We read about the big dramas and resets and alliance movements. However most of them are invisible to us. But not to Dotlan. It says that in June, 1155 corporations joined an alliance. Probably there are more, many corps aren't tracked by Dotlan. Anyway, that's a lot of movement. The idea to look after these came from minerbumping, where the good agents destroyed a lolalliance of lolcorps. What if most of these alliance movements happen in highsec?
Let's figure it out! I collected the data of NPC and ship kills from the various zones from Dotlan for 18 months. Then I plotted these data against the "alliance joined" data. It looks stupid, as joining to an alliance clearly doesn't cause more ratting. However I was just looking for connection between different activities and alliance movements.
The nullsec, WH and lowsec data provided very low R2 fits. On the other hand, the fits against highsec data were better: 0.47 and 0.56 for PvP and ratting and 0.66/0.69 linearcoefficients. So having 2x more drama predicts 1.7x more highsec ratting.
The drama obviously didn't cause the ratting increase. This should be interpreted as "most drama happens in highsec, if the activity increases there, so does the drama". This is reinforced by the strongest correlation found:
CCP has to realize that the newbie and casual activity happens in highsec. If they want the game to grow, they must focus content creation in highsec. It doesn't mean "making EVE WoW", as that would need making these casuals "win". WoW subscription count is decreasing because such approach makes core players leave. This can be completely avoided if the new highsec content isn't relevant for the low-null-WH play. The NPC corps should be restructured into a more social experience, by assigning GMs as corp leaders. Maybe less NPC corps would be better for management and activity. These GMs would teach, answer questions, lead events and kick troublemakers from the corp into a special "ghetto" NPC corp were they can try to scam each other.
Letting players dumbly join Interstellar Services Syndicate fits more to the "short bus universe" than the "dark universe" theme. Everyone has to accept that there are casual players who will never do anything worth mentioning in New Eden. But with some GM help, they could become satisfied subscribers.
PS: Goonies! Something really nasty is cooking! Save yourself the defeat and just surrender!
Let's figure it out! I collected the data of NPC and ship kills from the various zones from Dotlan for 18 months. Then I plotted these data against the "alliance joined" data. It looks stupid, as joining to an alliance clearly doesn't cause more ratting. However I was just looking for connection between different activities and alliance movements.
The nullsec, WH and lowsec data provided very low R2 fits. On the other hand, the fits against highsec data were better: 0.47 and 0.56 for PvP and ratting and 0.66/0.69 linearcoefficients. So having 2x more drama predicts 1.7x more highsec ratting.
The drama obviously didn't cause the ratting increase. This should be interpreted as "most drama happens in highsec, if the activity increases there, so does the drama". This is reinforced by the strongest correlation found:
CCP has to realize that the newbie and casual activity happens in highsec. If they want the game to grow, they must focus content creation in highsec. It doesn't mean "making EVE WoW", as that would need making these casuals "win". WoW subscription count is decreasing because such approach makes core players leave. This can be completely avoided if the new highsec content isn't relevant for the low-null-WH play. The NPC corps should be restructured into a more social experience, by assigning GMs as corp leaders. Maybe less NPC corps would be better for management and activity. These GMs would teach, answer questions, lead events and kick troublemakers from the corp into a special "ghetto" NPC corp were they can try to scam each other.
Letting players dumbly join Interstellar Services Syndicate fits more to the "short bus universe" than the "dark universe" theme. Everyone has to accept that there are casual players who will never do anything worth mentioning in New Eden. But with some GM help, they could become satisfied subscribers.
PS: Goonies! Something really nasty is cooking! Save yourself the defeat and just surrender!
4 comments:
There is a key term in your blog, "social" people stay in eve for the social experience. To me the trick is to improve that experience in general for new players. How that is achieved says a lot about the future of the game. Something has to be done about war decs let these social clubs do their thing and still offer enimies (not oh look another high sec mission group lets war dec, but rather those stinking scum insulted us).
But my answers are well down to two things, either reshape eve, or a hard reset.
I thought this was going to be a measure of corporate churn per alliance/coalition. Maybe test if null/low sec churn correlates to high sec ratting (my hypothesis is that one of the main things people do after they get kicked is bum around in high sec while they regroup), but that will probably be drowned out by the acu/ratting signal.
It might be worth it to exclude very young or small corps/alliances, especially in high sec. There is such a froth of abortive corps/alliances that I don't think you can tell anything significant from measuring corp movements in them other then demonstrating Sturgeon's law.
Everyone tries to make the casual player non casual to save Eve.
I finally figured it out. I don't want to join a corp, because I play Eve to relax, and chat a bit. Not to replace a real life job. Politics. Grind. Positioning. Doctrines. Career plans. Killboard padding...
And that's the rub of it. RL forces me to be casual. A couple of hours unscheduled free time here and there is all I can commit. The depth of the metagame is a great backdrop. But it boils down to what can I do that is entertaining in the time that I have - and to avoid activities that will stop you playing in that time. I wish the NPC's were more alive. Would love to be a roving (cloaked) journalist for SCOPE getting frontline exclusives... Ok. I'll fetch my coat...
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