Wednesday, January 2, 2013

A response to Gevlon's poor analysis.


@Gevlon post here. I know I shouldn't even respond as he has always shown a none too bright attitude towards how eve works and I could find fault in near every post he makes, but this one just stands out....

Here's the real baseline of the issue. Gevlon spent so much time trying to come up with data to support his position that he failed to actually interpret the data he was given. He disregarded or failed to notice data that did not support his notions, and then formed fallacious assumptions around those numbers.

To recap, he says...

"WH people are both extremely rich and that WH space is extremely dangerous. I used regional statistics from killboards to prove that WH ship losses aren't that expensive. They claimed that because they go to PvP in null (because they are so awesome that no one attacks them in their WHs). So I went to look for more data."

I ask you, to look at the "Average loss value MISK" graph again. The statement he is trying to disprove is, in short, "WH pilots, on average, pvp in more expensive ships and more dangerous area's."

First - Do WH pilots fly in "more expensive ships?" Yes, using his own graph, in every loss category, both in few losses and lots of losses, "WH people" aka Dark Blue, lead the curve. That alone, ALONE, is enough proof that indeed, WH people do fly and lose more expensive ships, on average than any other "Area," as defined by Gevlon.

Second part ("Dangerous area") - this is where it gets tricky, how do you define danger? Isn't this just a judgement call? WH people will say that WH space is pretty dangerous because of the lack of Local, or any wide ranging, local based intel networks found in low/high/null that can warn of approaching hostile fleets/gankers (by way of setting standings, or seeing criminal flags, long before they are a threat.

Now for WH space there is another wrinkle, it's the only true part of the game where fighting the PvE content is the only means for existence. Now what do I mean by that, I mean that in order for it to make sense to live in WH space, you must either be actively doing PvE or at least devote some of your time to PvE to make a living out in WH space using traditional methods.

Lowsec, Nullsec and Highsec are not limited in this manner. Lowsec does have FW plexes, or other PvE items, similar to those available, but much less profitable than, the plexes out in Nullsec, but you can still use PI and stations to evade, change or modify the combat. Nullsec has moon mining, reactions, drug, cap and supercap production just to name a few things that do not require active in-space participation. Highsec I shouldn't even have to cover because station trading alone is so profitable.

Meanwhile WH space stands alone with the massive majority of it's ISK making ability coming from sites that need to be run and thus can be scanned down and pounced. This is such an important distinction because it goes to lending towards a much more risk based, high danger atmosphere to gain the benifits of living in WH space than anywhere else in the game.

Then, Gevlon tries to pass off the majority of expensive losses by semi-to low activity pilots as "PvE" losses, or ganks. Now while I don't at all agree with this idea, except in the case of highsec, let's look at things through "his" lens. Expensive "PvE" losses actually help prove that WH space is more dangerous than the average other area in the game.

Why is that? Well simple it's as simple as my above point about use of the content and also risk-aversion. Rarely will a Eve player just jump in their most expensive ships, and fly around in high-risk situations. With the possible exceptions of the super-rich. But really we are trying to focus in on the "average player" of each demographic.

I will say that the average Nullsec resident does not fly their pimped out ratting/botting ships unless they have the means to ensure it's safety. In WH space there is no real way be "safe" as one is in nullsec. Anyone with a probe or an anom scanner can jump in on their ships. Yet WH players continue to field and lose expensive ships, even though it is more dangerous.

If that is not your definition of 'danger,' Then maybe you lay more weight to the number analysis of Gevlon, however those numbers are flawed and easily refuted when looked at by a few simple factors.

For instance, Gevlon does not factor in the all important data about the 'opportunity of loss.' In WH space with it's MUCH lower population density, proved using both CCP's stats and the Gevlon stats, reposting a graph from Gevlon,
Clearly, the number of people living in WH is the smallest of all the "area's" people choose to call home, by both the CCP and Gevlon killboard based metrics. Gevlon attempts to provide some kind of "ratio" but this ratio value is completely useless. Like comparing apples and oranges.

Gevlon takes his ratio by using his 9.2% of the polled PvP losses are "WH" based pilots, and then he compares that to the supposed total population of WH space (5.5%). It's because it's a bad ratio... Look...

The problem with the ratio is, Gevlon is taking a full sum value (a percent value that adds up to 100%) and comparing it to ANOTHER DIFFERENT full sum value and coming up with a ratio. CCP based their population values not on PvP activity but where players spent the majority of their time. Gevlon is just looking at PvP values, comparing the two values does not reveal the % of pvpers or a ratio of PvPers to non-pvpers. The ratio is the difference between his PvP fed values and the values that CCP provided. Not his assumed idea that it shows the ratio of active pvpers in a group of players. That's value is just total statistical nonsense.

Back to my point... the importance of the 'opportunity of loss.' If you only have a relatively small number of inhabitants, that makes both fighting and losing ships more rare. Now THIS is where Gevlon goes COMPLETELY off the rails. He breaks down WH space into C1-C6, but then leaves Null, High and lowsec combined. Either he did this because the data when combined, ie C1+C2+C3+C4+C5+C6 didn't support his theory, or because he was just lazy. Now because I don't have his exact figures all I can do it make a guess.
If you add up the values for the different classes of WH and provide a combined WH stacked graph, it would show the true value of all WH systems, and that value would be much higher than either Null OR highsec, second only to Lowsec... But like I said that is just a guess.

Let's not fail to point ou here that by his own graph Nullsec has a lower 'value' than Highsec. Sure it's damning when a C6 doesn't live up to highsec but then Gevlon glosses over the fact that Nullsec also doesn't have as high a value. Also that's a simple explanation  Highsec has more people than either Nullsec or WH space, in fact more than both combined. This gives a much higher sample size than either AND much more opportunity for loss.

One last thing, Gevlon bases the majority of his assertions on the idea that in short "a player with a high isk loss but low losses per year is essentially a PvE player." This completely disregards the "casual" eve player like myself and many others. I'd be lucky to get 45 FIGHTS in a year I'd say, let alone 45 losses.

Using myself as an example... While not a very active player, I am certainly NOT a PvE player. One of my losses easily pushes me over the 50m mark in a year. Now I am not exactly a huge loss player, IE when I die in stuff it's rarely all that expensive, but still I lost a carrier this year, that was a 2 bil isk loss or so, Plus other assorted losses, and now according to Gevlon, I am either an "outlier" despite the fact that I know of many other players just like me, or a victim of being ganked doing PvE. Seems a rather stark contrast.

To remove the true PvE gank losses, Gevlon should have called high isk losses with high damage NPC values, indicating plexing or belt ratting, as PvE losses. And then taken steps to exclude those results from his findings, I'm sure the appropriate SQL command could easily do this... This would quickly provide a more accurate and stronger overall graph. I'd imagine with those results stripped out than Gev's assumptions would not be so easily passed off as fact.

So, in short, the statistical analysis offered by Gevlon is flawed, incomplete and uses flawed logic in an attempt to "proof" his conclusions.

10 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Hmmm, good question, I have long considered removing him from my reader feed, but somehow never do. I must be addicted to his badposts.

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  2. I gave the article a quick skim-read, and yeah - his logic doesn't make any sense. The thing that stood out most for me was that he established the assumption early on that pilots with small numbers of expensive losses were considered PvE players (an assumption which is highly questionable, and seems designed purely so that he could later claim that high value WH losses were PvE players).

    On the graph with wormhole categories, adding them together would actually bring it lower because its per system, so the high C5/C6 would be diluted by the lower classes. However, a per system graph doesn't really make sense since it's tied strongly to population - Jita sees about 6x the number of kills per 24 hours as Rancer (a notoriously permacamped lowsec pipe system), but you're far far more likely to get killed in Rancer than in Jita. It would make much more sense to analyse kills per resident or kills per jump, at which point I expect WH space would rank much more highly.

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  3. Nice attempt to get some traffic without actually saying anything (you did not even attempt to prove an alternative) but no thanks. The comments leading to your blog are moderated out so you worked for nothing.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for coming Gevlon, I actually fucked up the captcha on your site that's why there were so many comment from me, sorry about that. Either way, if you can't understand that I did say something in my post then you're about as smart as you seem.

      Why would I attempt to provide an alternative? I was simply and easily disproving your post.

      Also, I don't need links on your page to generate traffic on my site, that's actually fairly insulting.

      Delete
    2. I personally always come from Azual's Blog, so yea.

      Delete
  4. Gevlon strictly argues only from his own viewpoint, there is never discussion leading to greater insight or information. As far as I can tell he never admits to error and humility is clearly something he doesn't possess. No one has ever taught Gevlon anything --- this brilliance is entirely his own.

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  5. TLDR: Gevlon still thinks Eve is WoW in space and don't accept criticism. Better to get your factual info someplace else.

    Hi,

    I know Gevlon site since the days of WoW (yeah, I sorry I played there before). WoW was dumbed down a long time ago and Gevlon quickly understand the game, made the riches trading the extremely limited Action House in WoW and then went creating a raid and battleground guild with some success.

    After the usual WoW burnout, he came to Eve thinking this is just another MMO and after 1 year he still don't understand that Eve is far deeper than WoW. The fact that player could do almost anything they want make the whole game much more complex (because of the strategy attempting to anticipating other players moves). He though that after 3 months he would have everything figured out (like WoW).

    I stop reading his blog after the third time I tried to post a comment to explain an obvious flaw on his post and he didn't publish my comment (very polite comments all of them). If he don't publish comments that point to obvious flaws or selectively publishes the ones he thinks he can counter-argument, how this could be a reliable source of information?

    Unfortunately, because of the amount of effort he puts in blogging (almost daily posts, more than Jester), he will become a important source of information (or some may prefer to say mis-information) about Eve, which actually makes me sad.

    I would like to do something about it, but unhappily I can't.

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  6. Gevlon'a blog is only worth reading if he's talking about the market. That part of the game he seems to 'get' well enough as witnessed by his success in the area.
    The rants about socials whom he so seems to despise are just annoying and pointless as are his philosophical posts. Made all the more hypocritical by his latest posts which seem to be showing him as an emerging social. Go figure.
    There also seems to be some unexplained resentment towards WH-dwellers for the longest time.
    A very poor and telling comment he left on this article, must be hard being as perfect and infallible as he is.

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  7. I agree.

    I would like to see people like Gilgalaad or some of the folks in the Eve Uni trade chat to publish their knowledge about the market in a blog.

    The knowledge itself is largely available, those guys give it for free, however a blog is a much more accessible way to learn about it.

    ReplyDelete