What I am not new to is declaring war on people and them getting blown up over and over again and trying every game mechanic they possibly can to get out of it and at no point opening a convo with anyone and asking what exactly they can do to make us stop shooting them.

You underestimate trolls being trolls. Some people just like to watch the world burn and take every opportunity to make it happen.

Says you, some random in EVE university who speaks for absolutely nobody in the griefing community.

I mean it's not like I personally have extensive experience in this area and know that you're completely wrong or anything.

There is no difference between a shell corp which folds because of a wardec and one that forms seconds afterwards and contains the same players. Or a corp with 20 members then when a wardec hits has 1 member and 19 "friends and allies", then when the wardec ends has a recruitment spree.

You're not fooling anyone, you're just abusing the fact that you can drop a form of non-consensual PVP at your whim, which is an exploit because there's nothing anyone can to do stop you.

That's because high sec wars are not intended to be a form of non-consensual PvP.

And defender corp members who drop cannot re-join for 7 days either.

If you could bypass CONCORD for a measly wardec fee there'd be precious little point to having them at all.

There is one game mechanic that has always existed game-wide and doesn't necessarily cost anything. Diplomacy is the any corp's best bet for survival. They could join an alliance, they could find friends and ~blue the universe~, there are so many diplomatic options. Small, poor, inexperienced entities packed full of new players like Dreddit and Goonswarm have been using diplomacy to practically take over portions of the game. Take notes from the big blue donut stereotype you like to use, highsec.

well. show me someone outside of this blue doughnut who will say this is good for game as a whole? Not sure. Eve Online is about conflict and wars and not about blue ISK-farms.

So if you force people into these alliances/groups you hurt the game.

Or these players and don't want to be involved in the war system could say, remain in the employ of an NPC corp.

A revolutionary idea, I know.

I'm about to submit a petition regarding a corp who's members drop and then rejoin corp during war. Is this an exploit I've read so many posts saying it is and so many saying it's not?

Why does CCP not simply lock corps when they are dec'd to prevent such exploits? or place a 7 day timer on leaving corp so the War Dec'r gets his war dec for the full 7 days.

Another option would be for CCP to charge ISK to move corporations to prevent people war dodging.

because people like you always say "remove NPC corps", "move players after 2 months of play time into some FW corp" or similar stupid things

This does really need adressed. A corp that is war dec'd should have a 7 day timer on leaving the corp or the war dec should follow players for the seven days who choose to bail. You pay the fee for 7 days and you should get those 7 days.

Can someone from CSM please support this or a future candidate put it forward, I'm looking at you James 315 as you'll get my vote. I'd like to see and hear people piping up about this at fan fest too please.

Well another point I'd like to make is that older players have no business being in npc corps in the first place. If you leave a corp you should be placed into generic corp which would be decable and awoxable.

They want to be unaffiliated and undisturbed, why shouldn't that be their choice?

Highsec would still be peaceful. Vastly more so than any other section or playstyle in the game. You just won't necessarily receive peace all of the time for free and you actually have to work towards it if you tend to do things that affect other people's gameplay.

Really don't think any solution that makes people more afraid to join a corp in the first place is a good idea, frankly. Definitely think if the aggressor should get refunded though if certain things happen.

Well another point I'd like to make is that older players have no business being in npc corps in the first place. If you leave a corp you should be placed into generic corp which would be decable and awoxable. Being able to hide within an NPC corp is a joke. NPC corps should be for new players to the game and not a skirt for cowards to hide under.

A quick fix would be for the NPC corps that exist now to be war dec'able while placing new players into non dec'able school corps for a maximum fair time frame.

Yep, "people like me", all six of us in Placid who will give gf's at around downtime.

What do you propose then, to fix the ridiculous nature of highsec wars, which are now completely consensual, and heavily punishing the attacker if the defender doesn't want to fight?

Then they should change their definition of exploit to "Anything we say is an exploit is an exploit and nothing else". Not "An exploit is when someone bypasses normal game mechanics, such as by utilizing a bug in the game, allowing him to take advantage of other players without them having any means of preventing it whatsoever." It's crystal clear that in CCP's definition of an exploit it should be classified as one.

It usually takes them a while before they officially classify it as an exploit and start taking action after they discover how much damage it is doing to the game (usually through player feedback), much like it took a while for them to classify loitering in incursions as an exploit. They know it's a problem, they're just not sure exactly what to do about it, because giving the GMs a ton of new exploit petitions to deal with is not the answer. They don't necessarily have to officially classify it as an exploit and have the GMs start doing things in order for it to be fixed by the devs.

I hope the discussion we are having, along with what the rest of the playerbase is saying and doing raises a few eyebrows and shows them exactly what needs to be done, because this is the kind of constructive discussion that CCP needs to have in order to fix the wardec system and make highsec meaningful.