Well said. Not exactly sure why Mike is confused that someone who is angry and disappointed in a game would rage-post; seems like a pretty common/expected response to me.
I’ve spoken to a lot of newer players and rookies over the years, and the number of people who quit with a tantrum or rage-post is by far the minority. On the order of less than 1% of people who quit or give up post publicly about it - in my experience more like 0.1%.
Of the people who’ve given me any feedback as to why they’re quitting, the vast majority have said that EVE is simply too boring, that it isn’t the PvP hotbed it’s advertised as, that the combat systems are awkward and dull, that the game is tilted towards ambush/gank play (as you said) - at least for the 99% of the game that isn’t large fleet battles. Fairly common is also that there “isn’t a lot to do”.
(Note these aren’t my own view, these are impressions from players I’ve spoken with, typically newer ones who don’t know much about EVE yet.)
There’s also been some who quit over specific nerfs or changes but even that hasn’t been a large percent. Bad game design leading to boring gameplay is the #1 reason for leaving that I’ve encountered, and from what I can see nearly all those people simply leave to play another game without saying a word.
As to any suggestions about “what should be done about it?”, there’s been thousands posted over the years, some good, most bad. The real issue is that CCP is stuck with a core game design that based around slow, repetitive gameplay and awkward combat mechanics, and it’s very hard to remake something like that into a more dynamic and interesting system.
It could be done, but would require a commitment to quality game development that CCP has not shown for the past decade or more. As it stands, they’ve got a cash cow, they’ve got people who will send money no matter what gets done to the game, and they’re just gonna milk that cow until there’s no milk left.
Moral of the story? Rage-quitters are a red herring. The silent majority of “not interested” quitters is way bigger, but CCP doesn’t care because hey, money’s coming in anyway so why change?