Yesterday over on Tweetfleet Twitter I mentioned that I believe the war mechanics in Eve are seriously broken and that it is having a negative effect on players that primarily operate in High Security space. I believe this cannot be denied. And yet, the merest glancing blow to this playstyle resulted in a lot of sudden and unexpected vitriolic expression. It got so weird at one point I had people questioning my bonafides as a Pirate.
Look, I don't give two shakes of a Lamb's tail about High Sec. I operate in Low Sec and rarely, if ever, go into Empire space. War or not. Doesn't matter to me as an individual player. I am also not an expert on HS war mechanics, I focus on LS mechanics primarily. But there are experts inside my Alliance and some of our players do choose to operate in HS. And it just so happens that I am also responsible for them and their playstyle. If you are having trouble keeping up with that logic then I can't help you.
I've documented in these pages some of our attempts at fighting back against War Decs over the past few months. Some of which have been promising and successful. However, all of those efforts did little if anything to stem the tide of constant war. In fact, it appears as if they have only encouraged those forces to continue declaring war on us. Over and over again. Let me be clear here, our players are good. We do not get killed much in these wars because our players know how to deal with them. Me complaining about a broken mechanic in NO WAY means we don't know what we are doing. Those two things do not go hand-in-hand.
What I do know is this. The recent changes to HS war mechanics are not working as promised. The Citadel War HQ device is seriously broken. War Decc'ing groups are putting their own Citadels into reinforcement so that attacking groups cannot. Timers are such that, even should you try, the War will be over BEFORE the attacking Citadel is destroyed. And, as if that wasn't enough already, the War HQ can often be changed during a war. So that you are fighting an ever shifting target. And yes we can argue the specifics about each of these statements until we are blue in the face, but this is what is happening.
My concern isn't about my own playstyle, or the health and happiness of my own Alliance. We're taking steps to deal with these issues on our own thank you. My concern, as always, is the health of Eve Online. And I believe that the current state of HS War is, in many ways, much worse than it was before these changes.
We have an abundance of extremely creative and resourceful players in my Alliance, and when they come to me and tell me the system is broken I listen. The system is broken.
And here is the moment when the writer would offer up suggested fixes and solutions. I'm not going to do that for a very simple reason - I just don't know enough about HS Wars to offer any. And I'm not going to pretend otherwise. I have my hands full trying to make LS better.
I'm just here to point at something and say, this needs fixed.
This needs fixed.