EVE General Discussion

In fact, let's run the numbers again and not assume anything special about the highseccers — definitely not something as silly as their having 50 alts each. Hell, let's even ignore the more sensible character counts and go for the really naïve ones CCP have done, where every last non-trial character is counted, even those who have never trained a single skill or hardly even undocked.

The FF2012 presentation (which is still the last time I saw them compare the two numbers), put the naïve character distribution at 71.5% highsec; 28.5% elsewhere. Quant's data mining that was presented at the last FF and on reddit put the expected account per player at 1.5; the average character per account at just above 2, meaning an average of three characters per player.

Highsec is still the place to trade for basics and essentials like craptons of base minerals and skill books. So let's do the very conservative assumption that everone who lives outside of highsec has one (1) alt character in highsec, and let's look at a statistically representative sample of 1,000 characters.

285 of them are not in highsec. At our assumed 1:2 split between highsec/non-highsec alts for these players, these characters represent 142½ actual players.
715 of the characters are in highsec. Per the same split, 142½ of those are just outsider alts.
572½ characters are owned by “true highseccers”, who have three characters each. These characters therefore represent 191 players.

The 72/28 split in character distribution has translated into 57/43 split in players. Yay! Highsec is a majority! But the majority is less than a third the size of what the character count would suggest (14pp rather than 44pp).

What if we look at the more sensible character count where all the unused and untrained alts aren't included? The same presentation suddenly shifted the character population to 65.3% highsec, 34.7% outsiders. Let's do the maths again
347 ousider characters yields 173½ players.
653 highsec characters - 173½ alts yeilds 479½ true highsec characters.
479½ characters at 3 per player yields 155 true highsec players.

The 65/35 split in character distribution has translated into a 48/52 split in players. Oh my, no more majority… What looked like a 30pp majority actually turns out to be a 4pp minority. All because we make two fairly reasonable assumptions: that averages are indeed average across both types of players, and that the non-highseccers only have one alt each in highsec.



So what about the map? For one, there's the sample bias of picking pilots in space. Being in space in highsec is a fair bit different than being in space in low or null — in the latter two, being in space without a plan is a bad plan; the the former, milling about half AFK is done habitually. Oh, and w-space doesn't show up and all, so we're ignoring something on the order of one in twenty players.

Then there's the matter of density. There are some 1,200 highsec systems; almost 3,300 null, and 700 lowsec ones. With more people being actually in space, rather than safely docked up, but crammed into a third the number of systems, is it any surprise that the heatmap shows up differently for the two? No. Even less so when you (again) consider that in high, the population tends towards concentration — there are “best systems” for trade, PvE, mining etc, and there are obvious single routes to connect them all. In low and null, you probably want to stay away from other players, outside of a select few corp and alliance HQ systems. Even if w-space was shown — a place where docking up happens in one very special system — there are 2,500 of those systems so those brave few who are in there are very spread out and would hardly even register.


All of that just based on numbers. The heretical idea that some true highseccers might still want to align themselves with the (supposed) non-high candidates would erode the ”majority” even further…

Good post.
However, they have already boiled it down to the life of accounts used mostly in an area of space by the highest SP character's activity.
i.e. During that process are you going to tell me that they don't know what the proportions are simply because it was a different type figure that was released but a very similar study to what we are talking about?

So, on one hand, we have people saying that the average High Sec players are too apathetic or dim to vote and on the other, they are taking special measures to use different IP addresses, home networks, machines and e-mail addresses ... riiiight.

1) Is the IP address used the same?
2) Is the same machine used?
3) Is the same e-mail used?
4) Are multiple accounts carrying on conversations at the same time?

That is off the top of my head. I am sure there are more ways to find out how many players you have. Consider how few complaints there were when bots were banned (rather accurate there).

For starters:
Exclusive? How often do you see two people playing EVE on the same computer at the same time?

For starters. MACs are not unique or exclusive — the wiki page even explicitly explains how and why. For another, you just demonstrated yourself why it can't be used to pin it on one person. The only bet you have is if the person is multiboxing and if it's all done on the same computer and if the client records that hardware information and if that information is actually sent to and collected by CCP. If two people use the same computer, and you rely on this unreliable piece of data, you get a false positive.

So it doesn't really do what's needed for the kind of precision you're after.

I suppose they have been off for you long enough already, so long that you returned back.

Want to sell your vote?

Manufacturers have begin making hardware and software that continuously randomise MAC addresses without any prompting, and as mentioned. So yes. And even then, the whole idea hinges on the client collecting and sending that data, which as mentioned will create tons of false positives.


I'm saying that in spite of knowing more about this than you do, CCP cannot produce any better than an estimate with a 20%-wide error margin. So yes, the statistics can very obviously be thrown off significantly.

None of your ideas work the way you want them to work, nor do they work for the purpose you want. Trying to combine these inherently imprecise and unreliable data points will most likely just create even more false positives and false negatives that make the whole thing even more unreliable, since previously dead sure predictions will not improve, but will rather be mixed up with all kinds of uncertainties.

No, it means that you, your ISP, CCP's ISP, and the peering networks between the two of you have no reason to respond to information requests from a local non-LE like CCP.

On the flip side of that coin, an LE the size of CCP would just keel over and die if they had to identify all the individuals behind a 300k:ish group of accounts with the required degree of precision.

In the same way that many (would-be) politicians claim to represent people without any evidence of them doing so, yes this is a "high sec agenda". I don't think enough players who play primarily in hi-sec and concern themselves mostly with common hi-sec endeavours care enough about CSM elections for this to be an agenda defined, however loosely, by sec status. I can't say for sure, but the fact that very few CSM candidates who run on what they call hi-sec agendas get in, seems to indicate this.

Two questions: Are you familiar with the concept of representative democracy (Or, as it is in this case, representation by delegate), and how would you identify whether CSM members are unknown? A followup question could be whether you can discern that CSM members are unknown due to factors such as some players not caring and thus never bothering to look more into the CSM after seeing it on splash screens, or causes more related to some hidden "null-sec agenda"?

Because the issues aren't just that we can only make educated guesses about distribution of voter turnout, but also that plenty of low- and null-sec candidates have vast experiences with missions, or mining, or industry, or... that can make them as appealing to the stereotypical hi-sec miner or missioner as they presumably are to their comrades back in null or low.
Furthermore, since the CSM is not an assembly like the ones we know from the real world, but are more akin to advisory boards that government instutitions, educational institutions and companies use (For example, governments often use advisory boards made up of relevant NGO's, experts and industries on many areas, while universities often have expected employers of their graduates come with input and feedback). It's not a parliament that legislates, it's a sounding board that responds. This means that any agenda/feedback that a plurality or majority of CSM members share/agrees on is given to CCP, as a list of allegedly good and productive ideas on the subject. CCP can then listen (Or not), and see how many threadnaughts happen if they decide not to take the arguments into account.
So having candidates competing on their agendas will most often in reality be broad ideas in general areas, and then a long resume of the expertise they expect to bring to the table.

Three things immediately comes to mind: First, you, and those like you, are the reason why the political system in your country is bad (Unless of course you live in a FPTP system, then it's a reasonable reaction to being a minority); two, you don't get what the CSM is; three, you think that what benefits some (Presumably null-sec?) corps and alliances is contrary to the wishes of hi-sec.

...

We're back to people who don't vote, and who often argue against voting, being mad that the CSM allegedly represents those who allegedly does vote. At least you didn't suggest disenfranchising people, so you're better than Jenshae.