EVE General Discussion

everyone is operating under the assumption that ganking fat freighters is easy.

the guys that actually do it say it's not
and the guys that never have, have no argument

Fair comment, I didn't mean to insinuate that ganking fat freighters is a doddle; I've seen first hand the amount of planning and coordination required to do it successfully.

In my defence my use of the word ease was referring to the morons that insist on autopiloting through a choke point with eleventy billion isk in a shitfit freighter.

Why would CCP say this after spending 5 years nerfing highsec PvP into the ground? They literally admitted that the last 5 years of changes were bad for the game. What can they possibly gain from that?

The inability to do statistics correctly, does not change the fact that people release figures as facts.

The statistics they released were done by a company with no prior history in statistics, with no published documentation.

Subsequently you can either have faith that they did them right or skepticism at the fact the results cannot be verified.

Faith is exactly that. The belief in something without proof. Also just the very basis they used for the general population, not the NPE for new players was flawed. To determine if ganking was harmful to subscriptions of older characters you would not go by peoples exit comments as to many of them would be non-responses.

You would analyze kill mails, vs play styles. For example the amount of time spent mining, which could be achieved by indexing the amount of minerals added to an account by the system in the case of mining of the amount of time an account spent in any type of ship, if that was unavailable, then ammunition destroyed and NPCs killed by an account.

There initial study into the NPE showed promise, it is just we cannot take the results as anything more than a belief as we cannot validate their figures and its not as if you can point to CCPs ability to get things right over the years.

Edit: Add to this the well known bias shown by some CCP Devs and the figures are automatically in doubt.

Dejavuncular.....auto correct is a bit hectic..

Here we go again.

No they are NOT facts and no statistics is not easy. There are so many ways to make errors otherwise all statistics would be 100% right.

So from that you would believe the statistics that say smoking does not cause cancer, while believing that they do cause cancer. Or the famous 1990s online study that showed that 99% of all people owned computers with internet connections.


I have only anecdotal evidence, however that is just as right as an unproven study. Which is why CCP need to get statistics Iceland in to help them. Then they could output things such as seasonally adjusted concurrent users, trend lines. The numbers of people who actually leave due to ganking using hard data.

The NPE study was a foot in the right direction. Especially given that CCP has such a horrible record in understanding their users (Incarna, POS's ect..). If they actually based their decisions on statistics this game would be a lot better and yes if they actually did a proper study into why people leave using actual data then they would know what to fix, rather than using anecdotal evidence themselves.


No you are assuming the bias of all CCP staff is in the same direction, where it is well known that some CCP staff believe that ganking is good and that people just need to HTFU. It then depends on the bias of the person who stated that less than 1% of people stated that they left due to ganking, the bias of that person and the actual figures themselves.

What scrutiny. Can you even point to anywhere that stated if they used a random sample or not.

Someone who does a statistic incorrectly, does not necessarily have to have something to gain. That is why statistics that are trustworthy publish their methodology and even the raw data if it is not confidentialised.

The NPE study was a very good start and it has produced a result they are working with. However that does not mean that the studies results are in any way correct. Also given that that particular study was only on the first 15 days of a characters life, you are using it to justify actions beyond those first 15 days.


There is nothing wrong with the data they used but there is a huge question mark over HOW it was used. Raw data is exactly that, raw data does not make a statistic it is the basis to form statistics.


No they didn't you keep going outside of the field of the study, which even if it was correct your extrapolation outside of the field of study is not.

They found that 85% of players who quit after having experienced no PvP within the FIRST 15 DAYS quit. What happens after those 15 days was not covered by the study except to say that their is a higher probability that people who did within the first 15 days are more inclined to stay longer. However they also failed to account for if the user was here via recruit a friend or a walk in, this would have massive alterations on the outcomes.


I don't know if I would call the less than 1% an "official announcement" anymore than I would call a Devs going to twitter and posting an official announcement but either way if in the case of the first 15 days study, the results were false then CCP would be greenlighting something they believed to be accurate. Their belief that they did a good job does not make a statistic a statistic, which is why national statistics bureaus have to submit their work to the IMF, world bank etc.. for verification. As to the 1% thing as it was tacked in they may not have known or either way likely cared.

The statement Less than 1% of people stated ganking for their reason for leaving is not even a statistic, it was not studied, it was not measured or analyzed, it is a completely useless statement. After all as I have said previously, how many do not answer? How many put things that might indicate ganking without saying ganking, piracy for example?

You just do not know and given you do not know and cannot answer simple questions, you are working on faith. Merely a belief in what they said you wish to be true.

What you do has nothing to do with scepticism but more with plain ignorance. Your assertion that they have "no prior history in statistics" is not only laughable it is just plain wrong. They have a whole department which analyses the in-game market and tries to predict the influence game changes will have.

I am not sure why you are so obsessed with their statistic skills. It's not like this is some magic tool, it just basic math skills every software engineer learns.

This has nothing to do with faith. We can trust CCP as they have every motivation to get this right. Their base assumption was the contrary of the result which is a strong indicator that there was no bias towards ganking.

Because the figures don't match his preconceived ideas.

The only logical conclusion in the face of compelling evidence contrary to a view, is to claim there may be something wrong with the figures.

Please show me this compelling evidence.

A simple statement of CCPs showing how they determined the sample, why they excluded factors such as recruit a friend and the raw data they used will be just fine. That is compelling evidence. Not because they said so.

I have not said something is wrong with the figures I have said the figures are useless because they cannot be proven to be statistically valid or not.