Fixing High-Security Wars
October 16th, 2011 by Khalia NestuneFellow blogger Jester wrote a post over on his blog (which I recommend) regarding high-security wars and the recent decision by CCP to allow corp or alliance hopping and other “tricks” to avoid high-security wars.
While I enjoy Jester’s blog and admire his writing skills, I disagree with him almost entirely on this topic.
What lingers for me today about this incident was the inherent unfairness of it. All of us that were fighting were sub-5m SP characters, trying to defend our right to mine veldspar in a 1.0 system. The aggressors were much older characters with tens of millions of SP and ships and income streams that we couldn’t dream of. They could keep the war-decs going cheaply for weeks, and we had no defense against them.
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Some of you are no doubt bristling at my use of the word “unfair”. EVE is a dark, cold, risky universe where you can get killed at any moment, blah blah blah. Fine. I accept that. Wouldn’t still be playing this game if I didn’t.
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Guys, I sympathize with high-sec PvPers and mercs. I really do. But in this, I have to look at the Big Picture, and the Big Picture says that such high-sec war-decs are often bad for the health of the game.
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I’m all for teaching new EVE players that New Eden is dangerous. But I also feel like the true newbies — the ones that are still trying to learn how this game works — should be protected more than they are today. That’s why I say the current high-sec war-dec mechanics are badly broken.
This attitude is wrong because “true newbies” are immune to wardecs; they are already in NPC corporations. New characters start in an NPC corp for this very reason – they have to learn the game mechanics before they get exposed to the issues of warfare. Even non-new characters get a chance to avoid wardecs, at the cost of an 11% tax, the lack of corporate wallets, hangars, etc. and the inability to deploy and use POS towers.
Another fallacy is the “health of the game” argument. The assumption underlying this is that we want new players to keep playing the game. The fallacy behind this assumption is that not all players are equal. I do not want the EVE player base to increase with players who lack the resilience or determination to keep playing when the odds are against them. If you stop playing after your shiny new Hulk is killed by suicide gankers, then this is GOOD for the game.
EVE *is* unfair. That’s why many of us like it. That shouldn’t change.
This said, here are my own suggestions for fixing the current high-security warfare problems:
- The corporation or alliance declaring the war must produce a certain number of ship kills, pod kills, or ISK value destroyed in order for the war to continue for another week. The formula for this is determined by the game, not by the group declaring war, and is based on the number of players in the target corporation or alliance.
- The war can be ended early if the target corporation agrees to pay a certain ISK value to end the war. This is a fixed value based on the number of players in the target corporation or alliance.
- When a war has ended either due to surrender or due to the group declaring war not meeting their goals, or from voluntarily ending the war, the target can not have war re-declared on them from the same aggressors for the same length of time as the war took place. If war lasted six weeks, the target is immune to wars from same aggressors for six weeks.
- No member may leave a corporation while the corporation is at war. Members who are forcefully removed from the corporation may not re-join the corporation for one full week.
- No corporation at war can join an alliance. No corporation in an alliance at war may leave the alliance. Corporations in an alliance which are forcefully removed may not re-join the alliance for two full weeks.
- Warp scrambling of any sort prevents a ship from docking or using a gate.
I’d go into greater detail about the suggested changes, but the ideas should be clear if you think through the implications. I also have to be awake at 0500 local time and need my fucking sleep.
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