Ganking and PVP: Numbers in perspective

Communications Center General Discussion
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Whatever data CCP has makes them believe that siding with the carebear crowd is the way forward, as can be evident from the constant stream of anti-PvP/piracy nerfs the game has experienced over the past decade. CCP has bought into the vision I outlined in my previous post, and you can see traces of it from the way they price the game, for example. Why did they significantly raise the cost of the single-month subscription, while keeping alt account costs and extended subscription costs as low as, if not lower (during routine sales) than before?

The only reason I see is that they want to capitalize on the revolving-door “one-and-done” players whom they’re sure they can’t retain. And because the “carebear” crowd outnumbers the “griefer” crowd so significantly (remember, I define both as long-term veteran players), that’s the demographic they’ve chosen to appeal to in terms of the game’s core mechanics. If CCP were to cater to the griefers at the expense of the carebears, they’d lose a bigger chunk of paying customers even if, hypothetically, new players were immune to PvP, because they wouldn’t be able to retain those new players anyway. If you browse Steam reviews, you’ll see that new players are dissatisfied with the game due to a majority of reasons that aren’t griefing, such as “pay to win,” “confusing tutorial,” “I don’t know what to do and it’s boring,” etc.

And so, in the absence of needing to concern themselves with new player retention, CCP chooses to retain the Lucas over the Aiko, because the former has 300 accounts while the latter only like half a dozen.

CCP doesn’t need PvP, or PvPers, or gankers, or pirates, or mercenaries. CCP doesn’t need destruction in their game. They just need a high turnover of players to fuel their quarterly earnings reports.

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they are also doing PSEUDO PVP activities (specially group ones) were people can say
look I’m a PVP pilot wen they are just interested in farming, i see a big similarity in the Pochven topic and the new faction warfare battlefields

4 dudes running from a t1 coercer, they can kill him in seconds ,he have like 6k ehp , the thrasher can kill him alone , the hookbill to … 2 slicers dam , but noooooo, lets run and farm elsewhere

they say , fight for the reward , but in fact most of those sites who has the fleet stay (not even entering in the multibox aspect ) , the others wait for a better moment to farm , there is also “seaguling”were a player don’t do ■■■■ and sit far away in a uncatchable ship to get rewards for free

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this is from a youtube video . Were is the fight ? there is none . OFC
and lots of isk printing

bad CCP is bad

edit:
its greed and laziness
also IMO is a ego thing to, similar to ladder anxiety
people buy ships to give to a NPC to get points for cosmetics OMG
that proves its not just money
EVE pvp is hard , and God forbid some dude kill me and i get a red mark on my killboard , im a cool kid after all
better stay close to my corp , not even learn how to fit a scram (those things reduce my tank) , and pretend I’m a warrior

i totally agree with @Destiny_Corrupted , they are making the game for tourists , people that spend money for some time until they get bored and turning the need for PVP for destruction obsolete with the i quit money sink and other game systems

the only benefit is for the null/ low/ Pochven /vanilla old bears that will hoard ALL THE MONEY , btw you don’t need to control the amount of money so thoroughly if most of the money is in the hand of few people

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Faction Warfare was specifically created and tuned for players who want to (pretend to) be part of big, player-driven conflicts without actually having to physically engage in those conflicts. Players can join Faction Warfare and basically do nothing but grind mid-tier PvE all day, but when they talk to their friends about EVE, they can brag about how they’re [insert FW rank] in this huge, player-driven PvP conflict in the “infamously-difficult” spaceship MMO everyone’s heard about. It’s a total ego trip. Meanwhile, all they do when they log in every day is grind out a few complexes to add some more LP to their piles. This is the EVE equivalent of telling the girl at the bar that you were “in the military” when all that really happened is that you barely graduated basic and then spent 9 months driving a fuel truck in Arizona before getting discharged for a gambling problem.

Forum carebears tout FW as this magical PvP Jesus feature that all the griefers should be taking part in if they want to have REAL fights with REAL PvPers, but because these people have never come close to experiencing any PvP outside of the pointy end of a Catalyst swarm, they have no idea that it’s basically one of the game’s biggest grind zones where most PvP experiences occur in the form of low-sec pirate gate camps or high-sec war ganks.

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I don’t agree that CCP intentionally makes changes to hisec that are inspired by “visions and plans”, but are merely a twitch response to endless complaints from people who 1) are out of depth in this game OR 2) have an agenda to benefit their own playstyle - which only involves the collection of isk, of course.

The real danger in doing that is that they may turn hisec into a zone of self-inflicted and self-sustaining helplessness, a perpetual Kindergarten where 1) the pve will never be interesting enough to be attractive for more than a few months, hence not doing a single iota for retention and 2) new players never learn to deal with pvp, hence preventing them from replacing lowsec/nullsec/wh players who finally stopped playing after many years due to life’s obligations or simply old age. Both lead to a dead game.

It’s quite natural for people to show a degree of risk aversion. And, same as learning how to swim, there are multiple ways ranging from “being thrown into the water” to “dressing up in unsinkable inflatables”, iow from no guidance (old eve style) to prevention. I was thrown into the water when I started EvE, and perhaps that is why I do not believe in any handholding and mollycoddling, let alone prevention. So for those who reply with “yeah but not everyone is like you” my reply is simply “it worked, both for me and for the game”.

Here’s a challenge to ccp: to prove that their new player retention program has lead to … higher retention. And no, the number of new accounts made in the last year, and the percentage of real new players on the total number currently playing are not proof of anything if the total number does not go UP…

On the contrary, I would think that the efforts done by ccp Aurora in making videos/lessons about pvp aspects, and of course the renewed FW landscape do a lot more for player attraction and retention in the long run. Both put the minds of a new player towards pvp - where it belongs in EvE !! -, and that for me is the true new player retention challenge. Those players will eventually venture deeper into the game, where pvp is the main aspect and danger lurks with every gate one takes. It creates veteran players who stay in the game. Mollycoddling in hisec does the exact opposite by sustaining risk aversion.

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It already is this.

When people say “I am a high sec player” they do not tend to mean player-driven goals like:

  • “I am a player that lives in a high sec system and use wardecs, player bounties, and ganking to maintain control over where I live, because I want to be Kingpin of [System]”.
  • “I am a player that lives in a high sec system and bribes CONCORD and uses the corruption of Empires to be a criminal in high sec shooting locals, because I want to be a notorious pirate in high sec”
  • “I am a player that lives in a high sec system and who interferes with missions, MTUs, and jetcans to provoke locals, because I want to be a big-game hunter that chases blingy ships”
  • “I am a player that lives in high sec and sets traps to spring upon a player with a high bounty on their heads, because I want to be a bounty hunter”

These used to be very real goals people had a decade ago in High Sec of all places! There are wardec and ganking groups of people that still exist today but they pale in comparison in number, and those that remain are the most tolerant of CCP Games’ bull :poop:. CCP Games has engineered the sandbox to discriminate against and remove the capability for the above player expressions. In some cases CCP has done just enough to maintain plausible deniability of “well technically you can still do this” but all movements have been to making these harder or impossible to do. See: their disgusting blog post about “legitimate targets”.

Compare the above list with the remaining player expressions and motivations for players living in high sec:

  • “I am a player that lives in a high sec system and mines in really efficient ships, because I want to be a miner.”
  • “I am a player that lives in a high sec system and runs missions for a faction, because I want to be well-regarded with a faction and be rewarded with special gear”
  • “I am a player that lives in high sec and hauls stuff from point A to B, because I want to be a hauler”
  • “I am a player that lives in high sec and runs abyssals, because I want to be rich”

Then there is the ugly:

  • “I am a player that lives in high sec and does [PvE], because I want to be space rich. One day I will do PvP.” Which we know that day will never really come.

While both lists can lead to “getting space rich”, the former just coincidentally happens to involve player loss in the process. CCP isn’t fooling anyone: they are devolving the game so people with weak mental fortitudes – the kind that would have been “weeded” / “naturally selected” out by the honest gameplay of the other players from the first list, instead of experiencing a personal growth moment – can continue to remain and propagate their weakness throughout the universe, leading to a regression and devolution of gameplay everywhere – not just high sec.

CCP can get more high sec players; it’s just not the kind most people think about.

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I’m afraid you are 100% correct. And ccp is 100% wrong, and will pay the price. Hisec is the most boring place in the game. Boring doesn’t attract nor retain, except those who are the real powerhouses by virtue of their (very old and fat) wallets. And it ruins the game’s economy in multiple ways.

:ok_hand: spot on

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Why do all of your player-driven goals revolve around varieties of piracy? Someone @Mike_Azariah who flies around highsec giving ships to new players. Is he not also engaging in a player-driven goal?

There are corporations that run various types of infrastructure in highsec, that will respond to incoming wars but don’t get involved in any types of piracy, are they not engaging in player-driven goals?

It always seems like people who support ganking think that highsec should be a beginner area that offers easy kills for lazy pirates and nothing more.

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There is only one @Mike_Azariah . He made a very clear choice to do something for the community of new players on a significant scale, and with the help of the older part of the community supporting him in his choice. He proves that it is possible to be a “nice” guy in a game where being a “bad” guy is (question mark) the norm. His ships aren’t invulnerable. He is organized. He knows the risks. He has a target painted on him and people would blow up his ship for the lulz. Mike isn’t particularly risk averse, he is a master at dealing with risk. He primarily wants to help newbies. I have no doubt he knows how to remove anyone from his/her ship, if need be… The man flies blops, for example…

There is no need to highlight player-driven goals that do not involve “piracy” or rather any form of hisec pvp, because those are mostly bereft of imagination and roleplay. Those are the easy, relaxed, detached and casual styles, highly risk averse. They need a counterbalance.

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Because I chose the first list from player driven goals that were effectively eliminated by CCP Games. As you astutely observe, these are themes of piracy. While I had used the term “player loss”, I am glad to see we are in agreement.

The second list would be appropriate for your “Mike” and “defense wars” examples

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Which definition of PvP are you going by here? Just combat or anything that involves any direct or indirect interaction with other players? It feels like your making a distinction based on your personal preference for a playstyle. What about if someone shoots rocks but keeps saying “Yarr! Take that ye scurvy rocks!” from time to time, does that create the necessary imagination and roleplay?

All highsec play is risk averse, even the “piracy”.

Doesn’t the second list comprise of playstyles you think contain no player-driven goals though? Or am I reading that wrong. It came across like “Here is a list of pirate stuff which I declare is player-driven and glorious, and here is a second list of things I don’t like which is all bad stuff”.

To me all of the playstyles can involve player-driven goals and interaction with other players, and none are good or bad playstyles, it’s just down to personal preference. What CCP are trying to do doesn’t seem to be related to attacking playstyles so much as guiding them towards outcomes they prefer. Their recent set of changes just failed to do that.

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Here, let me help you:

Hope this clarifies: I am just listing player driven goals.

Well, as someone that huffs, mines, pirates, PvPs, builds in indy, I am opinionated. But you’re probably reading way too uncharitably into what I said.

Feel free to repeat the exercise. List a bunch of player driven goals that could have been expressed the past decade. Put them into a list of “relatively feasible in todays game mechanics” and “infeasible” bucket. I highly recommend trying the goals to get a feel for what feels reasonably feasible. Gate camp, PvP in Fw plexes, gank.

I suspect if you do the exercise in good faith you’ll reach a very similar conclusion, especially considering things like player bounties were completely removed from the game.

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Some are less feasible than previously, sure. There are also new mechanics that were not possible in the past that now are, just not in “piracy”. Bounties never really worked as intended. I’d love to see CCP take another shot at making them work but it’s really tricky to get right without it being exploitable.

I don’t think it was uncharitable, you listed some piracy related things you think are no longer feasible as player-driven, then you listed some things which seemed exclusively self-serving and isolated, as if you think group content and PvP content no longer exists in highsec. If that wasn’t your intent then I’m sorry for the misunderstanding but that’s how it read.

The final entry you also listed out as “the ugly” so I assumed the other two lists to be “the good” then “the bad”. Perhaps that assumption too was wrong but I hope you can see why I got that impression.

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It’s almost depressing to read forums for decades and gradually come to realize how few people are interested in debate or acquiring new information and new viewpoints. But that does give some perspective on just how hard it can be to, for instance, change a game developers perspective on how their game “should” be.

It’s pretty telling how the majority of the carebears only want “make it safer!” and the HS PvPers only want “make it easier/cheaper to gank”; and the other viewpoint is anathema.

I’m surprised how few are interested in “take the PvP and make it better, more interesting, more engaging, with more interactions and more possible careers/playstyles”. Nearly everyone seems to take for granted that it can only be made more safe or more easy, not better and more interesting.

One thing I keep in mind that improves my outlook, is that 90%+ of the players just stay in the game playing, and only a small percentage of weirdos bother to come to the forums to vent.

Your two recent posts here (and Bladewise’s) are a bit over the top and tinfoil-hattish, but as is often the case you at least have some nuggets of useful thought in there.

This is one of them. Sadly it seems CCP may well be heading in that direction.

I can’t recall exactly what the trigger was, but somewhere around 2009 I remember thinking “That’s it, CCP has moved from ‘making a better EVE’ to ‘making a better player-cash-milker’”. And then around 2013 or 2014 I remember thinking “Wow, they’ve just abandoned game development and gone whole-hog cash extraction”.

I would disagree however that CCP is willing to dump the HS gankers and pile on the carebears. I think the CCP approach would be to try and force both sides into subbing more accounts and take more effort to achieve the same rewards. Because CCP seems locked into the viewpoint that players will pay anything to keep their “EVE fix” rolling.

For whatever reasons, we should remember that CCP isn’t a theoretical business entity with great analysis tools and a pure profit motive. They make mistakes and lose direction and get interested in other goals and start to believe their own propaganda.

All the arguing and viewpoints we dump in the forums may be for nothing, but I hope for at least a bit of it to reach CCP as feedback and slowly affect their thinking.

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disagree
the sites used to reward only 1 player , it was mostly useless to have a gang ( in terms of LP)

ofc we joined to bash systems or other things but it was way more solo oriented
ofc also there was always farmers, but the best pilots were there in the militia and in groups like smile and wave

that said the new FW rewards group farming
thats why I’m not omega with 30 ships down there

I’m waiting for the farmers to lose some ships , break the LP market and give up

edit:
and BTW i stumbled a lot on the first days but i already learned how to SOLO PVP on the new FW
i even changed the ships i use and bought them
I’m just pissed because i despise the fake militia guys waaayyy more than the honest HS carebear like our six pack friend …

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There’s a perverse irony that I visit lowsec and nullsec and take way more risk in my characters depending on how expendable they are. If I lose a 2 week old alpha noob to a nullsec gate camp…who cares. I can just biomass them if they have too many losses.

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There are some good points in your post, mostly about CCP devolving various aspects of the game without evolving others.

I disagree strongly with the unstated but very clear bias in your post that “everyone with a PVP-oriented mindset good, everyone with a PvE-oriented mindset bad and of ‘weak mental fortitude’.”

This is a cheap cop-out some people use to mentally position themself as part of the strong and the brave, while other people are weak mewing sheep. Yeah, I know, you’ll say I’m putting words in your mouth, but that’s only because you keep edging around what you really mean with deniable phrasing.

EVE is (supposed to be) a sandbox. That means the guy who enjoys dual-boxing his mining barges is just as legit a player as the one who dual-boxes his ganking ships. And he’s actually contributing just as much or more to the game than some HS ganker.

Some of your analysis is quite good, but you keep letting your emotional bias ruin half the value of it.

While I agree with a lot of what you say, I believe you’re wrong here, and also going against what data we have.

Highsec has always had the most players, doing substantial amounts of activity for a region with low yields/payouts. We wouldn’t have so many complaints from people losing expensive stuff in high-sec if it wasn’t holding players for the long-term. The ISK losses in high-sec aren’t being generated by 4-month old accounts who are getting bored and leaving the game.

And highsec play doesn’t ruin the economy at all but supports and enlivens it. MERs show this and Scarcity drove it home.

Personally I feel high-sec play is perfectly valid. It’s not up to us to tell hundreds of thousands of players their playstyle is “boring and ruining the economy”. You don’t want to play that way, fine. But don’t let your personal bias cloud your view of what’s happening in the game ecosystem.

:ok_hand: spot on your spot on and Io’s spot, too! CCP doublespeak gets really annoying.

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Let’s say, for the sake of simplicity, the ammo + pewpew involving kind, where loss is visible on the display in the shape of 'splosions, of a tiny sandcastle crushed. Why ? Because it’s evident that that is the kind that creates all this salty commotion. And I’ll re-state it for the umpteenth time: it is incomprehensible that losses due to player interaction (of the above kind) create so much more bad feelings than a loss due to an interaction with a dumb but weaponized npc. I personally feel more foolish when dying to an npc, and I can’t believe I’m the exception… Perhaps a fondness for competition lies at the heart of it.

And what about if someone shoots rock shooters while laughing “Yarr! Take that ye scurvy rockshooter!” ?

The pvp that CONCORD considers illegal in hisec is anything but risk averse. Attackers lose their ships almost immediately (you would call them ‘pirates’, or ‘griefers’ depending on the mood). If they play it right, so does the one attacked. The “victim” is at that moment as good as defenseless. However, as has been explained so many times in at least two decades of EvE, that same “victim” can retaliate - not at the moment of the attack perhaps, but at any other time. If these victims choose not to use their right to kill (the KillRight !), that’s entirely their choice and not poor game design - on the contrary.

And to make it crystal clear, anyone can at any time get enough information and intel on what to do to where and when with minimal risk. And that seems to be the effort that these risk averse people are not willing to make. Ironic, isn’t it. And hypocritical.

As to my own play style, you seem to have a more defined idea about it than I myself do. I do some casual pve, which usually bores me to death within the hour even with substantial payouts in nullsec. I do some casual pvp when I’m lucky enough to be in a combat ship at the right moment in nullsec, lowsec or w-space - or when the alliance has need of my presence. I do a lot of scouting these days, I cover the four corners on the New Eden map on a daily basis. I am in the process of building a cap ship, for which I mined considerable amounts, did some trading along the way to get the mats, do a ton of reactions and manuf jobs off of bpo’s I researched myself. I love flying solo and in any size of fleet. I love showing newer players how to do things. I love discovering new things in Eve, stuff I haven’t tried before - and after ten years I’m still discovering new things. So you tell me what my “preferred play style” is. I’ll tell you something else.

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I’ve never argued that it should be easy or easier to gank. I have argued that risk is an essential part of every sector of space, and against highsec becoming ever more ‘risk free’.

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Not to make too fine a point of it, but here you are lecturing on PvE and PvP and everyone else’s risk averse-ness and so on. I do not know if you are a ‘main’ account, but I expected to look at your killboard…after reading all your lecturing, and find 25 pages of kills and losses and so on validating your huge experience of Eve.

Instead I find one ship loss 5 years ago.

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It doesn’t matter how big a ship you fly, it matters how you lose it…