EVE General Discussion

Where is the evidence it is a problem?





You keep on saying balance but frankly after a decade of nerfs ganking is the single most punished activity in EVE.



Actually CCP has said that ganking has no impact on numbers and if anything is good for player retention.



More PvP. Its getting ever more clear that as PvP in highsec has been reduced due to nerfs player retention has gone down.

"Actually CCP has said that ganking has no impact on numbers and if anything is good for player retention."


Well myself and lots of others have never believed that comment, yes I saw him make it, but I still think there was a tad of.....misinformation.

Given they have spent the better part of the last 5-6 years doing the exact opposite of what they found I would say they are being honest.

But then anyone can see that player retention has gone down as safety has gone up over the last few years

I failed IRL because the 'mechanics' were stacked against me and the State outnumbered me hundreds of thousands to one. I put in between 12 and 18 hours a day and saw it all evaporate to taxes. In the end though, it wasn't taxes that did me in. It were but charges against me I didn't have time to defend against. For one, no proof for those allegations was required because childcare had the power to intervene based on loose indicators- and secondly, the time required by me to defend against this mockery took up the time I needed to produce and sell my software. So I went bankrupt, was put on welfare and am spending my time flying internet spaceships, playing with the kids whilst protecting my family from childcare. My house was declared uninhabitable (seemed fine to me- didn't live up to 'modern standards'. Apparently, property isn't what it used to be.

You need not believe any of what I just told you -- you weren't here. You don't have access to the files. You don't know me. It is, however, my story -- and yup, it is a failure alright. I'm now 37 and I'm right back to when I was 17 yo. I do not seek your pity, but I can't answer your question without elaborating somewhat- without allowing you a glimpse at the man behind the mask.

This is about as Brokky as you can get. A game is but a game, I know that. But what you see, what you get on comms, is still very much me.

There. I said it. Some things -the most important things- I got right but my self-employed business was shut down and my house publicly sold. Epic fail! That's where you end up for sticking to your principles, for trying to make a difference in a world ruled by pencilpushers. I still hold on to these principles in-game too, so personally I'm hardly roleplaying: I live as far outside of 'law controlled territories' as possible because in my experience, there are always those who are above it and stomp on the little guy.

I was the little guy. And yes I will despise spacelawyers because of RL lawyers.

Tears? No. Not from me. I pity the world we leave for our kids; yet there was nothing I could do to prevent it. "Have friends"? We didn't have the numbers. Big organisations are stomping all over your freedom, yet the cries for more legislation go on and on. New Eden is a better world. No matter how hard you scam someone, the damage is only a tiny fraction of what people will do to each other in real life; yet the principles apply the same. You'll see organisations forming. You'll hear the cries for more 'regulation'. You'll see the little guy, the small gang, struggling and trying to strike out for themselves. It's all very similar in a make-belief world -- or at least, I can draw parallels.

Does this answer your question?

cool story bro

And it may be hey make similar mistakes here, but as of yet it seem the choices they've implemented are fine.

So mission running only takes a bunch of disposable ships on disposable alts and can generate billions of income in under a minute if target selection is done right? OK, I'm game for that.

When you say "people like you" you mean "normal players" right? Their community states overwhelmingly that there's balance issues with gankers, this is from victims and gankers alike (being that I've not once been ganked but have ganked otehrs hundreds of times) and they listen to their community, look into it and develop balancign changes. That all seems like a good thing to me. It seems like your issues is that you're one of the players crying about how your super easy gameplay won't be super easy forever and upset that CCP aren't catering to your minority.

Actually it turns out if you interact you play longer, that doesn't have to involve shooting or being shot, simply being in a player corp extends playtime. This is why one of the other things I believe CCP should be looking at is the ridiculous state of wardecs that effectively renders highsec corps unusable. Additionally, PvP doesn't require ganking. They've added citadels in an effort to boost conflict and I imagine they will add more methods of generating conflict going forwards. while I see ganking as something that should stay in game it should by no means be the primary driver for highsec conflict.

Consumption isn't only from combat. If anything at least 50% of game activity has to be creation to maintain balance, so with PvP combat not being the only source of consumption, that tells me that less than half of the game needs to be PvP combat. Again though, PvP isnlt only ganking. CCP could in fact remove ganking (not that they should) and generate other methods of creating conflict and maintain balance.

"Stands to reason that less pvp means less need to pve some isk and both mean fewer jumps. As your numbers show, reducing the PvP in highsec has not been good for the game."

My numbers don't show that at all. what they show is that while activity is reducing in highsec, the relative amount of PvP combat in highsec is increasing, thus if anything it shows that an increased amount of PvP losses per player in highsec reduces activity.

The lower retention and sudden discovery that people who pvp stay longer would say otherwise.


You keep on saying gankers are earning billions, I don't think you have any understanding of ganking.


No I mean people like you, most EVE players don't care about gankers.

The quote was very clear, they said people who pvp play for longer.



"According to dotlan, 2015 was 12% down on highsec kills from 2014"

That's not a rise.

Let me be clear in this, almost every single ship loss in EVE is via pvp. 12% fewer ships getting killed is a massive reduction in content and you can probably tie that to the changes that have been going on for the last few years. Tippia went and looked at barge ganking and compared pre and post barge changes/nerfs and found fewer were being killed in 2015 compared to 2011. We also know that the barge changes coupled with crimewatch almost wiped out the content around jetcans. Over the years highsec content has been progressively nerfed and at the same time player retention has gone down.

Reversing the changes to ganking is not the magic bullet but it will greatly help given ganking is the only risk haulers and miners ever face in highsec. We also need to revamp ships such as barges to promote pvp not discourage it, undo some of the changes made to haulers such as the deep space transports unchangeable fleet bay, and stop these endless additions and nerfs that add more safety to EVE. Wardecs need to actually work, bounty hunting needs to actually work.

After years of CCP listening to people like you we have ended up with a much more boring game and that shows with the lower retention rates.

If ganking was causing players to quit then why was the EVE population rising at it fastest rate when ganking was far easier than today?

Why is it that as safety in highsec has gone up we have seen player retention falling?


Clearly your argument that ganking hurts the game simply isn't true.

Only when ganking was at its height the game saw its largest growth so again you post rubbish with no basis in fact.

Again, the discovery was that interaction makes people stay longer, not PvP. And the changes they have been implemented have been since the drop in retention.

Sure I do, you guys just love to pretend gankers live in poverty so you can justify crying when CCP balances mechanics.

Prove it. CCP seem to be putting time in developing balance changes to it and they have a pretty good idea about what people interact with.

Feel free to find that quote. I'm pretty sure they spoke about player interaction, not shooting other players in the face. There are plenty of players who don;t shoot other players that have been playing for years.

I didn't say it was a rise. Are yo uactually reading before you ragepsot or are you just mashing your fists into your keyboard while chowing down on cheesy poofs? HS PvP combat went down 12%, HS jumps went down 23%, therefore the amount of HS PvP combat went down at a lower rate and thus as a relative statistic, the amount of PvP per jump went up. What that shows is the more PvP there is per player, the less players there are, and since you seem to think correlation and causation are the same, more PvP causes less activity.

"Reversing the changes to ganking is not the magic bullet but it will greatly help"
No it won't, it wouldn't even remotely help. The only think it would help is helping gankers feel great for putting in basically zero effort.

"We also need to revamp ships such as barges to promote pvp not discourage it"
Why? The game isn't only about shooting other people. What you effectively want is the game to be stripped of it's depth and turned into a PvP arena game, so we can all just use disposable ships and not care about consequence.

"After years of CCP listening to people like you we have ended up with a much more boring game and that shows with the lower retention rates."
Then leave. If you don't like the game and don't like the way CCP are taking it, get out. If you're gonna stay, get used to CCP not caving into you whining and handing you easy gameplay.