Ganking and PVP: Numbers in perspective

[Scipio_Artelius]

@Scipio_Artelius

Overall, zkillboard only receives 40-50% of all killmails, however for pvp losses, including ganks, it receives a much higher percentage (I’ll go grab some comparisons for common ganked ships between the MER and zkillboard).

Just on this part, looking at commonly ganked ships quickly, whether zkillboard is a good source of data or not is something I’ve been interested in for a long time.

For freighters (my main interest as part of keeping my own hauling safe), I’ve known for a while that the data is good, but always thought it might be less so for other ship classes.

Surprisingly though, zkillboard has a very high percentage of losses for a number of ships:

Aside from ventures at around 90% of losses, the others are all >95%.

So from the perspective of using zkillboard to look at ganking, it appears it’s a pretty good data source.

[Kezrai_Charzai]

@Xucca

Q: Total PVP activity as in total value all over EVE, in Umpire, null, lowsex?

For that particular point (Relative Size, Ganking vs. All PvP) the months I checked for comparison were “all PvP listed on Zkillboard”. So as others pointed out, it won’t get every PvP encounter and it won’t classify everything perfectly.

For “quality of the data” discussions, keep in mind that we’re likely talking “order of magnitude” levels of accuracy here. There are ways to pull more accurate data but for a quick overview this is sufficient.

As for where do most encounters occur, I’m not sure I could narrow it down based on your criteria of quality vs. ISK value. However (again, quick survey), Zkill says:

June 2022 Zkillboard, Victims Only:
High Sec: 44,293 4.53T Isk
Low Sec: 81,683 7.69T
Null: 193,926 22.06T
WH: 41,708 7.08T
Abyss: 30,049 2.52T

So we can see Null sec basically accounts for half of all kills and value, then Low at 20%, High and WH space a bit over 10% each, and Abyss around 7%.

ISK value is subjective in terms of emotional impact/significance to the individuals but it is significant in terms of destruction vs. economy and grind-time to replace, etc.

@Xucca

I made a post regarding destruction and the fact that we don’t die enough (as we should)

This is a relatively key design issue of EVE and one of the reasons for this thread. The significant part being that lots of people (and apparently CCP) look at destruction and PvP as something we “should” be doing, simply because “EVE is a PvP game” or “it’s needed for the economy”.

So CCP does things like ESS in Null where they’re basically trying to nerf player incomes until they’re forced to PvP. Which is a really poor and lame way to go about it.

Gamers take the actions that move their goals forward and are likely to provide a positive outcome in some aspect of their value axis. Gamers will fight for glory, for position on a scoreboard, for profit, for honor (sometimes), for grudges, for relative advantage, etc.

If players aren’t PvPing in EVE as much as they “should”, then it means CCP has got the nuts and bolts, pros and cons, of PvPing wrong.

[Kezrai_Charzai]

@Scipio_Artelius

whether zkillboard is a good source of data or not is something I’ve been interested in for a long time

Very good post, thank you for running that data comparison.

The key issue for this topic with Zkill (in my mind) is less about the percent of kills captured (although that’s important) and more with the 5+ gankers needed. Unfortunately I couldn’t figure out a query that would get lower number of attackers over the time range I wanted, so went with the easy one.

I’m fairly confident we’re in the ball park for overall magnitude of the issue, but as always would love to have better data available.

[Ursula_Anders]

@Kezrai_Charzai

High Sec: 44,293 4.53T Isk
Low Sec: 81,683 7.69T
Null: 193,926 22.06T
WH: 41,708 7.08T
Abyss: 30,049 2.52T

This shatters anyone’s opinion who says “Null is safer then hisec”.

This place is full of disinformation and outright lies. Be careful what you believe out of this forum.

[Scipio_Artelius]

@Kezrai_Charzai

Unfortunately I couldn’t figure out a query that would get lower number of attackers over the time range I wanted, so went with the easy one.

Yeah, you can’t do it directly from zkillboard and I don’t think Squizz’s approach to marking what is ganked, is necessarily the best. He introduced it for the last Burn Jita to show a bit of a status page for the event and just carried on with it.

So for the purpose that he added it, it’s fine.

However, there are other approaches to trying to find ganks. For example, you can as one thing check the Corp or Alliance of the attackers. If they are Safety. or CODE., etc. then you can assume that it is a gank. You can also check the attackers and see if they were subsequently killed by CONCORD (noting that many gankers don’t post their losses, so if they were killed by CONCORD great, but if not, then you can’t rule it out as being a gank). You can also for example check the security status of the attackers and if it is outlaw status, then that is indicative of it being a gank (and best to just count it as one).

There are a few other filters you can apply as well, but all of them best done through writing a bit of code, rather than manually checking kills.

[Xucca]

It is. Null is indeed safer.

Just run a mental calc of how many ships pop to produce each of the amounts there. After subtracting the value/encounters that are pew as will.
Which takes me to an-yet-other pseudodefinition… gank is when one minuscule part did not want to engage anyways.

It would take roughly 3 pops per 1 I guess wrongly as usual.

I still believe there are more gank encounters than standard confrontations —to put it somehow—

Also, I have the tendency to qualify 95% of encounters as gank solely based on number superiority. Gank is seldom mistified and usually misinterpreted or just wrongly defined. So, it’s meaning could vary and I like the scope being narrowed to what the data interprets as ganking, which in the end is just number superiority in an encounter… or something around that pot.

[Ursula_Anders]

@Xucca

It is. Null is indeed safer.

Oh obviously:
High Sec: 44,293 4.53T Isk
Null: 193,926 22.06T

@Xucca

Just run a mental calc of how many ships pop to produce each of the amounts there.

No need, it says it right there ^

@Xucca

After subtracting the value/encounters that are pew as will

What kind of babbling bs is that?

[Kezrai_Charzai]

@Dracvlad

@Kezrai_Charzai

Avg. about 2-2.5 gankships per kill

So it was a bit confusing for me?

Whoops, missed answering this earlier, sorry. Was looking at total number of victims losses vs total number attackers losses. Presumably not all fights classed as ‘ganks’ result in Concord obliteration of all attackers. Edited OP to be a little more clear on that.

[Xucca]

Oh, I apologize… that grammar of mine…

I meant after subtracting the value or encounters (whatever fits) that are PVP by will.

[Kezrai_Charzai]

@Xucca

tendency to qualify 95% of encounters as gank solely based on number superiority

This is one of the reasons I was willing to use quite fuzzy data for the comparison. It’s very difficult to get people (on this forum, at least) to even agree that PvP = ship combat.

Ganking gets argued endlessly partly because it means something different to each player. Is ganking only if it’s a newish player? Only against non-combat ships (miners, haulers, explorers etc.). Only in high sec? Is every encounter where the victim has less than 3% chance of fighting back a gank? Is a 1-on-1 fight with a T3 destroyer vs. a Heron a gank?

Heck, for a lot of players, a ‘gank’ is “whenever anyone killed me and I didn’t like being killed”.

With that level of broadness in the possible valid and invalid definitions, we’re lucky to be able to pull together any sorts of numbers at all.

[Vokan_Narkar]

@Kezrai_Charzai

This isn’t a conclusion, it’s an observation. It literally says right at the top “NPC kills not counted”, then says so again in the video. We also aren’t talking here about the noobness of the pilots, but the value and entry point (in skills, ISK, fitting) of the ships used.

These are relatively noob ships from that aspect, and they’re clearly worth killing. And ganking isn’t the concern for that point.

Okay I didn’t notice that, great no npc-kills. Still, just brief look at killboard entry for Venture shows that tha vast majority, over 90% of the venture kills are happening in lowsec, wormholes and a bit in nullsec too.

And from the kills in highsec, about 80% of them are lost to npc, killed because of the suspect flag (it is hard to believe that ppls woul gank venture with stealth bomber isn’t it?), due to the faction warfare or due to the wardecs.

This is of course just brief look, we would need a software to get any real data and not useless speculations and observations like yours and mine.

[Kezrai_Charzai]

@Vokan_Narkar

real data and not useless speculations and observations like yours and mine.

I’m more than happy to admit you’re half-right, here.

[Ursula_Anders]

@Xucca

I meant after subtracting the value or encounters (whatever fits) that are PVP by will.

PvP in EVE - and I guess in other PvP games as well - doesn’t take into account “by will” or not. It’s non-consensual and even if it is consensual, the results are the same either way.
Whether one wants to use the slang term “gank” or the more correct “PvP” nomenclature, the numbers don’t lie unless the input is erroneous.

[Shipwreck_Jones]

Don’t kink shame. There should be no judgements when it comes to consenting forum posters.

[Ramona_McCandless]

I think theres quite a few judgements in the air atm regarding non consensual pvp between players out of game regardless of what I think.

[Xucca]

Say you belong or create a group of say… 6… a platoon for the case, and you want to pop stuff together in EVE.
In which scenario would it be easier to do?
There used to be fun zones, guaranteed… game mechanics (SOV) and personal scuffs got rid of such places. One can hardly name 2 or 3 anymore and depending on the season. Wether it’s rabbit or duck, of course!

There are less fun zones, mechanics act against PVP in too many ways to mention…

What’s left for that platoon? Which scenario is easier and perhaps closer-by than a well executed gank?
No matter how bad it feels or looks like for many, ganking is often the easier way.
We speculated on removing Concorde… that’s how far we went in the discussion… just for the sake of giving players more pop ability, more weapons, actions, strategies against incoming threats.

So far you have what? a shield, armor, a lame passive fitting to buy you time until Concorde isn’t busy enough to help… WHY? why can’t players handle this? too hard to code?

It’s a closed environment, I say… nothing else occurrs simply because the gatekeeper doesn’t allow it, isn’t creative enough or doesn’t get paid enough. Some say there are not enough gatekeepers, which is plausible.

Ganking is fundamental in EVE. It just shouldn’t be the shortcut way for popping stuff around.

[Iceacid_Frostpacker]

Lowsec cloaky or highsec/wormhole cloaky though i always found it that many small fleets always wanted to roam and never sit in cloak and wait.

I like to wait and watch rather than expose my underbelly in lowsec/nulsec as most times I suffer ship loss is when I am being hunted rather than me waiting for prey to enter my domain.

I want to be a cat as cats are cunning and right now I am the mouse and concord are the cats so yes remove concord but also do so on that new map so pvp is in lowsec/nulsec!

Other than that I would like to limit fleet sizes in Lowsec/highsec compared to Nulsec.
We have com’s so the Fleet Leaders can coordinate their fleet plans with other Fleets Leaders on their own channel if they wish to size up larger than say that magic (6) platoon you mentioned.

[Aiko_Danuja]

@ISD_Traindriver please do not merge this thread…

…but please do merge @Dracvlad with @DrysonBennington.

[Xuixien]

@Kezrai_Charzai

Cheap - Most PvP is performed in/against cheap, easily fit ships. This applies to the “cheaper ships won’t lead to more PvP” argument some people make.

Which is exactly why CCP made battlecruisers and below so cheap and easy to produce. Every ship of every class uses the exact same materials in the same ratios. Most of those materials can be easily harvested in HiSec and LowSec with a small smattering of NullSec/ WH minerals.

However, it does not logically or necessarily follow from your comment that this means battleships and capitals should be cheap.

[Kezrai_Charzai]

@Xuixien

it does not logically or necessarily follow from your comment that this means battleships and capitals should be cheap

I somewhat agree, and don’t believe I implied that particular notion.

I specifically made observations and not conclusions in the OP simply so everyone would be free to speculate and comment in their own manner.

If I drew my own conclusions in the OP (which I may get to later), the thread would very quickly have devolved into all the standard arguments without regards to the reality.