I have a feeling he would be fine with both, now what.
We’re talking about ganking not mining/mission running.
Ccps own numbers showed getting ganked lead to higher retention.
Where getting stuck on a loop of mission running lead to people leaving.
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I bet that kool-aid was good for you!
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Not sure I’m the one who’s been drinking it.
Ccp had a whole keynote on this a few years back going over the npe
How out-of-date are those numbers? And it was more than a few years ago (like a decade) as I remember the keynote. I’m not sure it would hold up today with the current playerbase.
Unless you have newer ones it’s all we have.
Unfortunately I don’t, but I’m also fairly certain the numbers CCP referenced were pre-Alpha, pre-injectors and other substantial changes (they were definitely pre-Pearl Abyss). Did getting ganked make me quit? No - but I also remember a time where ransoms were offered (and honored), and you could occasionally “sing for your freedom”. I remember when duels weren’t straight up bait-fests, too.
That hasn’t been the case for a long time now. Farming players has now become as much of an income stream as any other aspect in the game. I don’t have the specific thread (or reply) handy, but someone posted the ganking numbers for the past few years in Reddit and they were down something like 15-25% year-over-year for the past 3-4 years.
Does that mean that many players have decided to become risk averse and start fitting their ship accordingly? Or is it possible that new players are no longer sticking around to learn from their mistakes and simply quitting - which when combined with the more risk averse players - have ultimately resulted in less targets of opportunity?
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Ganking has never really been that big of a risk to begin with. Even during CODEs peak it was something like less than 1% of players would be a victim of a hack in their first month of playing.
There’s also nothing you can do to actually remove it from the game without ripping out foundational elements of the sand box.
Just look at what happened when they tried to make hs “safer” by basically eliminating war decs. It removed a sizable chunk of content and eliminated several groups that had been staples of hs for years. But did nothing to actually stop the people who were losing ships from losing them.
As someone who’s getting close to their second decade of primarily teaching new players in eve i can tell you it’s essential to expose players to what eve “is” as early as possible. I have seen very few quit when their first loss was a venture, a drake, or a retriever. Especially compared to the numbers iv seen quit when their first loss was a paladin.
Another important aspect is to exposes them to as much space is possible. Iv noticed if a player doesn’t leave the space they started in within the first six months they often never do. And i don’t just mean hs players that never leave hs. It happens to null players to. Newbros i sent out to null corps right from their start are afraid to enter hs. They see it as the most dangerous space and find the mechanics just as alien as forever hs players view null. I have even seen this with players that never left fw.
One of the best changes ccp has added in probably the last 5 years if not more is the incursions. Sure the pirate fw still has some problems but the corruption mechanic has forced people out of their comfort zone and exposed them to more parts of the game.
Be it the lifetime ls players that have now realized how to use and work around bubbles or how they change the way you approach a situation.
The what are normally hs care bares forming up in makeshift militias to prevent their homes from turning into functionality low sec. Some of the most fun iv had was getting these players together and it’s made almost all of them much more confident.
Ccp needs to do more to force players to break their routines and leave their comfort zones. Stagnation is the biggest killer of eve. Anyone who’s run any player group can tell you this. It’s when nothing new has been happening for a while that you start to see players aren’t logging in as much anymore.
Tldr you need negative things to happen or have the threat of them happening for a game like eve to stay healthy.
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I actually agree with all of your points - well put. +1
So do you have any ideas to break up the stagnation with ganking? (other than ganking permits, lol)
The best idea i heard no longer works because of the war Dec changes.
It was basically if you committed too many crimes the original npc corps would no longer allow you to join.
Should you be in one at the time you will be kicked out and put into a pirate or stateless corp. CONCORD would not defend pilots in these corps and they would essentially always be suspect in empire space. These pilots would also have to wait a week from leaving a player corp to being able to join a new one.
This relied on the old war dec mechanics however. Basically a repeat offender would either always be suspect no matter how much they spent on tags or they would be in a player corp that could be war decd.
There were people who offered suggestions on how this could work without permanently alerting an character. Either being able to regain your citizenship with a faction via an epic arc style chain. Though one that was much longer than the existing ones. Or by grinding security status to +10. Along with others i can’t really remember.
This would have allowed for a more permanent consequence to ganking as well as removing what at the time was seen a the biggest issue with ganking. That being the hs mechanics often protected criminals more than their victims.
I’m still of the opinion that hs ganking is fine as is. But i haven’t seen a better idea for shaking it up. Again though it no longer works with how hs war decs have been neutered
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Premium (ungankable) ships locked to high-sec would be interesting.
The control of setting the security status to red could be the key to changing Evermarks
Costing as per table provided by eveuniverity.
Cost is linked to the type of ship and the security status turns back to green as soon as the pilot leaves that ship.
Hmm…that’s actually an intriguing notion. The hard-core PvE players would be able to remain ultra-casual at the cost of a “gamma” experience (somewhere between alpha and omega). I mean, if CCP is willing to ignore botting because they love money so much, then why not cater to the career carebears, too?
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