Shadow of Cerberus EVE Community Forum

Comment of the Week: Official word

Earlier in the week, I gently bitched about CCP Fozzie publishing a graph of ship use without giving us numbers to go with it.  I compared a graph without numbers to a map without street names: you might know the general direction you have to go, but that's it.  Fozzie encouraged me on Twitter to post my concerns directly into his EVE-O forum thread, so I did so:

Hi Fozzie,

Great work compiling all the stuff from the F&I thread into one dev-blog, and I commend you for that! Also, thanks for taking player input so seriously during this process. I am still annoyed at my beloved Canes getting nerfed so hard, but at least you provided good explanations at each step why you were doing it. :-P

I do have some questions about this dev-blog though, as I blogged about yesterday:

1. Why did you guys publish a graph with no indication of where zero is and no scale? Is the bottom of the graph zero?
2. As a result, how many more Drakes are there than Feroxes, and how far has Drake and Cane use dropped (in percent) since their respective nerfs?
3. Will you be providing another updated copy of this graph before the summer release?

I was a big big fan of the former CCP Diagoras and the stats that he published on ship use, number of ships destroyed in PvP versus PvE, and decreasing and increasing use of ships. These same sorts of stats also used to (in the ancient past of two years ago) be published in QENs. Today, the players have do not receive these sorts of stats at all.

Fozzie was good enough to reply, and I quote his reply in full.  It's effectively the "comment of the week":

Excellent question about the graph, and it is something I should have noted in the blog.
The bottom of the graph is 0, and the scale is linear. I am however going to take a pass on providing exact numbers at this time.

I've been intentionally careful when it comes to distributing statistics that have significant potential economic value. When possible I'm trying to keep any such information to the official forums and dev blogs, and when in doubt I'm leaning on the side of caution. I know that can be frustrating for people who are used to the huge amounts of information that used to be distributed via twitter, and there's nothing wrong with patch speculation aided by cleverly following public CCP communication (that used to be one of my best income sources) but I don't have the time or education that a dedicated researcher like Diagoras could bring to bear on this kind of communication so I'll be fairly conservative in the foreseeable future.

It's very possible that we may provide some updated graphs as the results of our ship balance changes settle over time, but I can't make promises to that effect right now.

Those are about as gentle a pair of "no"s as I've ever read, but that doesn't stop them from being "no."  And honestly, I haven't decided yet how I feel about it.  I do absolutely remember at some point, somewhere, Fozzie saying exactly how much Drake and Cane usage has slipped in percent since the nerfs.  I just can't find the reference.  So taking a pass on the question was rather unfortunate.  However, it doesn't much matter because knowing the bottom of that graph is zero and the scale is linear, we can use a little :scary math: and solve for the answer to my second question.

From November 25 to February 8, Drake use dropped 10% and Cane use dropped 12%.

We can also solve for a few other things.  On February 8, there were more than twice as many Drakes as there were Canes, and there were ten times as many Drakes as there were Brutixes.  There were more than 20 times as many Drakes as there were Prophecies.  And I expect both of those numbers to change dramatically because Brutixes and Prophecies are now pretty damn awesome.  ;-)

But we may or may not ever know, because Fozzie won't commit to telling us.

I ask again: why is CCP so afraid to share information with players?  Fozzie effectively admits right in this post that using economic reasons to not do so, while safely conservative, ultimately hurts players.  After all, this information was the source of his own income when he was playing!  By blocking that information, CCP is effectively blocking the next generation of Fozzies out there.  ;-)  Isn't it kind of ironic that he himself argues that way?
Source: Comment of the Week: Official word