No I wasn’t.
Maekchu made a comment that mining would cause players to leave the game. Drac disputed that.
CCP’s data agrees with it.
I enjoy mining, so wouldn’t really make any judgement about whether it’s boring or not. That’s too individual a thing.
What’s not too individual a thing is the behaviour of the community as a whole, and a correlation with leaving the game exists.
Well try not to jump in with such comments if you want to ask a question in good faith, it sets the tone of any discussion in the sewer. I do not mine AFK ever…
I think it is a mindset of people not moving out and trying different things. @Browl_Hochmeister made a very good point above, they can do so much more and part of the issue was it takes so damn long to get effective. CCP have made changes in that part which helps. The people I noted leaving where people who lost expensive ships that were a large part of their wealth to cheap ships and they went backwards in game terms. Mining in hisec became high risk and low reward and if anyone tell me that is a good thing then I have to wonder.
Hell these FOB’s rock my socks.
I understand, after about five months I headed off to NPC null and did gun mining in the belts in contested systems, it was great fun and very close and personal combat. When they nerfed the refining rate they made it too inefficient and I gave up on it, but I had so much fun doing that. The fun of that was evading very good hunters from blowing you up and you had to be smart and attentive.
I have been there I made the mistake of trying to push more PvP type PVE on CCP but I am not sure it is what players want. The PvP is the main part of the game, and what you want to do is have PvE that offers some risk but is not a done deal and it is better if that risk comes from the players. That is why you see me having no issue with ganking as a whole, but attacking specific mechanics which make it too much of a sure thing.
It is mentality, when I started I mined, made myself a couple of ships and moved them into Stain via gates in 2010. Was one hell of a challenge. Prior to making that move I was mining but would go into a lowsec system and avoid people trying to blow me up to develop my knowledge. In a sense many people don’t get out of their comfort zone and that is more of the issue.
I am sorry for jumping at your comment earlier, your last post was excellent.
Go away Shae, I was not talking about 3 month old players so what you posted is totally and utterly irrelevant.
Toughen up dear boy.
Some of my posts might also have been a bit toxic. Seems my frustration with CCP spills into my sentiment in posts. So I apologize as well.
Like I said, we all just want a better game. In my opinion, eve is currently not a good PvP or PvE game.
What frustrates me is CCP’s inability to communicate or engage with their community. I’m just asking CCP to step up their game. As a mere consumer, I can really only give feedback on their “official” community portal and vote with my wallet.
CCPs data does not agree with it. They have a poorly analysed data set which doesn’t isolate factors appropriately which a dev then made a throw away comment about.
That isn’t data you can take any conclusions from. Its data that gives you at best some idea of what data you should actually be gathering.
What does their data agree with then?
In their Decision Tree analysis and use of recursive partitioning, what is poor about their approach from a statistical analysis perspective?
The approach they used is based on >35 years of practice in classification and regression, and specifically the approach in this text:
How is it poor?
It does for a lot of people, respect to you.
I think too many people dwell on what is worng with Eve and not what is right with Eve. For example I love the current setup of capitals, but FAX’s need a nerf. I like the fighter play I have no issue with fighters being able to kill sub-caps.
This is a complicated game on so many levels and that makes it a very good game. The combat has layers of complexity which makes it a challenge though it is often sad that this comes at the level of the FC team only.
I think it is a very very good group PvP game with high levels of strategic play.
A lot of people are focussed on what they find fun, take that gun mining comment I made earlier, it was boring grindlike PvE which was made fun because I was doing it with people trying to stop me and blow me up. That is what makes it a good game. But also part of the issue is how many people want to challenge themselves. Another part of the issue is that in some areas the challenge has got to the point where it is suicide, as more and more people became BLOP’s able my belt ratting got harder and harder. D-scan immune ships stopped my scouts from noting what was coming in. Games evolve but when they do they often lose what is fun.
Also another part of this is that there is a real difference between many of us the older players and the newer players that want something less challenging, but part of that is due to the issue of old wealthy high SP players and competing against that, it is daunting, I saw that in 2009/10.
CCP has to balance off enabling people to develop and giving a challenge, it is a complex game and not easy.
I am back in hisec at this point, but I do things that challenge me, my most recent one was asset safety on 3.5bn of P1’s from Faspera which is camped by PHEW among others. I did it without losing a ship while loads of people got blown up when I did it.
My next objective is to move ships out of Stain going across sov null in carriers, I am going to die in a fire but what the hell it is a test for me. It is what you do that makes it fun.
The parts of eve that I love, have kept me with eve since 2012.
But even if the game has some great parts, we can still ask for improvements. Especially, if we feel past changes made by CCP is going down a wrong path, are not improving anything or otherwise the game has grown stale.
Maybe I have just outgrown eve. Like I said, I have less time to dedicate to playing eve than I had before. So maybe eve is just a horrible game for casuals. Being bad for people with little time available to play, is a feedback point as well I suppose.
I have been here since 2009 and I did have a character before that too which I gave away.
For my part losing all those hisec players was a major issue, war decs and other play would be much more fun if they had not all left due to that poor balance decision. there would be more players in the game. CCP has to roll back from that and that makes things worse. But even if we have to pull back some aspects to get more people, it does not say that it is always going to stay that way.
Eve is not that good a game for casuals. I give you a key example ganking of freighters, without the bumping I am happy with it. But let me get to an issue for casuals. Do I really want to spend the one hour play time I have moving a vulnerable whale attentively through hisec. Or do I want that out of the way so I can do something more fun with that hour.
Ganking adds danger and fear and content and so on, but it also adds a huge amount of tedium and inertia and boredom. I asked myself the question because the other day I moved a load of capital parts into low sec and did it with BR’s. 76 individual trips, I have the time, but most people no.
So if their hours play is spent waiting for that Mach bumper to log off and he does not then the game is not for him. I am mixing a few things here, but this is not a game for casuals and the mere fact of being a casual player makes you so much more of an easy kill.
And with so much wealth sloshing around with multiple account min/max players it has devalued totally your casual possibilities.
The fact that Eve is so bad for casuals is perhaps its biggest issue.
Their initial data set was poor.
From that point it doesn’t matter what tools you analyze it with, you get poor results.
Like I said, that goes for all of it, not just the bits that don’t support x cause.
It gave some interesting pointers to collect better data sets on though, and hopefully they have done that with later studies they seem to have done.
LEL, they studied and studied and used science and what they got is drop in numbers.
In their case I would advise prayer, even when I am not religious. 
Thank you for those links.
Like they say at 19:18 “we can’t say that going to low sec or getting killed gets you to stay in the game. We can see that those that stay in the game, they get killed”
Correlation is not causation.
i.e. you can’t say that “mining makes people leave”. It would be also false to say “people who are going to leave decide to mine”, just as much.
This video is actually very good because he explains why you can’t just look at data and actually need “actionable” data.
…and what prevents them from doing something else?
And just FYI, mining is one of the best mechanics in EVE Online… for the right kind of player. It’s relaxing and used to be profitable enough before Rorquals Online. And yes, watching TV while you mine is a bonus (although ti’s more feasible with ice mining than ore mining).
In the face of a known and consistent correlation, however, it’s not inappropriate to make assertions that are consistent with the correlation.
For example: 98% of noobs who do not experience PvP quit within 4 months. That statement would seem to be consistent with the correlation you presented.
If that statement is accurate, then I would propose that the following statement is also consistent with the correlation: By placing PvP mechanics in systems where noobs will experience PvP, we can prevent noobs from experiencing the extreme attrition rate (98%) associated with PvP abstinence in new players.
If you read the thread, you’ll see that I generally feel all the PvE that a new player is exposed to is boring and in a dire need of a rehaul.
That being said, my point was also that if you have a game mechanic where you just start it and go watch TV, then maybe it’s not that good a mechanic and a possible reason for a lower player retention rate.
Anyway, at this point I’ve come to the conclusion there really is no point. With the new changes to player skills, it tells me CCP have absolutely no idea what their issues are. They don’t understand that the NPE and the inability to explain eve to newer players, is their mayor reason for players giving up on eve. Not some minor UI issues.
At worst, eve is truly dead. At best, eve is just not the game for me anymore. It’s time for me to take a break.
I have taken breaks, don’t biomass or give your stuff away. Good luck and I hope to see you back at some point.
Yes, it is totally inappropriate to assume causation because they go along your opinion, and it is totally dishonest to affirm them for the same reason.
That’s exactly why you are repeated “correlation is not causation”. It is NEVER a causation and you can NEVER use it the same. You can NEVER assume causation and as CCP said in that video you need to have a study with “actionable” events to find real causations.
Your example is bad. You implicitly assume a causation between “pvp” and “remain”. I already quoted why this is wrong, from CCP explanations, on the previous post.
One of the perks of sailing a Battleship in World of Warships is that it’s possible to browse websites while you position the ship, specially during the initial stage of the battle. I bet that if Wargaming asked their players, they would find out how those first 2 or 3 minutes with nothing urgent to do are important to many of their older players. Mind you, if you want to play WoWs at full speed from the get go, then you might pick any other class. There’s plenty of opportunities to start playing “now” and yet when you’re in a Battleship and are going to a good shooting location or are following the fleet or whatever… you can come to EVE Online forum and read what’s new, even type a short answer. Go back and look at the minimap. Then browse another website and keep doing it until the fight starts for you. This kind of multitasking potential is a perk of that ships class in that game.
Mining in EVE Online it’s not about AFK. It’s about multitasking. And you bet it’s a good thing of the mechanic -that one thing in EVE you can do while doing other things. It’s a refreshing change from 99% of EVE Online.
