Correlation is not causation. CCP hasn’t tried to make younger characters ungankable in order to compare retention rates with and without ganking. Not that it should do, but just stressing how different retention rates might be caused by other factors that also impact retention.
Claiming that ganking improves retention is a nice tongue in cheek, but it can’t be taken seriously without being tested the hard way.
Please read my post again and address the actual points I make and not something you just invented because it is easier for you to handle.
Stuff happened.
PSSSSHHHH!
GONG!
It was all intended 
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And that is not everything. These are just some comedic flops, but they indicate something more serious.
If anybody ever though that CCP knows what they are doing… really? 
Without us, and without CCP listening to players, EVE would be just another bad MMO game made by a bad company. Only because of us and that feedback CCP is (rarely) willing to incorporate, EVE is somewhat afloat to this day.
They stop listening, they go out of business.
great post!
one point, which i keep repeating endlessly, needs to be added.
history proves that blowing someone up increases retention.
but what’s really necessary is that people skmply stop arguing around and instead only point at the facts, ad infinitum if necessary.
It is already a delusion that those two things aren’t always connected with each other. Defining PvP as players deliberately shooting at each other, is simply not enough.
Avoiding to get in firefight situations is as much PvP as taking part of it. There is also:
[quote=“yellow_parasol, post:360, topic:15537”]
PvE vs. PvP does not matter. What you do does not matter. What matters is that, before CCP continuously attacked the game’s healthy culture, the vast majority of players was aware of the dangers and the mindset necessary, **throughout all “playstyles”, because that’s how they grew up.[/quote]
This is exactly where the NPE fails. It does nothing to prepare people for the game beyond explaining some basic game mechanics (which by itself isn’t a bad thing at all).
Actually, it even hurts getting people into the right mindset. When there was no extensive NPE, new players had to deal with old players to get directions and realized much sooner that this is (still) a player driven universe and that other players matter a lot, no matter what you do (in good or bad ways). Instead the NPE binds the player in some “true” isolated PvE context with is basically the opposite of everything else in the game (as explained above).
While I generally agree with you on that on an abstract level, it’s a little bit funny to read this after so many posts of “they got all the buffs and we got all the nerfs”.
“I choose not to answer”, I put that in maybe 20 times so far.
With your posts, i’m never truly convinced about the motive. do you want to add, or do you try to bring arguments?
now it seems you want to add to it, regarding the PvE vs PvP nonsense.
You’re not someone who has the need to express it. you know, as an outlet. many people do. vOv
“they got all the buffs and we got all the nerfs”.
When too many people repeat the same things, most people will accept them as true. And ao the PvE vs PvP nonsense was born. people started being dunning-krueger about the bigger picture (aka mindset) and went to the irrelevant individual level instead, which equals intellectual downgrading.
I’m more of a mind that those likely stay are also more likely to be blown up as there are a fair number who get blown up, sulk about a video game and never come back too.
A large number of changes made by CCP over the last few years have been in direct response to player requests for changes so if we don’t like them we only have ourselves to blame. Personally I’m fine with most changes even if they don’t work out quite as intended as long as something is done to address the problems shortly after.
In my opinion there needs to be af ocus on making all areas of space interesting, not just trying to drive people to null. Each security area should exist for a reason and should be reliant on the other areas to some extent to make sure they all remain relevant.
Dynamic missions would be a good way to improve the hisec experience, along with a rework of wardecs to make them actually viable for all. All levels of gameplay should be available but with more work being required in hisec to gain anything like the rewards of lower sec areas. However these rewards should still be achievable otherwise it puts of those who have no wish to leave hisec. Perhaps instead have them influence Empire actions with their gameplay.
lowsec should be similar to hisec in terms of affecting the Empires with your actions, but with better rewards, null will have higher rewards within lower timescales to reflect the risk of holding space. WH’s should always be the oddball with great risk and great rewards. WH’s also need Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster bars.
In short to retain more people CCP need to make more playstyles viable rather than trying to push everyone to null.
Well, i suggest you learn more about what you are talking about and then correct your post accordingly, because you show that you didn’t quite catch up with what’s actually important to talk about.
CCP does not need to add content.
it needs to remove the restrictions from the players who create content.
adding more content = The Agency. Adding more content = an ever increasing amount of people demanding more content. not saying its a bad thing to have better missions or adding any content is bad for short term, but it will not help the game survive or improve at all for the long term
playstyles and individualism are irrelevant. what matters is the big picture, not what you do. what matters is that EVE is a jungle and not anyone’s personal sandbox. it is one big one for everyone; no snowflakes allowed.
lots of posts covering this stuff, thoroughly. i suggest you read them.
lowsec should be similar to hisec in terms of affecting the Empires with your actions, but with better rewards, null will have higher rewards within lower timescales to reflect the risk of holding space.
history shows that this is the wrong approach. more rewards help zero and only attracts those who want even more.
PS: i need coffee.
Go fetch that caffeine goodness, I understand your needs.
I wrote my opinion after having read this and similar threads. Content does matter at least to get people hooked in. This in no way means that hisec should be some theme park safe haven. On the contrary dynamic missions would hopefully get rid of the eve survival guides etc and make mission running a little more challenging and varied. If done right it also makes it a simple matter to add in more missions, remove others etc. The thread on burner guides made me cringe when they teared up because the last release lost them a few ships due to buffs on the burners. This needs to change IMO.
My point is that some people only want to be in hisec which is fine as long as they accept the risks along with the increased safety. However, there needs to be enough in hisec to hook people in and encourage them to try other areas of space. It’ll always be a relatively low % of players who move out to those areas (for me moving to WH is the best thing I’ve done in game terms). Increasing the size of the pool that these players come from can only increase the numbers and therefore the interactions between players who are willing to take more risk (I hate the term ‘content’ 
).
I want more players in game, and more of those players in less safe areas. To me hisec is a means to an end, and if the subs from those who like to play in relative safety improve the game for the less risk averse then all the better.
WOT & you appear to have some sort of agenda 
Firstly I’d like to say I have no interest in seeing (& wouldn’t like to see) ganking & griefing nerfed further, you seem to have got the wrong end of the stick with regards to my position?
Secondly I really am completely disinterested in meta gaming these forums.
Which (though this post is relatively innocuous) by your past standards appears be all you’re really about in here.
Which is completely fine.
It’s just not what I’m here for, so please don’t involve me in your future projects o7
Agreed. Farmers need to be punished, instead of being encouraged. And it is farmers who cry, not those who want challenges. I disagree on the wording of “hooking” people via missions. you can’t hook people with missions, even procedurally generated ones. it’s a dead end, because either they all get beaten easily eventually , or the npc AI learns and continuously wipes them out of space. no matter what, it’s generic MMO content and will not hook, because it’s not the game that hooks them, but the people’s hoarding instincts.
it’s okay to look for short term and medium term customers, but the eternal september phenomenon needs to be taken care of first.
Anyhow: What gets people hooked is adrenaline. adrenaline creates a direct hook to where it comes from, compared to targetting hoarding instincts which don’t care about the source, because that source can be anything that throws things at it. see also: most MMOs who do not deserved to be called *Massive Multiplayer". you’ll have a much harder time finding the adrenaline anywhere outside of EVE, in games that feed the lower instincts.
wanting more players, without care about who or what kind of people, only leads to the situation we have now. nothing you suggested hasn’t been tried already and nothing of that really helped. except for harder missions, which are supposed to come in the highsec expansion.
highsec is a core part of the game. where people start and the game’s culture develops and evolves. it’s not just a noob area, but actually the centerpoint of the game… at least until CCP decided to ruin it. lowsec is lowsec, arguably one of the best places. nullsec is whalesec.
re nullsec i gotta say that anyone who complains about the lack of wars misses the point. the problem isnt the lack of wars, it’s the special snowflakes who can not play the game without someone feeding them content. there’d be aay more wars if nullseccers weren’t mostly a big pile of consumers only logging in for fun.
i need my notebook. i’m on the phone and it shows. i dislike that a lot, but i’m also at work and after a week of barely posting, it’s another week of barely working… lol (not complaining on a high level here :P)
Glad to see we both have our work/EvE balance prioritized
I disagree on adrenaline being the only driver, this may be the case for PvP players, but doesn’t necessarily apply to all careers in game. Currently I enjoy the industrial side as time constraints stop me actively flying. I get satisfaction and enjoyment from managing the whole indy side, producing and selling stuff, and generally being useful to my corp. None of this is particularly adrenaline inducing (I go and get punched and kicked at JKD for that), but still provides me with my EvE enjoyment needs.
I would imagine the same applies to Mission runners, incursion runners etc etc. All of these things can be worked out to provide minimal risk of failure, pretty much wiping out the adrenaline side of things. These players are in game for different reasons, and this has always been the case in EvE as far as I can tell.
The game grows when it provides multiple ways to play in the sandbox. Telling everyone they have to build the same sandcastles in the same corner just stagnates the rest of the sandpit. Just as long as everyone is aware that their sandcastle can be squished at any point there shouldn’t be an issue with this (IMO of course)
And many don’t and just take the easiest way out. My point: I’m not sure you can draw any conclusions from that question in that place. I’m not even sure you could draw the right conclusions when you ask your active playerbase about the health of the game and needed changes. Simply because the answers will most likely be in the mindset of:
Again, I agree. When looking at player retention or improvements of Eve (in general), that is the level you should start.
When you look at reasons why people leave (or don’t start with the game in the first place), it comes eventually down to all those things we are reading here: individual viewpoints and foremost feelings.
Right now, people everwhere feel unprivileged (when it comes to CCP caring about “their” playstyle or space), many feel disappointed (when the game or CCP doesn’t match their expectations), some feel alienated (when seeing CCP catering for the instant gratification crowd), some feel that development has stagnated and the game got boring and so on…
And while all these examples have reasons that lie somewhere in the ‘big picture’ (they even have a common aspect: lacking communication between CCP and players), people may feel very differently about those.
This leads to:
Which most likely means that they will also leave out of different reasons, when they don’t feel like getting what they are here for anymore.
I don’t see that push to Null and I also don’t see a lack (or more importantly a significant reduction) of play styles.
Some might say, that the current SOV system is even pushing players out of Null, the recent WH-space changes pushing players out of that space and the lack of changes in Low-Sec driving players out there, too.
Feel free to not use the forum at all if you have a problem with people addressing the content of your comments and trying to participate in a conversation.
What you wrote was utter nonsense and showed a complete misunderstanding of the presented study. I just pointed this out to you and explained at length why. Feel free to actually address my points, if not I will assume I made my point and you are still digesting it and the deflective reply is just part of the usual denial process.
I’m quite happy talking to everyone else, it’s just you 
o7
Mate, i suggest you read this one:
And even more on topic, this one:
That’ll help skipping a few posts.
We werent talking about a driver, but about a hook. The driving element, which makes people repeatedly seek a drug, is the desire to regain the feelings the drug provides.
You look for satisfaction (see second link), which is great! Long term, bam, a good customer. The rest of your post is addressed in the latter link, the former one helps understanding a few things about the game on a more fundamentally level. Both belong together, but things are missing.
If i ever write a proper paper about EVE ONLINE, these two posts’ contents would definitely be in it. 
No. Again, you talk about the individual level. It already provides multiple ways of playing and it doesn’t grow anymore. PvE/PvP are not playstyles and only pure PvE players create this seperation. PvP players do other things than shooting as well. Tons of them would be mining, if it was worth the time. And they’d be a hell of a lot better miners than those we have now, because attacking them will actually lead to a reaction in-game, not on the forums.
I’ve quadruppleboxxed a mining fleet, btw, and I’m what you’d call a PvPer. I also ran missions, traded, did industry, social engineering, politics, wardeccing. You name it and i probably did it… except afk cloaking. I don’t waste power like that.
You won’t see PvErs, who create this artificial seperation, doing PvP. Get the distinction out of your thinking process.
Everyone is building his own sandcastle, growing the global sandcastle, which is a jungle. The Game. As long as you don’t understand that the game (you lost 
) is a jungle and that being able to defend yourself isn’t PvP “gameplay” (and thus not some playstyle forced on others), but is a requirement for playing without being unhappy, then you will just continuously post things i will grow tired of correcting.
It’s not PvPers forcing some playstyle onto PvErs. It’s PvErs forcing their selfish, lower instinct driven desires onto the game itself.
If me and a carebear got dropped into a real jungle, only with a machete for each of us, then the carebear dies. He will not be willing to defend himself. Instead he will complain about how he is not supposed to do it himself and instead demands that i protect him and that the jungle leaves him alone.
So i cut his head off, because he’s food i need to protect myself and stay alive. That’s EVE ONLINE, ignoring how CCP tries to wreck it into something else that’s not working.
I accept your surrender.
i’m really happy about the way you write your posts now, , and as a friendly reminder I must ask you to watch out for his ego baiting you into back-and-forth posting. He wants that.
Anyhow, awesome posts, thank you!
you don’t need to play PvP to enjoy game and be part big events in New Eden.
Everything you do is ultimately PvP (Yellow seems to interpret my view and activities in game incorrectly here), the activity may be PvE but it affects everyone else in game to a greater or lesser degree.
My view is that CCP should seek to maximize player numbers in all areas in all activities, whilst encouraging them to take more risks. It also needs to be made absolutely clear from the outset that you are a target for everyone in game at all times.