I think one piece of information that we haven’t discussed to death over the last 3-4 years (unlike the rest, which has been discussed dozens of times over) is this analysis from CCP Quant:
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…The most important variable deciding on whether you were still playing in month 4 was whether you got your ship destroyed by another player…
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Really, the whole presentation is worth watching, to understand how seriously CCP record, backup, analyse and use data.
CCP regard the first 3 months in the game as the “onboarding period” and have looked at data much more completely than only the first 15 days.
So really, we should just bring pvp (consensual or not) to everyone, regardless of age…
(which ties in with CCP Quant’s joke about running all new players through Rancer and Amamake to reap the benefits to the onboarding period).
In 2015, CCP Rise presented on the new player experience and posted some information there that goes beyond the first 15 days, to look at players that become subscribers:
He has also commented in the forum that they’ve tried and tried to validate the view that griefing of new players drives them away from the game, and they’ve failed to be able to validate that common community opinion:
But the part in this presentation by CCP Quant looks at players moving beyond the onboarding period and sticking with the game - and the #1 statistical factor in players staying with the game beyond 3 months is whether another player killed them.
For all the hate that some people have for non-consensual pvp and for ganking in particular, to CCP this is part of the #1 reason that players will still be in the game beyond their initial 3 months, and is part of the concept of “rich experience” that CCP Rise mentions.