EVE General Discussion

Ganking has not dramatically increased since the end of 2012, when zKillboard started reliably grabbing kill data from the API. Perhaps it is up a bit since the historic lows, maybe, but there is no explosion in numbers and 2012 is coincidentally when CCP said such things as:

"For reasons that are left as an exercise to the reader, Exhumers are now blowing up at historically low rates." - Dr.EyjoG (pg.104)

and

"SoniClover pointed out that kill rights have already been made more severe and that a change allowing kill rights to potentially be used for several kills would go against the original “eye for an eye” concept. He said out that suicide gankers are already feeling pressure with the new changes and was worried further penalties could result in an unhealthy reduction in suicide ganking. He went on to affirm that suicide ganking is needed to make sure highsec is not completely safe, which elicited a nod from Soundwave." -CSM Minutes (pg. 59)

Freighters are being lost at a similar, or slightly greater rate in 2015 than in 2013. In the first half of 2013, 1724 freighters were lost vs. 2080 this year (about a 20% increase) which also explains the slight increase in CONCORD kills. Is a 20% increase significant? I guess that is in the eye of the beholder, but certainly 20% of a very small number is not a huge increase, and that is coming off historic lows. And this year has featured an atypical number of "Burn ____" events in the first half so it remains to be seen if this slighter higher rate remains for the rest of the year.

Ganking rates were certainly much higher in the past before the insurance, CONCORD and EHP changes referenced by SoniClover and Soundwave in the quote above. It is indisputable that highsec has never been safer mechanically, and if ganking rates are going up slightly, that is only because players have become more efficient and have developed alternative methods to fund the activity. Yet, they still remain significantly lower than in the distant past when Eve's player counts were growing the fastest.

Now a correlation does not establish causation, but these facts provide no evidence that a safer highsec increases retention. If anything, they support the opposite view that a too safe highsec bores new players out of the game. I think the game needs highsec though, and actually more mechanisms so players can tune their risk tolerance, but to say that ganking is somehow out of control or too easy or whatever is just disingenuous posturing from those seeking to change the rules of the game in their favour.

In my defence I would like to submit that my post was made at 02:19 AM BST; I should have been in bed, not posting on the forums in answer to a ultracrepidarian*.

*I learnt a new word today, and it is glorious.

I find it interesting that the 'victim' of a gank is usually blamed for losing a ship rather than admiring the skills and ability to organise of the many excellent gankers in the game.

If someone loses thier pawn in a game of chess, whose fault is it? If someone unexpectedly takes a pawn in a game chess, who should be admired?

The positive if that happened would be that we would all get to know each other much more intimately since the entire player base would be around 10k people and their alts.

The negative is that our new found friendships would be broken up fairly quickly as 10K people are not enough to keep this game alive.

Mr Epeen

In an office chair while dual wielding Uzi's.




No, wait, that's flying Minmatar, my bad.

No need to be so mean.

Office chairs deserve a better fate than that.

I've lost a couple hundred ships playing EVE; I'd estimate that less than 10% were lost in occasions that I couldn't have prevented if I'd done something differently or better, and every single ship I've lost in hi-sec lies in that category, starting with a CNR that I lost while blind drunk and experimentally trying to blitz the Damsel mission with 8 large smartbombs and going from there.

So… salt water?

But that makes no sense. Then they wouldn't be Minmatar.