Greedy Goblin

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

3 years in EVE in the same corp

EVE-gate shows that my main is 3 years old. But it's not a usual "hey it's my birthday" nonsense post with looking back on what happened or sharing dumb stories about newbie mistakes.

This post is about my corporation, which is my only corporation. While some of my alts took misadventures and participated in real (not 1-man) corporations, my main (defined as: doing the activity I identify myself with) was always in the NPC corp. And that's not because I barely play or I'm just leveling a Raven. I'm one of the most well-known names in EVE. Yet I've never considered grouping with other players.

This is because PvE, hauling or trading isn't a group activity. 2 missioners or miners are just doing their own thing separately and don't fly together. Only WH escalations and incursions are group content. If we add that if you are a real corp, anyone can wardec you and take away your CONCORD protection, it's clear that only clueless people join a non-PvP corp.

I'm a self-proclamed anti-social. I shun doing things with "friends", I always try to find good performers and evaluate people by numbers, not opinions. I'm fine playing hours without chatting with anyone. Maybe I send and answer some letters, with some plan or statistics, but that's it.

Most people aren't like this. They are socials who find simply chatting with people "fun". I don't even try to comprehend what is so good in chatting about nonsense with some random stranger. I simply acknowledge this fact: two missioners find it bonus fun to chat while doing their own missions separately. So it's extremely dumb design that this bonus fun is penalized by wardecs. Please note that the same missioners could do the same missions in 1-man corps safe of wardecs. So the penalty isn't on their gameplay but on their socialization.

I'm not sure if I'd be in a player corp if it wouldn't be pure suicide. I don't know what we'd do together with my corpmates. But vast majority of the players want to be in player corps. CCP long recognized that players who join functional corps are more likely to stay in the game. Then probably it's a good advice to make a change that removes "joining a corp" from the top of the "dumb ways to lose your ship" list.

Obviously if someone competes for some kind of exclusive resource like a POCO or a tower, he must be open to wardecs. But a group of socials doing nothing that they couldn't do in the NPC corp while chatting together shouldn't be a wardeccable corp.


I have no idea what this fit wanted to be, but clearly didn't work. On the other hand it's obvious what this and this minions of evil were doing: ratting.

16 comments:

Unknown said...

Given baiting, ganking, and the greenlight given to hyperdunking, I would have to agree: aside from going after in space points such as POCOs and POSes, there is no reason to allow war decs against corporations at this point in time.

Maybe the flag to mark a corp or alliance as wardec-able is the ownership of a POCO or POS in High Sec (since war decs are pointless outside of High Sec).

Anonymous said...

being in a player corp has it's benefits, you can ask questions of the more experienced players. Sometimes it will be good advise, advise you might not find easily with google, or it might suck. But it's useful input either way. I learned a lot from some of my corpmates the short time I was in a high sec industrial corp. But that said, I used up that train of usefulness pretty fast, we're talking two weeks. After that they were pretty much only useful for Orca boosts.

I'm in an NPC corp now, and I have no plans on going back to a player corp in high sec. The downsides are just too catastrophic for anyone who is not a ganker.

CCP claims they want players to join player corps, but then they place these completely wacked up, one sided mechanics in the way.

If your "tools of the trade" include anything more expensive than a ganking Catalyst, then you should NOT be in a high sec player corp.

Apparently, they're discussing making the intra corp damage (Awoxing.) a settable flag, but that's not the biggest issue. War Decs are the real problem. My opinion? War decs in high sec should only be invokable IF the target corp has a POS or POCO and no room for another in that system is available. And even then, the War Dec should be only for the structures and anyone from the defender's corp that that attacks your ships that are destroying the structures. It should be a license to remove an in the way structure that can be put to better use.

Note: The test of "Who can put it to better use" is settled by the war. If they fail to defend their structure, the attacker wins the right to use the space, fair and square.

Black Pedro said...

Wardecs are an important part of the game and have a rightful place as a tool for two corporations that are actually in competition with each other. However, since many corps aren't actually trying to do that, but rather just want to hang out in a chat channel with friends, we need something like the "social corp" where socials can just hang out and have fun and not worry about wardecs (just like the current NPC corp but just more social).

Real corporations as they currently are do not have enough advantages. There should be more boosts to corp income than just POCOs/POSes and the tax rate - a series of deployables is the first that comes to mind - so that they have a goal to work towards and something that attaches a persistent value to the corporations. This would also have the affect they would have something to lose if wardecced and would have a motivation to stay and defend the corp.

There really isn't much right now to distinguish a player corp from the NPC corp and the player corp comes with some significant downsides. And I agree with you, this is made worse by the fact that much of the content in highsec is not collaborative so there is not even much benefit if you team up with someone. Some things, like trading and hauling probably will always be more of a solo activity, but there is a lot of room to provide incentives for players to team up to do industry, missioning and mining.

Anonymous said...

I never understood why you were in the npc corp.

I leave asap with any char, and make their own 1 man corp.

You are a trader, what would a wardec hurt you? Unless you are still moving things around between hubs in high sec using 4 chars at a time, but even then, 4 chars = 4 corps.

If you do industry, there are bigger names than you who have solo corps with POS's.
Deccing != knowing where your POS is.

So, why do you sit in the most M&S place in Eve?

Chanina said...

The most simple solution to wardecs would still be to limit them to constellations.

If you don't want to fight, move else where. If war corp want to play hub denial, they can do so. And it would stop this random shot terrorism current wardec mechanic is.

Ryanis said...

Actually, there is no point in being in a corp at all if you don't own structures or want to PvP in High Sec: the only bonus is the lower tax rate.
If you want to chat or get advise, you don't need corp, you need the correct tools: in game chat channels that suit your hobbies and VoIP servers like mumble or TeamSpeak.

Thus:
- If people become war targets whereas they're in corp for "fun", then they made an error: they should never have joined a corp.
- If CCP wants people to join corps, they are working the wrong way: removing a few disadvantage while they should add bonuses.
But actually, that's not the problem. What they want is people to find contents, that's not directly linked to crops but to player groups. Maybe they should works on game chats, VoIP and... maybe even... walking in station.

Gevlon said...

@Anon: I'm hauling implants between hubs. Wardecs wouldn't help with that.

@Chaniana: that's a great idea.

@Ryanis: technically true. However socials want to belong to a group. A common identity and ship mark worth a lot to them, despite worth nothing in reality (they don't do anything together).

MoxNix said...

Corporation tax rates aren't a bonus for trading since market taxes aren't paid to your corps, but rather to the corps owning the station.

Unknown said...

Yes, if you are only trading and hauling, then an NPC corp is the place to be.
Player run corp mechanics are somewhat counterproductive for highsec, which is weird as soooo many people argue that carebears get ganked, because they do not play together. You can't play together in EVE, unless you go roaming or ganking.
Even incursions were better soloed. Thanks to CCP this might have stopped as ISBoxer is no longer "legal".

Now, why would people try to "play" together if there are absolutely no incentives in-game to do so?

I would even go so far to advocate against joining a player run corp, when it comes to getting advice and guidance. There are a lot of better sources of information on the internet than some player who runs Lv4 missions for a corp with a shitty isk/lp ratio...

Any ideas regarding small fleet pve are discarded, as players and devs alike will come with: "... but we already have incursions"

Although they pay well, there are only 3 or 4 different sites of each category, totally boring after a few weeks. Instead of bringing changes to incursions, like either other factions doing them, new site designs, nothing is done.

Burner missions are another example of good intention, bad execution.
At first, I thought that burner missions were the usual CCP troll of their customers, requiring very expensive ships with a high risk of losing them...
Now, mechanics were changed and team burner missions can easily and successfully done with a cheap tech1 fit Kestrel... A Kestrel!!!! The whole ship is refinanced after the first team burner mission...

Anyway, PVE has never been the focus of CCP's dev time, which is understandable, but pvp mechanics suck even more as there are almost no rules, so no one cares about "fair fights" which might be challenging, most people go for KB green and killmailwhoring.

Really, althoug I am sick of "World of Tanks" after playing 20k matches, it is to me, still more of a pvp games than EVE...

Oh, and the change in awoxing mechanics just opens room for veterans luring new or naive players into the axoxing trap.
Players should be able to check or uncheck for themselves individually whether they allow inter corp aggression or not.

Anonymous said...

pretty much the same.
my trading alts are all in a 1-man corp. every char that undocks is in a npc-corp. I don't have a need for structures.

being in a player corp has it's benefits, you can ask questions of the more experienced players. Sometimes it will be good advise, advise you might not find easily with google, or it might suck. But it's useful input either way.

you don't seem to understand the mindset. In the time it takes to make that conversation I installed SiSi and tested it myself.
Also rookie chat is littered with people that know EVE. ISD, EVEUNI, GM, DEV that answer in their spare time what the MOTD of the channel already answers. It's the price for dumbing down EVE.

I play eve for 2 years now.
NPE was. read motd -> read old eveonline wiki, see eve uni wiki source links -> read eve uni wiki. DONE. first 3 days all set, no questions. The next weekend installed SiSi to test mechanical stuff without the risk of losing TQ isk.

the only interaction on the second day was with a dev/gm (blue name) that asked me how I was doing and if I had any questions. I didn't and thanked her/him for asking.

Basil said...

They should allow players to create their own corps with all the same characteristics of the NPC corp.

Sugar Kyle said...

Why do you wish for that Basil?

Anonymous said...

Agree. Wardecs are a far bigger deterrent to players grouping up in highsec than awoxing is, and wardecs should be nerfed such that only corps which own structures can dec or be decced. CCP should want to encourage players to group up, by removing disincentives (like wardecs) and adding incentives (like a structure only corps can anchor which increases bounty/pve/etc payouts).

Borat Guereen said...

Hi Gevlon

Even if I am not myself a high sec solo player, you do raise a very good point about the utility of player's corp for solo high sec players with the current wardec mechanics.

I am running for CSM X to represent solo players, and these would be discussions I am ready to push and support if I am elected.

Fly safe!

Anonymous said...

I fully agree. I joined Eve Uni for all of one week when I first started playing before I figured out how terrible it was due to the wardecs.

There are very few fun or interesting uses for the mechanic, and the vast majority of the time it just a wardec corp full of wannabe PvPers who think they are awesome because they can kill unsuspecting carebears with their pimped out ships and OGBs.

I feel that suicide ganking is fine, since there is a pretty big price to pay in order to do it, thus making you pretty committed to wanting to do it. Non-consensual PvP in High-Sec space with no costs and little risk only serves to make corps less attractive to join.

Basil said...

@Sugar Kyle: It would allow them to get rid of the NPC corp, for one thing. It would continue to provide everything the NPC corps do, but with a better sense of community (you'd have to choose to join one).