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.