Killmails are not only useful for bragging and exposing stupid fits.
They also serve as intel (where you losing ships, what ships, how do you tank, do you kill solo/with small gang/ with blob, etc.).
Pointing newbies to relevant kills can be useful for them to understand why shinies != superiority, why dual tank is wrong, and also to show them that humble frig can take much bigger target if fitted and flown properly.

I'm sure that if CCP didn't provide us with their own implementation of killmails somebody would create out of game tool for that.
Just as we have fitting tools, fleet/doctrine tools, ISK/hr tools, wallet tools, etc.

I would change one major thing about KMs- listing destroyed items and their value is stupid. Those items are blown to pieces, it just doesn't make sense that they are suddenly revealed to everybody at the moment of their doom.

This would bring some intelligence back to intel, and some much needed mystery.

Why to we keep score in any game?
Why do we track statistics in the games and sports we enjoy?

When you can answer those questions you'll begin to understand why kill notifications are, and will continue to be, an integral part of EVE.

My fear is the OP's original post stems from the current fashionable liberal trend to make 'everyone a winner'.

You see it now in childrens little-league games, everyone gets a trophy, even the losers
Or you might see it in the fabulous public education system, where its now near-impossible for students to fail a grade, and illiterates graduate.
And on..and on...

In short...

Keeping score drives improvement in a competitive system, not keeping score drives stagnation. Not keeping score doesn't remove the competition, it just removes the measures by which people in the competitive system are pushed to improve (or strive to)...

EvE without killmails would be very bad, and the OP should feel very bad for posting a stealth remove KM's thread. If you don't want to be in a competitive game, go play WoW -- but don't kill the competitive game we love.

Scores in games are for defining a winner of the game. Here you can win a fight, but not the game.

My fear is the OP's original post stems from the current fashionable liberal trend to make 'everyone a winner'.

You see it now in childrens little-league games, everyone gets a trophy, even the losers
Or you might see it in the fabulous public education system, where its now near-impossible for students to fail a grade, and illiterates graduate.
And on..and on...

In short...

Keeping score drives improvement in a competitive system, not keeping score drives stagnation. Not keeping score doesn't remove the competition, it just removes the measures by which people in the competitive system are pushed to improve (or strive to)...

EvE without killmails would be very bad . . . don't kill the competitive game we love.

Because for some the fun only starts if they can stroke their egos?

Scores in games are for defining a winner of the game.

Here you can win a fight, but not the game.

. But if they weren't there, would things be different?

Really had to bring politics into it.. GTFO... Typical damn whiny conservative..

It also good for making graphs.

Because for some the fun only starts if they can stroke their egos?

Scores in games are for defining a winner of the game.

Here you can win a fight, but not the game.

How do you know if you won the fight? Usually by determining the value of losses on either side.

Is it now stroking your ego to see how well your opponent did or did not do?

How does a merc determine if they have fulfilled their contract to inflict a certain amount of loss on a target?

Why would you not want to know this? Or if you don't care, why inflict that point of view on every else that would like to know?

Get over yourself.

i have a nagging suspicion that Eve without killmails would be more fun.

How do you know if you won the fight? Usually by determining the value of losses on either side.

Is it now stroking your ego to see how well your opponent did or did not do?

How does a merc determine if they have fulfilled their contract to inflict a certain amount of loss on a target?

Why would you not want to know this? Or if you don't care, why inflict that point of view on every else that would like to know?

Get over yourself.

i have a nagging suspicion that Eve without killmails would be more fun.

Kill mails tell a story. You really want to remove that?

How do you know if you won the fight? Usually by determining the value of losses on either side.

Is it now stroking your ego to see how well your opponent did or did not do?

How does a merc determine if they have fulfilled their contract to inflict a certain amount of loss on a target?

Why would you not want to know this? Or if you don't care, why inflict that point of view on every else that would like to know?

Get over yourself.

I get it now! OP want to turn Eve into a Little League baseball game! Where no one keeps score, everybody wins, and at the end of the year you get a little trophy for just being who you are.

Now if we could just weasel a pizza party out of CCP after the season is over, that would make this idea just fantastic.

how do you know you won ???

Their ship exploding and yours not exploding doesn't give you a clue ??

We lost 4 cruisers, they lost 2 battleships. Who won?

Answer: It depends on their value.
Example: We lost T1 Cruisers, they lost 2 T1 BS that were faction fit. We won.

nope

who controlled the field of battle after the shooting stopped ...
if they only had 2 ships .. you won
if they had other ships that ran away, you won.

if they still have ships on the field

why aren't you still shooting, the fight isn't over.

We lost 4 cruisers, they lost 2 battleships. Who won?

Answer: It depends on their value.
Example: We lost T1 Cruisers, they lost 2 T1 BS that were faction fit. We won.


We just had a battle and our side lost 34 ships, their side lost 1. Who won?

Answer: It depends on their value.
Example: Our losses were Battleships and cruisers, their loss was a Titan. We win.

How do we determine value?

Answer: Via the information presented in the kill notification, parsed/posted/ and searchable on a kill board.

"You lost more. Therefore, I win."
Do you see a problem with that mentality? If you do 100 billion damage to me in a war and it takes me years to recover, but I do 1 billion damage to you and annihilate your civilization, then you lost . . . but try fitting that onto a killmail. Now, the loser might say "I did more damage.", but he can't, because he's dead.

How DO we determine value? We don't all use the same method, and I personally don't think that kill mails are intended to determine winners and losers. I could be wrong.

Kill mails stroke the narcissism of the ego.

They short cut and cheapen some of the "unknown" aspect of the supposedly cold dark univewrse of eve.

They make Eve more of an arcade and less of an environment.

Kill mails are cheesy.

I find that kill mails do the opposite - they actually discourage conflict in Eve. Too many people are concerned about kill / death ratios and isk efficiency. This leads to pilots being more risk averse, as they only want to engage if they know that they can win.

If killmails were removed from the game I bet you'd see people more interested in taking chances, since if they do die there wouldn't be some kind of automatic tally that haunts their egos until the end of time.

I find that kill mails do the opposite - they actually discourage conflict in Eve. Too many people are concerned about kill / death ratios and isk efficiency. This leads to pilots being more risk averse, as they only want to engage if they know that they can win.

If killmails were removed from the game I bet you'd see people more interested in taking chances, since if they do die there wouldn't be some kind of automatic tally that haunts their egos until the end of time.

The argument that killmails reduce pvp pilots from 'taking chances' and thus reduces pew (rather than encourage it), is false.

It does however tend to reduce pvp pilots from taking stupid chances. And that extra word contains all the difference.

Life is hard, not everyone should get a trophy -- if you lose your little-leage game, you lost. Improve for a trophy.
EvE pvp is hard, not everyone should win an engagement. If you lose, fight smarter, or pick your fights better.

EvE pvp shouldn't be a mess of scrubs forever hopping in shitfits and dirtying up space with their wrecks, it should be about learning over time how to fit ships and how to pvp. i.e. what ship can take what, or more importantly, what you cannot.

I am yet to let my killboard stop me from pvp'ing, it (and any good CEO) just give me pause before I engage a target.

"Killmails are not important -> EVE needs killmails." non-sequitur

The alternative is that killmails ARE an important factor in determining how and even IF people play. In that case, it is worth looking into HOW and WHY they are such an important factor.

What I am finding interesting in this thread is the notion that EVE has a winner. Would anyone care to elaborate on who is winning? Has anyone won yet? How do we determine who is winning and losing? Strictly by ISK efficiency based on kill reports?

Welcome to the "Everyone is a winner" generation.

That should be my new sig..."When everyone wins, everyone loses".....

Yet, in a 'real world' environment they would most likely exist. Newspapers report on incidents, at times reporting facts on the amount of damage in the amount of money lost/or amount of money needed to repair along with other information.

So I say that if EvE were real (which actually it is) there would be reports on battles, who lost what, isk lost, etc. etc.

So though you think they are cheesy, to many of us they do reflect what could be happening in a real world Environment.

I've wondered for a while if killmails create an escalated sense of violence in the universe, and what the game would be like if it instead just recorded a number of "kills" and "losses", without the elegant record of exactly what was lost.

Would miner ganking still be a big deal if there was no provable way of showing what someone had on them?
Would people take screenshots of wrecks and post them?

I'm not sure if killmails have always been in Eve, or if they were added at a later date?

I'm just curious how big of a roll killmails play in encouraging people to kill each other, and how much of it is isk/pew motivated.

I certainly don't want to see them go away. It's a neat feature. But if they weren't there, would things be different?

If kill mails didnt exist then the players who play this game would find little incentive to log in and play. Since the game is pretty much exclusively about PVP (or industry involved in creating ships for PVP) I suspect what little player base that seems to still exist in this game would dwindle even more should kill mails and kill boards dissappear.

Of course, since eve kill and zkill seem to work only about 3 hours a day lately.... perhaps they have dissappeared already.