Any theories on why so many people have quit over the last 2 years?

While I enjoy the sweet grief of a player that shows his ass, I have offered the help of plenty more that I’ve killed and been curious as to what happened. I may not give them a cache of ISK and ships to compensate their loss, but instead choose to educate them on how they can begin a life of profitable fun.

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Yeah, quoting CCP’s ‘study on ganking’ is a laugh.
Actually go and look at what they looked at then realise why it’s so irrelevant what they ‘found’ in connection to ganking. Especially since it wasn’t even to do with ganking what they actually looked at, but all PvP experiences.
The people who actually leave because of ganking are not the under 30 day newbies, it’s the 3-6 month player who gets tear mined for the third or fourth time and decides they don’t feel like being in a game with such toxic victim blaming culture. Sure, blow people up, but the culture around ganking & PvP has changed even since I started EVE, and become far more antagonistic.

Furthermore, if EVE’s population is declining either in total subs or in PCU, one would expect ganking to decline. The concord kills graph does not seem to be declining as much as the estimates in total subs or in PCU are declining which means that per person ganking is actually increasing. There is a reason that the saying about, lies, damn lies & statistics exists, because it’s very easy to use statistics in a manipulating manner without addressing the context the stats exist in properly.

Now is it a problem if ganking increases? Not really as far as I’m concerned. The problem is the lack of engagement for the targets & the other players around the area, not the fact that ganking happens.

P.S. Yellow, you are doing exactly what you are spamming accusations at people doing everywhere, you also cherry pick a single half sentence a lot of the time and ignore the entire rest of the post, using the half sentence out of context to then attack a persons character directly while pigeon holing them with a label, often used aggressively. Like I said you are a perfect example of the culture change to antagonistic behaviour.

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Dudes, one thing is self-evident: nothing that CCP has done for the game* in the last two years has improved server concurrency.

Some say it’s because of things that are gone, some say it’s because of things that have been done, and some claim that it’s because things that have not been done… but the truth is simply that the development made in the last years has been ineffective in terms of PCU. And there is no reason why future development should change this trend unless it’s something different, and it is not.

*Alpha clones are a change to monetization, not to the game

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Do what???

Please explain to me what attacking someone’s “pigeon hole” means. Sounds dirty.

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  1. Try actually quoting the whole sentence, not deliberately cutting words in the middle out of your quote.
  2. It’s a reference to old filing systems, to put someone in a box, to tell someone else you know what their thoughts & feelings are. Typically used to demean someone by using a label that has negative connotations.
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Man! So uptight here! I obviously spliced part of your post together. I recommend you step back and take 5.

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it’s as if he suffered from a serious cognitive bias and takes things way too personally.

The next carebear I gank I am going to link this thread in an EvEmail as to why they had to get blown up.

Dravaclad you will be getting reimbursement requests

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I have someone that is actually expecting like 5b in reimbursement. I will tag along and refer them to you @Dracvlad if that’s cool.

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You missed an option, which is “the MMO market has changed because gamers have changed and NOTHING CCP can do will have any affect on this, so freaking about about the PCU is useless”.

I bookmarked an article I read last year (while having the exact same kind of discussion on reddit), it’s worth a read. Rather than seeing EVE as something in decline, we should be marveling at how resilient it is in the face of a changed market that has destroyed many other MMOs.

http://media.equityarcade.com/explore/articles/2016/03/30/what-happened-to-western-mmos/

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Oddly enough, this proves Nevyn’s point about ganking not being fun for the target. Sure, the counter-play is there. Sure, it works. But…

The counter-play is to not allow your attacker to engage, because you’re magically invulnerable* once you’re in warp. This makes hauling anything around eternally boring. Having people try to engage and possibly fail will result in interesting gameplay. Having 99999 uneventful trips because nobody could or would engage you… isn’t. As someone who actually does haul things around semi-regularly, I happen to know what I’m talking about.

*except in places where bubbles are allowed

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That’s fine if you want some nifty gameplay to go with your boring space-truck simulator. I’m just pointing out that the result will likely be the same. Freighters will still die in the same frequency and more nerfs will be demanded.

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That article actually hits the nail perfectly. Thanks for sharing this.

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While I agree in general terms that the market for those games in general is changing - Eve Online still has pretty decent new player uptake numbers - yet overall activity levels are still in decline. To me that indicates there is much more to it.

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I may start up my 26th account. Does this make me a new player again? How do we know that each account made isn’t just someone’s alt that is gonna plex with ISK?

Implementation detail: damage has to scale over time from “that tickles!” to “dead.”

CONCORD has to stop playing around at some point, or it may as well not exist against professional gankers. You’d get, say, battleships with active tank and cap booster charge addictions. The problem of attrition can easily be worked around by dropping some from an industrial with a can (see: Lussy Lou solo PvP videos). The fitting solution and tactics to use against a CONCORD which does manageable damage indefinitely has shown up on the Reddit front page pretty regularly.

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Imo accelerating PLEX price increases over the last 2-3yrs are the single greatest contributor to player/account attrition.

When you boil everything down, the dollar/effort value of participation in EVE is what is left and where most players vote with their wallet/feet.

Game changes affect different player segments, but PLEX changes affect everyone.

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If someone is “tear mined” for the third or fourth time in a similar fashion, nobody but him is to blame. I can understand some new player being bitter about being ganked the first time because he didn’t know better how to protect himself. And that’s the point: in 99% (made up number) of all cases of being ganked, the victim could have avoided it by taking the right measures (but too lazy, too stupid, too distracted, too over confident, too whatever might the reason).
Victim blaming is only toxic in RL (where consequences for all parties involved are potentially much more severe), but not in this game.

Being in warp in time or in general being not there where the gank is happening or being not an easy target are all consequences of planning and plan execution (as long as you are not doing the right things by accident). By doing the right things you are already making people fail to gank you, because if they could (and should beacuse you are worthwhile target), they would.
Unfortunately, you only get feedback in case you fail, they notice you, they don’t have a better target present and sufficient resources at hand.

I have to quote this again:
Many mechanics in this game are boring: hauling, mining, ratting, missioning, scanning…
when you look at them isolated. The only become more interesting if embedded in an interesting context:
What are you hauling? Mission loot, ore or maybe the PvP loot that finances the SRP for the corporation?
Why are you scanning? To find relic and data sites to find some stuff that you can sell, to find an exit in a wh-system chain that you got lost in, or maybe to find out where those haulers you have been seeing several times in the last hour come from so you can shoot them the next time?

It takes a while to realize that, because in the beginning everything is new and exciting and there is sooooo much to learn and try. But once you have learned the mechanics (and despite that what the popular learning cliff image is trying to make us believe, it’s not that hard), it should be less about what you actually do in detail and more about what you want to achieve in the bigger picture.

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As if that would bother me, any excuse you can find for your fail attempts at ganking, look at the red on your KB in comparison to the green. Keep at it mate it is laughable…

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Many mechanics in this game are boring: hauling, mining, ratting, missioning, scanning…
when you look at them isolated. The only become more interesting if embedded in an interesting context:

Mechanics? They are professions or activities.

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