The difference is, game data, historical trends, and the analysis of game designers and experts from the past 30 years of MMOs have relevance to the entire MMO market and player base.
“This is my personal experience of the game” only has relevance to one person and their small circle. You don’t make design decisions based on someone who says “Hey, I like missioning, and I joined a mission-running corp, and ALL the guys I talk to (my corp, that is) ALSO like missioning. Therefore EVE is all about missioning and missions should be the game focus.”
You also just seem to have a bad grasp of data usage in general. For instance you’ve repeated this “concurrency doesn’t mean active players” nonsense dozens of times. And the “it could mean twice as many players logging in for half the time” mantra as if it establishes a fact. But it doesn’t. The account login graphs show exactly what they say they do - the number of accounts currently logged in, at 4 minute intervals, all day every day, for years. And they’ve been a consistent pattern ever since EVE began.
So there’s absolutely zero reason to believe hundreds of thousands of players have suddenly shifted their pattern to logging in differently, en masse, without changing the overall hourly/daily pattern at all.
At any rate, gankers tend to be a very small, very vocal, very self-centered portion of the player base, who also absolutely require other players to be their victims in order to support their playstyle. “I need other players to show up and be defenseless for me so I can safely kill them and feel good about myself” is an inherently selfish and self-interested playstyle, and thus "my personal experience as a ganker/wardeccer is that ganking/wardeccing is no problem at all for the game, all data that says otherwise is ‘misinterpreted’ " is a relatively meaningless argument.
You and others dismiss the data and analysis because it doesn’t support your personal needs. That doesn’t mean the data is useless. It’s better to find ways to use the known data to suggest game changes that encourage a wider swath of playstyles, while also trying to maintain as much of EVE’s “harsh and cruel” environment as possible.
I worked with data for 30 years and don’t know anything about it ?
My point about twice as many players logged in for half the time happens to be true. Perhaps ‘true’ is a concept you’ve lost track of. The ‘4 minute interval’ makes zero difference…as someone who was logging in for 6 hours but is now only logging in for 3 is still only going to be detected half the time compared with before. At any one period of time during a day you are half as likely to detect them…whether the interval is 4 minutes or 4 hours.
If everyone was logged in 24 hours a day and then everyone only logged in for 12 hours a day…do you really think ‘the number of people currently logged in’ would remain the same ?? I don’t need lessons in statistics from someone who needs lessons in basic maths.
If they add a module that blows all your cargo up instantly (active counter to ganking) I’m coming back.
Only speaking for myself, and a friend who left also because ganking didn’t feel fair.
No complains, we just play other games and seeing adds for Eve all the time made me come back to check on the situation, which seem to be worse than ever.
One notion that I didn’t include in the list of “significant changes” ideas (posted earlier in the thread), is that of consumable “add-on devices” for ships.
Ships could have 1-3 slots for one-time-use devices, with categories of Offensive, Defensive, or Utility. Generally short-term or limited area affects, device consumed on use.
Something like a small attack frigate might get just a single Offense device, a Logistics Cruiser might get 2 Defensive slots, an Exploration ship like an Astero might get a Universal slot (fits any) and a Utility slot. Larger ships would have all 3 slots with the mix varying by ship purpose.
Offense slots could have effects like rapid fire, bonus tracking, range bonus or lock time. Defense could be resists, warp core strength, capacitor refill, target lock break, etc. Utility could be for speed increases, scan strength, ECM strength, remote boosts etc.
These would all be somewhat expensive relative to their effects (more powerful = more ISK), so they’re not just burned off casually. They could shake up the overly predictable combat meta quite a bit and allow for some new strategies.
A ‘rapid self-destruct’ Utility module would fit right in there, I’d say.