Since the original question had the stipulation of “the last two years”, we have to look at any changes (or lack of changes) that have occurred in the last two years. In the last 2 years CCP has made changes to ganking which has made it more difficult (or at least more rule hoops to jump through) to gank someone in HS. It would be more logical to argue therefore that , in regards to ganking, EVE has made ganking too hard for some players (or HS too safe for some players) and this is what is causing the decrease in server population. This conclusion would seem to be different than what those bringing up ganking are trying to establish. Let’s put this specific culprit to bed.
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We could toss in the watchlist change as well, that was what…18 or so months ago?
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Ah I see we’ve spotted the person that has no idea what they are talking about!
Ah here we spot another! How is ganking not socially interactive? It’s is not a pure solo activity, as it is often done together by groups of people. Most everything in the game is able to be solo’d depending on how many alts you’re able to use. Mining is no exception as we saw just a few days ago, a screenshot of Orcas being miltiboxed in ridiculous numbers.
There absolutely is social interaction between a ganker and the target. CODE. demonstrates this perfectly as they often times communicate with the target in an attempt to sell them a mining permit so they may better protect themselves in highsec.
Ganking is no less personal or interactive than any other activity.
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And then:
Which is wrong.
Basically: ganking is a social activity for gankers, not for ganked. Thus being ganked was not proven as good for player by CCP.
It wasn’t disproved either. That’s the point, there is some evidence that ‘ganking’ (CCP Rise’s word was ‘griefing’) is a positive thing in the game.
But there has never, ever, not once been a SINGLE shred of empirical evidence that anyone can point to that ‘griefing’ has been a bad thing for EVE or that it’s chased a bunch of players away. And yet (as we can see by this thread), people believe that ganking has chased people away (measurably costing CCP money).
It shows the power of emotion(in this case, hatred) over reason and logic. CCP is a for profit company. According to damn near every poster here, everything CCP does is based on “greed” for more money. And yet the same people believe that “ganking” is chasing people away.
If Ganking is chasing people away and greed is somehow the primary motivating factor for CCP, WHY is ganking still here? If ganking was somehow costing CCP money, it would be number one on the chopping block, would it not? Could it be that the people who depend on CCP for income (CCP employees) have data that we players don’t and can clearly see that ganking is not the problem that a vocal minority of forum posters says it is??
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cause to lose enthusiasm and initiative, especially as a result of a tedious or restrictive routine.
Learned a new word again! Thanks! 
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This isn’t correct. People can-flipping and or just shooting people has been used for recruitment since ever. Plus, there’s always people who swear revenge, which is a good thing. There’s also those who are absolutely amazed that it’s possible and love the fact that the game’s dangerous when you don’t watch your back. Any form of interaction can create friends and enemies and both are good for the game.
The problem isn’t the activity, but those who reject it in an environment that encourages it. When you sign up to play in a jungle, then you better accept that it’s a jungle. New players are no exception. When you complain about the jungle, despite having signed up for it, then the game’s not for you. It’d be like complaining about the fact that not every figure in a chess game can move like the queen. How’d you react to someone demanding that the rules are being changed, because he doesn’t want to accept them?
No one ever considers what kind of horrible people those, who screech bloody murder, must actually be. i wouldn’t want to live next to someone like this. They can’t seperate life from a game and who knows what they’d do in their rage. Yet the gankers are the ones who are blamed for triggering them, instead of us trying to get rid of those who are easily triggerable.
More safety and protection only creates an environment that attracts, and creates, more self entitled whining by those who see themselves as victims of the world around them.
Not to forget that they create activity in local, which makes the game look way more alive.
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Exactly. Could the criminal mechanics be reworked to make them more accessible and allow more interesting fights or interactions? Probably. But is that the reason people are leaving the game? Almost certainly not. It is of CCP’s primary interest to look at all the data they collect and they have repeatly said there is no link to player retention and “griefing” that they can find. Those that claim that CCP is lying, hiding data or are that incompetent have been blinded by their preconceived notions or emotional bias and are not thinking rationally. CCP has a whole team working on monetization features and another on the NPE. Locking safeties to red in highsec has to be one of the simplest things from a developer standpoint to do and if there was data that that was the major issue, that change would be made overnight.
Furthermore, CCP has repeatedly tried the “reduce highsec criminal interaction” thing over the years making ganking harder and it had not brought or kept more people to the game. This points to the problem being elsewhere, and the focus of next week’s expansions tells us where CCP analysis of the days has found the problem lies - lack of highsec PvE content. Whether they deliver something the players will like remains to be seen, but clearly they believe the problem is lack of fresh PvE content, specifically that accessible to groups and newer players.
Personally, I think the bigger problem is the lack of mid- and long-term goals and objectives for groups to strive for and fight over, so I don’t expect this expansion to stem the decline much, but at least having another dish or two on the PvE table to choose from won’t make things worse and even might help a bit to strengthen social bonds for newer players. Given highsec has been made so safe and most of the antagonists have left the game or never leave the trade hubs, the pressure that forced people to interact in previous eras of the game are less now. This new stuff hopefully will steer newer players away from the solo mining/missioning trap that has shortened many a budding Eve player’s career.
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Because of pointless walls of text. Look up.
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Eve is all about “Risk”, the players who can “Risk Manage” by being part of a larger alliance, or the like, who fit their freighters properly but players will also discover their tolerance for “Risk” - how much is enough and how much is too much.
The ganking model that is touted, is poor because we have no real metrics, what’s the optimum amount of time to be ganked for player stickiness, how much is too much?
What Eve has done is lower the risk with things like asset safety; I did have an account back in the old days when death meant losing skill points - so I remember when it was much harsher. It’s improved now considerably for accessibility.
Ganking in Eve isn’t pleasant, especially if you don’t plan for it - it’s literally being tied down and beaten without any mechanism for response. If you plan for it, you know about it, you lower what your risk exposure is.
But at the same time, Eve is a demanding game, it takes an enormous amount of time to commit to play effectively - it is not casual friendly. A successful Eve player is a particular type of player - maybe the changes have moved away from that type of universe - but maybe the Eve universe isn’t compatible with the WoW mindset of maximum violence and zero risk (except to pride).
How many of you know people who’ve left - ask’em? If it’s that big an issue?
Mainstreaming all antagonistic forms of gameplay should be top priority, without relying on CCP to do it. When CCP does it, it will become more “accessible”, which is marketeese for “dumb it down so more people can do it”, which i’m not a fan of at all.
@Exaido Sorry, i have no idea what you’re trying to tell me.
Nope, it is PvP which is a social interaction…just not a nice one, a non-cooperative form of social interaction. It is right there in CCP Rise’s response when he says,
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.–CCP Rise
And no, it hasn’t be “proven” good, but so far the only study of the actual data provides support that it is good.
It is worse, it is demanding that the rules change as soon as you get in trouble in your chess game. Your opponent is threatening you with his rook and bishop, you make the demand that both the rook and bishop move just like pawns. Then he brings his queen to bear…you demand that moves like a rook…or bishop whatever suits you best. As soon as you get into trouble it is…lets all say it together…one more nerf. Then everything will be good.
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You’re right, that’s way more accurate.
Just a thought…we all know it can take a long while to build assets depending on how you earn.
One could take a month to earn for a Vargur for example and then lose it in a few minutes. If the player then quits it could be due to the time it takes to acquire wealth vs the time it takes to lose it. So ganking may play a part in someone leaving.
We have to analyse the logical path things take in this game due to it being such a unique game.
Common sense should dictate ganking can play a part in people leaving, or it could be one of a few reasons.
I’ve seen some heavy freighter losses on zkill even up to 40 billion. That’s a lot of time spent grinding or a chunk of change for a plex £400 or above in UK.
So let’s keep it real guys £400 real life money is a lot for game entertainment, it means something.
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Where is this evidence?
It is easy: CCP does a lot of things which out of blue make people mad and possibly leave. Changing UI? Nobody asked for it, nobody needed actually. But many people complained. Audio? Aura voice? Inventory? There is lot of examples of things CCP do which goes backwards if you think they are good in making money.
Actually all the fluff about limiting high-sec aggression and dropping player numbers tells something about it.
All in all: using CCPs ‘greed is good’ as proof of something might be wrong.
I think this is true. I’ve spent some time in recent months investigating abandoned POSes all across highsec and doing some quick background checks on the corporation that owned the structure. Very frequently, maybe even more often than not, the killboard of that corporation ends with a very large freighter loss and then nothing more. Now, some of these players could have just gotten good and learned how not to lose stuff and quit subsequent to the gank for an unrelated reason, but the fact they just abandoned their POS leads me to believe a large number just immediately rage-quit and didn’t look back.
Now, the way I stumble upon these stories told by the killboards is subject to a massive amount of selection bias since I only see corporations who have abandoned structures, and I really have only looked a couple dozen, but I think you are absolutely correct that this does happen and it is completely plausible that people walk away after a great loss. Anyone who claims otherwise is being disingenuous.
Now, the question is though how frequent that is, or even if it is a bad thing. The first one was addressed by Rise in that Fanfest talk and he puts a figure at <1% (who cite ship loss as why they are quitting) which also seem plausible to me. There are plenty of other reasons to leave Eve other than because you stupidly lost a bunch of stuff in a freighter. But more philosophically, is it even a bad thing? Would we really want to play a game where you couldn’t lose stuff? And if there is a possibility of losing stuff and someone experiences a loss and decides to quit because they don’t like losing, have we lost anything really? That person was just playing the wrong game.
Sure, drilling into people that Eve is a full-loot game and you can lose your ship and your stuff even in highsec might help mitigate this problem but we already do this. Making highsec more risky so that the first time a newer player experiences loss isn’t as crippling might also help train people to not undock with more than they are willing to lose. This is probably a good idea, but unpopular. Heck, even @Jin_taan’s pop-up window idea for undocking with large amounts of cargo might help educate people and help prevent rage-quits. But ultimately, if someone doesn’t want to play a game where they can lose stuff, you can’t make them and you shouldn’t try.
I believe CCP though when they say that statistically this isn’t an issue. There are so many other places in the NPE and early game where players can get lost or fail to integrate into the game than falling victim to a pirate in a game about building, losing, and exploding stuff. Sure, getting ganked probably becomes a larger (but still very minor with boredom being the largest) reason for players quitting in the 6-12 month range, but as I said above that really is the game, and anecdotally getting ganked also retains some players. Eve is a competitive, single-shard full-time PvP game - not a progressive, accumulation of wealth game like FarmVille. I see no way to prevent people from losing stuff without fundamentally altering the game, something that would cost more players than the tiny number of gankee-rage-quitters it would save.
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I have just returned after a year out. Not sure how long I’ll stay this time. Until my absence, I had played daily since 2008. I have tried most of what eve has to offer, living in lo sec and null for quite a time.
The most fun I have had was chasing war targets and can flipping both in hi sec. Changes to the watch list and the suspect flag timers have taken all that was fun from me. I have no mind to alter my play style like the mass deccing mercs of today, waiting in the pipes or trade hubs for the hope of a flashy target to drop in. I miss the hunt, and the play style the watch list used to facilitate. Hi sec is now as stagnant as null. Hi sec shenanigans are so few and far between I just got bored.
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As stated, everyone has an opinion. As you’ve seen. But that’s all it is.