The only things in EVE that are not PvP are direct isk injections: mission rewards, incursion payouts, bounties from rats. The moment you even touch the market, congratulations you're a PvPer.

If you don't want PvP, play a different game. Period.

Incursion payouts - you are competing with other players for the sites, which is economic PvP.

Same thing with ratting in a system with other players attempting to also do ratting.

Mission rewards, OTOH, are indeed mostly PvP-free, except for people who come into your mission pocket and interact with you in some fashion.

On the other hand, the game should foster all play styles.

And then the allies. Unlimited allies for the defender. You can be an ally in an unlimited number of wars. So instead of doing the Privateer thing of dec-ing everyone, you just become free allies with everyone. Unlimited wars at no cost.

You declare war, you will end up at war with half of EvE.

i dec u hoping for a good fight with both of us dieing saying GF atfer said engagement.

there always seems to be a thread about a carebears point of view about the war dec sys . ok heres my point of view on wars since i do them often not for the reason to grief but for a controlled pvp battlefield that keeps it between me and you with out many outside factors. to give u situation that happens often, i dec you since i think that ur an active alliance with players that will give me a good fight.

You dec me against my will. And you hope I will give you a good fight. I do not want you to extend this war. I will not give you what you want.

Which is not a fundamentally broken design like the Privateer thing was. The Privateers used it to turn large portions of hi-sec effectively into NPC-null because they wardec'd dozens of corps/alliances.

This results in very few interesting high sec wars as the following are the most likely scenarios:

1) The defenders are able to give a fight hence the attackers dock up. (And play with their alts). No fight.
2) The defenders are unable to fight back, hence dock up. (But as a new player have no alts, and will probably leave the game). No fight.
3) The defenders don't care and get ganked again and gain losing immense amount of money which again results in new players leaving the game. No decent fights.
4) The defenders call in allies and spend millions they don't have on defending themselves. The war deccers end the war. hurr.

5) The defenders realize it's just a game and take it all in stride, bringing as good a fight as they can. Afterwards they ask the aggressor for PvP tips and all become brosefs for life....

Don't think 5) is likely? Probably cuz you never tried it.

5) The defenders realize it's just a game and take it all in stride, bringing as good a fight as they can. Afterwards they ask the aggressor for PvP tips and all become brosefs for life....

Don't think 5) is likely? Probably cuz you never tried it.

Small scale wars are dead. 20mil+500K/member per week... yeah.

Basically, I have no idea how a newbie corp could give Vladmir a good fight. In fact, I know that it is impossible for them to give him a good fight any more than a 7 year old could give an adult a "good fight"

So, since Vladmir isn't looking for a "good fight" what is he looking for?

So no more getting out of a war declared on you. Small indi corps like mine get screwed either way: You pay to surrender or you pay to find an ally.

Now you will see player owned griefing corps who a) start wars so that b) their silent partners can reap rewards from ally contracts.

I get that the mechanics of the game design shouldn't allow an "out" in a sandbox game. On the other hand, the game should foster all play styles. While 70 percent or more like PvP, there are still some of us that just like to fly ships, research, make Isk etc...so... game tweaks to close a loophole which allows players to escape griefing but no tweak to actually remove the option to grief to begin with. Developer on record saying "yes we know that griefing will continue, but hopefully it will be more expensive and less incentive for it to happen"...

Lots of evidence showing that a core group of players enjoy Eve because of griefing and evidence showing that usually ambivalent players will tend to grief when there are no consequences (lord of the flies effect).

Definition of griefing: forcing another player (victim) to live with the consequence of the first players intention to cause harm or grief, sometimes for profit but not necessarily, thereby diluting the experience of the victim.

Since certain game elements require a player owned corp (POS / tax control for instance), opting out of player owned corporation means giving up or diluting the game experience.

Sounds like fun.

You don't want to get wardecced? Go join an NPC corp and crawl back into your hugbox.

So CCP wants to secure large alliances so that they even don't need neutral alts for hi-sec hauling???
good work CCP... NOT!!!!!

So, if you dont have 5B ISK per week you cant war dec large alliance.
And you want that all now attack small/medium corps/alliances???

Nice work CCP.
I see that this CSM break your reason.

This isn't a barrier. To war dec a corp with 40 people will cost 40 million isk. That's what - an hour of L4 missions?

I have long thought missions needed more opportunities to engage in economic PVP. Something akin to the way incursions work.

WISDOMS

1) If you can't leave, or dodge, the war, then you do have the option of playing on an out of corp alt. Sucks, but that should be your only "out" - and your CEO should be asking why you didn't front up.

2) I also agree you should be restricted to the number of people you can bring in for defence;

3) I can see the point here, but I think there's many ways to make war costly. I don't know how you wuld enforce any form of mechanic beyond simple stuff like, eg, most killmails within the week is declared winner.

4) Totally agree. It should be much costlier for bigger alliances to dec startup noob-filled corps or alt corps running highsec POSs.

I have heard of changes having been poposed to war dec mechanics. Is there a definative link available from somewhere please?

First, there should be no way to leave corp or alliance once a war has been declared and this is a positive step in the war dec system. There should be some pride in a corp/alliance, and if you dont have it then you will get smashed and no more of that corp/alliance.

Second, Its a great idea to not allow agressors bring in new members during a dec, but allowing the defender to bring in mercs or allies. This will add some serious consideration to who you try and dec. Also gives the defender a nice way to royally screw the attackers. I think there should be some limit to how many allies you can bring in so its not a "invite every free merc in game" type situation. That would render war decs useless.

Fourth, The cost of the war dec is looking backwards. It shouldn't cost so much to dec an alliance/ corp bigger than you, it should cost less. It should therefore cost more to dec an alliance/corp smaller than you. Start with a base price and add cost for a dec to a smaller alliance, and subtract for the larger ones.

Before War dec shielding -- small corps avoided war by (1) taking down their pos in the 24 hr pre-war window; (2) docking up and playing alts; and, (3) temporarily quitting their corps for npc corps. While CCP is contemplating changes to #3 -- there is nothing that will prevent people from avoiding war by simply not engaging in it, i.e. staying docked

Ultimately, IMO, its bad policy for CCP to try and compel folk to play in any one particular game style. Here CCP is essentially saying that somebody can force you to engage in a play style that you may not want to engage in. But CCP cant make people play when they dont enjoy what they are doing. So ultimately all that is going to happen is that carebears are going to dock up and refuse to fight and maybe unsub if the war decs become too onerous

The changes that CCP are making simply do not address the true problems underlying war decs. The main issue with war decs is that they are pointless. There is no territory for you to conquer, no resources for you to control, no strategic objectives that can be achieved. To make war decs viable, CCP must incentivize war. There simply must be things that can be won and lost; items which are significant enough that the attacker will risk attacking while the loser will will regret losing if it doesnt defend. The custom houses introduced in the last expansion point the way forward. These objectives are focus points for corporate conflict and they should have been introduced in empire

In sum, if CCP only looks at the mechanics of war decs and fails to consider the motivations behind engaging in war, the new changes will be a failure.

You're making the assumption that deccers need an incentive beyond the lolz factor. I can assure you, they do not. Hisec wars will always be the same regardless of what CCP does. It's a place where the strong pick on and bully the weak and risk averse. I'm not saying I like it. I'm just saying that's the reality.

Actually you're making my point. War decing as it now stands is a nothing but a griefing mechanic. Sure the attacker can be in it for the lol'z, but what incentive is there for the defender to actually participate? CCP needs to add items to empire that give advantages to the corp's holding them such that if a corp is war dec'd it will want to engage in the war to prevent the loss of their advantage. Otherwise, we are just going to go back to a situation where docking up was the primary way of avoding war.

Actually you're making my point. War decing as it now stands is a nothing but a griefing mechanic. Sure the attacker can be in it for the lol'z, but what incentive is there for the defender to actually participate? CCP needs to add items to empire that give advantages to the corp's holding them such that if a corp is war dec'd it will want to engage in the war to prevent the loss of their advantage. Otherwise, we are just going to go back to a situation where docking up was the primary way of avoding war.

Docking up means you can't do all those things you were planning to do. The defender fights because if they win, they can get back to what they were doing. Also, POS owners have something to defend.

In most situations, a deccer decs another corp because they believe they can win. That is human behavior. We only prey on the weak. If the defending corp thought they could win, they would simply fight and not undock.

There is no mechanic that will ever overcome this sort of risk averseness often displayed ingame. If you have one, I'd love to hear it.

PS- Let's not forget that CCP advocates griefing so for all intents and purposes, CCP's response would be, "Working as intended"

So no more getting out of a war declared on you. Small indi corps like mine get screwed either way: You pay to surrender or you pay to find an ally.

No. I'm not missing the point. You're being very clear. However, there is a logical fallacy to your entire argument. Your argument is predicated on the belief that war is or should be equal and allow a defender to have an incentive to fight. That isn't CCP's logic. So if isn't CCP's logic then obviously they're not going to fix the wardec mechanics to suit your belief how wardecs should occur.

You're also assuming that CCP wants actual real pvp to happen wrt hisec wardecs. I don't believe they ever stated that. They just want to simply minimize the outrageous tactics people will go through to wardec or avoid a wardec.

If you can find where CCP explicitly stated that they want to encourage actual pvp wrt wardecs, then I would consider changing my opinion on the matter.

Docking up means you can't do all those things you were planning to do. The defender fights because if they win, they can get back to what they were doing. Also, POS owners have something to defend.

In my Opinion the new wardec system needs to be balanced that's why i want to introduce my improvement to highsec wardecs.

At the moment wardecs are unbalanced and with Inferno they will still be unbalanced in favor of agressors, the raised cost for war declarations make large corps/allys untouchable and small corps are still easy targets and will have less options to defend themself.
Here comes my suggestion:
Agressors should decide on their own how much they want to pay per week per wardec, e.g. Corp war A want to wardec Corp B so Corp A have to declare war and at this point they put in a certain amount isk (e.g. 100mio isk) as a weekly payment to concord. Now Corp B gets the message of a war declaration and have at this point the option to "counterpay" concord so Corp B decides to pay 100mio isk as well and the war comes to an end even befor it has started. If Corp A pays more than Corp B can effort to pay the war goes ahead as we know it.
Industries may can't fight as well as pvp'ers but industries have more money respectively should have more money that's why they should get a possibility to use their money to defend them self by preventing wardecs before they start.

I still think this would be the best solution ISK part of the problem:



So elite PVP corps with rich killboard will attack other PVP corps with good killboards for little money. (you have balls you pay less)
And if elite PVP corp with rich killboard attacks mining/indy corp without any killboard (empty/poor killboard) it must pay much of ISK. (you are a wuss who attacks people who cant defend themself - you will really pay for it)

So you are paying for less risk.
Find the opponent of your own size and have fun, if you like fighting, and don't grief children who cant defend themself.
I think that's only fair.

If corp A decs corp B for 100m then corp B can counter that with a higher offer to avoid war and Corp A does not get refunded then no one will want to wage war on the offchance the corp they are deccing has much more isk.

They can use that money to hire mercs.

You're making the assumption that deccers need an incentive beyond the lolz factor. I can assure you, they do not. Hisec wars will always be the same regardless of what CCP does. It's a place where the strong pick on and bully the weak and risk averse. I'm not saying I like it. I'm just saying that's the reality.

A few things come to mind as a student of war

First lets talk about the purpose of war, ignoring the griefer factor, for a moment. The purpose of war is to create, obtain or defend a position of advantage, be that position logistical, territorial, political or economic. There are other reasons for war but that is the core

In highsec this means mainly POS, which for most Indy corps is all of those things. If they pull down that POS they are potentially losing a lot; research time, production time, etc. That being the case if an Indy corp pulls down their POS, the attacker has already won. If they choose to stay docked up, and lose mining or trade or production time, the attacker has already won. Sun Tzu teaches that those who don't prepare for war have already lost it. The only way to win a war in eve as the defender is to continue production or cost your aggressor one of those positions without losing your own. In highsec this is very hard or near impossible to do, and the changes do nothing to address this

Now plenty of examples have been provided of methods of not letting your own Indy efforts be disrupted; jump clones, move into a wh, etc. So I wont beat that dead horse but what I have not seen is many ideas of how to make war truly mutual. If engaging in war was as much a threat to the initial aggressor as to the defender, you would see few griefer style wars.

What I would suggest is that instead of expiring after a week of time they should expire after a week of no contact between the warring parties, not allies. In addition make the enforced peace period negotiable in the surrender providing the defender incentive to control those negotiations. This would make war less of an isk sink but would also allow the defender-aggressor dynamic to be much more fluid, and the potential risk of starting a war much higher without eliminating any play styles. Yes this would allow you to just dock up and hide but then you've lost a week of production and risk being wardec-ed again when you show your face.

--

Lets talk about hiding in a station until the war ends for a moment, as that seems to really bother some people (I'm guessing highsec greifers). There are examples through out history of peoples and cultures that have done exactly that. Gone into hiding when aggressors came to their down and simply waited. SUCK IT UP AND DEAL CUPCAKE, YOU'VE JUST WON!

Trying to pin down what CCP are going to do is still difficult. Anyway, for me the change that will change things a lot are of course the suspect tag to neutral RR and of course them getting aggro so they cannot immediately dock or jump. There is one reason that my corp refuses to fight in high sec certain corps when they dec us, people having a huge amount of accounts and legions of neutral RR support. Nerfing neutral RR is a major plus point for me, the other issue of course is corp hopping by certain people, lets say you set up a trap engage one guy on a station, bring in others from next door, great, then all of a sudden you get 10 people join the aggressor corp in station and undock and your toast. From what I have read CCP are going to do something about this.

So no more getting out of a war declared on you. Small indi corps like mine get screwed either way: You pay to surrender or you pay to find an ally.

Now you will see player owned griefing corps who a) start wars so that b) their silent partners can reap rewards from ally contracts.

I get that the mechanics of the game design shouldn't allow an "out" in a sandbox game. On the other hand, the game should foster all play styles. While 70 percent or more like PvP, there are still some of us that just like to fly ships, research, make Isk etc...so... game tweaks to close a loophole which allows players to escape griefing but no tweak to actually remove the option to grief to begin with. Developer on record saying "yes we know that griefing will continue, but hopefully it will be more expensive and less incentive for it to happen"...

Lots of evidence showing that a core group of players enjoy Eve because of griefing and evidence showing that usually ambivalent players will tend to grief when there are no consequences (lord of the flies effect).

Definition of griefing: forcing another player (victim) to live with the consequence of the first players intention to cause harm or grief, sometimes for profit but not necessarily, thereby diluting the experience of the victim.

Since certain game elements require a player owned corp (POS / tax control for instance), opting out of player owned corporation means giving up or diluting the game experience.

Sounds like fun.

New War Dec changes = -1 from me.

1. Promotes small corps/Alliances getting War dec'ed loads.

2. Promotes Defenders geting lots of free Ally's coz ppl just want free wars.

3. Puts Mercs out of business in High sec.

4. Promotes big alliances - Not the best for all pilots people should have freedom of choice but if they get War Dec lots more they will soon Alliance up.

I think there really should be something to disallow shooting of mining ships and industrials/freighters in a high-sec war-dec. I don't think it's right that those that are not in a PVP ship can be targetted. In civilized countries we have agreed upon rules of war to guard against military shooting unarmed civilians and non-combatants.

I know I'm looking for honor in a game like EVE, so I'm probably in for a long wait.

Until that change is made then the wardec changes suck.

I think there really should be something to disallow shooting of mining ships and industrials/freighters in a high-sec war-dec. I don't think it's right that those that are not in a PVP ship can be targetted. In civilized countries we have agreed upon rules of war to guard against military shooting unarmed civilians and non-combatants.