SandKid
Sunset Logistics Company
205
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Posted - 2017.02.28 01:28:18 -
[1] - Quote
Vincent Athena wrote:Like all game mechanics, the objective of war decs is to have fun.
Is this happening in high sec? Most of the time, no. The receiver of the war dec will most likely stay docked for the duration. The players will leave corp, or play alts, or play a different game. This leaves the attacker with no targets, which is hardly any fun. This was summed up by CCP in some CSM minutes a few years ago:
"Solomon noted that they were looking specifically into cases where one corp wardecced another corp, and no losses occurred. Usually this means that a larger more powerful entity has wardecced a smaller entity that wants nothing to do with the conflict and therefore does everything in its power to avoid being caught or killed. Solomon wagered that this was the case in 70-80% of wars.
Solomon: The strong prey on the weak, but the weak arenGÇÖt responding, and nobodyGÇÖs getting particularly fun or nourishing gameplay out of this. Is that a failure? "
The only thing I can see to help the issue: Limit war decs to those groups of players who enjoy that style of game play. One way to do this: A corp can declare itself neutral. Doing so means it cannot be in a war, not as an attacker, defender, or ally. For balance it also means it cannot be in an alliance, or have any in-space structures (POS, citadel, complex, etc.)
Another option for doing this: A corp is automatically neutral, unless and until it puts up a structure in space.
Neutrality runs the dangerous (and likely) risk of 70-80% of corps not even engaging in war - which seriously diminishes a key part of eve online: risk and reward. This is tantamount to just making hisec PvP free (or gank only, which still doesn't solve the presenting problem).
That said, working wardecs along a line similar to OP that might use some sort of reward system could be good. I dare even utter 'participation award'.
Let's be honest, Solomon is right - most corps don't even want the war, so unless incentivized to literally 'play the game' this trend will continue. It sounds counter-intuitive (and may be), but maybe we need to seriously look at a 'consolation prize' mechanic in wardecs that is dependent on involvement. How you build such a mechanic is beyond me...the economic pitfalls are many, and the value of loss in eve is a prize we don't want to diminish as it drives the essence of the game.
I personally feel any wardec mechanic change will inherently need eve to have an internal killboard to base payouts and the like on. This exists in the background, but not in the foreground as a ui - we have to use 3rd parties to use this data. But going off the earlier point, perhaps the 'loser' of a wardec (based on net value destroyed / lost) could receive an insurance payout from CONCORD (condolences for sucking, yada yada) that is a multiple of the net value lost.
EX: Payout multiple of net loss based on 'participation' of destroyed amount.
1) >5bil, multiply net loss by 0
2) 5bil to 10bil, net loss by 0.5
3) 10bil to 100bil, net loss by 1
etc...just numbers for idea sake
You finish war and net lost 5 bil - destroyed 35bil, lost 40bil. So you get from CONCORD 5bil x 1 = 5bil isk back. You lost no isk in other words on losing a war in this example...but you had to DESTROY at least 10bil of your enemy to get that payout. If you had docked up, and destroyed only 10mil isk (your one hero member), you would have a 40bil loss but no multiplier. The example multipliers suck and are only intended to make the idea...balancing would be key, with the intent of not creating an end-result isk sink but incentivizing participation...even if you lose.
For alliances that can actually be evenly matched (or not very far apart), this could drive more battles in a race to get that multiplier higher. You care less about winning or losing and more about pew pew...though there is still a clear winner and loser. Working out mechanics for the winner is tougher (if any - if you won, you should have gotten more loot in your kills).
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