It works fine.

You're joking, right? If not ...

If the system sets all accepted allies to blue at +10 standings, then they aren't seen as hostiles.

Awoxer is someone who joins a group to then provide warp-ins to hostiles. A short-term spy gig used to mess up those that see them as friendly. It happens a bit in nullsec -- get "blue" to an alliance by joining it or a pet/friendly. The way many setup their overviews there, they turn off blues in local. As such, you warp to someone who's doing PvE stuff and have hostiles warp in to kill them.

It can tend to mess up trust.

With respect to this - simply have an alt group offer to help against your mains corporation, use that blue standing to get in close on their stuff and have your buddies come in and blow them up.

A couple such stunts and trust in accepting help takes a big dive.

It's not difficult to see this being done *IF* it is possible for griefer types to pull it off and once it starts, trust in strangers offering help won't last -- merc contracts go back in vogue vs accepting help "for free".

This is EVE and trusting someone to help that you don't know... I seriously doubt I'm the first to look at this notion and see the potential griefer side but, then again, I do hold a huge paranoia gig about others in this game so tend to look for what dangers may be lurking in any such game changes that come around.

If that standings for accepting help isn't in there, then request it and let the nature of the player base push things back to "normal" distrust.

...

Before the changes, there was an actual mercenary market where people could hire mercenaries by reputation, and mercenaries actually got paid for their work. What we have now is a bunch of privateer-style groups doing the same for free. So point 1 is that there is no more mercenary work, because mercenaries get paid.

So, you're trying to charge for a service that others are willing to provide for free. That kind of makes you an idiot.

How is it "sandbox?" I fail to see how it can be "sandbox," unless your definition of sandbox is having all the adults on the playground beat the living **** out of the kid who knocked down another kid's sandcastle.

How is it "sandbox?" I fail to see how it can be "sandbox," unless your definition of sandbox is having all the adults on the playground beat the living **** out of the kid who knocked down another kid's sandcastle.

Look, I'm all for the "if you wardec someone, you better be prepared to fight" ideology. But this is simply absurd. It removes all incentive for declaring war against someone, because no matter how much you like pvp, and no matter how fearless you are, having the enemy get infinite allies is just stupid. No amount of ridicule and chicken-calling is going to get me to engage three hundred people out of principle.

We told them this would happen (Alekseyev Karrde made a big write-up on it in another forum section that summarized these concerns), and they didn't listen.

My take on it is that it was simply another concession to carebears, since these changes act as a painfully-obvious nerf to high-sec war aggression.

How is it "sandbox?" I fail to see how it can be "sandbox," unless your definition of sandbox is having all the adults on the playground beat the living **** out of the kid who knocked down another kid's sandcastle.
.

We are 10 active people and had a blast in the past deccing other corps about our size or bigger
Now... we really have to think about the costs.. having 3 active wars will easily get you to 450 mil a week.. IF you dont have an alliance in those decs.. (our RP wardec on ccp is billed with 366 mil per week)

Assisting would make us mercs of some sort.. and we always stayed wayyyy out of mercland. Its not our business.

I agree that it is stupid, there should probably be a cap on how many allies can join. All this does is promote the 0.0 blob in high sec. Last thing EVE needs is 500 man war dec blobs running around.

And as someone else said, I also agree with the "if you war dec someone, be preparred to fight" etc. etc. But you shouldn't turn a war from 30 v 30 to 300 v 30. Its just a free way for those who get war dec'd to essentially end the war. There are enough corps out there who will ally for free at the prospect of potential free high sec targets.

you're missing the point, why hire a 'powerful ally' and pay them what they are worth, when you can hire unlimited scrubs for free?
most corps/alliances will go the free option

Except the people who are putting out 0.00isk assistance offers are the exact same people who are listed in the merc contracts channel. So no, not really.

you're missing the point, why hire a 'powerful ally' and pay them what they are worth, when you can hire unlimited scrubs for free?

for a quick example: Against All Authorities wardecced Pandemic Legion.
Now because of the higher wardec costs all the high sec pvp allainces and corporations are all
offering to be an ally for PL like Flies on a big fat pile of **** just so they can have these free wars.

"hired merc for 0 ISK to save my faction tower and they just stayed in Jita and did nothing" will be the new complaint on C&P

I think that both sides should be allowed to bring people in. Starting with the defenders getting to pick one ally. Then the attackers can bring a merc in, and then the defender can bring a merc in, and so on, it stops when one team chooses to not use the merc option. So you limit how many defenders there can be and give the merc a chance to score more contracts with the aggressive corps.

Sandbox

it'll work itself out

If the system wasn't open to this sort of abuse it would be too closed to promote sandbox gameplay. If the playerbase in eve want to ruin the ally system for a while, it'll happen.

CCP already knew this would be a great way to let people get free wars, and get their allies into war with them for free.

If anything if you're tagging your self as someone who needs defenders it should only be if you're looking to pay someone. There should be an easy way to bring in free allies without littering the merc marketplace with people who don't want someone to give them an offer.

CCP have made concerted efforts so they look like they listen to the players, they even made the CSM with 14 players, 2 of which represent and care about the majority of players.

They post on these forums regularly telling us how it will be, and criticise or ignore objectors, and generally keeping us informed of who the boss is.

How is that now players can see through their mask...

They didn't provide it for free when there was a war fee attached. In most cases, that fee was so significant (due to their existing amount of outgoing wars), that clients would balk at hiring them, even if they didn't charge for anything but the war fee. For example, The Orphanage does "free" work, as long as the client covers the war fee. How many small groups would be willing to shell out upper-hundreds of millions, sometimes even billions, for a week of war? Most balk at paying even 200-300 million, fee included, to a small mercenary group that will actually devote a significant amount of time to going after the targets. Now, they can get a few thousand people without having to pay a single cent, and let numbers do all the work.On top of that, Inferno made it significantly more expensive to declare war.

2/10 for getting me to reply I guess.