About a year and a half ago I got into a discussion with one guy who was into solo or small gang war decs, and initially he was very hostile towards me, but during this discussion it became very clear that he could not find any prey that was prepared to fight him because there was less people in hisec, people had given up and they had no interest, and this was the main issue in terms of the decline of small or solo war deckers. He had only limited opposition from the blue donut groups and they did not affect him at all as he was hunting selected targets and easily avoided them. His issue was that he could find no one that would engage him period.
The lack of real targets in hisec is the biggest issue facing war deckers in hisec, because hisec has been effectively cleaned out of content.
I am glad to hear that you are doing well and I would think that you are looking at a region which you operate in that you know very well, there are some groups that operate outside the main pipes and hubs and they can be feisty if they have something to defend. I would be interested to hear what defines your success when many people I speak to are so negative, what are you doing right?
I like your edit a lot, this is what I have been saying for some time, but like I said I expect you operate in an area and you take the time to get intel in that area at a guess.
EDIT: I just looked at your killboard and see that you are ex-VMG, perhaps the group of players that were still actually hunting, you operate around the blue donut mercs such as VMG and I see you have kills with them on the same enemy. Part of this initial success is based on people not knowing who you are, be interesting to see when people have your cards marked, still it looks like you are doing targeted war decs on feisty entities who take a fight on you at this point.
As I said in our convo the other day, props to you if you get it to work.
But my predictions is that you and/or your guys will be burned out in a few months.
You guys have been operating for one and a half month now out of VMG right?
a lot of that is true about finding groups who are unwilling to engage as I myself have that similar issue, (Both RIOT and Marmite shipped down into PODS to escape my terrifying 5 man gang /sarcasm) As for the staging we do not limit ourselves to 1 region, we base in Nourv for the large number of locator agents available.
As for the lack of targets I too think that would change if the amount of small griefer corps increased, I canât speak for all, but I know that when I was but a youngster, fresh into the HS pvp I was more than happy to engage most things even if it yielded a net loss, so I think if more small griefers were allowed to flourish rather than be stomped out instantly, you might end up with more hunters in the game.
I donât think weâre doing anything different in termsof game mechanics as much as a different mentality, We absolutely F#@@ing love the hunting gameplay, and weâre more than happy to put in the effort of getting eyes on a target and stalking them even if it doesnât yield a kill due to unforseen variables like âoh itâs getting late in their TZ and they logged for the nightâ. Weâre in it for the gameplay, Not the shiny km at the end of the tunnel (even if the shiney km is still great) We define success in how efficient you are at killing targets when the opertunity presents itself. And doing so while being mostly unseen untill itâs too late⌠Literally any body could gather a large fleet and fly to marmite HQ and throw gang signs in local screaming âfite meâ (and theyâd probably get nothing) So you have to be more creative in your approach to catching and killing targets. Things like scouting mission hubs with your main account and blundering down the pipe are what I consider to be amateur.
As for your edit about being ex VMG, I donât really think this yields much benefit, as youâll notice in our war history that VMG and the entire blue donut did in fact declare war on us when we had a disagreement with PE. So being ex vmg doesnât make us immune to such things.
Edit: also the only kills that I can find (itâs early and Iâm still waking up) was the ministry of the damned kronos, Ministry of the damned was one of our wars that joined RATE MY TICKS, which have active wars against the entire coalition, when they then left RMT (and are now back in it insert confused face ) they retained those wars.
Was not meant as a dig in any way, contacts are contacts and you should use them, there are of course some fairly major ego clashes within the war dec groups and this can spill out into conflict.
That to me is the definition of hunting, good on you.
No worries I didnât take it as such However feel free to PM me in game if youâd like to continue the conversation? We tend to try and keep our forum posts to a minimum inside of gnomeland!
80,000 accounts (not just trial accounts) and then categorized according to having been (or not been) ganked during their âtrial periodâ (15 days). For all we know you or I or both are in that sampleâŚor not.
My understanding which might be wrong was that they checked if they had been ganked or not within the trial period. So they would have had to have had a trial period, I did not have a trial period, so I am not in that sample.
This is probably a poorly thought out idea, but what if cost to dec was drastically increased for alliances over corps? Would this cause some blanket alliances to shatter into more cost effective splinter cells? Would they just use in game tools to act like an alliance without being in one? Dunno⌠Itâs late and i have work to do
Someone point out all the crap i just spoke please.
Most alliances operate as one giant corp anyways, The only reason alliances exist is because most people are too hubris to leave a corp tag they have had for X amount of years. So likely they would just fold into one corp. But one thing you have to deal with before you ever even begin to present the idea for increased war costs, is the fact that wars take 24 hours to go live, and it only costs 1.5 mill to create a corp, rather than 50 mill to declare war. So you have a huge issue where youâll spend 50 mill to declare, and then instantly the corp is closed, and a new corp, with the exact same name and logo is up again within 5 minutes.
One way to fix this issue is possibly issuing a refund to the aggressor if the alliance/or corp is closed within the first 48 hours?
Yeah man, that gets on my nerves too. It should cost LOADS more than 1.5M to create a corp. I personally would place it closer to 100M. Not a huge grind for a small group who want a banner to fly under, but also not insignificant to an older entity who cycles corps a lot (1 man mining vets / ISBoxers).
Every account has a âtrial periodâ (i.e. the first 15 days). But they were not trial accounts in the literal sense. Because, my guess is when they checked retention they looked at the average amount of time the accounts in the three categories were active. For example, if you had 3 accounts, and their duration of activity is:
5 days.
6 months.
Still currently active and started exactly 5 years ago.
Then our average would be: And average of 671.13 days. Or about 22 months.
If you watch the video, CCP Rise states that something along these lines (not an exact quote):
We grapped 80,000 accounts, not characters so these are not alts, and we looked to see if they were killed in their first 15 days.
The first 15 days was the old âtrial periodâ, but it is not clear if they were looking at people who had trial periods (i.e. people who did not start paying right away).
Edit: At least that is my interpretation of what they did. I was not there so I canât say with certainty, but the question was âDoes ganking/griefing cause newbros to the leave the gameâ (again not an exact quote). In this case, if CCP Rise is defining ânewbroâ as first 15 daysâŚyou were a newbro and you might be in there in this case.
Edit II: Also regarding my quite example above: Account in 1 is a trial account in the sense of it never made it out of âthe first 15 daysâ period. The other accounts are not in that they did make it out of that âtrial periodâ. And the quotes indicates that the notion of âtrial periodâ may not be literal.
It has been a long time, but on reflection you are right there was a period of time where I did not pay so yes and it was 15 days, my understanding was that it was people getting shot in that first 15 days only.
I had always said that this was not the issue, it was the person who had trained himself into Exhumers, got one and then got blasted by a Catalyst in his first use of the damn thing having stretched himself to buy it, those people were the issue, as well as those who tried to mine but lost ship after ship because they could not find one that worked because there was no options. I saw their anger at CCP for leaving them to be picked off like that and I went on the forums warning CCP that these people were really fed up and many of them left, as I said not a single one of the people that I started playing with who mined are still in the game.
Anyway they are gone, it is done and dusted, the issue is no longer there as they no longer really play and the people who have that attitude here and now can only blame themselves for not using the right ship or the right fit, as they have that option, but not then.
I canât prove this as I do not have access to the data, and I doubt that CCP did until maybe six months before they made that change.
As I said, ganking does not cause mass subscription loss at this point.
Perhaps you could try finding a series of Exhumer loss mails from back then. you can build your own evidence. When you started playing in 2008 killmails were recorded well, some of my really old killmails before 2008 donât even list the modules fitted.
Also, on the subject of your friends that left due to Exhumers having poor tanks, did they ever try anything like using a few of their alts to attack the ganker once he was flagged? Or did they have any sort of pvp ship or logi on standby to defend/heal themselves?
From what youâve typed it sounded like they were stubborn and didnât want to try a different approach. One thing I can say Eve has been consistent with is that if you work in a well organised team you are more likely to achieve your goals, this has always been the case. Did they seem happy to work with others to develop solutions? or was it a case of them trying to do it solo and failing?
Perhaps the fault was with their play style and not in the Exhumers tanking ability?
Iâm not trolling here, Iâm just curious really.
For what reason would I spend my time gathering that data manually just because some CODE trolls keeps chanting show me the proof? When just above linked by March rabbit is the proof which I knew about, because it was the reason for the tanks.
Even if I did that work they would just come up with some other thing to say no and then laugh at me spending my time to prove something that they are winding people up withâŚ
Well some did and some did not, one tried but the gankers just brought more ships, the others did not because they only had one account, they were casual players after all.
They were paying for a game to sit there and mine and chill out in space, not my cup of tea as you know, but still it was the reason they played the game.
This is indeed one of the issues of hisec, is that it is casual players who just want to do their own thing, so when it became just an experience of expensive loss after expensive loss from doing something with low time returns so their net worth went down and all their progress disappeared they stopped playing. Unlike me, who decided that sitting in any ship that was so easy to kill was not for me they did not want to do that, I made the decision to not get into such a death trap ship group until CCP gave people a choice between tank or yield.
Hmmmm, well yes and no, yes because previously before the destroyers DPS was buffed so much people had to gank with BSâs, there was ganking but it was limited, after the DPS change loads of people did it. So the issue here was not so much the play style but a change made to the game by CCP without thinking through the balance impact and adjusting for it, which was my criticism of it.
Take for example gun mining that affected you and me, that was because CCP added additional materials to ships to prevent people making ships before changes and then reprocessing them. After that they made reprocessing have a base level of 50% cutting the value of what we were doing in half. As CCP had their eye on people taking advantage of ship raw material changes they were not looking at the number of people operating in a niche way. Did I want to sit in a mining ship in 0.0 as a small group player, no wayâŚ
It is not so much a case of fault, though CCP has a duty of care in one sense, but more of expecting intelligent decisions in terms of game balance. I was annoyed at the time and was on the forums saying they were mad not to increase the tanks of mining ships in some way, but in the end I realised that because it was a low return exercise that the solo miner was likely subbed it was going to cost CCP in their pocket with the loss of paid subscriptions which it did. This also coincided with the influx of new players due to headline big battles and at that time CCP did not have any tools or interest in keeping tabs on their client base so they missed it because they did not care.
Then due to the stagnation caused by Dominion based blob gameplay the wheels fell off in 0.0 in terms of boring play and blue donuts and suddenly those new accounts melted away and they then noticed the loss of all those long term solo mining players in hisec who had been subbed.
In any case it is history now, the balance is currently correct and there is no issue at all at this point, you get the odd ganker like baltec1 crying that the tank of a Skiff or Procurer is too much, but in reality there are enough people making the choice for yield over tank, he just wants it to be super easy on all his targets, which is not Eve to me.
If you look at his explanation of the fun he had, you will notice that the miners always lost, they might actually survive in one engagement, but the next day N+1 and a counter and bang they died and it was so cheap to do that the ganker could just keep throwing cheap ships at it and the miner, lost expensive stuff that took him an age to build up. You noted this correctly in one of your posts above, in effect CCP made a balance decision to allow the gankers a very cheap and easy way to gank the expensive tools of a low return group of players, who paid cash RL money for their subscriptions, seriously a stupid move IMO and they paid for it in a loss of subs, poetic justice really. My only concern was that the game would lose too many sub paying accounts that would cause issues for investment to improve things, in a way it did have an impact in that way, but CCP have a loyal player base that keep it solvent because the game is actually deep and meaningful.
Did that help?
PS It is all history now, but we should get back on the topic of war decs, not react to CODE trolling
Been interesting following the conversations here, unsure why most of the last 100 posts have been about ganking as itâs completely different topic to the thread.
One part of the issue is a lack of real targets for meaningful content, for example these small corps of miners were content for solo or small gang war deckers, so the loss of a significant number of people in hisec did hurt war deckers. Another is that blanket war decâs are seen as griefing by some, I do not agree with that statement as I see it as more a desperate search for easy content, but that is just me. However my point of view is that the staleness in hisec is the main issue.
Pheonix Jr gave me some interesting things to think about in a private convo, sadly I had some wife aggro so had to bail, but there are a couple of changes that make the situation interesting for people who want to fight back, it is certainly much more doable, but getting people wanting to fight is going to be tricky.
As I have fully committed to my nullsec alliance and I am not in the right TZ for this I just hope that someone with drive and intelligence can work it out and give it a go (that is not to say that I have the drive, ability or intelligence to do it.) At last there is some meaningful co-operative PvE in hisec with these new FOBâs that pushes people to co-operative play, that is a damn good start, CCP should have a big pat on the back for that as it can change the attitude of people in hisec, if they can work together to kill these FOBâs why not do the same against war deckers?
I think these threads have something in common which is peoples attitudes and play styles within the game and how they affect quitting.
I see both sides of the wardec debate, one side is unsure of how to fight or they donât want to fight, and the other side complains because they want easy kills and there is no more watchlist. I feel both sides are somewhat to blame for the current state of affairs.
Dude, come on. Youâre reading CCP Tallestâs summery of what CCP Ytterbiumâs team did. That dev blog even links to the actual initial blog and update:
Our goal is simple: each and every single mining barge (and their tech 2 variant) should have an appealing role, and not just be a stepping stone on the way to something better. Players shouldânt only aim for the Hulk without considering anything else when doing some hard rock and roll mining. That means playing with the following variables:
⢠Mining output: first and most visible balancing factor, plan is to increase all barge mining output to be within an acceptable margin of the Hulk, not miles behind as it is currently.
⢠Autonomy: mining barges should have proper cargo holds so they not always have to rely on jet cans (without turning them into industrials however). That means giving them large, specialized ore bays where all the ore will automatically go into when mining. ⢠Resilience: another point is to give some of them proper EHP not to be one-shot by anything that even remotely sneezes on them.
As a result we thus get:
⢠New ORE frig: we want this ship to replace current mining frigates as low barrier of entry vessel, but also fulfill high-end gameplay expectations by providing a very mobile platform for mining in hostile space. Lowest mining output, decent ore bay, little to no resilience.
⢠Procurer/Skiff: primarily made for self-defense. Better mining rate than the ORE frig, good ore bay, but capable of having battleship-like EHP.
⢠Retriever/Mackinaw: made for self-reliance. Has the largest ore bay, similear to the size of a jet can, second best mining output but less EHP than the procurer mining barge.
⢠Covetor/hulk: ore bay is identical to its current cargo hold, little to average EHP, but best mining output. Basically made for group operations when players have industrials and protection to back them up.
I should not have to say this, but a CCP tag doesnât mean that the person writing has something to do with the thing being talked about. You took a single line out of a developerâs summary of another team and thought it meant something.
Itâs also ironic in that Dracvlad has linked it twice now, the same poster that has spent years denying the plain English CCP Rise used on a stage at fanfest (talking about work his team did), but one misplaced phrase on a summary written by one dev abut another teams work gets used as evidenceâŚ
If people do this with video game related things, no wonder real world politics are so screwed up
Jenn you are well and truly mad as a hatter triggered.
The detail above actually says it and the overview gave the short version. I like the expression of sneeze on it, which is close to my tank of a wet paper bag expression, would have been great if they had used that line.
I have never disputed the findings of this analysis, what I have disputed is certain people saying it means more than what it does which was merely the affect of ganking on newbros. So as you are putting words in my mouth and saying something that I have never actually said, I have to turn it around and ask do you agree with CODE saying it proves that ganking never affected player subscriptions as compared to newbros subsciptions? Because that is what you are actually defending with your comment directed at me in terms of this analysis.
You are screwed up mate,as per normal⌠and your failure to answer that question will prove just what a dishonest poster you really are!
However feel free to PM me in game if youâd like to continue the conversation? We tend to try and keep our forum posts to a minimum inside of gnomeland!
