Player Features and Ideas Discussion

allowing -10.0 players to sit in jita popping wardeccers sounds great

The analysis at fanfest supports the claim that ganking is not bad for new players. In fact, it suggests exactly the opposite.

You are correct that it proves nothing, but here is the thing, you can't prove claims like that. Proofs take place in mathematical and pure logic systems. When it comes to empirical work and hypotheses, you cannot prove them like you would a mathematical theorem. Instead, what you do is look at the evidence and evaluate the relative validity of different hypotheses.

For example, the hypotheses:

H1: Ganking is bad for new players.
H2: Ganking is not bad for new players.

Then you'd evaluate the efficacy of these hypotheses relative to the data. A very common way of doing this is problematically, that is we'd evaluate the probabilities:

Pr(H1|E) and,
Pr(H2|E).

Further, if we not that H2 is the negation of H1, we can re-write it as,

Pr(H1|E),
Pr(~H1|E).

And we can make use of Bayes theorem,

Pr(H1|E) = P(E|H1)*Pr(H1)/Pr(E).

That is how likely is the evidence, E, given that H1 is true. And Pr(H1) is the initial subjective probability that H1 is true, which should not be either 0 or 1.

Thus, given that H1 is true, ganking is bad for new players, how likely is it that we'd see that players who are ganked stay in game the longest our of all the players in the sample? We should expect such evidence to be unlikely--i.e. small. Thus, the left hand side should decline in value.

Conversely we'd expect P(E|~H1) to be higher, thus, irrespective of your initial prior probability of H1, you should move more towards accepting ganking is not bad for new players. If you refuse to accept this without some valid reason there is a word that describes you: dogmatist.

In short, barring some sort of big blunder on CCP's part, of which we have not a shred of evidence to support this, after that fanfest presentation people should be less inclined to view ganking in a negative light when it comes to new players. If you want to continue to hold onto your initial beliefs despite this evidence you are simply being dogmatic in your views.

No.

Agreed. How difficult is it to understand that this game is a PvP game? If I can lock up an 'innocent' ship in highsec and cycle guns quickly and blow up that ship before CONCORD shows up, don't you think the devs designed it that way and that is what they wanted?

Now I know ganking has been nerfhammered into the ground but the basics of it is still around. CCP doesn't want conflict to stop occuring in highsec or they would have already removed it. Conflict is good and keeps the circlulation going and the paranoia at a certain level to ensure the person at the keyboard is alive.

I haven't seen the presentation and haven't the time to watch it. Could you summarize the stats in numbers please:

How many new players per month?
How many stay in game?
How many who stayed were ganked?
How many who left were ganked?
How many who stayed said it was because they were ganked?
How many who left said it was because they were ganked?

That would give a clear view of whether ganking is toxic or not.

To be clear I am neither pro or anti ganking, just interested in the numbers.

There is only one additional target that I think this so called privateer license could realistically open up. Currently even without performing any hostile actions, if a pilot has a security rating less than -5 they can be attacked on sight. What the privateer license should open up is pvp access to the pilots that have a security status less than 0 as well.

Paying for a so called privateer license would then open up a range of new targets that can be hunted in high sec.

For this system it may be necessary to purchase multiple licenses as security ratings are based upon empire standings within the 4 factions, so naturally each faction would manage their own privateers.

Okay going by memory here.....

They went in and got a sample of 80,000 players, so as to exclude alts.
CCP then went a categorized them into three categories:

Killed illegally in their first 15 days (e.g. ganked)
Killed legally in their first 15 days (war dec, dual, etc.)
Not killed in their first 15 days.

They found that,

1% were ganked.
14% killed legally.
85% were not killed at all.

Then they looked at how long players stayed with the game in the three categories:

Longest playing: Those who were ganked.
Second longest: Those killed legally.
Shortest: Those not killed at all.

So, at the end of the day, the notion that ganking causes newbros to bail on the game does not fit at all with that presentation.

Actually, I don't know if this is true or not. But two thoughts,

The categorizing was for those killed or not killed in the first 15 days. So their sample might have been over those players who stayed at least that long.

If they didn't put that restriction in there, then yes, with random sampling you can get this kind of outcome. And yea, if that guy left after 30 minutes and did not lose a ship...yeah, he'd likely be counted as not being killed.



The question they were looking at was, "Is ganking bad for the new player," in terms of retention time in game, and there the presentation said, "No."

I'd highly suggest you go watch that again, as you got it wrong. Just to clarify, though, I went and looked up the conclusion slide from that presentation. Focus your attention on the last line.

So... for a fee, effectively remove CONCORD for everyone but the holder. Nix any thought of that being available to an Alpha clone. Seriously... they want the full Monty, they can pay for it.


In the end, however, you might as well ask that CCP remove CONCORD completely. Lets be fair and egalitarian here.