Maybe? I have seen PCU numbers but not total pop numbers like you are suggesting. But ok assume that is true.
I was responding to a post by Salvos. Salvos said he did not think there was any decline in HS production of (given the context of the quote) NPC kills. The number I tossed out shows there was a drop.
How is your comment relevant to that discussion?
lolwut? What makes you think I’m mad? Are you sure you aren’t a Goon alt?
You’ve made the convincing argument with the post I responded to. Whether you or they are convinced is not really my concern. But more and more, this game starts to look like a racket, where new entrants are fleeced to pay for a game that the old, established players play for free and have enormous advantages at. If that’s not a convincing argument to change it, what is?
It’s their jobs and reputation on the line. Not mine. They can do whatever they want. They can believe whatever they want. They can listen to whoever they want. They can make the game however they want. But insofar as they are making the game that I play, some feedback from me might be helpful, even if only to tell them what NOT to change and who NOT to listen to.
If? Why wouldn’t they be concerned that the pay gradient they designed, from high sec → low sec → null sec, was squeezing a major portion of their player base too hard?
If you go back to that Dotlan comparison between 2011 and 2017 and look at a different metric, jumps, and tally up the total for high, low, and null security, you will find that there were 1,970,533,213 jumps in 2011. In 2017, there were 1,675,948,761 jumps in high, low, and null security. And that is counting on the fact that capitals can now use jump gates. I don’t know that they or you or I should be concerned with this fact that appears to show a marked decline in player participation, if not outright population decline, but IF we should happen to concern ourselves with it . . . well, the data’s there. Working as intended?
A - salvos has not made clear what he means by ‘no decline’, ie he could have meant no decline after scaling by active server population.
B - any influences on the figure you are quoting are confounded with this fact - any arguments one way or the other have to accomodate this fact.
I tend to not take jumps as being very meaningful. But lets assume they are. Null and Low both had higher jump counts in 2017 compared to 2011. The decline stems from a significant decline in HS jumps.
If you are saying that CCP should be concerned that NS is growing while HS is shrinking, then I think you might consider that they think its a feature. Maybe even the achievment of a goal.
EDIT: Also, if jumps are a meaningful, I must thank you for providing more data for other conclusions I have drawn in this thread. 
The measurements of inflation in game essentially use the same calculations. The idea that 2+2 = 4 IRL, but 2 + 2 = 13 in game is not true. Here is the formula,
It is just some basic math. Doing this in game for the various items they select for the index gives us a way to evaluate how much it “costs to live” in game–i.e. how much it costs to purchase the items they’ve selected over time. It is not an exact measure (actually a Laspeyres index is skewed upwards since it does not treat price increases and decreases that are the of the same magnitude symmetrically), but it is still a measure non-the-less. The fact that certain things renew in game does not really change the implications of the price index.
There are reasons this index can change and they tend to be similar to reasons we see IRL. Suppose CCP changes the various bonuses for a given ship, lets say the buff them. The demand for this ship would increase right? Pretty obvious result that is consistent with RL economics. And as a result price would increase, right? Assuming (heroically) nothing else changes this would result in an increase in the CPI from one period to the next. But this is not, strictly speaking, inflation. Inflation typically has to do with changes in the money supply.
When CCP did a rebalance on the mineral requirements for ships it likely had an impact on the CPI. Similarly when it made a change to insurance being tied to the ships price. And probably when they changed rogue drones from dropping drone poop to having bounties. I don’t recall when CCP did that, but I think it was sometime in 2012…and in looking at the MPI and the CPI we can see that both started going up in 2012. Just what economic theory would suggest.
And it is funny…why would the price go up if there is infinite amounts of tritanium in the game when CCP changes drone rats to having bounties vs. dropping alloys and compounds?
Edit: And yes, if you are not purchasing the same “basket” of goods that CCP puts in its CPI it won’t provide much information on the cost of living. But in looking at the MERs here is what they count,
subIndex
Accessories
Ammo
Apparel
Boosters
Citadels
Commodity
Complimentary ships
Drone
Drones
Faction Ships
Ice Products
Implants
Insignias
Officer Modules
Orbitals
Planetary Infrastructure
POS Fuel
Scripts
Security Tags
Services
Skills
SKINs
Sovereignty Structures
Special Edition Ships
Starbase structures
Tech I modules
Tech I Rigs
Tech I ships
Tech II modules
Tech II Rigs
Tech II ships
Tech III ships
Tech III subsystems
Seems like that covers quite a bit of stuff in game.
I’d say that they may well be aware of subscription ( and now interaction) lifespan issues that made this stat inevitable whenever the game has reduced recruitment of new players, and that may well influence their current thinking on what kind of player to attempt to acquire, particularly because they don’t have an easily ability to tweak the press anymore, and therefore acquisition has a cost.
A - Sure. I can only respond to what he writes. If he meant something he did not write, then I am sure he will have no problem clarifying that. People clarifying thier posts is always welcome. I assume you are clarifying your post with the addition of B (which is good).
B - I agree that a decline in population can be a confound. It is far from the only confound as well. Unfortunately, without different data we don’t know the effects of each confound. We just do not have all the relevant data made available to us. I specifically said that there was prima facie evidence to support a particular conclusion. It is not definitive nor conclusive. All we can do is discuss reasons and arguments for any particular conclusion.
So, again, I am not sure what you are on about. Do you have a particular argument you are advancing? Are you saying that potential confuonds undermine a particular conclusion of mine in some (as yet unspecified) way?
I don’t have to have a conclusion to advance a fact. ie I wasn’t arguing with you.
So you were providing specifics instantiations to qualificiations I already made?
Ok. Thanks?
Thanx for agreeing with what I said in the first place with your basic math and basic understanding of dialogue.
The other big factor yet to be discussed/explained in this thread is the rampant use of bots to generate income. No matter the isk generating activity, players can only spend a limited amount of time per day depending on their schedule. Bots, on the other hand, mainly work 23/7 all year long. Any solution to the problems being discussed here must include the data/effect of bots and their ability to mass produce income on a huge scale. Atm, NS has the most prolific and profitable use of bots (as expected, the rewards are better), so any tweak to EVE’s rewards must factor this in.
^ In this quote, a Goon alt gloats about having turned CCP against the rest of the player base.
Why would they want to shrink any part of the playerbase?
I dont necessarily agree with most of what the OP is saying or asking for but i do believe that sector based economic balance is important. Post such as these may bring to light the need for CCP to consider sector based analysis, especially since i believe the already collect the data to bring the meta date presented in the MERs to our attention.
CCP has its own philosophies some seem confusing to me but as to the reason why sectorial analysis is important, that is covered by the inflation the OP is seeing in his sector of the game.
I make NO claim even if the OP did that meta data in the form of the MERs is irrelevant and so i will not defend this position.
The argument for allocating dev time again comes from the fact that MERs data is covering up important sector gains and losses in real economic terms, it is up to CCP then to determine if such sector based balancing is sufficient cause for an addition of sector based analysis to its meta data (MERs).
Interesting numbers, didn’t know dotlan had stats like that.
I have a few thoughts as to why the numbers shifted
How many null players had highsec alts for income? belt ratting wasn’t great income and only supported a few players in the average system. The first few times I tried null, I said screw it, I can do better in highsec. Now it is far easier to make income in null and the player density can be much higher.
how many players have moved to blitzing rather than full clearing. years back full clearing with loot+salvage was decent money, not so much these days. That will cause a large drop in npc kills and bounties.
how much is it players have just moved around in general, On the most traveled systems a few highsec picked up but most dropped off, but the low/null systems saw big increases and then the least traveled systems have all seen large increases in traffic over the years. Inari, Waskisen, Irjunen was all one big mission hub, now it’s a ghost town as the CPF LP store is non-competitive. Of the top 10 NPC kills by region in 2011 it was all empire regions, in 2017 it’s a mix of empire 6 to null 4. By bounties null easily wins, but mission NPCs often have much lower bounties, and the belt/anoms have massively lower bounties.
Player count had a long run increase, then a plateau, and has been jumping around but mostly decreasing over the last few years.
Those are all possible explanations. I would also add/modify with the following possibilities:
A - Incursions came to draw large percentages of L4 mission running characters away from L4 missions. IIRC Motsu was in the top HS slots for NPC kills prior to 2010.
B - Wormholes. For quite som time you could make in a month what AFK’ing L4s made in a year. That drew characters out of HS.
C - I don’t remember when, so perhaps its not relevant here, but CCP also made changes to mission rat volume. Fewer rats but higher bounties.
D - I don’t remember when, so perhaps not relevant here, CCP changed agents to help disperse L4 mission running characters.
There are lots of possibilities. Some add to the argument that HS characters have been moving into more ‘dangerous’ areas. Some do not.
It would be really interesting if Quant did a super in-depth demographics presentation.For example, I think it would be really interesting to see a historical graph of Monthly Active Unique Users. Or more in-depth historical activity statistics (unique user and game-age bound) and trends.
But, I also know that will probably never happen. Not only is it a lot of work for very little practical use, but players will use those numbers (regardless of what they are) to ■■■■ post and bash CCP. Lots of future headaches just to satisfy the curiosity of a minority lol!
Okay if that makes you feel better.
But to be clear, I am not agreeing with you all that much.
Does this mean there are no issues at all anywhere in the IG economy? No, and I noted this here. Could some segements of players see a cost of living increase above what the CPI is showing? Sure. But I noted this way back here. Maybe I wasn’t clear enough there, but I did note that the CPI provides an overall measure the “cost of living” and it is not unlike an average. With an average it is a measure of central tendency…that is some specific observations are above and some below that measure. Having more CPIs kind of like what the Bureau of Labor Statistics provides might be informative and helpful, but these will still suffer the same problem unless you calculate a CPI for everyone which maybe prohibitive in terms of computational power and also trying to interpret the results.
I also looked at the prices of HACs after reading Chainsaw_Plankton’s post here. Yes, the prices for HACs have gone up…and they are coming back down. Chainsaw’s point is probably the correct one: CCP changed up how we gather moon goo and it has acted just like what economists IRL would call a supply shock. I also looked at a number of T2 modules and saw a similar pattern there as well. Again, economic theory being used to explain what we observe in game.
Zircon:
Thanks for the stats, but they dont mean what you originally argued them to mean.
You are correct that HS NPC destruction has dropped since 2011, but as others have pointed put, thats due to many EVE changes in the years since, and cannot be deduced to mean those players have moved to NS.
So we are back where we began in argument.
OPs premise (which he has since rescinded) was that NS PvE profits should be increased, with the caveat that caps should be blocked from unrated sites.
I posit the opposite.
It seems to me that NS profits are far too great, already.
Delve stats are game breaking, already.
I am unsure what you mean when you say “don’t mean what you originally argued”. That implies that my argument has changed. It has not. Second, your statement about ‘deduced to mean’ is not relevant.
There are two ways of viewing my use of data.
OR
Just so I am clear, is it your belief that there are no/few PVE alts who, at one time, ran L4 mission that now run null anoms?
My guess is no. But I feel like I should be sure.
In the time between 2011 and 2017, there have been many profound changes to EVE.
AND
So, as I said earlier, we are back where we began.
Albeit, closer to the understanding/fact that NS profits are too great, especially regarding the drop in HS profits/PVE activity, as was shown by your own evidence.
We can deduce that HS PvE doesnt payout enough to warrant PvE there, but we cannot deduce that those players went to NS. Rather, NS entities figured their own potential, as evidenced particularly by Goons in Delve.
You did not answer the question. lol