Is Hisec ganking good for the game?

[Kellie_McCalamitie]

Ghudfjutfgu…

[Rroff]

@Kellie_McCalamitie

One will never really find out if ganking is good for the game since all information pertinent to making an accurate judgment is detained by a biased party in this argument.

Agreed.

Something which can also be true potentially (not saying it is or isn’t) that ganking can factor highly in players who were retained as customers but also factor highly in customers who weren’t retained as players who could* have been retained as players. That could be simply down to a different set of circumstances or it might be you just can’t accommodate both.

• In my experience there are a lot of people, probably around 2/3rds, who quit the game as new players where the game simply wasn’t for them and you could never have retained them whether they were looking for a different kind of gameplay or didn’t realise the time investment it would require, etc. but there are also a good number who don’t go on beyond the first few weeks who could have been kept as paying customers where ganking factors and it isn’t just the fact they got ganked which put them off.

[Aiko_Danuja]

Highsec ganking improves retention. Only whiny crybabies quit because of ganking, and those aren’t players who will last long anyways, so no loss there.

CCP knows all this.

[Dracvlad]

Ganking adds to the game, yes, however if the balance is wrong and the player being ganked feels like they are just a cash cow or a turkey in a turkey shoot then it will have a negative impact to the game, especially in terms of retention of players.

If you can do things like avoidance and have a chance to get away then you will play it, but if you have to go through somewhere that is always camped and you will have no chance to survive then you will see a negative impact.

So I want to improve their chances, like having the option to fit a BS MWD to a freighter.

I detailed an example of how this works, previously bumping was unlimited, so people would bump people for hours. The ganker would offer help with a webbing alt and the desperate freighter pilot would in the end accept it, to then be blown up.

I analysed one prolific bump scan ganker, I checked back all of the victims and checked to see if there was any activity from those characters following this type of event. That would be loss mails, changing corp and even setting up structures etc. I found that 60% of that sample stopped playing after that scam bump gank.

That is an example of bad balance which CCP dealt with after a long time with the changes to bumping.

I keep saying that ganking is fine as long as it is correctly balanced. One important factor must be enabling the butterfly effect so that people can get back at them. CCP have still not got that right. And I have made suggestions like remove the ability for -10 to dock in NPC stations and force them to operate and use structures that can be war decked.

Many people will say that Eve is a PvP game and ignore the fact that it is much more than that, it has a very sophisticated market and industry with specific professions designed to supply items for indy. So as such it is designed for different types of gamers, the best example of this is that there is a profession of space hauling in this game.

[Kellie_McCalamitie]

Fhjitdvhyt.

[Rroff]

@Kellie_McCalamitie

Not sure but the way you phrase that implies that the players exist for the game while it is the other around, the game exists for the players.
Maybe I’m not understanding you correctly, that’s possible as well.

I’m not really understanding your interpretation either so not sure how to explain what I said in light of that. In my experience a lot has been made of the factor that ganking factors highly in players who have gone on to become longer standing customers, often presented as it “improves retention” as if therefore being ganked doesn’t turn players away - but it doesn’t work like that - both sides of the coin can be true without being incompatible with the other. And it doesn’t mean every player who quit because of being ganked would always have quit because of being ganked.

@Kellie_McCalamitie

Yes. Not every gamer has the propensity for every game, that’s why there are all kinds of games for all kinds of players.

What I’m looking at there is the distribution of players who haven’t stuck with the game beyond a few weeks - some you never had a chance of retaining as a player anyway short of fundamentally changing Eve as a game. But there are a not insignificant number who could have been retained without having to ruin the game to accommodate them - that is a broader take where ganking is only a part of the picture.

@Kellie_McCalamitie

Ultimately, there isn’t one game in existence that is designed for ALL gamers in mind.

Part of what I’ve acknowledged there are some people who quit who you couldn’t possibly have done anything different to keep. That doesn’t mean it is the story for everyone who quits.

[Kellie_McCalamitie]

Fgjutdbhyf.

[Jayce_Fitzpatrick]

Fine fine… You guys talk about the negative impact of ganking on new players. Let’s assume there is some impact, it’s still not nearly as big a sinner as the boring, grindy mission system.

You know, the part of the game that new players most commonly gets introduced to, because it’s the most intuitive continuation from career agents and SOE arc.

Where is the outcry and whining for that? Let’s face it, none of you really care about the new players… It just sounds like a good argument, because “think of the children.”

[Rroff]

@Jayce_Fitzpatrick

Fine fine… You guys talk about the negative impact of ganking on new players. Let’s assume there is some impact, it’s still not nearly as big a sinner as the boring, grindy mission system.

You know, the part of the game that new players most commonly gets introduced to, because it’s the most intuitive continuation from careers agents and SOE arc.

Where is the outcry and whining for that? Let’s face it, none of you really cares about the new players… It just sounds like a good argument, because “think of the children.”

Years ago I talked about that quite a bit - back when there wasn’t really things like mission arcs, etc. at all. Problem I find as well is that CCP seems to use a data driven impression of what players want and talk about how “we understand you want to do X” but not really understanding what people want to do - there is a lot of telling people what they want to do instead.

It is a different topic though to whether highsec ganking is good for the game.

[Kellie_McCalamitie]

Fgnbffyuh.

[Jayce_Fitzpatrick]

@Rroff

It is a different topic though to whether highsec ganking is good for the game.

It’s relevant in the context of defusing it as an argument.

Again, if people really cared about the new players, there would be copious amounts of threads whining about dull, outdated game mechanics and how these are never iterated on.

Basically, “think of the children” is a bad argument, because highsec ganking does not have nearly as big an impact on NPE opposed to other factors. It just feels nice to say “I complain, in order to improve the experience for new players.” Complain about the right things then.

[Rroff]

@Kellie_McCalamitie

I’m sure there are. Unfortunately, when CCP takes months to fix an issue, you can’t expect such a corporation to go out of its way, spend time and money only to accommodate a group of players whose difference in CCP’s wallet would only amount to 0.0001% of their revenue.

I’m not sure it is that insignificant but I have no way to know the full facts of it - these kind of things tend to have a compound effect on a game.

[Kellie_McCalamitie]

Fgjutdchhgf.

[Rroff]

@Kellie_McCalamitie

There is also another possibility:
EVE is primarily a game for PvPers and the only reason that the PvE side exists is to give those PvPers a little variety in the game and permit them to chill while still playing the game.
Could be that EVE was designed only with PvPers in mind.

Those ships they use, etc. have to be created from somewhere - if it was designed only with PVP in mind ships would have to materialise out of thin air and you basically have an elaborate arena shooter.

[Rroff]

@Jayce_Fitzpatrick

Basically, “think of the children” is a bad argument, because highsec ganking does not have nearly as big an impact on NPE opposed to other factors. It just feels nice to say “I complain, in order to improve the experience for new players.” Complain about the right things then.

You’d have to go back to the old forums and I have no idea how to search them now - but it is something I covered a lot back in the day - these days I just drop by every 6-12 months to see the state of things on the forums and usually don’t stay more than a couple of days.

[Kellie_McCalamitie]

Fgjuyrfhhg

[Jayce_Fitzpatrick]

@Kellie_McCalamitie

Could be that EVE was designed only with PvPers in mind.

PvP is essential in the game, because it creates demand for produced goods. Without the demand, the economical system does not work.

Unfortunately, some people have difficulties understanding this. Both production and demand are needed for the system to work. However, as of now there is way too much production and not enough destruction.

[Rroff]

@Kellie_McCalamitie

Not really. PvPers can and do manufacture and sell as well. One doesn’t prevent the other.

You need something to manufacture from and some modules, etc. are only available via PVE activities faction and complex and so on.

[Kellie_McCalamitie]

Dghuyrfbu

[Jayce_Fitzpatrick]

@Rroff

@Jayce_Fitzpatrick

Basically, “think of the children” is a bad argument, because highsec ganking does not have nearly as big an impact on NPE opposed to other factors. It just feels nice to say “I complain, in order to improve the experience for new players.” Complain about the right things then.

You’d have to go back to the old forums and I have no idea how to search them now - but it is something I covered a lot back in the day - these days I just drop by every 6-12 months to see the state of things on the forums and usually don’t stay more than a couple of days.

My above argument about how “think of the children” is a bad argument does not change, just because you posted something back in the day.

Currently, people don’t complain about it nearly as much as they should be, if they truly cared about the influx of new players into the game. However, they love to come into ganking threads and scream “THINK OF THE CHILDREN!”