EVE General Discussion

Yes, it's called a hyperbole. It's an exaggeration of the facts to make a point. The point she is making is that CCP focus heavily on PvP aspects of the game like the abomination they call the new sov system while PvE is rarely iterated on, and many players don't like that. There's a viewpoint that the current roadmap isn't one that is supported by all players, and that improvements to PvE are needed too. CCP would seem to agree as they have started looking at PvE improvements to roll out in the next few years.

Perhaps, but the points being made are "EvE population is dropping" and "I believe this is due to lack of focus on PvE". Both of those are valid viewpoints whether you agree or not.

I imagine it was a "This is the primary competition for EVE seeing as EVE was built using Elite as inspiration, and that's a lot of sales for such a new game". I wouldn't say E:D is that heavy on classic PvE, it's pretty PvP-like even when NPCs are interdicting you.

I'm sure some people would. There's a large number of players put off of games when they can be easily trolled by the existing vets. It's one of the biggest complaints against survival games like Rust. I'd not be surprised at all if more people would stay if the PvE experience was fuller.

Well I certainly know from my own experience that the game is less entertaining to me than it used to be which has led me to cancel subscription on 12 of my accounts. ACU isn't a perfect measure but it's a fairly good indicator.

"Btw. read Tippias replies"
As a general rule I skim read Tippias responses at most because the vast majority of the time they are troll posts.

Eve is not dying. It has had a subscription increase almost every single year since it became live.

Everyone in Eve PVPs, Everyone in eve PVEs, 62% of players can be either/or in that statement.

Most players dont like major changes to games at first because they are use to playing a certain way. And major changes mean they have to do something different. So really most players may not like a change because its radical. Like the citadel thing... destroyable stations. What happens to all my stuff? Is it like a POS/ wreck and can be looted by others? I wont be able to stay docked and retrieve or firesale my stuff? Thats scary, dont like it, im moving to WH if that happens!.

I agree pve should be improved, and it has already been worked on, the statistic 62% are pve'ers is just an example how people twist and change things to fit there own agenda, thats why people ask for evidence because people know the statistic is not 100% accurate

Effort-post pt.1

The first problem with the graph Indahmawar uses is that it's for visual effect rather than precision. So if you'll permit, we'll use this one instead. It's supposed to be the same data, but less “prettyfied”.

What this allows us to do is reverse-engineer the numbers behind it. We can simply measure the size of each data point, which the final presentation icons don't really allow for. It's dirty and ugly and imprecise, but it's as good as it gets short of CCP giving us the raw numbers. We also have an immediate problem of interpretation: is the relative size a matter of area or of radius? Picking the former when the latter is the case will create exaggerated differences further on down the line; picking the latter when the former is the case means the differences will be incorrectly understated.

For this, I'm picking the radius interpretation, meaning any differences we see may be larger than what we calculate.

Measuring the blobs and normalising the whole thing gives us this matrix (the two time measurements each have their own individual normalisation since they're continuous events the way the rest of the stuff on the list is):

                 Pro    Entr   Agg    Soc    Trad
--------------------------------------------------
Logon Days       1.00   0.864  0.773  0.591  0.591
Session Length   1.00   0.957  0.739  0.587  0.652
--------------------------------------------------
Undocking        0.96   0.96   0.88   0.78   0.92
Highsec Travel   0.76   0.88   0.60   0.60   0.84
Nullsec Travel   0.64   0.32   0.54   0.36   0.16
WH Travel        0.84   0.56   0.54   0.34   0.20
Missions         0.56   0.80   0.44   0.48   0.68
Mining           0.54   0.76   0.36   0.38   0.56
S&I              0.68   0.88   0.20   0.26   0.40
Trading          0.92   0.92   0.54   0.36   0.68
Connected        0.88   0.60   0.74   0.70   0.38
Chat             1.00   0.88   0.88   0.88   0.56
Fleet            0.80   0.54   0.60   0.40   0.32
Logi             0.92   0.68   0.68   0.30   0.32
Tackling         0.76   0.54   0.66   0.38   0.34
Kills & Decs     0.80   0.12   0.68   0.16   0.08
Assists          1.00   0.40   0.96   0.30   0.16

Neat. So what? We can get a better sense how a “player” in each segment engages in each of the activities, relative to each other and relative to other activities. We can see that everyone does everything to some degree — not very shocking. We can kind of interpret these numbers as “percentages of maximum attention” or some such: how much does a player in a given category do of a specific activity relative to the maximum attention any one activity can have? So an entrepreneur gives missions an 80%-of-max level of attention.

But above all, we can now start doing aggregates. How much is each activity done (since that's the point of contention)? Here is where the percentages Indahmawar misinterprets can actually be of use: we can use them to spread these attention scores across all players, weighing each score against how many people are in that category, and sum the whole thing up (and scale the whole thing up by ×1,000 to make it easier to read).

                 Pro    Entr   Agg    Soc    Trad   ∑
---------------------------------------------------------
Undocking        288    240     70     93    230    922
Highsec Travel   228    220     48     72    210    778
Nullsec Travel   192     80     43     43     40    398
WH Travel        252    140     43     41     50    526
Missions         168    200     35     57    170    630
Mining           162    190     28     45    140    566
S&I              204    220     16     31    100    571
Trading          276    230     43     43    170    762
Connected        264    150     59     84     95    652
Chat             300    220     70    105    140    836
Fleet            240    135     48     48     80    551
Logi             276    170     54     36     80    616
Tackling         228    135     53     46     85    547
Kills & Decs     240     30     54     19     20    363
Assists          300    100     77     36     40    553

The rightmost column gives us an activity score for each activity: how much attention does it get from each player category and how common is that category? Missions score 630 pts, in no small part because professionals are plentiful and do them a lot; kill assists reaches 553, in no small part because entrepreneurs are plentiful, meaning they contribute more than the aggressors do, simply through sheer numbers. Trading and chatting (and undocking) are at the top of the list — it's almost as if this was an economy-based MMO or something.

This is probably as close as we can get to “how many percent do X” — out of a maximum score of 1,000 each activity gets some fraction of that from the combined attention given by each player category. But even then, it's a very gross misrepresentation of “doing” something in-game. By that interpretation, just going by the score would suggest that almost one quarter of the players never trade, which is obviously nonsense.

Yeah, right up until they stopped publishing subscription numbers. I wonder why they did that?

But you're only asking for proof because you are assuming the opposite to be generally accepted as true. If someone says "EvE is about PvP" you don't demand proof of that, yet that is just as much of an assumption as any other. You make demands, like asking for proof of something said in passing or repeatedly asking an unrelated question as a way to disrupt the conversation.

I've seen you, a lot. I've watched you repeat the exact same thing time and again, it's pointless, it's boring and it's non-constructive. It's why I have no interest in attempting to have serious discussions with you.

OK, then the PvP that is known as missions needs to be improved because it's currently too static and terrible. When you start doing this you are literally arguing about the label, not about the activity. It's no surprise from you though as it's yet another one of your diversionary tactics to derail the points being made.

It's not supposed to be 100% accurate, like the ACU, dotlan statistics or the HP stats it's a quick and dirty method of getting a feel for how many people do what. If you agree PvE should be worked on, then what's the argument? Purely that someone used an inaccurate stat to put across a point that you agree with?

I disagree. All that would do is provide further reductions in difficulty for people that want to hide behind Concords skirt while still attacking people in highsec. There' should be more ways to disrupt people in highsec but you should actually have to take some risk to do it. Risking a disposable ship is not really risk. I do find it funny how some people want more ways to totally trash other people's ability to play the game but want to be able to easily avoid exactly the same happening to them.

The part of missions that should be changed is how repetitive they are and how static the spawns and inherent risk is in the mission itself. There should also be more failure states as very few exist. At the end of the day, it's one of the the first parts of the game people see, and it will likely be one they revisit a lot, so it should be entertaining enough to keep people subbed.

Nonsense. Most of the people complaining about PVE aren't even PVE players. A PVE player likes PVE for what it is, and probably cycles through the various types of it. Most people who claim PVE needs 'help' are mission runners to afraid to try anything else.

CCP must have learned over the years that adding more 'content' to a game that already has loads people don't use only creates demand for more content. It's a never ending cycle.

I'm serious about this too, I NEVER see the people who complain about PVE spend any time in the PVE forums. The problem is their lack of creativity, not any lack of pve in EVE Online.

What I'm saying and doing is OK. I'm actually allowed to have opinions you know. You disagreeing with them doesn't make what I say "not OK".

Skillpoints trading is coming next month, so will be interesting to see what happens to numbers of new players.

I know I'll be stripping off several characters and then closing those accounts as I won't need them anymore, but I hope it brings in new players too.

There is no such thing, only opinions you agree or disagree with.

No, I don't. I don't even agree that there's been a net buff to mission runner safety. Anyone that knew what they were doing before was just as safe then as they are now. Effectively what you're complaining about is that they've tidied up some of the systems so newer players don't get caught out so easily first time round, that you actually have to put in some bloody effort, which I'm happy with.

To do the job well should take effort, it shouldn't just the "the way".

No matter what fit they have, they will still be the ones already being shot by NPCs, unless you're suggesting that when a hostile warps in the NPCs despawn and they get automatically repped to full. Making it easier to disrupt a mission as it stands now would simply mean the player has to evade, leading to the same lack of conflict problems plaguing null, and putting even more players off.

LOL! No, your problem is that people are using techniques to avoid being killed and you don't want them to have those. If it were mechanical, then they simply wouldn't be able to be ganked, yet freighters, miners and mission runners still die because they didn't choose to mitigate their risk properly. If anything the changes they've made simply offer more choice to be less protected and potentially earn more or be more protected and earn less. Again, the only people who are helped by default are newbies.

And mate, ganking is easy. It takes nearly no skillpoints, isk investment or even training. Hell I had a 10 day old alt blapping frigates on the Niarja gate with ships made from pocket change, and I risk what? A 1m isk thrasher. Ooh, scary. One half decent implant or blueprint drop and he's set for life. Stop pretending gankers have it tough you joker.

You want to know who has the raw deal? The AGs. They get nearly no reward, risk getting ganked themselves (usually in ships that actually cost isk) and have one hell of a time getting on grid during the 10 second window they have to stand a chance of stopping a gank.