EVE General Discussion

In that respect, if you say that there is no proof that ganking cause subscription losses then the opposite seems to be true.

You can not prove to me that ganking increases subscriptions or keeps them at the same level.

I'll admit there are not true numbers floating around, but I am making a logical inference that the balancing happened because event A seemed to correspond with even B. Perhaps my logic is flawed but it seems pretty suspicious that only after Hulkageddon did they buff mining barges.

Also lets consider this story why ganking may cause a subscription loss...

You are a miner and enjoy mining. You want to mine the most ore possible. Back in the day the ultimate ship was the Hulk. But it is expensive. Maybe 150 million isk (I don't remember the exact numbers) but for a miner starting out that might mean tens of hours worth of mining.

So they spend the better part of a month finally saving up enough isk to buy that hulk. They go out and fly it all happy their hard work paid off.

Then suddenley on the day they first start to mine... Gank happens. The newbie miner is out of a ship and no isk to show for it. Sure the people who ganked him are concorded but doesn't help him get his isk back. The insurance (if he could have afforded it) doesn't even cover a fraction of the ship cost.

What is the logical thing to do for a logical person at this point? Well cause and effect shows him that if he spends time saving up for a hulk that he will simply lose it. The most reasonable thing for this miner to do at this point is to quite the game.

Why should he waste all that time only to lose his hard earned money?

At this point he cancels his subscription and goes plays Star Treak Online.

And many of you say "Good riddance! We didn't need that player!" but that means lost money for CCP, who as a business, must worry about how to pay the bills.

Sure this may not have happened in this exact scenario but how many of those hulks in hulkaggedon quit their subscription?

I'm sure some people kept going after their first hulk loss, but what about the second? Or third? Why keep playing after that point? It is logically in this regard that ganking must cause subscription losses of some sort.

Where is the evidence of decreasing subs during player created ganking events like Hulkageddon? THAT would be proff that would stand up in a court.

If eve should be a place where everyone can enjoy level 4 mission running and nobody bothers anyone else, then what game should my friends and I be playing? Believe me when I tell you that we've looked, and there are no games that give us the gameplay we want. We came to eve because of what it allows us to do and stay because there are no better options.

To those saying that allowing this sort of gameplay is a bad business model, the term you're looking for is product differentiation. Let's look at this argument under a different lens. You say that McDonalds sells the most food and makes the most profit of any restaurant on the planet so all restaurants should be McDonalds. You wander into a largeish non-chain restaurant and demand a Big Mac, only to be informed that this is the sort of quiet, intimate place where you might take your wife for some high quality french food. You start losing your mind and screaming that's not how you run a business and you'll take your pants off and **** on the patrons until you receive a Big Mac.

I think you're just in the wrong restaurant.

I think it is pretty obvious that CCP wants some level of ganking and non-consensual PvP in hi-sec.

The difference between CCP and the average "just want to blow stuff up" pilot, is that CCP sees it as acceptable when it's goal-oriented. Goals drive conflict and conflict keeps EVE alive. All playstyles.

Just blowing stuff up drives nothing. The people doing it either get bored or run out of stuff to blow up, since nobody sticks around to get blown up if there's no reason to stick around.

It happened to low-sec and it's slowly happening to null-sec. In the end, nobody wins.

It can't happen to hi-sec, hi-sec is the incubator in EVE. Blow it up and everything will eventually fade away.

That's why CCP is looking into hi-sec PvP. Looking for ways to add goals. Stuff like POCOs in hi-sec, better structure for war decs and transferable kill-rights.

They aren't looking to remove non-consensual PvP in hi-sec, but add structure and goals. Because FFA PvP with no goals has killed every single MMO that tried it.

In that respect, if you say that there is no proof that ganking cause subscription losses then the opposite seems to be true.

You can not prove to me that ganking increases subscriptions or keeps them at the same level.

I'll admit there are not true numbers floating around, but I am making a logical inference that the balancing happened because event A seemed to correspond with even B. Perhaps my logic is flawed but it seems pretty suspicious that only after Hulkageddon did they buff mining barges.

Also lets consider this story why ganking may cause a subscription loss...

You are a miner and enjoy mining. You want to mine the most ore possible. Back in the day the ultimate ship was the Hulk. But it is expensive. Maybe 150 million isk (I don't remember the exact numbers) but for a miner starting out that might mean tens of hours worth of mining.

So they spend the better part of a month finally saving up enough isk to buy that hulk. They go out and fly it all happy their hard work paid off.

Then suddenley on the day they first start to mine... Gank happens. The newbie miner is out of a ship and no isk to show for it. Sure the people who ganked him are concorded but doesn't help him get his isk back. The insurance (if he could have afforded it) doesn't even cover a fraction of the ship cost.

What is the logical thing to do for a logical person at this point? Well cause and effect shows him that if he spends time saving up for a hulk that he will simply lose it. The most reasonable thing for this miner to do at this point is to quit the game.

Why should he waste all that time only to lose his hard earned money?

At this point he cancels his subscription and goes plays Star Treak Online.

And many of you say "Good riddance! We didn't need that player!" but that means lost money for CCP, who as a business, must worry about how to pay the bills.

Sure this may not have happened in this exact scenario but how many of those hulks in hulkaggedon quit their subscription?

I'm sure some people kept going after their first hulk loss, but what about the second? Or third? Why keep playing after that point? It is logically in this regard that ganking must cause subscription losses of some sort.

That would be proof of correlation, not causation.

Two VERY different things. It's actually quite hard to prove why people leave unless in the exit poll they put

"I'm leaving because I keep getting blown up when I do stupid things"

Wow? So you think people are going to unemploy themselves for your amusment?

CCP is a business. The owners of the business aren't running the company simply for your amusment. They are doing it in order to maximize their profit.

Sure some companies sacrifice short term profit for long term profit or intangibles (like good will), but in the end of the day if the business does not make as large as a profit as possible they are doing it wrong and will go out of business sometime in the future.

If CCP wanted only to maximize profit, WHY are we flying space ships instead of riding unicorns and blowing on horns of Gondor?

pretty much a strawman argument, as no one is suggesting doing anything like that in EVE.

Tranquility currently *is* a PvP server, everywhere.