Crime & Punishment

Must disagree - intelligent people modify their positions in the face of contradictory evidence.

So let's see if we can sum up CCP's "Science!" here:

• Gankers would rather kill mining barges, particularly Hulks and Mackinaws (and other ships you can't fly within 15 days);
• Gankers rarely kill Ventures and cruisers (and other ships you can fly within 15 days);
• new players that jump right into BRAVE, RvB, or other "legal" PvP activity enjoy EVE and stay subscribed; and,
• new players that avoid PvP and presumably stick with EVE's horrifically bad PvE don't subscribe.

Have I summed up the "research" adequately? In other news, CCP discovers that water is wet and snow is cold.

I appreciate that they looked at this issue, but talk about spending your time on the wrong thing...

Hell. It froze over.

Liked and agreed.

D.

Nice analysis, but I am not sure you have the evidence to back up your first and second points. As a ganker, point one is probably correct. However, we regularly go after ventures. CODE. recently sponsored a venture killing contest.

Also, you can, in fact, fly the T1 barges within 15 days. So it is likely that there are ample kills of these ships included in the data-set.

I agree with your third point, but you leave out that CCP Rise stated that it is gank targets who are the most likely to stick around. Not sure why, but this is just the opposite of what the carebear apologists argue.

CCP may have defined "new player" too narrowly here. It would be interesting to see if they look at this over different player ages (30, 90, and 180 days would be good)

All this aside, what is important here is that the carebear myths that gankers intentionally target "new players" and this has a negative impact on player retention have been debunked.

Brave did more for new players in a month of living in Barleguet than you will most likely ever do.
You are about KB stats. Brave was about fun. Guess which one is more important to new players?

I'd like to share a little (but overly verbose) story from when I started playing EVE in mid 2013, coincidentally just after the release of Odyssey (I'm still pretty pissed about destroyers, BCs and command ships). They might not be 100% accurate, I don't recall every detail, but I think I'm not so senile that the gist won't be approximately right.

Like most gamers, I'd heard of EVE. In discussions of MMOs, how EVE does something always comes up. The main things I knew about EVE was that it had an advanced market and industry system, that it had real time based skill training and it was "the MMO that allows griefing and theft". I was intrigued but wasn't in the market for an MMO and suspected that it'd be grindy like every MMO. I did not know that it was a space game at all, and I don't think this is even very relevant to EVE's appeal; if we were submarine pilots I don't think that would change the game much at all.

One day I was feeling depressed and didn't care that an MMO would probably eat a lot of time and give little back, so I asked a player I know and got a referral link. He's a carebear for what it's worth and his guidance was mechanically helpful but didn't send me down any interesting paths. Most usefully he pointed me towards the EVE University public channel. Now, I'd heard that EVE was dangerous, and when I undocked I was looking around for possible threats, being suspicious of everyone, but nobody attacked me or even tried to bait me and I was disappointed. The universe was not very cold nor harsh, and I didn't know any of the main reasons why, more on that later. Well, to make it short, I spent my trial gawping at the beauty of space, which I still do sometimes, doing tutorials, the soe epic arc and a little exploration. I wasn't really engaged though and I quit.

Now fast forward a while and I heard of something called "Burn Jita", and googled it, and what a fruitful search term that was. By following links I found out about miniluv, the New Order and the Belligerent Undesirables among others. This was the EVE that I'd heard of! I decided to create another trial and train for ganking, since I hadn't really trained any relevant skills on my first character.

Something curious happened when I took this new character through the career agents quickly as a refresher and for some capital. I saw a pilot in a flashy incursus taunting new players and trying to duel them. From my first trial and my recent reading I knew some simple mechanics, so I bought a ship scanner and decided to check his fit. Hmm, dual rep, tech II everything... killing a serious tech II pvp fit was a big deal to me at the time and even the module drops looked tasty to my meagre wallet. I went to pyfa and tried with my weak knowledge to work out a fit that could best him in solo pvp despite a severe difference in SP and skill. I needed a couple of days to train those skills, but I watchlisted him and promised him that I would show him that a new player can win, and he mocked me like he mocked everyone, saying that I would never beat him. He was right. The fight never happened. He didn't log on again.

What I didn't know until some months later was that engaging in PvP of any form with rookies in rookie systems is potentially bannable if the rookie petitions it. It's "griefing". Wait, isn't this the MMO that allows "griefing"? I was annoyed by his mocking, his superiority, but I didn't feel put off EVE, I wanted to teach him a lesson! I would probably have lost, but I would've tried and wonderful things could have come from that above and beyond the thrill. But no, it's "griefing", no fun allowed.

CCP needs to look hard at the data and see that it rejects the theme park. Give the players what they need, not what they say they want and EVE can reach its third decade.

Unless they are just trolling.

Also this is why we needed a highsec criminal on the CSM so badly. This conclusion is completely obvious to most gankers, wardecs, ninjas etc. It's well known that there's a CCP policy that devs are barred from these activities on their non-CCP alliance characters.

Something you're most definitely qualified to talk about.

The problem with Eve retention is the fact that new players drift into the game without any sense of direction or opportunity. No one leads them to incursions, L4s, manufacturing, etc... Their main experience is trying to make a mining corp, getting curbstomped by marmite, and quitting the game.