R I 0 T's Tangled and Shady Web

The case of [SW-SS] vs [GAVIA], [VBEE], R I 0 T, and [TSRS].

In my previous blog entry I detailed the very deep flaws within the current WarDec and Citadel mechanics. In this post I want to discuss the dishonorable and untrustworthy manner in which R I O T is conducting themselves in the HiSec "mercenary" market, and how they conduct business in bad faith.

My motivations for sharing my findings are simple: Turnabout is fair play. My target hired mercs - fine. But that doesn't mean I'm going to be nice about being interefered with, either. My motivations for writing this particular blog piece are clear and in the open: turnabout. But motivations do not change facts. And I think my suspicions are true -because people are very angry and getting very defensive about what I have to say.

I probably wouldn't have even caught on to the scammy shenanigans, save for slips of the tongue on the part of Sgt Angel and [TSRS] leadership. Without further introduction:

The Original Shady Shit

I declared war on "Gavaid Janau Corporation" and "Volga Bulgaria Empire". "The SRS" declared war on me a few days later. A few days later, R I O T WarDec'd me as well. I reached out to Destiny Corrupted in R I O T to find out why. I was informed that it was a contract. It was very obvious to me who it probably was, as the list of potential suspects was particularly short. But everything was very "hush hush" and "need to know".

(Unfortunate for the contractee because because I was already buying up all the Type-C crystals and Light Neutron Blasters I needed to make sure that what would have just been a quick structure bash turned into a months long affair of grief and misery...)

I spoke to Destiny at length, trying to trouble shoot the situation and the game mechanics of the situation, to see what my options were. Everything was fine; everyone was calm. I even offered to transfer R I O T my Astrahus since at this point I just wanted to get rid of it, drop the outstanding WarDecs, and move on.

But during my conversation with Destiny, I was offered a deal: Surrender the wars immediately, and they wouldn't blow up the Astrahus. I didn't actually care about the Astrahus. It was stolen in the first place and I'd made my bucket of cash. But, why not avoid a loss if you can? I sent the surrender offers, and provided screenshots. However, after I sent the surrender offers, I was told that they had to be accepted. That's when things went sour instantly: This put me in a very vulnerable position wherein my target could accept the surrenders and end the war prematurely, but R I O T could still blow up my Astrahus. I don't take kindly to being tricked.

Here's proof of the deal, and the attempted switcharoo:

And the switch:

Talking with the diplo:

At the end of the day, I had to threaten to go public if R I O T violated the terms of the deal as written. 

[ 2022.06.16 01:12:18 ] Xuixien > I love hypotheticals! Okay. So let's say, hypothetically, that the CEO is too lazy to log in to check his mails, and then you guys blow up my Astra, and I post all these receipts on my blog showing that RIOT can't be trusted, that you guys make deals and then amend them after the fact with "clarifications" and other nonsense that was never talked about. And I the direct link in my bio. And then I start bumping every RIOT recruitment or jobs post on the forums, start mentioning it every time I respond to you on the forums, and making sure a link is sent to everyone you deal with.

It was simple: Break the agreement, and I will do everything I can to make sure it ruins your reputation as much as possible.

So the issue of R I O T vs [SW-SS], and by extension [SW-SS] vs [GAVIA] and [VBEE], were resolved. As far as [TSRS] vs [SW-SS], that also seemed to be resolved, which was strange, because I never mentioned them in the conversation. But Sgt Angel thought it was pertinent:

[ 2022.06.16 01:14:24 ] Sgt Angel > we're all good SRS are going to look into the surrenders and hopefully it will all be sorted within the next few hours
[ 2022.06.16 01:14:33 ] Destiny Corrupted > so sarge, let's make it clear that we won't be attacking him
[ 2022.06.16 01:15:18 ] Sgt Angel > correct, neither us nor SRS will be attacking and the two other entitiues will not war dec
[ 2022.06.16 01:15:30 ] Sgt Angel > SRS will talk to the corps to get them to accept the surrender

Why was SRS even mentioned? Why would they "not be attacking" me because of my deal with R I O T? And why they were "looking into the surrenders" and talking to the other corps about it? What did they have to do with anything?

A few days later I noticed something that got me thinking...

What is going on here? One minute [TSRS] is supposedly talking to the wartarget corps to get them to accept the surrenders, and working with R I O T on it, but then they turn around and WarDec the person who hired R I O T?

I wondered what R I OT would have to say about it. So I reached out. My contact didn't know anything - that was all leadership stuff.

R I O T leadership is "involved in" and "decides" on the [TSRS] stuff.

I pressed my contact a bit for more information. The story, from R I O T of course, is that [TSRS] declared the wars to spite me.

But how would that in any way hurt me? After all - a deal was made: I wasn't going to kill those Athanors. [TSRS] would have already known about the deal: after all they "looked into it" at R I O T's behest... so how would blowing them up in any way affect me what so ever? If anything, it was a win for me: that smug little twerp who hired mercs and thought he was so clever and invincible because of it? LOL. He would lose his structures anyway: TO R I 0 T'S FRIENDS.

And I made sure he knew about it:

People are making a big red herring about this "alt" thing to distract from everything else.
For all my being great at everything, I am not 100% infallible.

I am disappointed though. I was very much looking forward using Type C crystals on the moon fields and ganking the miners - all while being immune to WarDecs. Two can play at mechanics! Instead, all I could do was whore on the kills to at least put them on my KB.

The R I O T - SRS Connection

Let's go back in time a bit, to the days before [TSRS] declared war on [GAVIA] and [VBEE]. The following is a brief snippet of the EVEMail conversation between my contact in R I O T and myself wherein my contact tries to sell me on the idea of my corporation, [SW-SS], potentially joining R I O T and what a R I O T alliance head said about the situation:

Somehow, [TSRS] knew about this conversation. When I joined the [TSRS] Discord channel to get them to blow up my Astrahus, Storm Preldent said two interesting things. First, nothing about the deal with R I O T. His reason given for not shooting the Astrahus was not "we're honoring the deal made with R I O T". Instead, they've just been too busy and had to defend a Fortizar.

(My plan worked by the way, and I was able to goad [TSRS] into breaking the deal R I 0 T made. All I had to do was insult their CEO's masculinity in DM. The conversation is summed up as follows:

Xuixien: Can you blow up my Astrahus already? Don't be scared.
Storm Peldant: We're busy.
Xuixien: Faggot*. Come at me, sissyboy.

I trashed him and he did exactly what I wanted.)

(* more on this later.)

And second, he knew about my potentially joining R I 0 T.

Something shady was going on. And that shady something is the idea of cross-pollination. What this basically means is groups having ties by dint of their membership, or their leadership, knowing each other and being friends. They work together, in the background, "unofficially".

So let's say that, despite your being contracted to defend a certain corp, you look the other way when your friends, knowing about the upcoming timers (maybe you even told them...), decide to go and "do their own thing" and blow it up, even though you have an ongoing contract with the structure owner:

Your business partner can complain to you, but you can spew some official-sounding garbage about how "that's a separate entity" and "we have no sway over them". It's all for the sake of apperances. It's all bullshit, too.

Cross-pollination is how I got the deal with R I O T. I knew Destiny from the forums, so I contacted her when the war was declared to see what was going on. Because we were friendly on the forums, she put in good words for me and got me a deal that otherwise wouldn't have happened. See how that works? Things become flexible when there's cross-pollination involved...

The Chain of Responsibility

Destiny Corrupted explaining in detail how R I O T fucked me out of structure kills.

Destiny Corrupted failing at strategic self-anticonformity, AKA reverse psychology.

I'll try not to be too long winded about this. I want to keep this post short. But really quickly, I want to talk about the "chain of responsibility" to argue how, what [TSRS] did, is partly on R I O T's shoulders.

Remember Padrick, the sad guy who was unhappy that he wasn't the Emperor of Solitude? Well, he tried to hire mercs to attack <WHBOO> and <-HC->. <WHBOO> and <-HC-> found out, and they destroyed Padrick's organization - <GSC> - for it. Why? Well, because Padrick would have been a responsible party had he succeeded in his plan and gotten mercs to attack.

Do you know who else would be responsible? The mercs!

Why? Because they're both active participants and in cahoots with each other. People are always responsible for their own freely chosen actions, regardless of the pretenses behind those actions. Always.

A lot of times people will use this language of "independent entities", "third parties", etcetc. All they're doing is trying to obviate their responsibility for their participation and save face. But they're still actually partly responsible. So R I O T, by their own admission of working with, collaborating with, and making leadership decisions with [TSRS], as well as having NAPs and various other agreements with them, are responsible for the destruction of their contractee's Athanors.

R I O T fucked their client over by allowing their friends, [TSRS], to destroy their client's Athanors because of a NAP. It was R I O T's leadership's decision. They were involved with it.

The Conclusion

In conclusion, can I really "prove" anything, as Destiny Corrupted said? I don't think "proving" is necessary here. R I O T's shady behvior - at the very least, gross blunders - are clear. Furthermore, R I O T's connection to and involvement with The SRS is also plain to see and painfully obvious.

R I O T also showed up to system while [TSRS] was destroying their client's Athanors, chatting in Local with [TSRS]. Their "official story" was to make sure I didn't attack the Athanors, but cmawn naw - that is not even somewhat plausible. [TSRS] were in system with 12 combat battleships and 7 Nestors. R I O T knew this, but still camped the station for over an hour.

So R I O T was in system, trying to camp me in station, to ensure that I didn't attack the structures R I O T was hired to protect while their friends in [TSRS] blew them up instead.

There are no doubt people who have had good dealings with R I O T, and perhaps even The SRS. But the problem is: you don't know if you'll be one of those groups. And even if you are, there is the possibility of shady, backroom dealings with other so called, "independent and unrelated" organizations that may get involved and screw you over in some way. In summary:

• R I O T and [SW-SS] made an agreement. R I O T tried to shift the terms of that agreement post facto.
• I had to threaten R I O T with bad publicity unless they adhered to the original, as written, terms of the deal.
• R I O T and [TSRS] leadership are in contact todo el tiempo, and have a close enough relationship to discussion such matters as who they might be recruiting.
• R I O T and [TSRS] are, by R I O T's own admission, involved in a NAP and work together on joint ops.
• [TSRS] WarDec'd R I O T's client and blew up his Athanors.
• R I O T was in system and more interested in blowing up my Rookie ships than protecting their contractee's structures - a contractee who has "a long series of contracts" with them.
  

Because of their close ties, [TSRS] is free to keep an eye R I O T's war history, and check around for any upcoming timers. While R I O T might defend you against the original attacker, your money will have been wasted when [TSRS] shows up to finish the timers - and R I O T looks the other way as their friends - in the independent and not-in-any-way associated with them corporation that they do joint OPs with - destroy your stuff

Any "mercenary" LARPers who have "NAPS" can't be trusted. Because someone who they have a NAP with can screw with you, and they won't take the contract. You will have wasted your money and lost your assets anyway.

Either Way, I Win

At the end of the day, things worked out well for myself. I was able to extricate myself from the Astrahus by getting [TSRS] to blow it up by insulting Storm Preldent's masculinity (he's an insecure, sensitive type of guy - I think he should take a break from the game for a bit, and come back fresh in a few months...) I got to harvest some tears and rustled jimmies, or at the very least get a reaction out of a lot of people. It was fun flying around Koona with 20+ flashies in system who wanted nothing more than to "stick it to me" and blow me up. I particularly enjoyed R I O T camping the station for over an hour just to kill a single Rookie ship - just because it was me. It fills me with giggles.

And, the best of all: I got to sit on grid and laugh as the smug twat who hired mercs lost his Athanors to their friends anyway. Who knows, maybe the loot from the Athanors was split between R I O T and The SRS? "Hey guys, this guy we have a contract with has some timers... you know we have a NAP in place so jussayin, jussayin, if you WarDec him and finish them off, well, ehhh... maybe we could split the loot yeah?"

I have to say I'm happy with how this all turned out though. I officially wash my hands of EVE's HiSec war mechanics and will be moving on to better and more interesting playstyles.

EPILOGUE

Just Some Racism Without Ownership

These guys sure like to ragespam.

There is a long documented history of comparing certain ethnic and racial groups, most notably those of African descent, to primates and monkeys. You can read more about it here and here. There are contemporary examples as well:  Milo Yiannopoulos was banned from Twitter for calling a black actress a "gorilla", and the term "sheboon" was coined just some years ago.

Folks in [TSRS] have tried to rationalize their use of racist language: accusing me of "pulling the race card", or saying "oh yeah well you called our CEO a f*ggot!", or saying that because I'm (supposedly) white, it's not racist. Or that, because I'm white, I don't have the right to say anything (this is, again, a racist proposition). To this I ask: Assuming I'm white, would it still not be racist, and gross, to call me the N-word?

Yes. Yes it would be.

I fully acknowledge my use of a certain F word in order to goad [TSRS] into doing what I wanted - namely, blowing up my Astrahus. [TSRS] has taken issue with my use of that word. Fair enough. I typed it. I own it. It's not a word I use often anymore, and I'm fine with my having done so. I don't hide what I do, or try to weasel out of things. However, if [TSRS] wants to maintain that it's not "racist" to hurl racial insults at someone - as long as that someone is not a member of the relevant racial group - then is it really "homophobic" to use the F word against someone who is, in all probability, heterosexual? By their logic - no, it's not.

[TSRS] have logic-mathed themselves into a corner. If my use of the F-word is "homophobic", than their use of "chimp" as a pejorative is racist. But, the difference is: I'm not trying to weasel out of what I said. I own it. [TSRS], however, does not. I hope in time they mature into adulthood enough to do so.

And I think Storm Preldent needs to take a break from EVE. He is so unhinged and burnt out from grinding undefended structures in HiSec that being called a "f*ggot" is enough for him to go off the rails and spam racist epithets in Local chat and on blog comments.

Destiny Corrupted

I know Destiny from the EVE-O forums, where I have been semi-active, off and on, for a few years now. She always struck me as a sensible, rational, and calm person. Our interests often aligned wherein we did not like certain other forum posters, who are undeniably toxic and probably certifiable narcissists. But we've never been close. Less than a week before R I O T declared war on me, I had mailed Destiny. Apparently, we had a mutual contact who was interested in working with both [SW-SS] and R I O T for removal of abandoned structures and defense of his own. I thought it would be nice to fly together. Maybe she would enjoy my playstyle and cause mayhem with me. But that was not to be the case.

It's unfortunate that Destiny has gotten herself mixed up in such a shady and untrustworthy group, who are friends with a racist and toxic "independent third party". It's unfortunate that she has taken it upon herself to be R I O T's mouthpiece, making a liar out of herself, while simultaneously leaking enough information to ruin R I O T's reputation. She's only been with them for a few months, so perhaps in time she will notice things that make her question her membership, and move on to a better group. Perhaps she'll even get out of HiSec for a bit and stop blapping haulers near Amarr.

While I hold towards her no personal ill-will, she is nonetheless part of a group that declared themselves hostile to me and interferred with my affairs. They should have done some research into my background before taking the contract. It would have been obvious to them that this is one they should have reconsidered. It's not like they're not above doing shady shit and letting their clients die anyway. And it's not like who I am and what I do is any secret, after all. 

I wish Destiny the best of luck and am sad that things did not go in a different direction. But it is what it is.

Until next time dear readers. This is space kitten Xui, signing off.

Not Worth It: The State of WarDec Mechanics

In my previous blog entry, "Worth It", I imparted the tale of a miner I ganked in Kador, and the hilarity that ensued from it. In the interim between that blog entry and this one, I got up to some more shenanigans:

You see, I haven't been involved in the WarDec playstyle since about 2015, just prior to the release of citadels. I knew a bit about the mechanics, but certainly wasn't an expert, and figured I'd give it a try and see if there was anything to this whole idea of "HiSec structures being worth killing now that structures always drop a Quantum Core". If anything, funny things might happen - it is, after all, HiSec. 

As with most things in EVE, I prefer to learn via experience rather than just taking all the fun out of it by reading guides. So I dropped an Astrahus, waited the 24 hours for it to online, and issued the wars. Everything went smoothly at first, and we quickly found our rhythm. All told, we made about 5 billion ISK in loot. The Astrahus we dropped was stolen in the first place, so we made a tidy profit after divvying up the spoils after expenses, which were minimal. We were fully expecting some group to come and take out our structure, but we were not expecting it to go down the way it did (stay tuned...)

(As an aside: During the whole fiasco, OldGuyMonty and myself began to chat, becoming more cordial as time went on, despite some... colorful commentary... in Local from his membership. He explained that while the loss of the structures was unfortunate, it was also not unexpected, and it was just the sort of shake up that his corporation needed to arouse them from the dull slumber they had fallen into. He has since placed his corporation in an alliance which is part of a fledgling coalition that wants to start growing and projecting power. In other words: PvP. I wish him and his membership the best of luck, and have even considered placing SW-SS in the alliance to serve as a mentor to... POO...).

And then we hit the hard wall of EVE's current WarDec mechanics, and all the fun was completely sucked out. After my experience as a small, indepndent operator doing WarDecs, I have to say: what a sad, sad state of affairs. CCP has certainly made a royal mess of things and done what they've been great at the past few years: squelching player generated content with disincentivizing and cumbersome mechanics.

So what happened? First we had a loot roach show up. He managed to swipe 1 core, using the DST trick to avoid suspect flagging. We tried to offer him a deal to split the cores, or give him a certain porportion of cores per system, but being a smoothbrain (he was SNUFF associated), he decided not to take the offer, and instead, we passed on our remaining timers out of spite (I'll talk more about the cancer of suspect-free ninja looting later). We knew he'd probably hang out, so we debated whether or not to continue in the area of XFer the structure away and leave. We decided to stay for one last run, figuring if he showed up again whatever, we'll just pass and dip, but if not, we could score some more cores. So we WarDec'd a bunch of seemingly mostly unused Athanors in our staging system. There were about 8 of them. Only a few of them even had active moon drills.

We reinforced the Athanors, making sure we'd get timers on Saturday. It was all going perfectly until I received a notification that R I O T had declared war on us (some smalltime nobodies, "SPS" or whatever, had also declared war a few days prior, but have so far the "chimps" have been too scared of me to come do anything).

I contacted someone I knew in R I O T and asked them about why they had declared war on us. I was notified that they were contracted by the guy who owned the holding corps I declared war on ([GAVIA] and [VBEE]). I talked to my contact a bit to try to get a better grasp on the situation and see if there was still some way I could attain my goal - such as if the contractee didn't own both corps and I could sue for a "stay of execution" for a day or two, or play around with mechanics to finish off the timers even if it meant sacrificing a second structure in an alternate corp. And that's when I got a crash course in the absolutely shit tier mechanics CCP has graced us with. Keep in mind, this is from the perspective of the smalltime, independent player - so that's where my bias is - but this is also exactly why I think I have a credible argument as to why the mechanics are so toxic to content creation and in need of immediate attention from CCP.

So here's what I've learned from all this:

The Problems

1. In order to be wardec'd, you must have a structure. This mechanic is... so so. It certainly isn't the worst offender. In the past, players always had a way around wardecs: NPC corps. And they had the trade-off of higher taxes and less access to the community. Today the way around wars is either to be in an NPC corp or part of a corp that doesn't own structures. At first glance this seems somewhat fair; the cost of being immune to WarDecs is to not have your own stru- oh, wait. Because of the way ACLs work, this is completely irrelevant. Players now have a cost-free way of being immune to war while also being in a player corporation and having full access to their structures via ACLs. If you fly around HiSec you'll see lots of structures all held by 1 man corps. This is why.
2. In order to declare war the corporation issuing the declaration must also have a structure - in HiSec. This seems fair at first - the people declaring war must also have "skin in the game", so to speak, and take on an equivalent risk, right (for some reason the ships we fly don't count...)? But it is actually the reason why the war meta is unfair, stagnant and has become a shit tier mechanic dominated by a few large and very cross-pollinated groups who can push other would-be warbears out of the playstyle via continued structure removal.
3. The problem with needing a structure is that the aggressor must select a single "WarHQ" (the aforementioned requisite structure to declare war). If this structure - which has only a 24 hour reinforcement timer - is destroyed, the war ends, regardless of if it's day 3 (of the 7 days you paid for...) or day 7. Do you have an offensive timer in 2 days? Oh well, all your time is wasted cuz your WarHQ got blapped by a blob. So this means that not only can a group of carebears have a corporation with structure access while being completely immune from WarDecs, but also that if they're willing to pay a blob, they can rest assured that their structures also will never be at any risk from a "griefer", since it takes only 30 hours minimum to end the war prematurely via shit mechanics, but it will take 4-5 days to lose any of their structures.
4. Their allies(for hire...) don't even have to bother showing up for any defensive timers and do any work or coordination or engage in any actual PvP what so ever. They can just bring their big blob of battleships (with 1 Guardian or Nestor for each battleship - gotta make sure we win, bois!) and kill the WarHQ. Anti-content served on a silver platter. And the carebears can just sit there, smug and self-satisfied that they are badasses who no one can touch, and gloat in local about it despite how actually pathetic and effete their playstyle is. Because now they have a 2 week period in which they are immune from being re-dec'd by the aggressors, and what small time, independent group is gonna drop another structure and try again?
5. Allies who enter a war don't need a WarHQ, so they enjoy the benefit of 4-5 day timers. Also, the aggressor has zero options for escalation beyond hiring help or having friends declare their own independent war; an aggressor can not "open for allies" against the allies of the defender, despite that being someone else declaring war on them if you think about it for half a second. This "WarHQ" nonsense is only in place to handicap aggressors.
6. Even worse than that: without even having any HONORABRU MERCENARY contract in play, a group can just decide: you're not allowed to do WarDecs. And all they have to do is blap your WarHQ, which again, has only a 24 hour reinforcement window. Even if they're not allies of any of your war targets. By simple dint of being a "War Headquarters", the structure has a 24 hour timer for anyone involved in a war with you. And they'll watch you, and any time you declare war, they'll either enter as an ally (4 hour wait), or just declare war the conventional way and a couple of days later, before you're even halfway through any reinforcement timers you've created - end your war and kill your content.
7. Oh but wait, you can kill their WarHQ! It's just as vulnerable! Lol no, you can't. Because I promise, as a small timer, you're going to be trying to solo or small gang not only a structure (usually a Fortizar or at least a very well fit Astrahus), but also a fleet of blinged battleships with a logi for each one. That is if they even have a WarHQ. I'm told - but haven't been able to confirm - that you can enter as an ally if you have a POS anchored in HiSec. Good luck trying to kill a large POS with active defenses... anyhow:
8. If you do manage to skirt under the radar a for a bit, and the vultures who call themselves "mercenaries" don't get involved, you also have another problem: it won't be long before some random RUS pilot notices a timer, and starts showing up to them all and brazenly sitting on the structure in a Rookie ship with a DST next to him, at 4 AM local time because he's unemployed, annoyingly orbiting with a prop mod while you burn through the structure's HP. Once the structure is destroyed the pilot will loot the core (with a high probability of third party program assistance) and drop it into the DST. The Rookie ship will flag suspect, but the DST won't. So now you have these little loser roachers stealing loot but not risking anything for it, after the huge amount of risk you put on the table, and this is somehow supposed to be "fair" and "balanced" to protect the poor pwecious widdle carebear newbies. This also happens when abandoned structures die. It's an amazing sight to see. Rookie ships, DSTs, and freighters everywhere, ninja looting in absolute safety. Zero consequences.

So where does this leave the current state of the playstle? Simply put there isn't one. Because of the disproportionate risk and lopsided vulnerability taken on by aggressors, and how easily it is for an aggressor to not only lose their structure but also have their war ended prematurely (or to be muscled out of the meta by a larger group, since they can delete your ability to declare war), WarDecs are now dominated by big vulture N+1 groups. There is safety in numbers and having more people means you can defend your fragile WarHQ, while being able to simply delete other people's. If you're a small timer, you incur all the risks and penalties for dubious rewards that can easily be swiped out from under your nose, with no counterplay to any of it. All the advantages go to the defenders - but none of your risks come from the defenders. They come from guns for hire LARPers.

Unless, of course, you're in one of those big vulture groups. Then of course you get free reign, with some small print, because of course the big guys - naturally being risk averse little shits, which is why they huddle together - all have NAP agreements and treaties with each other.

And so CCP has moved the game closer to it's most cancerous and stagnation causing aspect: N+1. The conglomeration of more and more players into fewer and fewer groups. Small numbers of large groups dominating playstyles, and anyone who wants to have a crack at it must subordinate themselves to someone LARPing Blackwater USA.

It Used to Be Good Better

Back in the day I used to engage in all sorts of HiSec shenanigans. Us "Belligerent Undesirables" called it "content creation". One of my favorite forms of content was declaring 1 man wars against medium sized corporations. You didn't need to drop a structure, or understand a sleuth of convoluted and unfair mechanics. You didn't have to deal with big vulture blob groups monopolizing a playstyle or roaches coming to swipe your loot risk free. You just paid a bill and off you went. The groups I dec'd were always larger than myself (I was solo - and I wasn't even using "backpacks" or neutral scouts or anything either). Most of my targets were groups of about 30-100 members. I would have dec'd larger groups but CCP made it so that the larger the group, the higher the bill. I guess that was the first inch on the slipper slope...

Well anyway, I had some memorable wars, piloting my Omen Navy Issue outnumbered against pilots intent on vaporizing me. It was really a lot of fun! And more than a few players contacted me afterwards to tell me it was the most thrilling experience they'd had in EVE Online, and they were off to join a more PvP-oriented group. Now that is a success - for them. And I was thrilled to have been part of their becoming more deeply engaged - and more interested in - EVE Online. Those were the players who stuck around for years afterwards. Keep that in mind as you continue reading...

Most of the time, however, everyone would just vanish. My watchlist (back in the day...) wouldn't have any targets online for days and days, when before they were constantly online and out doing things. I knew the routine, having been in enough carebear corps: The mentality, usually enforced by fiat from membership, was not to engage engage, not to provide content, and not to fight back - lest the WarDecer get a kill or a fun fight and stick around, renewing the war! Just ignore them and don't be around - they'll get bored and leave and then we can start playing the game again. A pyrrhic victory at best.

The thing is. I was just one guy in a cruiser, and I was able to shut down 100 man corporations for a week. This isn't a problem with game mechanics - it's a problem with players and that's perfectly fine in this case. If out of an entire 100 man group, there isn't at least 1 person willing to go have some fun and make shit explode... that's not a game mechanics problem. That's not a problem for CCP to solve.  That's a player problem and it's for players to solve. Often I would get EVEMails from members who wanted to fight, but were being told they weren't allowed to, or they couldn't find anyone else willing to come along. These guys would drop corp and go join a group that actually had some grit. The group they left would, rightfully, wither and die.

Thats EVE. Or, it used to be. A simulation of "group selection theory", played it in real time.

And, regretably, sometimes people would vanish from my watchlist and just... simply never come back online - not even after the war had ended. I didn't even have to kill them, or permacamp them - just the very fact of having had hostilities declared against them was enough for them to quit the game. Or maybe they just walked away because their leadership and corpmates told them that if they played, they'd be ostracized and exiled?...

That second group of players - the quitters - the ones CCP catered to with their shitty new WarDec mechanics - those are the sorts of players who would have quit anyway, for any small, trivial reason. Lost a ship to an Incursion rat on a gate? Gone. Accidentally autopiloted through LowSec? Gone. Got bumped while mining? Gone. Just bored because they have a conflict-avoidant playstyle and EVE is actually a terrible game unless you have enemies? Gone. Any plethora of trivial reasons is enough for these sorts of players to quit. And CCP, desperate to retain the unretainable, has ruined what was once a fun and engaging playstyle.

Many people would complain on the forums about WarDecs. How they weren't fair, how they were killing the game, driving new players away, depriving people of the ability to play for a week+ (a nonsense argument if there ever was one). You see, there were a lot of problems with wars back in those days, such as neutral logi. CCP corrected a lot of those problems - neutral logi later got ammended to suspect logi and then finally changed to !CONCORDOOKEN!. Introducing a "friendly fire" setting in corp management removed the problem of green scouting and green tackling on the part of alts. However, the way carebears responded to wars - logging off, quitting, dropping corp, etc - was not a problem with the game or the war mechanics. It was a problem with them - the players. And CCP overcorrected for the situation, and has created a pitiful, stagnant, and frankly disgusting mess.

You see, there was nothing stopping any of my targets from getting a few ships together and killing me. Nothing. It happened a couple of times. Or they'd bring EWAR and just keep me jammed for the entire fight. Once, my war targets even contacted each other and coordinated a defense fleet to protect their miners while they mined. Not only did they get the reward of accomplishing the defense of their comrades, but they also got the thrill of a PvP engagement out of it. But now, these sorts of opportunities are gone, because of a few very vocal whiners.

The Quick and Simple Fixes

There's two quick and simple easy changes that would solve all of this nonsense and re-open the war meta:

1. Remove the structure requirement for issuing WarDecs. If corporations want to hire protection, then the protection has to actively protect - as in, actually show up for defensive timers. Otherwise, they are free to lose the structures in their cheesy 1 man "holding corps" or nut up and keep their structures in-corp and defend them themselves. This will probably make defensive contracts more cumbersome - and expensive - for mercenaries to take on. Great - that will also mean there will be more mercs available to fulfill these contracts, which will help mitigate the costs, and there will be more ship-to-ship engagements and less boring structure grinds. So not only will niches open for WarDeccers, but the market for mercenaries looking to get paid to PvP will open up.
2. Fix DST ninja looting. Regardless of fleet or corp status, a ship that receives loot from a suspect into a fleet hangar also goes suspect. Or maybe just disallow suspects from dropping things into fleet hangars. Either solution would be equitable. In order not to ruin Safety.'s playstyle, change ownership of wrecks to belong to the corp/alliance that lost the asset and the corp/alliance that destroyed the asset - regardless of whether it was a war or suicide gank. This way Safety. can just use in-alliance haulers to get their loot. - and apply this to cans dropped from abandoned structures. Bring some risk back to ninja looting. That was always my favorite part.

I hope CCP does something to bring back solo/small group WarDecs. It was a thriving community back in the day. For every change CCP makes to improve the retention of conflict-averse players, they stifle content-creating players. And this is not good for the creators nor the avoiders. The creators get bored and leave after their playstyles gets nerfed and the avoiders, fragile flowers that they are, will also get bored and quit or quit over any other reason - because it is inconvenience which is their ultimate aversion.

Take care space nerds. Space cat Xui signing off.