Why do people only seem to fight “for content” these days?

I remember the old days of EVE where people would start epic wars because of grudges, or another user smacktalked them on the forums. The BoB v Goons rivalry was incredibly to watch unfold over the years, the animosity between the “old guard” elite and the newbies in rifters who dared to challenge their superiority. Both alliances were out to utterly destroy the other, and crush them from existence.

These days it seems there isn’t anything like that, we seem to have a much more sanitized version of it where alliances still have fights but not proper “wars”. Fighting another alliance but with silly little rules in place like you can only fight in anomalies or you can’t attack the other alliances structures. Why I don’t understand fighting “for content” instead of fighting for proper motives like territory, or to eradicate a rival alliance who smacktalked you. Where have all the proper grudge wars gone?

5 Likes

Because everything has got way too expensive in this game and wars costs dictate the reasons.
It’s not worth to spend 50bil on a slight, not anymore.

1 Like

High sec wars were fun till CCP made it structure wars.

6 Likes

Where are you fighting that you have those silly rules?

1 Like

Some alliances do have rules against shooting structures because it causes issues for diplos. Blowong up ships, no one cares. Destroy someone’s aniblex jump gate and now you’re messing with someone’s logistics… which makes members unhappy.

As for why there are no more wars anymore, youre wrong. There is a small war going on in the north.

But youre unlikely to see any huge wars anymore. 3 major blocs in null are basically inmovable now. Beeitum or World War Bee 2 (whatever you want to call it) proved that you really can’t utter destroy an enemy… Upwell structures and the knowledge of how to use them effectively in a defense has ended that sort of thing.

The only way a major null bloc falls anymore is if they have an internal fail cascade for some reason.

1 Like

Sounds like a job for the goons

Pure Blind requests your presence

Ah it’s Carlos Warren. Good to see you on the forum. I’m an admirer of your work.

I think it’s a combination of factors.

Some of it is just the maturity of the game. Back in the early years, like the old Goon vs. BoB war, the leaders of those alliances were the guys who had built them from nothing. They were way more emotionally invested. Nowadays the big bloc leaders are all guys who inherited their empires, which just isn’t the same thing.

Also, bloc leaders seem to be a bunch of independently wealthy folks who don’t need to work for a living like most of their line members. They seem to have endless free time. Every year they all seem to be able to jet off to Iceland for Fanfest like it’s nothing. They all raise a glass or two together there, while the rest of us are back home with our noses to the grindstone. I’ll wager that they have more of a sense of identity and comradeship with one another than they do with their own alliance mates.

Furthermore, I think that they enjoy bragging about having thousands of nerds to do their bidding far too much to put that at risk by engaging in grudge wars. My impression is that they also have a “been there done that” attitude towards war, and just aren’t really interested in doing it anymore.

I think that the culture of the line members has changed over the years as well. For the average bloc member, they are there to enjoy a safe space for krabbing. There is an overall reluctance to PvP. They value stability over conflict. That’s why players choose big blocs nowadays. People who want grudge wars take one look at the blues list of these blocs and run away as far and as fast as they can.

That said, I think grudge wars do still play out on a much smaller scale here and there. Highsec wardecs used to be a great source for that kind of vibe, before they were tied to structures. Now that outlet is lost to us as well.

This is downright silly. There are individual players who are trillionaires in this game. Plenty of them. The idea that isk is a determining factor makes no sense. Horde started the Casino War, for example, because they were paid a mere 500 billion by one guy who happened to have that in his wallet.

I do think there is a tendency towards miserliness among the player base though. If I had a trillion isk, I’d blow it all real fast causing all sorts of chaos. I really can’t think of any other reason to have so much isk except to see what kind of trouble you can cause with it. But it seems that all these trillionaires are just hoarding it so they can look at their wallet balance and pretend it’s not monopoly money.

So, in conclusion, what’s a belligerent undesirable to do? Nothing for it that I can see but to undock in a PvP ship and try your best to make people hate and fear you. Judging by the way Horde guys talk about you, Carlos, I think you already do this. We may not be able to get the big blocs off their asses, but we can certainly create a few little grudges of our own out there.

6 Likes

LOL. For highsec is the reasons we have been screaming about for years. Primarily War Hqs … and structure reqs for war with forced peace. #1 killer and the lid on the coffin. Simply remove them and add a 50 member limit for war eligible and highsec would light up. There is no butterfly effect anymore. What you do and all your isk is irrelevant. Players fight for npcs and their only purpose is tax revenue to the nullblocks represented by TTP.

“What matters most is that the experience is emergent, unscripted…”

That will never happen as they would have to face the Wrath of the Whinebabies.

1 Like

We had the biggest ever war in highsec back in March…at one point there were well over 1000 players in Finanar. A hundred or so of Parabellum’s stations were destroyed over a 2 week period.

Maybe the problem is that if you only ever watch The Meta Show it gives the impression that nobody other than the big nullsec alliances is fighting wars.

Conflict requires winner and losers. Unfortunately, since carebear crybabies throw temper tantrums when they lose, CCP has prevented any conflict which might result in meaningful loss. This is why, for example, you see keepstars that can’t be killed (and if they are killed, their contents are protected by asset safety).

1 Like

They’re all supposedly at war yet somehow manage to run a cartel together at the TTT.

3 Likes

I observed that bash a few weeks ago. Kind of funny how the null-sec “sworn enemies” teamed up and showed up to bash this war HQ just because Skill Issue declared war on the TTT holder (I doubt they’d even try to attack it in practice). The amount of ■■■■ the blobby dronelings talked in local was unbelievable.

If I had executive power at CCP, I would absolutely eviscerate the entire concept of the null-sec ISK cartel, what with their constant RMT/botting and their fake wars. After I’d be done, there would be like a quarter of the null-sec players remaining. I’d make more of them quit in a shorter period of time than blackout did.

And then I’d go on a massive advertising campaign, marketing how CCP finally got rid of the biggest griefers and cheaters in the game, and welcome new players to take their place in a more dynamic and equitable universe. I’d add plenty of game mechanics that would make this sort of anti-competitive consolidation impossible ever again.

I’d literally measure the progress and effectiveness of the campaign by the amount of real-life death threats these null-sec shitters would post on Reddit in their fits of spittle-faced rage.

10 Likes

F my hat, its so hot when you talk like that

4 Likes

For the record Skill 100% did attack several TTT structures.

1 Like

That hit the nail on the head

Because if you fight for territory and absolute power, Goons would have taken over literally the entire map long ago.

Understand, that CCP has massive perks/advantages that apply only to large alliances, so not only do they enjoy the advantage of numbers, but can also partake in the benefits only provided to them as a large sov holding alliance. CCP promotes large groups to the detriment of all else through many mechanics. The only way to provide any kind of balance is voluntarily.

Yup get rid of assest saftey and make trashing stuff delayed too. Then blowing up ■■■■ pays. Right now peeps can assest saftey far too easy

3 Likes

Or there should be ways that small group can chip away at that power , not saying it should be easy but Destiny is on to a good idea but that runs into problems in the end with game mechanics. I suppose if wars got fixed and null alliances came under any form of attack they would moan,