What it is boils down to management decisions. A huge amount of change in 2 yrs? wtf are citadels?
A more contemptible view of the subscribers by ccp employees, I have seen proof of this also. Downright insulting comments from a company from a supposed progressive country.
Finally, this game was made in 2003, it is somewhat dated. It’s not a sim in any way, it doesn’t reflect spaceflight whatsoever. It is not 3D even…there is no y-axis that I can tell.
Answered
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CCP had the same concerns and they actually looked into this and found that there is no connection between ganking, new player retention or people quitting the game:
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CCP is desperate. They are throwing so many different concepts/changes at the wall hoping something sticks and draws back players, or at least retains, the existing player base. But naturally, as typical with CCP management, they have missed the big picture. Focusing on enhancing the gameplay / income operations of the null sec cartels over the benefit of every other type of game play is a disastrous baseline to start make decisions from, yet CCP has based virtually every change in the game in the past 7 years on that base line.
Until CCP recognizes that the preferential treatment of the cartels is the main reason of their declining subscription base, the game is doomed. Frankly, I don’t expect CCP to recognize this. But I keep hoping, and I keep one account subscribed just so I can point their folly out to them. Consider me a lookout on the Titantic frantically signalling the bridge, but the bridge staff is too arrogant/incompetent to understand.
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The core philosophy of the game is do what you want, but you are not insulated from others attempting to interact with you. That interaction could be cooperative or non-cooperative. Ganking falls in the non-cooperative category. As such, ganking is very much part of the game. It is up to you to take necessary precautions. If you choose not too (either knowingly or unknowingly) that is not the Devs responsibility.
Ganking is only as easy as the player being ganked makes it. Consider two scenarios:
- I fill my freighter with 7.65 billion ISK worth of cargo.
- I put cargo expanders on it.
- I undock and set a route through Uedama, Niarja or worse both.
- Hit autopilot.
- Go AFK.
Second scenario:
- I fill my freighter with .765 billion ISK worth of cargo.
- I put reinforced bulkheads on it.
- I undock and set a route through Uedama, Niarja or worse both.
- I either use and alt or buddy as a scout.
- My scout has webs.
- I don’t go AFK.
In scenario 1 the guy is taking on extreme risk. In the second scenario risk is being mitigated as much as possible.
Ganking is “easy” because one side takes on so much risk.
And no, the game is not supposed to balance risk. If you take on considerable risk, and I seek to take advantage of it in a prudent and intelligent manner…why should I face the same level of risk you stupidly took on? The risk you face is, in large part, dependent on your actions. If you don’t want to face high risk…then take prudent and reasonable actions. Notice that in scenario 1 above that player was taking imprudent and unreasonable actions. He turned his ship into a loot pinata, and then he did everything possible to make it easy to whack that loot pinata. In a word he was stupid.
Why indeed? See it isn’t the hunters’ problem…it is the prey’s problem. They make themselves into the prey…by being imprudent and foolish.
Because the target made choices so that this becomes true. Note in scenario 2 the benefit to ganking that freighter is minimal. It would just barely, if the loot fairy is “fair” provide enough cargo value to cover the cost of 38 catalysts. That might be enough to gank said freighter, but there is little to no profit. The player in that scenario has largely removed the incentive to gank.
So, you are wrong above, it is not because there are no repercussions regarding CONCORD it is that an imprudent and foolish player has created the potential for reward that swamps the costs imposed by CONCORD.
CCP’s own analysis of ganking says that those player actually are the least likely to stay with the game.
Yes and even with ganking it works like gangbusters.
Seriously, turning HS into a super safe theme park would be one of the most stultifying things for the game that CCP could do…in fact, they have been doing just that, IMO and oh…look, the PCU has declined.
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Actually, there is a connection and it is the reverse of most people’s intuition: those ganked typically stay with the game the longest.
That’s been debunked (In fact the forum software has told me this has been posted before in this thread):
We have tried and tried to validate the myth that griefing has a pronounced affect on new players - we have failed. The strongest indicators for a new player staying with EVE are associated with social activity: joining corps, using market and contract systems, pvping, etc. Isolating players away from the actual sandbox seems very contrary to what we would like to accomplish.
In both your examples the gankers face zero risk. The only risk they have is ganking a target that yields less than the value they lose from their ship losses, and quite frankly if they’re doing that wrong then they don’t know what they’re doing. They are, afterall, targeting the weakest and least able to defend themselves, the ones that have no interest in combat.
Ganking is playing EvE on easy mode, taking advantage of the theme park at the expense of everyone else, getting that risk-free loot. Lets be clear about this, most gankers couldn’t handle a fight with people that shoot back. That’s why they don’t leave highsec, that’s where the slowest and easiest prey reside. And what do we get from making sure they’re having fun getting that super-easy loot and collecting tears? People stop playing the game, and that’s not good for anyone.
Though to be clear highsec shouldn’t ever be made super safe, it just needs balance so those not looking for combat play aren’t constantly getting it forced down their throats.
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You might want to re-read that post again. It actually supports my point of view. Ganking is considered a social activity in that resposne by CCP Rise, it would be part of the PVP answer.
The idea of making HS gank free is to increase the isolation of players that CCP Rise noted.
You completely misread that post. Completely.
Yes, and in the second scenario by limiting my cargo size I change the risk from against me to in my favor. You did notice the cargo value in the second scenario decreased by an order of magnitude.
Wrong. I often move stuff around HS and I have plenty of interest in combat. I just often have to use a ship with no combat capabilities so I take precautions to minimize my risk.
Risk is not just some thing that the game imposes. It is literally a function of your actions. Act in a stupid manner your risk goes up. You might get away with it for awhile, but eventually somebody will take advantage of it and you’ll suffer an expensive loss. Act in a prudent manner and you still might experience an expensive loss, but the interval between them will, on average, be larger–you’ll have more opportunity to earn ISK to more than offset that loss.
There is no theme park. There are players who may think it is a theme park and take imprudent actions, but that is on them, not on the gankers. One of the rules of EVE is don’t fly what you can afford to lose. It does not apply just to LS, NS and w-space it is a universal rule. As such it applies to freighter pilots in HS.
Now you are just making crap up. Of course not in a gank ship…it is a gank ship. But many gankers are like you, they live in NS and are experienced in PvP.
Goons run a very successful ganking group. Goons live in NS, some just keep JCs in HS or alts for ganking. You are literally advertising your ignorance on a billboard here.
Again, this is not true. Isolating players actually induces them to leave the game. Interactions, even via PvP which includes ganking, indicates the exact opposite of this.
CCP looked at ganking of new players (less than 15 days old) and you know what? Those who were ganked stay the longest/are most likely to stay with the game. those who are not ganked at all leave the soonest/are most likely to quit.
There is no balance issue here. If you fly stupid that is on you. If a freighter pilot flies stupid that is on him. Don’t fly stupid and you’ll be less likely to incur an expensive loss.
No, really. There’d be no ganking issue if freighter pilots literally stopped flying stupid.
If ganking is easy mode, what mode are the “slowest and easiest prey” playing?
Gankers serve as a small amount of risk for the those truly playing Eve on easy mode - the ones running min/maxed missions from a script safely under the watchful eye of CONCORD, moving goods by autopilot while they walk the dog, or alt-tab mining while they watch Netflix. Criminals call the lazy and greedy on their lackadaisical play. Honestly, highsec is so safe now that is is near impossible to lose a ship if you are aware and take some very basic precautions. Only a fraction of a percent of goods are lost to gankers according to CCP Quant’s numbers.
I am not sure how much safer you want to make highsec. Do you even play in highsec? At this point it is already super safe, so pretty much more “balance” just means locking everyone’s safeties to red and being done with it. That’s a legitimate position to take even if I disagree with it as a good one for increasing player counts, but you don’t get to claim that all the criminal mechanics need is ‘one more nerf’ to put everything right. Highsec criminals have been nerfed again and again over the years and all that has happened is highsec activity has gone down and down with each nerf. I don’t know what the fix is, but years of evidence points to it not being that highsec just needs to be a bit safer.
Eve grew the fastest and had the most players when ganking was much easier and highsec much more dangerous pre-CrimeWatch 2.0. I think you need to look elsewhere than the ganking boogeyman for your reasons.
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Moron mode.
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Also the notion that ganking is easy is a stupid and tired old argument. To gank a freighter you need to do the following:
- Have a scout who is looking for targets.
- A bumper.
- An alt to shoot the target if he tries to logoff.
- A fleet–i.e. dozens of players all flying the appropriate ship type.
- A fleet commander.
- Comms like mumble, teamspeak, etc.
- Somebody to scoop the loot.
- Somebody to do the logistics, get ships into the staging system, move the loot to market, etc.
Compared to those who get ganked the targets who don’t have a scout, fit their ships to actually make the gank easier, carry enough loot value to make themselves gank worthy.
Yeah…easy mode. 
No need for “NO U” here. Nobody argues that those who got ganked being AFK and overloaded deserved their fate.
This tells nothing about “easy mode for gankers”.
I’ve always seen that as ‘Those who stay in the game longest get ganked at some point’ i.e. they are naturally prepared to take risks, in my case taking a retriever into losec for better ore.
Ed: note that I’m not against ganking, just that I read that stat differently
Well, you’ll be glad to learn that, by your own standard, the game is currently balanced.
The problem with ganking isn’t that it is easy or hard.
The problem is that ganking is not a social interactive activity the way it is normally done.
And it creates virtually no interaction with the target in most cases.
It’s a blink and you miss it event.
CCP’s analysis was actually very poor when it came to the impact of ganking since it focused on only the first 30 days, and did nothing to separate cause & effect. People that stay longer are of course more likely to have a PVP encounter simply by having more hours in the game, so people that stay their first month being more likely to have a PVP encounter is utterly inconclusive, and also doesn’t touch that 3-6 month guy who has enough stuff to be a significant loss when they are ganked but not enough knowledge yet.
Now, I still don’t believe ganking is bad for EVE, but trying to quote CCP with regards to ganking is using an obviously flawed study.
Anyway, back on the topic, to make ganking more social, which ‘should’ be better for player retention if the engagement is long enough to be significant interaction, the gank timer actually needs to become longer. Which then calls for some carry on changes to industrial type ships for living in a world with a longer gank timer. And ideally we finally change over to the Concord ‘death ray’ system rather than spawning 100’s of concord ships on a large gank which induce lag and overview spam.
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That is possible. However, that is a heck of a coincidence and pre-supposes quite a bit of game knowledge for players who were ganked 15 days or less into the game.
I think That everyone has an opinion and the point is moot. No one will agree…as seen here. Colourful characters that left the game added to its fabric…banned or otherwise.
Can we agree that Hello Kitty won at least?
It is social for those doing it. Whenever I ganked during a Burn Jita event it was very social.
To hear it, it is the scourge of HS because of the endless bumping, but okay…
First 15 days, and that was the stated intent, to look at the effect of ganking of new players. Keep in mind that trial accounts were initially for 15 days.
What cause and effect. That is actually very tricky in statistics, hence the phrase, correlation is not causation. That is why you usually build your statistical model from a “theory” or “hypothesis”. In this case the hypothesis was:
Does ganking negative adverse player retention when players are ganked in their first 15 days.
The answer appears to be, “No.” Given the results of the analysis and in fact, those who were ganked had the best retention, those killed legally the second best retention, and those not ganked at all the worst retention.
You seem very confused.
The sample was 80,000 players.
Then the looked and classified that data as follows:
- Ganked in their first 15 days–i.e. their killer was in turn killed by CONCORD
- Killed legally in their first 15 days–i.e. their killer was not killed by CONCORD
- Not killed at all in their first 15 days.
Thus, in that 80,000 there are players who are still playing and players who have quite.
Yes, if a player plays for 5 years then quits he is more likely to have been ganked in that 5 years. But you expect us to believe that such players are more likely to be ganked in their first 15 days? Why? It could be, but you just offer speculation and nothing else.
Speaking as an econometrician in his day job type guy…I have yet to see a valid criticism of the study. Yes, it could all be due to confirmation bias, but so far the best I can see is speculation or just outright misunderstanding of the point of the study.
Completely disagree. Ganking is social for the gankers. They form fleets, talk on comms, talk via chat channels, have forums, etc.
The “problem” from a social view point is those getting ganked are NOT being social. They are by themselves, reject helpful convos, block people, etc. All this on top of doing imprudent and foolish things.
Stop looking at the gankers. They are doing it right. It is those who are getting ganked who are screwing up multiple times.
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To be clear on this social aspect…I would not be at all surprised if gankers actually help with retention. As I noted ganking is a social activity among gankers. They interact alot. And the old/established players help those who are new. Ganking organizations typically hand out free ships. They put ISK into the pockets of those who gank (freighters at least). They provide content and fun. So you have this for dozens of players maybe hundreds…at the expense of some freighter pilots who were taking extreme risks…and we are suppose to feel bad for the player who took extreme risks?