environment it once used to be.
As somebody who has been living as a pirate in low sec for more than 6 years in the earlier days I always enjoyed sitting at either low sec entry gates, or pipes into alliance territorry and entry systems. And back then it was not what it´s like nowadays, where you just get the random easy kill once in a while.
Back then low sec actually had a strategic meaning, as people had to pass through it in order to get stuff in and out of 0.0. This means it was a very attractive area for the happy campers, who would rather sit at a gate for hours than roam around looking for single targets.
Back then alliances also had an incentive to go after us pirates and to clear gates, which resulted in good and interesting fights on a regular basis. Alliances themselves also were able to block supply lines of hostile alliances and “deafeating” them by ship to ship combat rather than just grinding down structures.
Then slowly first capital ships became more common and even worse jump freighters were introduced. With the ability to completly bypass low sec, traffic went down and a previously target rich environment became a total wasteland.
Before starvation of content in those areas wardecs have not been an issue at all. At least back then I never heared of any larger entitys, who wardecced everything they can just to get some targets, it was not needed anyway as exactly that trade hub camping type of player had other options to be happy while persuing their preferred playstyle.
Now since this thread is about wardecs I am not going to list all the developements that only could take place thx to capitals, jumpfreighters and easy mass logistics, but a lot of things that people hate about the game today would not be possible without that ■■■■. And as in my earlier post it was additions to the game made in the name of makig things more convenient that a) took away options for player interation b) removed strategical options c) turned activities that required some level of team effort into solo activities. Turning it into a less interesting and less interactive game.
I think we are talking next to each other. I just don’t want the random deck floodgates to open. Can’t you drop a structure ?
Some of the people you claim are ingame a long time could hide in an NPC corp just the same so I guess your argument is convenience, just like the counterargument to drop a station is equal. The difference now is “failures to launch” are able to try and mine a little, like in the CCP song Wrecking Machine “big dreams, mine instead”. Maybe they should change the lyrics into “Big Dreams, get permadecked out of gaaaame.”.
Yes, some might hide in a social corp instead of an NPC corp, but no one has explained how it saves them, even if tehy have an alt out of that corp just to hold a structure, you can get teh structure, there is no war immunity for people that get free ISK from station taxes.
Structure spam means low fees.
It takes massive amounts of refining, industry or trading before the fees for using someones elses structure becomes more expensive than the fuel to run them.
And that’d cost them corp hangars and shared wallet for all their alts and then the npc tax on bounties.
That’s fair to me.
Instead we’ve enabled alt corps and encouraged isolation.
The free isk from station services i don’t mind at all. Its that we are helping people to hide from the sandbox that’s the problem.
We could have had social corps that are like npc corps except with a shared name, chat channel, killboards and mailing list (You know, the true social aspects of a corp.). These would be useless to alts but still a good way for players to hang out without getting decced.
Edit-
The game design was very much about meaningful choices. Balancing rewards with risk.
But what reason is there to not start a tax free one man corp for you and your alts the minute you join the game?
Well CCP could easily change the structure of how taxes work. Instead of paying an npc corp tax it could be remodeled into a “concord law enforcement tax”.
The base rate for corps that are not eligable for wardecs could be matched to the 11% standard npc corp tax, which I find is a totally acceptable price for being imune to wardecs.
For eligable corps you could adjust the tax rate depending on the amount of wars they get declared against them. More wars active as the defender -> lower tax because of reduced law enforcement support.
So everybody who earns money under the protection of concord is treated equally as a baseline and corps that get wardecced (as in: are on the defending side) can earn a little bit more money as the risk for them is higher as well.
While the whole wardec changes are something I don´t agree with at all, at least by changing the tax structure in such a way, imunity does not just come for free.
edit: at the same time the regular npc corp tax can then be disabled. Which means more money for people who stay in an NPC corp, but go out into low sec / 0.0 to make money where they do not get the protection anyway.
I invite personal friends in the corp. If I am in a npc corp I can’t kick people that in detail larp about sexual intercourse. I rather have a chat not exiting me and disgusting a friend. And then the bored trolls creating new accounts over and over after being kicked for breaking chat rules.
Do mere words bother me and my friends? Yes, will we pay CCP to encounter nasty chat on a daily basis? No.
PS: I am not the social services guy that rightclicks and selects ignore over and over. I guess it appears a nice minigame but to eaxh their own.
Exactly. So as soon as you start the game, start your own corp for you and your alts. Inviting others into it may happen with some but is probably done less often than players just sticking to themselves.
But my issue is why did it have to be structures that separated social corps from war eligible corps?
They could have (should have) made it corp hangars or corp wallet.
That way social corps can still be used for social features (and you can still kick out people) but it doesn’t enable people to make corps for themselves and their alts.
