Tidbits from the Quarterly Economic Report

The new Quarterly Economic Report is out and it contains quite a bit of interesting information. This is a 'MUST READ' document for every EVE player as it not only provides a nice summary of information that can be gleamed from in-game, but it also give some information that can not be gathered from any other source. This quarter, I can happily report, Dr. EnjoG is concentrating on PVP stuff so there are some nice little goodies in it. These are my comments on what is contained.

1. Eve Population Drop!
For years the EVE population grew steadily. However this trend seems to have stopped. Although the trend is still slow growth, the reality is that after each spike the population is dropping. With the recent disasterous Tyrannis expansion we now have it dropping to pre-expansion levels. No wonder CCP is finally listening to the CSM on what players want.

2. Skill points matter (new characters need not apply)
This I think is the most disturbing graph I have seen. Basically it shows that new characters with < 10m SP and even with < 20m have pretty much no chance in PvP. It shows that players with < 10m SP account for 24% of all ship losses, yet make up only 2% of all kills. Considering that 10m SP corresponds to around 9 months of play this is very disheartening. I can sort of understand the < 5m SP characters doing so poorly (but not as spectacularly poor as they seem to be), but if even characters with nearly 9 months of time devoted to the game can not really participate in PvP, then there is a problem. EVE really needs to do something to improve the PvP game-play for inexperienced players. I am not saying that they need to nerf SP, but rather they need to provide a mechanism (like making factional warfare not suck for instance) for new characters to actually have fun doing PvP.

3. Minmattar Rule ... Gallente Drool
Looking at the Measures of Success section we see the trends for PvP ships. What strikes me is that Matari ships have 5 (Hurricane, Vagabond, Sabre, Rifter, Thrasher) of the top 10 ships landing a final blow. Two of the other ships are pirate faction ships that are effectively Minmattar ships with added bonuses to Gallente skills. Also there is not a single Gallente ship in the the top 10.

4. The Rise of the Super-Carrier
It seems like Super-Carriers are getting a bit out of control. Ever since the Dominion patch boosted their effectiveness greatly, they are now the de-facto blunt instrument used by large rich alliances to steamroll their enemies. Their massive DPS with fighters and bombers means that they can decimate a field of ships from capitals on down. With a massive tank they can usually survive simply by logging off when caught unprepared. As a result the number of ships being produced greatly outnumbers then number of ships being destroyed by a ridiculous margin. In July, August and September about 45 super carriers were destroyed, and about 480 produced! I know personally for my alliance this may cause a lot of grief. No-one I know wants to play Super-Caps online, yet that is the direction Null-Sec may be heading.