The CSM 13 Winter Summit Minutes are out

[Teckos_Pech]

@Arrendis

Because, again, if you want to improve player retention, you have to understand why people choose to do something else with their time .

Exactly right. This is a behavioral issue as well as a mechanics issue. Ignoring the behavioral element and focusing just on the mechanics may very well lead to a(other) bad decision.

[Persephanie_Mae]

Ccp can not interpret and read data well.

They have proved this over decades.

With fear of being banned for dev abuse, I gently mention now how High Quality devs do not want to move to Iceland.

Ccp notoriously pays bottom of the barrel wages.

Job Security at ccp is a joke.

The list goes on and on about how ccp does not attract “top of the class” high Quality devs.

So NO. WE CANT TAKE IT FOR GRANTED CCP CAN INTERPRET DATA AND MAKE CORRECT INFORMED DECISIONS.

They literally have proved they make terrible decisions and interprete data WRONG time after time.

CCP DOESNT EVEN PUT FREAKING LABELS ON THEIR GRAPHS AND YOU WANT ME TO TRUST THEIR DATA?? HELL NO LOL.

[Teckos_Pech]

@Whitehound

Of course it’s a reason and it’s a terrible one. Obviously am I lying when I first state something about the graphics and then go hating on the players.

Leaving a game over graphics is totally valid and reasonable.

Hating the players because they do not share your views is a personal failing. It is like hating people who like watermelon while you don’t.

[Brisc_Rubal]

@Mizhara_Del_thul

Let me try this again, because you seem to have missed it the first time I said it.

I got it the first time. I’m still trying to figure out why it matters whether you trust they’ll come to the right conclusions.

[Brisc_Rubal]

@Teckos_Pech

Yes, but how does that invalidate that it is a behavioral issue?

That’s not the point I was trying to make. Arrendis is noting that in my line of work we have experts who do data analysis to guide policymakers in determining solutions to problems. My point is that the need for that kind of independent analysis is not as critical when the decisions aren’t at the level where a mistake will literally kill people.

I’m confident that Larrikin and the other devs who collected and analyzed the data didn’t massage it to come to some kind of outcome they already predetermined or otherwise misinterpreted the data to draw conclusions that aren’t there. There’s no reason for them to do that - the easiest thing in the world would be to gather the data and present it in such a way as to argue in favor of doing nothing because doing nothing is the status quo and always the easiest option.

Instead they gathered this data and realized pretty quickly it was a problem and that’s why I’m hoping this means that after years of the CSM begging them to do something about war decs they’re finally going to do it.

[Mike_Azariah]

@Brisc_Rubal

Regardless, I do think the numbers are still bad enough to justify turning wars off until that’s coded, but I know that’s going to make the literal handful of groups who do this stuff unhappy.

That right there is the crux. If the numbers are that bad then . . . well where is walking in stations? CCP is not above removal of assets, now and again.

m

[Teckos_Pech]

@Brisc_Rubal

That’s not the point I was trying to make. Arrendis is noting that in my line of work we have experts who do data analysis to guide policymakers in determining solutions to problems. My point is that the need for that kind of independent analysis is not as critical when the decisions aren’t at the level where a mistake will literally kill people.

I’m confident that Larrikin and the other devs who collected and analyzed the data didn’t massage it to come to some kind of outcome they already predetermined or otherwise misinterpreted the data to draw conclusions that aren’t there. There’s no reason for them to do that - the easiest thing in the world would be to gather the data and present it in such a way as to argue in favor of doing nothing because doing nothing is the status quo and always the easiest option.

Instead they gathered this data and realized pretty quickly it was a problem and that’s why I’m hoping this means that after years of the CSM begging them to do something about war decs they’re finally going to do it.

I still don’t see you answering my question though. It seems to me the problem is largely behavioral. Player behavior is the problem. And the behavior is on both sides, IMO. War decs are to a large extent voluntary. And leaving out the behavioral element could very well lead to an incorrect “solution”. And yes, my belief is that CCP has fallen into this trap in the past.

BTW, I am not saying that CCP did their analysis of the data incorrectly. My question presumes that the analysis is fine (correctly or otherwise).

[Mike_Azariah]

So, hypothetical here, they (CCP) remove wardevs while they rework the system to something more amenable to all.

But MIKE! What about the hisec wardeccers, what will they do in the meantime?

Play on alts, wait it out or quit . . . if you do not see the irony in this symmetry then I worry about you.

m

[Teckos_Pech]

@Lucas_Kell

You’re a bright guy, surely you can see that categorising people who are killed 16 days after starting and leave immediately as “not killed, left the game” is going to skew the stats, right?

This is an empirical question and cannot be answered without looking at the data. Is a player more or less likely to quite after being ganked the “older” they get in game? What those that function look like. Does is decline steadily from the moment a player starts? Does is increase, peak and then decline? Is it fairly constant over time?

[Whitehound]

@Teckos_Pech

Leaving a game over graphics is totally valid and reasonable.

It wasn’t my point. One can certainly have wrong reasons for leaving a game. It was a response to the claim that there were no bad reasons. Of course there are. In my example did I make this up and only hinted at the real reason with an emotional response. My actual reason was “I don’t like someone in this game” and so I acted like any teenager, gave a fake reason and hated on random people for not wanting to tell the real reason. It’s a completely normal and common behaviour in young people.

[Predvodnica_LSG]

Nice idea, but main rule is that CCP is reporting to owners not to players.
This communication and data sharing with CSM and players are voluntary and limited.

[Black_Pedro]

@Lucas_Kell

It is though because the conclusion he then formed is that people who engage are more likely to stay. However, it’s almost certain that the category “left but did not get killed” was heavily inflated by people who were in fact killed after the 15 day cut off and left the game. You’re a bright guy, surely you can see that categorising people who are killed 16 days after starting and leave immediately as “not killed, left the game” is going to skew the stats, right?

The data say exactly what they say - during the initial time in the game there are way more important issues for retention than getting exploded. Trying to extrapolate that to anything else is just conjecture.

If you want to know the things that correlate with people quitting at other times just do another study. I don’t know why you are trying to use this as evidence of something it doesn’t show for a time range it doesn’t cover.

I don’t know why anyone finds this study controversial in the slightest. Everyone knows how confusing Eve’s UI and concepts can be for a new player. It makes sense so many other factors drive away new players more than the rare event one of them experiences PvP in the first weeks.

But why are we talking about this? Wars were not an issue for new players in 2015 and they are still not in 2018 according to the latest CSM minutes. They are however an issue for smaller highsec groups of all ages and that needs to be addressed, but let’s move on from this baseless “think of the children” narrative too many people are going to despite the fact the numbers we do have show this isn’t true.

Yes, we all love new players and want the game to grow and succeed so let’s all agree to stop the virtue signaling and focus the discussion of the changes that are possible in this PvP game to make wars less harsh and oppressive on the small/casual/newer groups that apparently are being pushed out of the game.

[Iowa_Banshee]

Here’s how I have seen a wardec effect a friend in the game.

He has his own corp populated with 6 alts - He mines ice in hisec and chats on discord with a dozen others. After a while he’s has amassed 6 athanors and his group of friends also mine ore, donating to him for the upkeep.

One day a griefer pops into system and bumps his orca away from his drone & steals them - he calls the the griefer a ratbag. Then his 6 man corp is at war with a 65 man corp part of the CODE alliance with 600+ members and 50 corps. A fleet of bashers arrive and destroy all his Athanors.

He feels helpless and there is nothing he can do to stop it. Last time I saw him logged on was August 5th - Of the dozen or so people who used to log on and chat with him - I’ve only see 1 or 2 of them.

Edit: As ice miners all of that group had been Ganked at one time or another - sometimes concord got the gankers sometimes the gankers got them - the result depended on luck, fit and maybe some local reps but all treated ganking as the price of doing business

[Teckos_Pech]

@Lucas_Kell

To be entirely fair, it probably would be easier to digest if people could see the data and the methodologies behind it. Any idea if CCP plan to release it?

Agreed.

[Teckos_Pech]

@Lucas_Kell

It’s not, it’s a straight up simple question. If you are categorising people who clearly have left because they were ganked in the category “left but was not ganked” then you are skewing the stats.

But your characterization is inaccurate. The categorizing is conditional…on the first 15 days. CCP Rise did not say, “Oh, ganking always improves retention.” He said those being ganked in the first 15 days tend to have the better retention numbers. You keep wanting to stretch the study into areas it was not designed to cover and then proclaim it invalid.

Now a more sophisticated analysis might use something like a logistics regression model. Where you take those 80,000 players. Some have stopped playing (thus the dependent variable is a 1) or they are still playing (dependent variable 0). On the right hand side you’d have explanatory variables. You could have number of kill mails the player is on. Number of loss mails. You might even break down loss mails in various ways. And other variables as well. In watching one of CCP’s presentations they do use some pretty sophisticated techniques. Just because they do not share them does not mean they don’t do them.

[Brisc_Rubal]

@Teckos_Pech

And the behavior is on both sides, IMO.

I think that’s a tough argument to sell.

It presupposes that there is something more effective than logging off that lets the defender remain in their group of friends and not be subject to getting killed over and over with no meaningful way to fight back or stop it.

That’s what I mean when I say that the meta is docking up and logging out for these guys - it denies the war deccers content and loot, which are two things that you can guarantee will get a group redecced and it ensures that the defender doesn’t lose any assets. Fighting back, especially by groups who are relatively young (a few months in to a year or so), is unlikely to gain these guys anything - thanks to neutral logi, the difficulty in finding war targets with nothing to protect or defend, and the relative skill gap between these players - so why do it?

The smartest move for them is to dock up and stop playing for a week. And for folks who have not yet been bitten by the bug, or found a group of friends that will stick together through this stuff, they can easily get distracted by a dozens of other games, space sims or MMOs or both, out there that they can play instead. So they do. And then they stop logging in to EVE.

We don’t want the best mechanic to defend against a war dec to be logging off (and regardless of those who claim dropping corp is a better mechanic, folks shouldn’t have to quit their group of friends or abandon a cool name, reputation or logo because they got decced) and right now it is.

[Daichi_Yamato]

@Lucas_Kell

It only matters to you because you don’t like the implications and want to find some way to discredit it.

No that’s what you do. Like you’ve been doing with the previous retention stats.

And now you’re using the lack of details about this information to suggest it’s saying something that suits your agenda.

@Lucas_Kell

The data we’re talking about here is broad data, it’s not a release in-depth analysis, and so realistically every post in the thread should be prefixed with “assuming CCP believe the data shows what has been declared”

But you’re using it to say that hi-sec pvp is having an adverse affect on player retention. But in order for that to be suggested by the data, the retention rate of of those who are never decced or shot at would have to be significantly higher than those that are.

But is it? Cause last time we checked it wasn’t. Is this time different? We don’t know. All we have been told is that players go quiet during a dec and continue to be quiet for some unspecified period after.

Given a long enough time period decs could be hurting long term game health or simply weeding out the ‘weak’ or ‘unhealthy’.

[Brisc_Rubal]

@Lucas_Kell

To be entirely fair, it probably would be easier to digest if people could see the data and the methodologies behind it. Any idea if CCP plan to release it?

If I knew I couldn’t tell you, unfortunately. But I don’t know.

[Whitehound]

@Iowa_Banshee

He feels helpless and there is nothing he can do to stop it. Last time I saw him logged on was August 5th of the dozen people who used to log on and chat with him - I’ve only see 1 or 2 of them.

He has been taught a beautiful and rare lesson. Try to put a price on it.

[Rivr_Luzade]

@CCP_Falcon Probing is bugged today as well. You can’t probe a BS like normal. You have to eject ship to force skill to take effect.