Remember a few years ago, they had a PowerPoint thing and they said that new players were more likely to stick around after being ganked or killed by another player? Feels like they’ve gone back on that completely. It’s interesting.
I think that still holds true. The effects on corp activity they mentioned the CSM minutes are easily explained with wardev dodging by corp recycling/jumping. It is exactly what you would expect if you make it super easy to completely evade all consequences of a war by making corps extremely worthless.
There was a time when corp recycling to dodge wardecs was an exploit. They changed that policy, this is the result. It does not contradict the previous numbers at all. It also has nothing to do with retention.
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These are totally different things. On an individual and situational basis non-consensual PvP is good for learning to some degree. Wardecs however extend an otherwise single gank to a whole group and make it lasting for at least one week. This and the lack of options is what makes people quit, not the one-time kill expierience.
Nevertheless I’m with Ima, that nullsec CSM does only care, because they want their newbs, and alts safe in highsec. Every single action or opinion is biased towards preserving and increasing safety for their empire and ISK fountain.
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You know, before you start calling me a liar, you should probably ask what I mean by “new” players and “newish” players.
Because, if you had asked me, I’d say players who have been in the game for less than a year, but longer than six months. These are players who have learned the basic mechanics and want to branch out and do new things. These are the people in the make and break time period when a war dec that causes them to log off for a week are going to end up just quitting the game and doing something else.
I’ve said that basically constantly, but you guys keep seeing “new player” and thinking I’m talking about somebody who just finished the NPE and are still in a newbie corp that can’t get wardecced.
We’ve literally been talking about this stuff for six months and you are still acting like this is the first conversation anybody has ever had about this issue and throwing up the same constant strawman arguments while tossing in a liberal dose of name calling. Just stop, dude.
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The problem with war decs is that they don’t result in players getting killed - they result in players logging off. That’s what the data shows.
If war decs were a way to introduce people to PvP that gave them a meaningful chance to fight and have fun doing it and learning, nobody would have a problem with them. That’s not what they’re used for. The wardeccers will tell you flat out that’s not what they’re used for.
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Fair point and thank you for your clarification.
I still find it hilarious that you guys, who are so good at coming up with edge cases, honestly think that anybody in nullsec gives a rat’s ass what you guys to do each other up in highsec. It literally has no impact on the nullsec gameplay style. Anybody with alts keeps them in a newb corp so they’re not deccable. Highsec war decs have zero impact on anybody’s empire or “isk fountain.”
It amazes me how much you guys all think of yourselves and the impact you have on nullsec. It’s negligble.
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I can’t find the comment now but I read somewhere on this thread that wardecs are essentially going away and by next spring (April expansion?) there will be some sort of fix/solution either implemented or proposed/announced. In the meantime however, the free travel in highsec is certainly more than a negligible change for nullseccers…
Then you are either completely incapable of communicating or intentionally misusing the emotional power of the word “new player” to talk about a completely different group of players we would otherwise not respond to in the same way. I guess it is the later, isn’t it?
A player who plays EVE for over HALF A YEAR can hardly be described as a new player and you know it!
And sorry, but if someone plays a game for HALF A YEAR and then a simple thing like a wardecs causes them to quit, maybe the problem is that he wasn’t exposed to PvP earlier. I mean WTF, how can someone expect that people should be able to play a PvP game but not be exposed to PvP for half a year. WTF is happening in your head, this is a game!! This are gamers not children…
And now you want to remove them even more from PvP. Have you even thought about that that may be a bad thing? CCP has done multiple studies on this which show that people need to be exposed to PvP to be retained. This us going in the complete opposite direction…
Am I the only one missing to see Ima Wreckyou saying something on her suggestions, other than “there’s a document in Discord”? 
I think I’ve made my stance clear enough, but I’ll put it in simple terms:
- most (say 90%) of players who now quit rather than war will still quit rather than war no matter what the war mechanic is
- wardecs are only necessary for players who agree to PvP in highsec and to destroy structures and should not serve any other purpose.
- wardecs as a mean to gank without CONCORD intervention must die.
Addendum: wardecs have become an issue because of the inabbility to pinpoint war targets with the poorly executed change to watchlist, the subsequent meta of blanket wardecs and the background of shrinking game population in which the losses caused by blanket wardecs have become a liability.
I’ve never been so confident of CCP’s previous claims of cause and effect when it comes to PvP. The reason? They have a less than stellar history on other different past data points and the conclusion and subsequent game development that was implemented. RW for one. PvE development focuses/concepts for another. There are many other examples. CCP has always claimed that losing ships early through PvP was good for player retention based on the data. I felt they were misinterpreting the numbers by projecting their preconceived concepts for EVE on the data; taking the most favorable interpretation they could to validate their thinking.
I always felt that those people who were already predispositioned to be adventurous and take risk would be far more likely undertake actions which would have a higher percentage of ship loss. Exploring LS and WHs, joining FW, trying to join a NS corporation,etc. These players are looking for excitement and are willing to accept higher risk because they crave the adrenalin rush. To them, win or lose, the rush is what they are looking for and, therefore, they are far more likely to stay in the game because they will always have activities in EVE that offer that chance of excitement. By this principle, they will have a far higher rate of ship loss, but are retained at a higher percentage because it provides the rush.
In the meantime, CCP has created a stagnant and slowly evolving PvE that can grow monotonous quickly. Their attempts at creating new content has either been almost nonexistent in the last decade or has veered one direction or another, usually trying to force either group activities or end game content to bored NS alts. Players who decided to do the majority of their EVE gaming doing PvE activities quickly found themselves bored or, if WD in a newer corp, unable to maintain any activity they managed to find and enjoy. They found EVE to be lacking in PvE activities and growth, leaving the game for other games that balanced the game play better.
I think that the newly implemented system they installed with Into the Abyss is showing CCP devs that some of their original thinking/concepts are no longer (if actually ever) true. Rather than saying that ship loss through PvP retains players, I think they are finding out that players who enjoy the adrenaline rush undertake activities where ship loss through PvP is much higher. These players were far more committed to EVE from the start; they were far more aggressive and self confident win or lose. In the end, a higher retention rate shown by those players losing ships through PvP shows that committed aggressive players remain playing EVE longer because that IS THEIR NATURE, not that PvP ship loss itself causes player retention.
Of course, I may be incorrect, although I have looked through a lot of CCP dev presentations and blogs. I feel they had a basic flaw in their arguments; that their cause/effect was incorrectly connected. Hopefully, CCP will be more open about parts of what they are finding so that the community have a more accurate grasp on what exactly the problems are and to drive discussions in more productive directions. I am NOT advocating for a PvP freezone in HS, but corrections to current faulty mechanics and gameplay that reduce player retention. In the end, I doubt that CCP would ever come out a admit they had erred if it was revealed that they had been wrong in the cause/effect of PvP on player retention. @Brisc_Rubal any word from CCP since they dropped the bombshell at EVEVegas? Please encourage them to be a little more communicative with the community; its starting to fracture around the seams.
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I’ve been playing game for 12 years - anybody who hasn’t played more than a year is new. Some random alpha character that had been in the game a week is not who we are talking about and never has been.
You guys refuse to recognize what you do harms the game, and that’s fine. We will fix it regardless of what you think. You’ve basically decided you don’t want to be constructive, so that’s fine.
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I would have thought that the data that was shown at Vegas would have been sufficient to at least get folks to take a step back and think. We have asked multiple times to show more of the data that was shown to us. All we can do is keep asking.
I expect we’ll see something more when the structure change planned for December that was announced gets closer, and I am talking to a couple of the other CSM members to put together a round table to get feedback from the pro-war dec crowd since they’ve asked for that, as well.
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This is the point where I sigh and roll my eyes. CCP’s mythical Soon™ that usually means at least 10 years down the road, 9 1/2 years too late, and somehow worse than the original broken state. The reliability of CCP in this type of scenario is extremely low, given their track record.
Maybe what’s needed here is a new framing of this change: Wardecs are going away completely, with the simultaneous introduction of a structure bashing charter. Actual wardecs may or may not come back to the game sometime in the future.
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I’m also as jaded as you are to be honest.
The problem is that, people who are not willing to PvP will not do it, no matter the tools they get to fight back or engage in the content.
I don’t see any balancing fixing this issue. Just look at some of the sentiment people leave on this forum. It is clear that some people want a space completely free from any interaction at all.
I’m not saying that a rebalance won’t change it for the better for some people. It very likely will, but there will always be people advocating for complete safety going against what eve is about. Are those voices taken seriously? Should we be worried that CCP are compromising on the fundamental aspects of eve that “Everything should be destructible”?
Given the nature of this game, I don’t see a problem with providing some incentives for defenders to get out there and PvP. If you provide sufficient rewards and find ways to make war decs less favorable to attackers - so there’s some risk in a war dec - then nobody is going to be complaining, even if you are right and folks who don’t want to PvP end up not PvPing.
But right now, the balance is something like 95% in favor of the attacker, and the meta is to log off. That needs to be changed.
If, after those changes, folks still don’t want to fight, so be it.
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I would agree with you, if we hadn’t seen multiple examples in last year when stuff was promised and it came out on time.
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Are you sure you know what you are talking about? Because it sounds like you don’t. How do you get 95%?
Great. That was all I wanted to hear.
I really don’t mind overhauling a system that many deem to be broken. Hopefully, CCP will come up with a better system.
I just wanted to make sure, that the core philosophy of the game remains intact. Maybe I’ve read the general forum too much, but the cries for complete safety in highsec have been rather loud lately.