EVE General Discussion

The chicken of chickens, the guys who docked on us in Amarr and refused to come out despite outnumbering us at about 5:3 ratio, speaks of risk aversion.

Then again, that behavior probably makes him an expert on the topic.

Coming from CFC pilot lol. You forgot to post on alt m8?

Entering CFC space in a Heron fitted with a MWD and cloak. Risk adverse?
Fleeing to high through bubbles from a Wolf in the Heron. Risk adverse?

I am posting on an alt.
CFC doesn't exist.
We always pewpew when its time to pewpew.

Next noob please

This is the crux of the matter. This is a video game. You aren't going to suffer cataclysmic real life consequences or death for losing.

It is human nature to prefer winning over losing. But if no one will undock without being convinced of near certain victory, that is going to cause stagnation. I'm not sure any amount of mechanics tinkering by CCP can force content into an arena where people won't engage without a 90%+ chance of victory.

It just seems that the players themselves choose this path. So many want steady, risk free content (read kills). I have roamed pretty far and wide in New Eden and it amazes me how much of the player base just huddles in their little corner with a huge pile of ships and ISK, constantly accumulating more. They undock to curbstomp anything weaker or less numerous that wanders into their cave and they hide any time a superior force moves through the area. They don't go actively looking for content. They want it brought to them, either at the local hub undock or their nearest low/nullsec chokepoint stargate.

Right now, the "bittervets" and the people that actually understand how the game works, are relying on dwindling number of casual or just plain dumb players for content. People that don't watch dscan, people that fly their PLEX-bought faction BS into hubs during a wardec or use it to solo rat in low, that don't fit tank to their mining barges or use scouts/webbers to move their freighter.

The players who are just plain clueless, and the ones who have the stones to go run around solo in hostile space with expensive ships, are providing content for everyone else who just want to engage in a succession of risk free ganks. The players who take risks, for whatever reason, are providing content for people who don't. And if we just keep getting hopelessly stomped every time we're going to stop taking risks. The idiots will eventually learn or quit. When you get to the point where no one will undock without victory being almost certain, you will have a problem.

You can spout off about how "this is EVE" and "there's not supposed to be any fair fights." That's lovely and entirely unhelpful. Once you reach a critical mass of players who can accurately assess the risks and will not undock unless that risk is extremely low, you are going to have a very boring game. I have felt myself getting to the point where I don't want to take fights at all in anything bigger than a T1 cruiser because I have to assume I'm going to be baited and blobbed, or he's got an OGB or logi alt on the adjacent stargate. I can fly with a blob myself, but that's just hitting F1 and jumping when the FC says jump. It's boring.

Short version, if you want to break this risk averse stagnation, you can make choices about how you play. You can dock up the instaloki, undock a HAC, leave behind the warm embrace of the 4-4 undock and go hunt targets in distant space. You can leave the logi alts and blob behind and just wander through a few dozen systems looking for mischief. Get off the stargate, leave the sebo'd Gnosis in the hangar, and figure out a way to gank those other assholes gatecamping at the other end of the pipe. Challenge yourself like you didn't train skills and grind ISK for years just to sit in one place every day hitting F1.

There is no law that says you have to play like a risk averse hermit. There's no law that says you can't pvp without 3 scouts, 2 logi and a pet falcon, or 20 corpmates waiting on the adjacent gate.

Go play like you want to have fun instead of worshipping little green numbers on zkillboard.

Right until you consider people that actually don't play every day. Who then would never be able to afford anything because their ships would blow up before they made the isk back.

The way to actually counter risk aversion is limitation of information. If all you know is that your opponent is in a cruiser.... then you have to guess more about engaging than if you know he is in a Thorax, or a Tengu.

Indeed, no hunt without prey, reads less experienced, careless or bored players. The essence of EvE combat is to trick people into a fight they will lose.

Regarding information to foster fights, less information is bad because it increases caution, false or misleading information is good because it creates (over-)confidence.

No, the problem is this thread starts off with the presumption that there is one correct way to play...the OPs way.

That and a continuing conflation of risk averse with loss averse.

Well, space AIDS is a no joke matter. It is serious business and has reaped untold number of lives.

No. Risk aversion is due to uncertainty. When people have a choice between an uncertain outcome and a certain one, they often pick the certain one even if the expected payoff of the uncertain outcome is higher. It is the uncertainty. Limiting information is a type of uncertainty.

The OP is correct in one regard...insurance is a mechanism for managing risk. Basically you pay a premium so that the outcome in the good and the bad state are pretty much the same. For example, if a person has income of 50,000 and faces a possible loss of 20,000 and there is an insurance market, and the risk of loss is 10%, that person would be willing to pay 2,000 for the insurance. If nothing bad happens the person gets 48,000. If something bad happens the person gets....48,000 (50,000 - 20,000 + 20,000 - 2,000 = 48,000). With insurance the person is indifferent between the good state and bad state (assuming all that matters is the loss of money). However, this is an ideal situation where the person is fully insured (less the premium). Given that information is often incomplete insurance is rarely complete (deductibles, and co-pays as well as limitations on coverage).

The insurance in the game is also incomplete. My guess the reason for this is so that PvP means something...you suffered somewhat of a (in-game) monetary loss.

And to add to this issue...people often behave....oddly. For example, consider these gambles:

You have an urn with 30 red balls, and 60 black and yellow balls. You don't know how many black and yellow balls, just that black and yellow balls sum to 30. Also the urns are thoroughly mixed so the underlying distribution is a uniform distribution.

Now, you can pick the following gambles:

Gamble A: You get $100 if a red ball is selected.
Gamble B: You get $100 if a black ball is drawn.

Most people will pick A even though A has a fairly low probability of winning and it could be that B has a high probability of winning.

And on the second round you are given a choice between:

Gamble C: You get $100 if you draw a red or yellow ball.
Gamble D: You get $100 if you draw a yellow or black ball.

Here, most people will go with gamble D. Problem is going with A then D is a violation of subjective expected utility theory....a paradox in essence.

A person prefers A to B iff Prob(Red) > Prob(Black) which implies there are less that 30 black balls...and more than 30 yellow balls

A person prefers C to D iff Prob(Red or Yellow) > Prob(Black or Yellow), but from choice of A over B, people are implicitly saying that the inequality is now reversed, that since Yellow > Black, then you should have picked gamble C.

Or an other very famous example, the Monty Hall problem from Let's Make a Deal. You have 3 doors to pick from, A, B, and C. Behind one door is a car. Behind the other two is a goat. Once the player makes the choice (for sake of argument lets say he picks B) Monty then opens one of the two remaining doors that does not have the car behind it--i.e. he shows you a goat, say door C. Then he asks the player, do you want to switch door A or stick with door B (the original choice). It is always strategically advantageous to switch. Switching leads to winning 2 out of 3 times. Sticking leads to a win 1 out of 3 times. You double your chances of winning by switching. But this is very, very counter intuitive.

Basically, when presented with choices under uncertainty, people behave...differently than what logic and math tell us. People tend not to like uncertainty, and they like unknown uncertainty even less.

So, if we want people to undock and fight...set insurance coverage to be full. You lost 50 million isk...no problem here is 50 million isk. But then PvP will be nothing but bragging rights and killboards. That way people will not have to deal with risk. And still, some people will still not like the uncertainty of PvP and dock up and stay docked up.