(Of course, for all his rhetoric, I don't think James 315 wants to burn highsec to the ground, but that's a post for another time.)
I'm not Terrible Trebor. I would not scrap the entire wardec system if I thought it would put another $50K per month into CCP's corporate wallet.
So, my Wardecs Be Broken post from yesterday was simply a response to two things. The first, Trebor's notion that wardecs should be scrapped if it can be proved that they lose CCP a significant number of subscribers. The second, that they aren't fulfilling the role that CCP wants them to fulfill (and that would be a place for corporations to air their grievances, and as a place where a mercenary market can thrive; both those goals failed.)
The thrust of yesterday's post was to find solutions that would fulfill CCP's stated goals. Debate on the subject showed that my suggestions would provide no incentive for fights. And that's fine. Like I said in the post, I wanted there to be a discussion. One interesting idea was presented in the comments. Something that I think has some actual potential. So ignore the ideas from yesterday, scrap them, they were just the beginning to a conversation, and the conversation has already moved past those ideas.
As it stands, wardecs only favour the aggressor. That's cool and all, but there's absolutely no reason at all for a defender to undock. Unless it was CCP's desire that e-honour be the only motivator for a defender, and we all know what place e-honour has in EVE. There should be some enticement for defenders to undock, to fight. Certainly there'll be some groups of people who will undock under no circumstance, and again, that's cool, but there are groups who only need a little shove out the door, the proverbial carrot.
Why not let the aggressor's wardec fee be that carrot. The motivator for an aggressor is targets. The motivator for a defender could be cold, hard ISK.
Let's say Foo Alliance [Foo] wardecs Bar Alliance [Bar], and the wardec fee is 500M ISK. That amount of ISK becomes available to Bar and only Bar. Even if Bar is able to bring in allies, the amount is still only available to Bar.
How does Bar collect? By killing Foo. Every ship that Foo loses to either Bar or the allies of Bar, some portion of that 500M ISK gets transferred to the alliance wallet of Bar (or the corp executor's wallet, I don't know how wallets work at the alliance level.)
Does Foo get anything for killing Bar? Nope. That get nada. Why? They initiated the wardec looking for targets. They paid for those targets and they got them (if the targets choose to undock.) The wardec fee is the privilege of those targets. Nothing more, nothing less. If that 500M ISK is enough of an enticement for Bar to come out to play, then Foo is going to get a crack at those targets.
Why don't the allies of Bar get any of that 500M ISK? Because it is a war initiated against Bar, not a war initiated against any of the allies. If the allies want to see any of that money, they'll have to negotiate a fee or a percentage with Bar. Maybe some of the allies don't care about the ISK. Maybe some of them do want to earn a wage for their assistance. At any rate, the fact that Bar does collect on Foo kills maybe helps to jump start an actual mercenary market.
At the end of a week, any uncollected "bounty" (wardec fee) remains with CONCORD. Some defenders will choose to fight, some will choose to hire mercenaries, some will choose to stay docked up. I think by giving the defenders a monetary incentive to fight will bring more of them out to play. Certainly more than under the current system, where there is absolutely no incentive to undock.
Thoughts?
I'm not sure about that one - would a corp genuinely airing a grievance (rather than deccing for access to soft targets) want to potentially subsidise their opponents with the wardec fee? Probably not.
ReplyDeleteWhat about a simpler solution where kills by the defender drive up the cost of renewing the wardec?
There's an incentive for the defender to fight, *and* a means of combating perma-decs if you're able to defend yourself effectively. Not a perfect solution by any means, but a simple one.
That's an interesting idea too.
DeleteAs for your argument that no aggressor will want to potentially subsidize an opponent. I suppose that's a risk they take. If they're initiating a war, they likely think they're a) better, and b) have the upper hand. I doubt they feel that much of their wardec fee will go towards subsidization.
How about combining both ideas into one? An escalating cost that offers greater potential rewards to the defender for protracted war decs.
Deleteto me (someone very inexperienced) wardecs seem to happen from small war oriented corps with no easy targets against large soft targets.
Deletewars should be cheapest between equal sized groups. it should be prohibitively expensive for a small (one man) corp to wardec someone like eve university.
if a pvp corp wants to grow to a size where they can cheaply wardec a large carebear corp they make themself a legitimate target for someone else. if they wanna have a very low exposure to risk the expense of a lucrative target should scale dramatically.
I think this is a great idea. I have personally been on the aggressor side of war decs (hired mercs,small but skilled 5 man corp) and we dec'd corps well over 200 members. Size difference did not matter as we knew we had an advantage in skill and experience. 2 things generally happened, they would not undock or they would ignore us until we hit them hard. We scouted our targets and picked a time when we could do the most damage in the shortest amount of time. At that point they would either pay us to stop, try to move someplace where they thought we could not find them (locator agents ftw), or stop undocking. When it reached a point where we could not make isk anymore we let the dec go. Having the cost of the dec be available to the dec'd corp as a sort of bounty pay out tied to an escalating cost of the dec based on the size of the corp/alliance being dec'd would force griefing corps to seriously consider who they dec and the potential cost. To small a corp would mean very little potential for making isk, to large a corp/alliance could mean the potential to lose a substantial amount of isk.
DeleteI also think there should be a penalty paid to the agressor if members/corps want to drop from the dec. This would encourage people to stay in the fight, but give a way out if they really don't want to be involved.
Ultimately the cost of the decs should be high enough that before you do it you should have to really think about what you are trying to accomplish and whether it will really be worth it.
That actually sounds very appealing Azual.
DeleteRvB would hate this in a pretty extreme way since they wouldn't be able to continue their perma war with each other.
DeleteThe problem gets back to POSes (as many current issues in Eve seem to of late). Players don't have stuff to kill in space because they don't need stuff in space when they can use the NPC station services or they are willing to forgo the benefits of stuff in space for inconveniences associated with doing things safer. Very few people have anything on the line in a war dec because few people find a benefit to having assets that could be destroyer in space (like a tower or POCO) because other avenues of income are significantly safer and are often more efficient.
If a POS were a more viable thing to have, wars would have more purpose because there would be something to lose if you don't fight.
Mutual wars would be an exception given any solution.
DeleteThis idea hinges around the wardec system being used to attack those that really want to be left alone, and reinforces that usage, which is the exact problem that CCP is already facing with the existing system. If this is all the wardec system is there for, to provide a secondary form of gameplay that is ALREADY available in highsec (paying in some form for the ability to attack those that don't want to be attacked), than the system is already working as intended.
ReplyDeleteThe problem, as Azual quickly pointed out, is that the current state of the wardec system isn't working well for its actual intended purpose: the airing of grievances between two corps, the enabling of CONCORD-sanctioned PvP in highsec, and god forbid - ACTUAL WAR, with actual killmails being generated in large amounts.
This jeopardizes such a proposal's ability to get traction with CCP because it isn't addressing what they want to address, which is that the wardec system in its current form fails to produce actual war. It's overwhelmingly used to grief those that don't want to be griefed, and it fails miserably at this task as well because unlike suicide ganking, you're giving your victim all the warning he needs to turtle up.
It's not a terrible idea in isolation - incentivizing soft targets to expose their necks to aggressors might improve the griefing usage of the wardec system, but it's hardly persuasive in an environment where CCP is pretty clearly messaging that they're looking to design a system with a different function.
As Bagehi has already pointed out, no wardec system can take someone who doesn't want to fight and make them want to fight. That would require a much broader revamp of highsec that would give people something to fight for--and if CCP wants to work on improving that aspect of the game, null and low are more natural areas to start.
DeleteNot only are you criticizing proposed wardec systems for failing to do something that doesn't really lie within the purview of a wardec system--but you do so without bothering to attempt to solve the insolvable problems you've presented yourself. Exactly what we've come to expect from Hans Jagerblitzen.
Attacking those who want to be left alone is indistinguishable from attacking those who have caused you a grievance.
DeleteIn both cases, one party wants to fight, and one party does not (I'm ignoring mutual wars, because those work fine as far as I'm aware).
In both cases, creating an incentive for the defenders to fight improves the chances of killmails being generated. The problem with a positive incentive is that it invites gaming the system (in the case of Wardec Fee as bounty, mercs/allies would simply join the defending corp to be eligible for the bounty). The problem with negative incentives is that it may lead defenders to simply not log in for a week (I'm assuming that any fix fixes the clearly broken corp dropping/disbanding to avoid wardec mechanic), which is bad.
Ideally, every corp would have something valuable (that rewards the aggressor for destroying it) in space that they need to defend, and that they want to keep (as in, it provides them with some benefit). Of course, there are problems with that idea as well, since you can't realistically expect every corp to be able to defend a static structure, and it's quite possible that any structure not worth sending an overwhelming fleet after is also not worth defending (like POSes now; not really worth defending in HS, since you just evacuate your stuff, hookup a bunch of ECM, and let the attackers burn it down if they'd like).
Ultimately I'm not sure how do fix wardecs, but I know that the current incarnation is broken. It incentivises going after newbies, and is essentially consensual PvP for everyone else (as they, unlike the newbies, are experienced enough to know they can just drop/disband corp).
"The problem with a positive incentive is that it invites gaming the system (in the case of Wardec Fee as bounty, mercs/allies would simply join the defending corp to be eligible for the bounty)."
DeleteI specifcally disallow allies/mercs from collecting on the "bounty". If mercs want payment, they negotiate with the wardec defender. That is how that relationship should work.
"I specifcally disallow allies/mercs from collecting on the "bounty"."
DeleteBut he even more specifically said that the mercs/allies would join the corp instead of using the ally system, to evade your disallowance.
However, the drawbacks inherent in having to join corps to do this, plus the pre-existing limits of the bounty system to 20% of kills, makes this type of gaming seem rather acceptable to me. Any system will be gamed, it's just a matter of keeping the possible resultant benefits within reasonable limits. I definitely think your idea is an incremental improvement over the current system, though I also agree that ruby's ideal scenario is a larger though more difficult/complex improvement over EVE as it exists today.
Ah. I missed that then.
DeleteAren't there limitations to joining corps under a wardec? Or perhaps that was just a limitation on corps joining alliances. Yeah, has to be the latter, otherwise the Uni would not have been able to accept new members for close to a year now.
I would still like to see a carrot out there for Foo to undock as well, like I said in your previous post I've seen too many war decs end up where Foo's only undocking for quick ganks and the minute Bar forms a fleet they go back and hide in their holes.
ReplyDeleteFoo needs to put something at risk that's worth defending when they make a war dec to prevent them from just staying docked up and only coming out when an out of corp spy has gank target IDed. Foo can even decide the time of day that their asset is at risk so that there's no issues with timezone coverage.
Bar should be able to collect those bounties in some way even if Foo stays docked up or else its not a war dec, its a mugging dec. Which is precisely the bottom line we're trying to avoid with war decs and what they've become.
An excellent observation. It's pretty ironic (and hilarious) that many "aggressive" high-sec war dec groups actually end up playing in an extremely risk-adverse fashion. While there is certainly value to many who PvP in high sec because it limits participation in the engagement (and thus allows them enjoyment free from the blob) there is no hiding the fact that this is still essentially avoidance of the possibility of -unwanted PvP aggression against their fleet-.
DeleteThis is where the "preserve the sandbox!" and "non-consensual PvP must be protected!" rabble just loses me completely. There's not only a hypocrisy involved by a good portion of those waving this banner, who have chosen to play in an environment where they can PvP with reduced risk, but its also capitalizing on a debate over an issue that really isn't at stake.
Not once has CCP budged on their insistence on the ability to attack anyone, anywhere, anytime - from individual developers all the way up to senior management, all who have commented on this perennially bitched-about debate. All they have questioned (along with Terrible Trebor) is simply the value in a system that is intended to generate those beautiful kill reports that Punkturis has spent a lot of time on, and is failing to do so.
Regardless of what prospective CSM candidates and pundits alike would have you believe, the internal debate has NEVER been about removing war decs, nor about making high sec safer. It's been about -generating kill reports- every single time a war dec flies. It's always been about how to INCREASE risk for those participating, not about how to reduce it.
Crying and pitchforking and soapboxing about the death of EVE, the ruination of the sandbox, and the need to restore the game's soul are all amazingly attractive, especially because its campaign season and the issue is delightfully polarizing and competitive. But the recent public debate is a boxing ring - a contrived battle, a place for everyone to beat their chest, sweat, and get their aggression out. Regardless of who wins or loses, CCP has a decade now of upholding non-consensual PvP, I think its pretty insane to think they're suddenly going to change this bedrock principle.
Everybody is risk-averse. Unless you're kidding yourself into think you're not.
DeleteAs an example. You feel Fweddit is risk-averse because they base out of Egghelende. We feel LNA is risk-averse because it bases out of an FW system that ha to strategic importance to the Amarr. We think you're risk-averse because you limit the distance of your roams to keep your OGBs safe.
Everybody is risk-averse to some degree or another in this game.
Absolutely. Risk aversion is a base characteristic of all EVE players that needs to be designed around, pretty every system in the game must provide incentive for us to resist our innate nature and expose ourselves in hopes of gaining more in the end.
DeleteMore importantly, the fact that risk aversion is something we all struggle with is a direct result of CCP's aforementioned commitment to PvP anywhere, anytime, for any reason (albeit with cost). There might be a few out there with an illusion of EVE being a different game than it has always been, but that never lasts long. The rest of us are just too efficient at exposing, humiliating, or otherwise "educating" players who still hold on to some scrap of their perceived immunity from harm.
This, to me, is exactly why I think its silly to run around campaigning against or calling other players out for their risk aversion, or of their alleged support of removing something that CCP will never actually remove from the game. It's an exercise in wasted effort and futility, when effort could be spent instead (as you have in your latest couple of posts) in brainstorming ways of making risk-taking more fun and rewarding.
I need to proofread my comments before I post them.
Delete"... ha to strategic importance ..."
should be
"... has no strategic importance ..."
"This is where the "preserve the sandbox!" and "non-consensual PvP must be protected!" rabble just loses me completely. There's not only a hypocrisy involved by a good portion of those waving this banner, who have chosen to play in an environment where they can PvP with reduced risk, but its also capitalizing on a debate over an issue that really isn't at stake."
DeleteThis is nonsense. The recent debate over safety in highsec has primarily been about awoxing and suicide ganking, not war decs. Trebor has made some strange proposal about removing wardecs, but that's a side issue--due to the fact that highsec wardeccers didn't really respond in any significant numbers to that proposal. If we're talking about suicide ganking, then gankers are actually more vulnerable to aggression then their targets are, so your point fails completely. You're aren't just wrong, but you're wrong, and then extra wrong, with whipped cream on top.
"This, to me, is exactly why I think its silly to run around campaigning against or calling other players out for their risk aversion, or of their alleged support of removing something that CCP will never actually remove from the game."
Actually, it's silly to run around calling people out without informing yourself of the basic facts that are up for debate first. People are upset over the changes that CCP has ALREADY MADE to the game, not about imaginary changes that will never happen. CCP needs to fix the real changes that have already occurred. One person can currently mine, solo, playing hundreds of accounts with a high degree of safety, without even using ISBoxer, he can do it completly manually. He's doing it right now, as I type this. Do you have any reason to believe that this won't spread over time? Is this how highsec should be? A year ago, this would not have been even a fraction as safe as it is now.
Why not take it further? Put a fraction of the aggressing corporation/alliance fee onto that same entity as a bounty. That should continue to initiate fights, and really gets everyone what they want - mercs get fights and eventually an aggressive merc corp will find themselves on the receiving end just because of the bounties.
ReplyDeleteNot too bad an idea apart from the base dec fee currently being 50 mill
ReplyDeleteTo solve the wardec problem, I think you need to go back to first principles. What are wardecs for? Why does Concord allow them? If you can answer that, then it will suggest ways to reform the system so that it makes more sense and creates meaningful PVP.
ReplyDeleteThere might be many reasons why Concord allows wardecs. I.e., Concord (standing in almost directly for CCP) may have decided that wardecs are a good way to let capsuleers have some fun. If you take this approach, then almost any arbitrary scheme of limitation of wardecs is rationalizable: Concord makes them be only a week because, well, longer is no fun! Of course, the biggest problem with this sort of idea is that it leads directly to the removal of non-consensual wardecs. After all, if wars are supposed to be fun, then shouldn't the best judges of that be the wardeccer and wardeccee? And if the wardeccee has any say...
(continued)
ReplyDeleteHere is my take on on Corcord's motives. Concord wants taxes, but it does not directly tax capsuleer corps. Rather, Concord deputizes corps to collect taxes for it. So, the point of a war in highsec is tax extraction.
Having made this determination, we can see immediately one reason why the current system is unsatisfying: it is unlimited income taxation. That this would destroy the target is of no concern; the system does not allow for any ongoing relationship between predator and prey. My suggestion for Concord's motive shows us how to fix the system: limit the effective taxes that can be levied via wars.
Here's how it might work: there is a fee charged to the wardeccer to declare war. This scales only with the headcount of the wardeccee. Perhaps it is 5m per active corp member. (This fee is Concord's tax.) The wardeccee can unilaterally buy out the wardec at any time by paying twice the amount of the wardec, to the aggressing corp. So, for example, Aggression, Inc declares on Carebear Inc., which has 20 active members. AI pays 100m for the privilege. CI decides not to fight; they can end the war by paying 200m (to AI). AI ends the war up by 100m. Concord gets 100m tax. CI loses 200m. No fighting happens and nobody spends time in station. AI has a new asset -- CI -- which AI will have to fight to retain (see below).
We need more to prevent any given corp from paying too much. To do this we create a feudal system. There are two classes of war outcomes: a war can be a draw, either by timing out, or via a mutually agreed armistice. Or one side or the other wins the war; both sides must agree and the loser must pay the winner tribute. When a corp wins a war, it is deemed to have beaten the losing corp and becomes its feudal suzerain. The loser becomes a vassal of the winner. Any vassals it had become vassals of the winner.
All vassals pay taxes to their suzerain, on a monthly basis. The amount should be same as a war -- the suzerain gets 5m per head, per my example. Concord also gets 5m. The vassal pays 10m per head. Thus, the total tax paid by a vassal corp is no more than 120m per member per year. This is not particularly much, IMO; perhaps it should be more. But my 5m number is just for example. A vassal should be billed at the start of each month, and it has the option to not pay. In this event, it is no longer considered a vassal. The newly ex-suzerain should be notified.
Normally a vassal pays tribute to its suzerain (and Concord). But it gets something in return: protection from other predators. To this end, the wardec mechanic must be adjusted. Vassals are not immune to wardecs, however to wardec a vassal, you must risk war with its suzerain. Initially, you pay to wardec only the vassal. Then the suzerain must decide whether to defend the vassal or not. If it declines the war, the vassal is freed and the war proceeds as per above. If the suzerain opts to fight, then the aggressor must decide whether to pay the increased amount (to fight it, too). If it declines, it loses the initial sum paid to Concord and no war happens. If it "antes up", the war is on!
One more tweak to the current system is needed: all active characters in NPC corps pay 10m per month, directly to Concord. You can opt not to pay, in which case you are permanently flagged criminal until you pay. Characters do not pay this tax until they are 1 year old.
The expected result here is a feudal structure of corps. Carebear corps are at the bottom; they are vassals, paying taxes to tax-farming PVP corps. However, the carebears are largely immune to wardec. The tax-farmers, on the other hand, have valuable "property" -- their vassals -- which they must fight to defend. Independent corps can remain so only by hiding, or fighting.
This, almost. Replace the flat fees with percentages of income just like corporate taxes and I'm totally on board.
DeleteOther Reasons to wardec:
ReplyDelete1. To inflict damage on the economy of your hisec opponent. (Maybe you both are selling some trade good, or some manufactured good.)
2. To recruit. One way to recuit is "join or die"
3. To advertise your mercenary services. I would dec a corporation and then offer a buyout if they would purchase a weeks worth of mercenary services against a target of their choice.
Wardecs are definitely difficult to deal with sometimes. However never impossible, there are always options.
The wardec fee is supposed to be to release Concord limitations. Why is there not a fee to refuse the wardec?
ReplyDeleteThe numbers below are variable, don't nitpick the values, it would scale according to corp size, alliances, etc.
It would make it a gamble for the aggressors and work similar to this:
1 - DoucheGankSquad sees the corp DirtyOldMiner eating rocks.
2 - DGS pays 50M to Concord to WarDec(the bet)
3 - DOM responds by sending Concord a response fee of their choice:
They pick 250M (the raise)
4 - Now DGS has the choice:
4a - Refuse the wardec and lose 50M, DOMs gets 250M ISK back (DGS folds)
4b - Accept the wardec and immediately pay anything greater than 200M (the difference between the bet and the raise). DGS picks 300M. (the call)
If 4b, then DOM can force the cancellation of the WarDec by destroying 50M ISK (the difference between the 'raise' and the 'call') of goods in the aggressor corp within a week. So, even if they lost a crap ton of ships, so long as they got a 50M win (or several 5M ISK wins), somewhere, the wardec is over. DSG loses.
If DOM is successful in either 4a or 4b, DSG is locked down. No-one can leave the corp, no-one can join and DSG can not declare a war for 30 days, against anyone ... don't waste Concord's time if you aren't going to win.
Now, how do we make the continuation fee fair (perhaps a separate idea from above)?
Continuation is reduced by an amount equal to the victories. Just don't lose the cancellation amount (so 50M in the above example). So it would be possible to reduce the fee to zero with enough kills.
Continuation is increased or decreased based on how much the aggressor corp is on grid at the defender corp's headquarters. Scale the time such that the following occurs:
100% corp participation on grid decreases (or increases if defender) the bill faster
Any time a defender corp member is online but not on grid at HQ and an aggressor is, the fee is decreased faster
Any time a defender corp member is online and on grid at the HQ and there is no aggressor on grid or online, the fee is increased faster
The longer the same pilot is on grid, the faster the decrease (or increase)
So, it would work such that, if you just have a few guys in the aggressor corp logging in randomly through the week, and the defender corp is continually on grid, the continuation fee might triple or quadruple.
If, however, you have several aggressor pilots sitting on grid for several hours at a time and members of the defender corp are also online. It might only take two? three? hours to push the continuation fee to zero. (a cloaked ship counts for zero).
If the aggressor corp shows up and pushes the fee to zero, they could carry on the fight indefinitely. If the defender corp shows up, they could push the fee so high that the aggressor must cancel. End result is fight or pay.
Its a quirky mechanic, but it has no analogy to real life. It kills the immersion because it reminds us that EVE is a game and it requires unrealistic things like this to make it appealing. In real life, you war dec someone to make the engagement legal under international law, and then bam. No welfare for losers.
ReplyDeleteSo no, I don't like your idea. Not because it doesn't achieve what you want it to, it does. But because it just doesn't feel like war if sometimes, one side doesn't get wrecked. Cash for losers is a bad idea.
If they collect a significant amount of "bounty", then they're likely not losers.
Delete