Assembly Hall

No something I have much use for, it is primarily used to determine probabilities with unknown paramaters.

I am no astrophysicist or weather forecaster. Subsequently I have never really studied Bayesian statistics.

I will admit it is an interesting concept for modelling especially things such as percentage of smokers (rising or falling) given a tax rate, using other economic indicators such as unemployment rates, CPI and the immigration rate. Especially given that the levels of immigration to a country from other countries with variable smoking rates varies from country to country.

Oh the drama of EVE online, its why I quit after playing the game for what was it, a year of active sub. I was so happy to come back and play the game when I heard it was having a free to play component now. I am coming here from Elite Dangerous btw, figured that would scratch my space game itch but the developers of that game are as clueless and incompetent as they come. I see now after having dipped my toes back into the currents of New Eden that CCP are just as incompetent, a lumbering dinosaur of a company struggling to survive as the world is marching by. What was innovative a decade ago is ancient now, you can talk about participation trophies and safety blankets till you are blue in the face, but the core problem has been there since day one and it has nothing to do with EVE as a game, it transcends it and is inherited by every environment that hosts a combination of PvP and PvE. It is why Elite is a dead game, it is why EVE is a dying game. The issue is quite simple, but has far reaching ramifications.

Most players are not inherently hostile when you drop them in a sandbox like EVE, they will poke around, try to get their bearings, build an experience for themselves. However, there is a much smaller, very vocal, very dedicated community for which the game is actually built, the social degenerates that delight in nothing short of ruining some else's experience through non-consensual interaction. Nothing gets these people quite as hard as putting someone in a position where they are helpless while eliminating every variable that would actually present real challenge. These people if you can even call them that will lobby up and down the forums using every justification under the sun for why the thing they are doing is the right thing, after all the people who made the game advertise it as gritty and dark, its all part of the experience. This is of course complete and utter horseshit, the game is made for these people because CCP knows no matter how many numbers they bleed out these hyper dedicated fanboys to whom they cater so exclusively will keep them afloat for a while at least.

So now that we have gotten that little premise out of the way, how does one deal with this situation? Well that is a decidedly difficult dilemma and I have yet to see a game do anything about it to actually reach a balance, there are notable examples we can examine in EVE and Elite for the sake of discussion but in the end only genuine effort from the developer would make anything happen and that is not something I see CCP caring about, the game has barely changed in time I have left after all. Still if this continues and nothing is done about it the pot will keep bubbling and the game will keep bleeding population till it dies while the people at the wheel sit on their hands and pretend their vision IS THE TRUE VISION, then again its something I would expect from people who are so poor at adapting to the changing market.

Lets get on with it then. Both EVE and Elite have a problem, as I discussed earlier it is a root issue common to that environment and its that the games are designed for people who get their kicks from forcing others into interactions they don't want and or can't possibly succeed at while pumping their chest and yelling how good they for having won a rigged contest in which only they as the aggressor had any hope of winning. Both games allow a hostile party to engage a target without their consent and allow them in most cases to manipulate the battlefield in such a way that any though of fair combat is out of the window. In both games the risk to loss ratio is entirely arbitrary, you get into a tiny ship and you can feck the best of them if you bring enough buddies.

Oh why don't you just bugger off again? Your attempt to extrapolate from a game to RL behavior is old and tiresome and stupid beyond belief. Perhaps if you weren't so bad at the game and life in general you'd have a better outlook (hey, if you can extrapolate to real life so can the rest of us).

Seriously, what happened? Were you mining and AFK when somebody warped in a flew over to your badly fit retriever and blow it to bits or did you overload your freighter and die to a gank group because you were foolish?

And lets not mention the one bit of evidence that shows when a player is killed illegally in their first 15 days they stay longer than those killed legally and even longer that those who are not killed in their first 15 days at all.

Whiners like you should literally leave. You do not get the game. At all. This is a PvP game and in this game I can shoot you in the face if I am willing to accept the consequences...which means I can shoot you in HS, LS, NS or a wormhole.

Proving what? You know, literally, nothing about me. You have assumed that because I oppose your views I must be some sort of degenerate IRL, but you know nothing. You do not know that yesterday I and my family wept as we had to put one of our dogs down that we have cared for since she was a puppy (11 years). A dog that developed bone cancer. A disease that she fought long and hard and that we helped her fight, but in the end a disease we could not beat. Yet because I have, on occasion ganked the odd miner here and there and participated in various Burn Jita/Amarr events, I am somehow a bad person IRL? Seriously, how about you just uninstall the game and leave because it is you who are the true cancer in the game. Your sanctimonious Bravo Sierra sickens and disgusts me.

Do you want to know why I don't have an issue with CODE. or other freighter ganking organizations...because the freighter pilot has the power to greatly reduce his likely hood of being ganked. Being ganked is pretty much a mathematical formula. Keep the value of your cargo below the given threshold and you will be far less attractive a target for ganking. If it is going to cost 400 million ISK to gank you, then do not put over 800 million in cargo in your freighter. If it is small enough in volume, use a blockade runner which is nearly ungankable in HS. Using a scout will solve most ganking problems. Using a JF will also eliminate ganking issues. Instead we get players who put 6 billion ISK worth of cargo in their freighter then are upset when they are ganked. The reaction should not be, "Oh that is terrible!" but, "Well geez what did you expect with 6 billion ISK worth of cargo?"

As for miner ganking, of the limited solo miner ganking I have done I have meet some...surprising results. One guy was totally cool with being ganked by another player. I found that so refreshing I sent him the ISK value of his loss and an email encouraging him to stay in game and even consider trying PvP. Another got away from my gank attempt and we had a nice convo where he talked about how he liked that kind of challenge.

My point here is that ganking other players, even new ones, does not have to turn out lie you might logically think it does. In fact CCP's own analysis suggests quite the opposite. On a broader scale what it suggests is that when other players interact with other players it promotes player retention. Meeting new people, making new friends, and having new experiences...that will help game retention the most. Changing the game so that players can remain isolated to a greater degree will not help at all. So forcing interactions...that is good for the game because it is that interaction that keeps people engaged. That you don't get that means you are part of the problem not the solution.

Actually I can infer a lot about you from how you carry yourself in a conversation, you know its a thing some humans are good at, and let me tell you, you make a terrible impression. If you want to pull the bullshit card of you don't act like you do when you are talking from behind the anonymity of the internet then be my guest but then you are being an ******* here consciously and with intent.

What I originally posted was a pretty in depth dissection of the root issue that is causing this game and others like it to lose players. I did not talk about strategies, or equating the game to real life or in fact any of the things you write in your posts. You are clueless and the only way you could have gotten offended as much as you have is if what I said cut pretty deep in how true it was about you.

I am sorry for your loss of the pet, its a terrible thing to lose something you love. I do not, however, in any way in fact, understand how this is supposed to illustrate to me anything about who you are. Going through a traumatic experience, although in this case lets face it its not the end of your world, does not make you a good person or a bad person. I fail to see how this ANYTHING to do with ANYTHING we are talking about.

You are also a hypocrite given how you opened up the discussion with me by leveling personal insults and putting in question my ability to interact with the game WHILE KNOWING NOTHING ABOUT ME. Only to huff and puff at me moments later when I said things about you from OBSERVING how you act instead of flinging **** at a wall and seeing what sticks.

You also don't have either the attention span or the processing power necessary to interpret what I actually said, you are giving it the best meaning you can in your limited understanding of it and I can't blame you much for it, but I can still blame you.

You are using the same tired excuses I heard from people across countless games protecting their precious safe one sided PvP space. You are a coward, you are ignorant and for all intents and purposes a poster child for the cancer that slowly kills interactive spaces that have great potential.

Given you are a little slow I put some of the more important things in bigger letters for you, I hope it helps, do try to read everything this time because otherwise you'll keep making an ass of yourself.

Continued @ Black Pedro

I have seen the sentiment that "We are in trouble and I know problems exist, but its hard ok?" use by a lot of people. I want you to understand that I hold no illusions about how difficult this task is and anyone who approaches it in any sort of meaningful discussion needs to realize this as well. However, that mindset is simply not good enough. The players having good ideas on how to fix these issues is also simply not good enough. This situation is way past "We are in deep ****!" and it requires an open and honest effort between players and devs to keep a place they love to be in and create in alive. Well lets face it, I am using the wrong term, no matter what happens EVE is going to live on for quite a while, it has a strong enough following to do so. What I am trying to motivate people to do is to fight against it becoming a mere shadow of its former self which is really what is happening to it right now.

The people who PvP are one part of an equation that makes as you've put it "EVE a living work of science fiction", the other being people who want to play in PvE scenarios. When you empower the people in only one part of that equation you effectively dehumanize the others since they are at least in this game very inherently linked. As you've put it people become "content" for others to enjoy, this is an unacceptable frame of mind. No one in their right mind will want to participate in an environment where their existence serves a purpose as a product for someone else to consume. This is only made more acutely present by the horrendous implementation of F2P into the EVE universe, a topic so poorly handled it is a discussion for another thread.

The way current PvP mentality goes it is the victim who is already powerless to do anything that is making the mistake of presenting themselves as a target. That is also how **** culture views the victim, a jarring comparison perhaps but one that needs to be made. People often think that just because they are emulating a behavior in a harmless medium it is ok for them to do it, it is not and it needs to change. Can you argue in return that bad things happen to good people and that its just part of simulating a gritty experience in this unique world trying to emulate the struggles we face in our own, sure. However, you need to consider that this is a game and most people in it need to have fun, not just one group. There is lack of balance and you fix that lack of balance not by taking things away from people who already have them (the PvPers) but by giving more agency to those who do not. No matter what argument is made in a vacuum the current state of the game leaves those who do not choose the path of PvP helpless. Give them means to defend themselves, force people who want to make a profit to really have to work for it if they want to pry it from the hands of others. If they are genuinely after the thrill of battle this should be a welcome change, it will make the fights more intense and the rewards that much more satisfying without leaving people on the other side with the feeling like the could not do anything. I know it is here that someone will jump in start spouting how this and that way of doing things will keep you alive, that is not a way to do it. Planning is passive, both sides do it but only one side has the agency to do something when an encounter takes place. Not only that but all those ridiculous things people describe doing are meant for people who have already fully integrated themselves into the game and in those cases the margin for error is slim. They also say that just not enjoying the PvE play style to its full effect is a valid way to stay alive, then when an argument like that is made why in the world does the other side get to do what they want? In either case most people will never make it to the stage where the current excuses for the broken system even work, there is no point in even discussing them.

So in the end I don't really have anything specific to tell you about how to fix the game as it is now, I'd be happy to go theory craft in a thread that isn't this if people want to do that but I view this place as one where awareness of these issues first needs to be cultivated.

As promised here is why I take the effort to have an open, lengthy conversation with anyone civil and willing to have it on this topic:
I have been playing lots of games for well over a decade of my life, in that time I have delved into many wondrous worlds, fought lots of skilled people in various tests of will and reflexes, I have traveled far and wide as one would put it. I do not limit myself to a given genre of game and I do not try to impose the play styles I like onto others. However, in all of that time I have seen a particular breed of person plague the game industry like a cancer. The dedicated PvPer. They are like locusts, swarming across the gaming landscape. They will enter the space enjoyed by other people who may not directly have the same mindset as them or for that matter be at all interested in doing what they are doing and aggressively convert that space to suit their desires. They will lobby, scream, beg, spam, threaten and do everything in their power to bring their one true hobby, PvP, into a place which may not in any way support such an activity. They drain resources from other development priorities and usually push out a larger portion of the population with their thrill seeking. It is a thrill they are after though, not actual challenge, dear me, those people are some of the most spineless worms I have met in my life. After all of that the game usually struggles, sometimes it withers, sometimes it outright dies, but these people then just move on to the next space they decide to invade.

Although you have some good points I think we have run up against a wall in our discussion. Its an issue I noticed with your posts when you originally responded to me, I figured you simply did not understand what I meant so I went into much greater detail to hopefully clarify that. The core issue that I have with your argument and is the thing I have been discussing revolves around the very core of the dynamic experiences of EVE.

That of the interaction is never fair.

Every example you have brought up in your post is an inherently PvP designed space, people enter the social contract you speak of when they enter it because it is quite plain with what interaction you can expect. Not only that but each of those spaces are designed to give both interacting parties in those settings the same level of agency. Skill and decision making decides the victor in those environments, that is not the case with EVE. The risk to reward ratio is also the same for both parties in all of those games, which it is not in EVE.

The way EVE handles the integration of PvP with PvE is outdated. Very outdated. It has thrived because it has largely gone unchallenged in the market due to having little to no competition from titles of the same genre for a long time. That is not the case anymore. In the time that EVE rode on without change on the gravy train of subscription straight into obsolescence the rest of the market evolved. There is a good reason no current commercially successful title handles player interaction like EVE does, it objectively does not work. In the current market PvP and PvE experiences are completely separate from each other because people do not want to put in the effort to properly integrate them together. Its hard, leads to the issues being discussed here and is generally not worth the effort.

What EVE is doing now with their Alpha system is a joke as well, its the earliest iteration of the F2P model that has been proven to fail every time it is used, the internet is littered with bad memories of games that died using this model. Its a desperate attempt to preserve the status quo they and you are used to. However, you do not succeed buy forcing people into subscribing by taking things away from them, you succeed by providing complete experiences people WANT to pay for, if Blizzard can do it and GGG can do it then its pretty fecking obvious the model works.

The bottom line is simple, the current gaming market does not support predatory gaming experiences like EVE.
It (EVE) also no longer has anywhere near the amount of content to justify a subscription system in the first place. Most completely free to play games can easily compete for its audience now. These are not my opinions, these are observations anyone who takes the time to look can make.

In closing, you are completely right, the game is completely not compatible with my frame of mind because I live in the now and not in a world of decade old outdated values and standards.

I'm late to the party here, but I have a question for those supporting ganking.

I don't have an issue with ganking in general, but do you seriously think that it isn't laughably easy to carry out / maintain currently? I'm honestly curious if I'm missing some sort of hidden cost that balances out the risk vs reward factors I hear brought up so much by those defending it.

Why don't you try it? Start from the ground up, don't go join code, but build your own organization. Lead gank fleets. You'll need scouts, bumbers, logistics guys to move ships and ammo into systems you plan on ganking in. Comms, and even a website might be a good idea. Oh, and a SRP might not hurt. You can do the latter manually, but alot of groups these days have moved over apps on their websites too.

This is another example of the seen vs. unseen. You see the gank and think, "That is so easy." But you do not see all the other stuff that went into setting up the gank.

You are making a big mistake. The gankers income is not determined by the game environment like with miners or mission runners, but by the imprudence of the freighter pilot. The more imprudent the pilot the higher the ganker income. As such, it is not up to CCP to balance it. Ever.