EVE General Discussion

Simple answer: No.

The problem is not the data or the statistics.
The problem lies in the question what the "community" feels. - This is something that can not be quantified.

For one thing it is NEVER "The Community (tm)". Because you will find always someone who disagrees.
Sometimes it is the majority. But mostly it's a loud and visible minority that wants this or that change, or not.

To conclude: I think the actual approach from the devs is the right one: Fact and numbers. Not feelings.

There are three "lies," in the world: Lies, Damn lies, and Statistics.

Yes we do need data. Yes it must be the right data. The right data may be unnaccessible.

the wrong data can hurt more than no data, but I don't think CCP is using the flat out wrong data. (IE: Using Industrial Activity to balance Lasers)

I think it's worth mentioning in the new age that is comming, the one without 1000 man super cap fleets and multiple sov fights happening at once, combined with the slow but hopefully steady nerfs to T3 (Both Cruiser and Destroyer) the batlteship MAY seen a new role. We should wait for that to all come into effect, let it go a few months for metas to develop, then evaluate the position of the oft loved BS. I imagine a Napoc fleet sitting on a TCU will be be plenty hard for those pesky Tengus to deal with in contests. The 250km range on the Entosis however... that's another issue all together.

Ki, I don't think CCP should ever design to "overall community sentiment" that OP wants. The vocal minority always ends up skewing things too far.

Yes. We also need good analysis to go along with it. The problem with too much data is that it becomes not only a crutch, but a cage. CCP needs to take a bit of a step back, they can't see the forrest through the trees; or even the damn tree through the leaves.

87% of statistical analysis are actually interpreted wrong by the people that take them.

63% of all studies that relied heavily on statistics were later to be found to be fatally flawed in some way.

73% of statistics are made up on the fly anyway.

As I see no reason to comply to this request, I'm afraid I will have to say no to that.

One of the things I consistently like about the data CCP chooses to show us is exactly how little it's been doctored up. We have some basically pretty raw numbers, some means here and there, and some rolling means.

These kinds of numbers are not the numbers people generally choose to display when they have an agenda. This is grade-school type stuff. There is nothing going on here that I would call even remotely obfuscatory.

If anything, I would like to see CCP doing more (or perhaps I should say showing more to us) of things that are perhaps a bit more advanced. I'd like to see a factor analysis around some of the variables mentioned in the OP to see if there are latent causes behind the raw data that could explain some of the variance, for example. I'd like to see some regressions to understand how much of the changes in the numbers can be explained by natural cyclic variability, and how much of the change is actually related to mechanics changes.

But in any case, there are a couple of things you have to take into account. When people are using statistics to hoodwink you, you have to consider
1) the level of certainty claimed by the alleged perpetrator, and
2) the obscurity of the mechanism used to arrive at the supporting data.

If someone comes to you and says they know for absolute certain that x and y are true (where x and y are totally contrary to intuition), and you can tell it's all true because of this new method of analysis that they just made up for this one purpose: guess what! You're getting lied to!!!

If, on the other hand, people use very straightforward methods to arrive at some conclusion that's relatively weak, well . . . there's little room for duplicity there.

CCP's use of numbers is closer to the latter case, in my opinion.

First off, I don't think it matters at all what statistical methods they are using when their claims are so weak.

All of anything that they ever say amounts to: "When we look at these numbers, we feel good about them. When we look at these other numbers, we don't feel so good about those." In seven years of EvE, I can't remember a dev blog that really made a stronger claim based on "the numbers."

So I have to wonder, if no one is claiming any particular truth, where is the lie that these alleged statistics are telling?

CCP has always struck me as a company with a philosophy-first approach to design that sometimes looks to the numbers to make sure they are not completely out there. It has never struck me as a data-driven company at all. And I don't mean that in a negative way at all. Facebook and Zynga are data-driven companies. They are companies that tweak every aspect of every interaction to maximize addictiveness based on behavioral psychological data. Blizzard is somewhere between what I see as two extremes with EvE and things like Dwarf Fortress on one end of the spectrum and Farmville and Candy Crush Saga on the other end.

Sibyyl has already made what was going to be my second point far more eloquently than I was going to, so I'll leave that alone.

OP sounded an awful lot to me like he was saying, "CCP, I want you to ignore the numbers I don't like and design the game around what I feel."

But I will make a third point. CCP does already do a certain amount of what the OP most charitably could have meant. CCP appears, from my point of view, to design the game around

a) a large, reasonably consistent philosophy,
b) a strong desire to troll, and
c) some numbers here and there to serve as big-picture guideposts.

If that's not what the OP is asking for in terms of "extra-database-ical-ishy" data, then I can't imagine what reasonable thing is. I just think the OP doesn't like the consequences of CCP's design philosophy or the way that CCP loves to troll and is using the weakest possible intellectual approach to criticize Fozzie and Rise because when you throw around hardcore words like database, you can't be wrong. Right?