I recently returned to the game, so go easy on me.
I am in a corporation, and we were wardecced last week. I was pretty excited. I went around and marked the locations of my old locator agents. Made sure my hauler and mining alts were all fitted out to be good decoys and bait. Then I hopped onto EveWho and took a list of the opponent’s capsuleers, to add to my watch list.
Then found that I didn’t have a watchlist anymore. No matter however, they have 40+ people, I was sure I’ll run into somebody.
Yet here it is, a week later, and we haven’t had a single encounter. Corpmates are mining and missioning like nothing is out of the ordinary.
I remember logging on and seeing which bad guys were lurking, then running my locators to find out where they could be found. Ihave memories in this game of epic clashes against hisec wardec corps flying shiny expensive ships, hoping to score easy kills on fat barges; and the relentless cat and mouse game of trying to dodge, bait, and trap them. The game of espionage, trying to identify and expose the alts with which they infiltrated the Corp. I remember the thrill of laying a trap for a wardeccer in their T3 cruiser, and watching them rage in local when caught by a bunch of miners and getting blown up. I remember the grudging respect given between two enemies when a professional ran up against an industrialist with teeth.
But this wardec has none of that. It’s dead quiet, and business as usual. WTF happened?
CCP removed the old affect of watchlists as it was too easy for Alliances/Coalitions to track the logging in and out of Super/Titan pilots and so they could easily hunt on the basis of the free intel and/or take action to avoid being attacked if enemies close by logged in.
The intended/unintended (we aren’t really sure which) side effect of that was that it also impacted the ability to highsec mercs and wardec groups to also gain that intel (and for defenders to gain the same intel on wardeccers).
So now, many of the old, small hunting groups have disappeared and wardecs largely consist of hub humping groups these days.
So if you want to have fun in a war, take an industrial ship to a trade hub. Wait to be wardecced, because industrials are potentially good targets and there’s a good chance you’ll be decced as a result. Then try to lure the attackers off station, away from logistics support, etc. in order to fight.
Essentially, CCP removed a lot of interesting game play and so far they have no intention of correcting anything to make the meta more interesting again.
If someone could propose an idea in Features & Ideas that allows CCP to sell more SKINs as part of making the gameplay more interesting, then it might get implemented. But so far, every serious suggestion has been ignored.
Typical CCP shoddiness; rather than let concerned capital pilots hide their status unless whitelisted, they removed status tracking unless players are mutually whitelisted.
With any luck they may decide it’s stupid to not have friend lists in a social game and will sort it before 2020… if they find a way to monetize it, of course.
Is it just factor of cost and benefit that killed such contents? I mean nowadays nobody would dedicate themselves to do homework on their target corp and go hunt far from hub, instead they can get way more fights by just camping hubs. BTW, you can always go low/null/wh and shoot anyone who is not your friend, without the need of a wardec.
All corps can always move to low/null/wh and completely avoid the wardec mechanics of highsec.
It works both ways and pvp in highsec is just as valid as it is anywhere.
And no, it’s not a cost-benefit issue. It’s a time-enjoyment issue. It’s not really possible to effectively hunt targets in highsec at the moment as there is no consistent way to know if they are even online. So it’s far more time efficient and enjoyable for the groups to mass wardec and let targets come to them.
Most of the wardeccers went for maximum killboard/minimum effort. Or: wardec everything that looks like it might have an indy full of something more expensive than trit, and cap trade hubs and pipes for any war target that flies by. Most of them don’t like fights, so they’ll dock up if anything which looks dangerous shows up.
Suggestion for forcing a fight: have a fleet drop corp, set up in a station nearby, apply to rejoin corp, and log off before being accepted. Accept a small fleet back into corp once it’s logged off, and form another one nearby. Then take something bait-fit and fly through the system occasionally. When they take the bait, log the fleet in and teach them some manners. Except, if they have a spai in your corp, they won’t bite.
I am intrigued, how long have you been away from the game for, because the move towards blanket camping war decks occurred before the watch list was removed.
Yes it did, but as has been discussed so many times, the change amplified the situation.
Blanket wardec groups have always been there, however it became generally regarded as the optimal way to wardec in the period since the watchlist changes. Hence many of the smaller wardec groups, the true hunters, just abandoning either the gameplay, or EVE as a whole and the large hub humping style becoming not just the dominant, but almost the exclusive wardec style in current use by regular wardeccers.
I’ve been gone since around 2014, maybe even 2013. I can’t really remember. Attack battlecruisers had recently become a thing; but they were called Tier 3 battlecruisers at that time.
Yeah that’s true too. Should have really said, before the change there were other reasonably viable ways for mercs/wardeccers to play also. So those that wanted to play differently, had a way to do that. Since, those styles have became much more difficult from a time/enjoyment perspective, so they’ve left.
not a perfect fix, but maybe if the aggressor corps pilots could be added to a watchlist like in the old system. (but of course, if you do that, then they can add you back which would flag you on theirs as per the current mechanics.) and in the case of a mutual war, watchlists work the same way they used too in both directions.
would give the defending corp a slight edge over the attackers, since they could tell who was online when. and would give the attackers some intel on who in that corp is keeping track of them (and possibly who’s looking for a fight.)
Yeah it is really sad. I actually had my hopes up with the new expansion all themed around the empires that they would at least take a look at the wardec system and fix some stuff so it is interesting again. But it now seams like they focus on mining only
Can’t rejoin a corp that’s at war for 7 days. You can join another corp in your alliance if your alliance is dec’d though.
For some. When I first got into decs it was 100% hunting and stalking targets. The whole idea behind camping trade hubs and high traffic pipes makes complete sense though. The outcome for a wartarget is likely the same for both situations: You get jumped on while traveling to/from a trade hub or you get killed while mining or doing a mission. The outcome is the same: death.
Wardecs are easier and cheaper than they have ever been, only the watchlist made them “slightly” harder. They removed warddec limits/shields, and made them cost absolutely nothing to maintain. (A mining alt in a venture can afford to warddec indefinitely.) Unless your wardeccing a 3000 man alliance, in which case, “yay CCP nullblock bias.”
At various times I’ve had alts in Brave, Pandemic Horde and Karmafleet.
Their alliance sizes are currently 4658, 13529 and 6927 respectively.
All three of them are permanently wardecced with at least 3 wars running simultantously in any particular week. Eve-uni are the same, as are Goons in general, Pandemic Legion, etc.
You can see the number of wars ongoing for the large Corps/Alliances on Dotlan:
Generally, the larger groups end up wardecced more than individual small Corps, simply for the greater chance that targets will wander into systems that the wardeccers are active. The large groups are more likely to have players online 24/7 and not all their members pay attention to notifications, etc.
That hardly seems like a bias in their favour. The thing in their favour, which any Corp that is wardecced can also do, is that they aren’t in highsec.
Oh I’m not arguing that larger corps and alliances are not warddeced more, merely that the cost to do so increases with size. When in reality it should be reversed, with larger alliances being free to wardec, and smaller corps costing vastly more.
No matter however, they have 40+ people, I was sure I’ll run into somebody.