A Proposed Solution to the problem of Newcomers in Industry

Communications Center General Discussion
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Hello!

Following the interview of CCP Rattati, I’ve been thinking about one of the problems he raised about Industry in it’s current state, in that it is very hard for a newcomer or someone without the infrastructure of the bigger players to be able to make a dent into Industry.

Seeing the problem as it is, it is a clear case of accrued advantages, an established player can afford thinner margins, and more importantly, can afford to lose money on some products. If you look at real life, you can see the same kind of mechanisms at play.

The only things that can counter those advantages are Disruption and Newer markets.

Pretty much, the only way you can remove all those advantages without outright stealing them from the big players (aka going the Commie way) is,
First, to make the advantages not relevant to where the money is made. See how Nokia got all its advantages reduced to nothing when Smartphones came by.
Second, to open virgin spaces where the accrued advantages are not useful, and where the playing field is reset for everyone. Think the Gold or Oil Rush making new fortunes and power players.

Thus I think of two types of solutions that have to be used here:

  • Find a way to make products appear periodically that do not benefit from the current skills and bonuses. The various event resources are a good example of that. Have them have logistical chains that are different from the actual, typical, and established chains.

  • Create temporary spaces where new resources appear that can only be in used in that space and ask for the creation of new infrastructures and chains, and that after a certain time disappear and reset the playing field for everyone.

There are various features in the game already that could allow to do that, features that I like a lot but that I feel have failed to be used at their maximum potential. For example, Storms, or Abyssal Pockets, or Ressources Wars.
You could have the sudden appearance of Storms thatd create a special type of mineral and that would have to be experimented on to convert them into typical ore.
Or you could have Abyssal Pockets where new types of recipes would appear alongside new resources and thus would ask for a new chain of extraction and production to be created.
As for Resources Wars, the volatile nature of the ores that were mined there was interesting, that volatile nature could also apply to blueprints and allow newcomers access to production methods that the more immobile and entrenched industrialists wouldn’t have access to.

Just throwing ideas out there, but by far the most important thing is that, you can’t rob people who have worked hard to get their advantages already. But what you can do is create spaces so that other industrious people can get a foot in and start something to hopefully get the means to one day threaten the established industries.

My 220 cents, have at it!

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All terrible ideas.
Your premise is built on the idea that someone gives a sh- about new players. Nothing can be further from the truth. Not in a game based on zKillboard. The only way new players are valued is as prey. New players are there to be taken advantage of and to gank upon. The rest is just window dressing and pretty words.

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A solution to what problem?

After the upcoming industry changes, it will be very easy as a newcomer to industry to produce your first ships, easier than it is now.

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In many T2 productions pet players get to missout the whole invention process.

Very few new players will stick around in that area of the game when they read about T2BPO’s.

Interceding the whole “reeee, t2bpo have nill effect, reeeee.”, ok say we agree,;Then lets make T2BPO’s a daily login reward then?

“Screeech, reee! Value, content creators, 3rd party community development, reee!”.

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Thats a good thing. Its just a timesink on the perceived return anyway

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Everything you suggested makes it harder for new people to do anything because all these things would be barred behind restrictions, limited in availability and cost them money if they can’t sell their crap until the event ends. All in all, this does not help new players in industry, it makes it worse for them by locking them up in useless activities without any impact on the market. In addition to the fact that this barred content is mostly a waste of time, established players can do it much better than newbs because they have the means to farm the materials faster and more efficiently and they have their facilities setup in advance and can start harvesting and producing right away, while newbs are busy trying to figure out where and how to get to these barred locations.

It is ridiculous to claim that new players have a hard time in industry in EVE, it’s eyewash. The industry in EVE offers tons of items to be produced that can be considered introductory items to get started in the industry activity. The most important of those is ammunition. You need a cheap BPO, a few hours of research (if at all because margins are high on most ammo), a few very basic minerals and a facility to build them and then a ship to transport the ammo to a market. That is all. How much easier should an introduction to real industry in EVE with real participation on the real market be until the new players are happy that CCP and you see failing in industry? It is bonkers to say that it is hard to get into industry in EVE.

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Confirming, new players don’t have a hard time getting into industry. But it does seem many of them have this attitude that they should be able to build high end stuff from day 1.

The new system of locking basic industry behind an sp wall should be a clear signal to new players and alphas that they shouldn’t be building some items. Unless they pay2progress of course.

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I don’t remember having issues with going into industry, I don’t see a problem to solve. Today it’s my main source of income (combined with market speculation), and most of my operations are in highsec, rest in lowsec (rigs, my Hecates, reactions).

The interface we have for a couple years now is quite OK, although it has some stability and performance issues. I think the problem is that a lot of players are just not in numbers and complex logistics.

The new patch will solve nothing for new players in regards of manufacturing, it takes away logic (all T1 ships of one class have same BoM) and makes it harder to get into high-end and capital stuff, where the profit is (new lvl5 trains).

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@CCP_Rattati (You said you like a well worded post. Hopefully, you find this wall of text worth the read.)

I did industry my first year and half in Eve, and I’m not convinced that industry needs to be made easier for newbros to get into.

First, I am not saying that it’s easy to get into industry, because it’s not. It does take a very long time and huge investment to make profits similar to what other careers can make early on (especially with all the youtube PvE tutorial videos floating about). However, industry is ultimately one of the most profitable activities in the game, scales extremely well with additional characters, and can even be done semi-passively. Thus, I don’t think that it’s necessarily a bad thing that things are so hard starting out, because it helps to balance out how great things become later. I think of it like the mage class from D&D. They can ultimately lay waste to entire rooms of enemies… but start out as fragile and impotent. So, that is the tradeoff. Their absurd late-game power is balanced by their early game crappiness (welp, I cast my one magic missile. Time to sling bullets with a 20 THACO until I get another full 8 hours of sleep. P.S. I have two and half hit points, and can die by stubbing my pinky toe too hard).

Second, you don’t need to own structures, be able to take advantage of huge economies of scale, have perfectly researched BPO’s, or 100million SP to be successful at indsutry. Don’t get me wrong, those things are indeed advantages that will help increase profits, but they are not required. And that’s because the key to success in industry is being able to use your brain.

Let me put it this way. if you start a business in real life, would you think it’s a good idea to compete against industry titans in a saturated market? Or would you try to do things like find under-served markets to break into? I kind of don’t want to say this because I don’t want to increase competition for the guys smart enough to figure it out on their own, but I found success not by trying to compete with vets trading out of Jita, but by selling things that didn’t have meta variants out of smaller trade hubs like Clellinon and Oursalaert. In fact, I think this is a good way for newbros to get into industry because:

  • The big players tend to focus their efforts on the big markets, which leaves plenty of small ponds for small fish.
  • Younger players are much more likely to buy out of local markets for various reasons (i.e. Clellinon is a career agent station, can’t see sell orders outside of the region, don’t know about Jita item selection and prices, don’t know about sites like Eve Marketeer), which is important because they are much more likely to buy T1 items.
  • Existing meta mods are often better AND cheaper than their T1 variants. Thus, trying to compete against meta mods is a fool’s game. Fortunately, there are plenty of T1 items that don’t have any meta-mod equivalents (i.e. rigs, modulated strip miners, tractor beams), which provides newbros with items that are relatively profitable and easy to get into.

Long story short, newbros can break into industry, and they don’t need a bunch of isk, structures, or SP to do it. What they need is to be smart about it -and, imho, it is this which makes industry special. It’s not a virtual economy that can cheesed (i.e. Fable’s economy), and there are no step by step guides that require absolutely zero thought from the people that follow them. In order to be successful, you have to turn on your brain, and really think about what you’re doing.

Case in point, when I was still quite new, I went looking for T1 items with the biggest difference between build costs and standing sell prices in Everyshore, and then made a bunch of each of those items. I then put them up on the market and… watched them just sit there for days and days. And that’s when I discovered sell volumes, and that all of the items that I had made was all stuff that people hardly ever bought. I ended up having to cancel all my orders in order to get my market slots back, and I lost even more money when I sold what I could to lowball orders in Jita and reprocessed the rest. But, I did learn from it, and grew as a player as a result. And the experience made it all the more rewarding and exciting when I did finally start figuring things out and saw the money start coming in.

Now, to be clear, I actually don’t have any problems with any of the industry changes I’ve seen so far (and think that de-tethering cap prices from T1 subcap prices is a capital idea -pun intended). However, I still haven’t been convinced that industry needs to be made more accessible. I don’t know. Maybe you shouldn’t listen to me because of survivor bias, but I like the fact that it requires a brain. And I hope that that remains the case moving forward.

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From what I see, Meta-mods are one big offender, making what is supposed to be the beginner tier, Tier 1, to actually be tied to higher tiers of Industry, as in being used for T2 production.

There were talks about a making Meta-mods no longer drop directly but instead need a dropped part that would then be needed with a T1 to produce a meta.

Whether people here think there is no problem of access, you do have to admit that the gap between T1 and T2 is way too gigantic to be be reasonable.

And yes, I do suspect that there is a lot of survivor bias around here :stuck_out_tongue: , but since I don’t have the data to back it up, I will not push the subject too much.

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In order for those products to be meaningful, they need to be involved in some way to the current industrial mechanism that exists in EVE. And yet, they already exist, and they are found almost exclusively in wormholes.

Youre basically adding things that already exist, but make it skill-neutral. Having even more steps and more resources to building something only makes it harder for new players to make things. This wont help new players at all, and only established, older players will be able to make use of these products.

Furthermore, by having it be skill-neutral, you need to either invent some sort of completely new type of Mining. Which makes no sense. Theres very little benefit for CCP to invent, balance and impliment a completely new type of mining system when a mining system already exists.

Again, without it being somehow tied into what already exists in EVE, there is no incentive to farm those things. Why bother farming for Product X if no one uses it and therefore it doesnt sell for any amount of ISK?

How is this any different from mining in hisec.

What would be the reason why more established pilots with better, established corporations wouldnt have a huge advantage over new players in this system?

And again, how would collecting these resources be any different than mining in hisec?

Yes, and its called MIning in hisec.

You do realize, that when a new player mines in hisec(after either playing the NPC missions to get a free mining ship or joining a good corp), that 100%, yes, thats right, 100% of the minerals he mines, is profit? And if he chooses to buy a blueprint copy or get one from his corp, that whatever he makes, can be sold at near-100% profit? Especially since the new patch will change the mineral requirements for smaller ships.

The only problem you seem to have, is that new players cant buy billions of isk worth of materials, manufacture them, and make a hefty profit.

And yes, new players cant make a dent into industry. And they shouldnt be able to. New players are new, and they shouldnt be able to log in for the first time and make a billion isk in the first hour of playing.

What is the problem you are seeing here?

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Hah I haven’t seen somebody use the term THACO in ages.

As far as the rest of the post goes its not a matter of ease of getting into it. Industry frankly is really easy to get into. Buy a bpo, get matts, build, sell. Pretty simple and easy. Whats hard about it is the fact that for a new player its actually hard to make money when with almost all tech 1 stuff its more profitable to sell the materials then it is to build the item.

For example to build an Acolyte 1 base cost (base being a non researched bpo) is $5,423 vs the price you can sell it for being about 3k on average. a little over a 2k loss. Thus making it far cheaper to use that market slot to sell the ore you mined up vs actually making (thus getting taxed) and then selling (getting taxed again plus broker fee) the actual item.

This trend continues with almost every single tech 1 item. If you are lucky to find an item where that isn’t the case its usually an item that wont sell anyway thus still leaving you in the same position.

The real question of course is does this necessarily need to change? Answer… Well its complicated. its both yes and no. Yes industry needs to change so that new players can actually make a profit even if its a very slim profit on doing it otherwise they wont spend the time doing it and either quit playing if thats the thing they are wanting to get into, or move to other activities. Moving on to other stuff is not the issue but players not sticking around is.

At the same time industry is meant to be a long game where you slowly move into the bigger better stuff and slowly getting better and bigger profit margins and bigger better ships. Its something that should take time and effort to get to. There should be rare matts that require you to either purchase them from other players willing to risk getting them or you should have to risk going into dangerous areas your self to get them. There should matts that are only found in null sec, Worm Holes ect.

At the end of the day, Eve is meant to be a sandbox where people can do the activities and content they want. It is also a PvP game being it interacting with other players. Be it PvP combat or buying/selling to other players you are going to have to interact with other players. Some activities may require more work to get into and some activities will be more profitable than others, game is what you make of it honestly.

Yah it might frustrate me as I am an industry style player that most of the stuff I want to make is not going to make me a profit regardless of how small there are plenty of ways for me to make ISK in the game if I am willing to take the risk while I work on getting into the stuff that will make me a profit.

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I dont see why.

Prices are set by players. Its not something hard-coded into the game. New players can mine and build things with great profit margins.

The fact that they cant just buy things straight from market and build and make a profit, doesnt really seem to be all that problematic to me.

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I have no idea how either of these proposals address the issue you raised regarding new players.

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Very True, however the issue with materials being worth more to sell vs using them to make items is in the mainly due to scarcity that we are currently in. Secondly is the monopoly that the older player groups have on the market. Taking my example in my prior post. Older industry blocks can afford to take a loss on those to price any potential competition out of the market. Part of the game yes, something that needs to change? No… Removing scarcity would however make it a lot harder for the older player blocks to do it though.

Used to be able to get every single starting tech 1 ship material, drone, ect. In high sec. you only needed to go to low, null or worm hole for the tech 2 or i think it was battle cruiser or higher. Could be wrong its been a few years before scarcity starting since I mined in high sec. At the same time what used to be a common material found everywhere is now only found in high sec. This of course has driven prices up due to lower supply but not lower demand.

Frankly speaking scarcity dint do crap for the newbie industry like they where hoping rather it hindered it and made it not worth it for the newer player. Older players like me are not really affected by it and can absorb the cost.

Watched the CCP stream about the changes today and the guy was laughing about how the last industry change just made him have to spend over a trillion isk on new blue prints, that he then made back in two weeks. Even mid aged players like my self cant afford to do that. The upcoming industry changes are not designed to get more people into industry or help them succeed in that aspect of the game but to protect the monopoly that the older players already have on that aspect of the game.

So yah something needs to change to encourage and allow newer players to actually make a profit or break even till they can get to the bigger stuff. Personally I think that should be an end to the scarcity that they implemented but I could be wrong about that being a good solution.

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Thats not exactly true though. A lot of older players are able to sell things at a premium because they have the connections and the abilities to source raw materials cheap. Whether thats buyback from corps to owning good citadels and characters with max refining skills, they are able to source a lot of it at a cost lower than market price.

And no, removing scarcity does nothing but make it so that more established players will continue to get a leg up on the newer players.

Not really, things like zydrine and megacyte werent exactly available in hisec. I think megacyte was scarcely available and zydrine didnt exist at all in hisec.

Why? You just agreed that this drove prices up due to lower supply. They can make even more money now by directly selling, and thus creating a good base to work from as they start to get into industry.

And the new patch will only make things more easier for new players to produce Tech 1 ships.

How? Could you explain your logic as to how the new changes will protect the monopoly that the older players already have?

You do realize that the changes to mining last time around, hurt Nullsec, possibly the most concentration of old players with huge monopolies of building masive capital and supercapital ships? Havent Rorqual nerfs been consistently occurring? These nerfs in the past have systematically, and consistently targetted these types of players? No one in hisec uses a rorqual. The last nerf to ore in nullsec, too, was pretty massive, with removing veldspar and spodumain from belts and reducing the quantity of ore anomalies.

But id really like to hear your reasoning as to how this will only benefit older players and hurt newer ones.

They can mine it, cant they? Doesnt that make it vastly more profitable than even a 20 year veteran buying from the market to produce their stuff?

Thats how its always been. When i first started, I built my first Obelisk from mining the materials. Only things i bought were the zydrines and megacyte that I couldnt source from Hisec. Everything else was built, and it cost me like 5% of the actual cost to buy an obelisk from the market because i only bought 5% of the materials needed. If I were to sell it, it wouldve been 95% profit. No one whos buying materials from the market and building obelisks could possibly reach that high a profit margin.

And when i built the anshar, yes, i bought the Mats that came from Moons to build the T2 components to build the Anshar, but I still saved a ton from buying the mats and making each T2 component myself. I did the math, and i saved like 200 million isk versus outright buying it from the market.

Thats how I learned about industry. Thats how new players should learn about industry. Mine it, build it, sell it. Once you get enough ISK and enough connections, you can cross off the Mine it part, and start building and selling at a profit.

Edit: maybe it was nocxium that wasnt found in hisec too. I cant remember, its been a while since I had to mine stuff. Im pretty sure Zydrine wasnt available though.

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Whatever you will do, some players will cry.

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EVE is a competitive game. When there’s competition there will always be losers. People need to stop trying to get rid of/punish winners to help the losers. This is a brute law of life. In 10,000 years of civilization we haven’t solved it. We probably never will. No one is entitled to winning.

In EVE we all come to the table in the same position as everyone else: with nothing but our wits and our own intelligence and willingness to learn, take risks, and put in the time and effort. We succeed or fail on the basis of our own merits. Of course people who have been at the table longer have an advantage; an earned advantage.

Also to keep in mind: people are constantly leaving the game, even senior players. The dreaded 1% everyone whines about? Very high turnover rate.

Anyway, what you should be asking is:

What can we do to make being a loser viable?

Most people are “losers”. In the past, being a loser meant starving to death in the cold. Being a loser wasn’t viable. Nowadays being a loser means you have food available year round, a steady year round job at the local grocer, and being able to use a magic wizardbox that fits in your pocket to summon food that was farmed, transported, and prepared by other people directly to your door at any hour of the day. Also, you get to play EVE Online all day while covered in cheetoh dust. Being a loser is viable now.

Is being a “loser” viable in EVE Online? Considering all the ways to make ISK and how cheap the frigate to BC line is going to be (and how simple to produce) - yes, being a “loser” in EVE is viable. Just look at me; most of what I do is mining and opportunism, and I have no complaints.

If you wanna be an industry or market whale or fly a fleet of 5 multiboxed supers… put in the work and the time.

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Missions, you used to be able to find a lot of your low and null sec ores in missions or other exploration pockets in high sec. Currently and I run a ton of missions I have found zero in missions that I used to find those rare ores in all the time. Bringing that back at least provides a means for players to go and mine the stuff themselves without going into low/null/wh or buying it. Even if it means not doing it at a traditional belt. Right now honestly best way to get that rarer stuff without buying it or going into low/null/WH is how I do it via mission running and reproccing all the loot, and scanning down tech 2 drones and reproccing them.

My logic is simple. If I have to spend 500 mill for a battle ship to craft it and use it yet only have to spend 300 mill to buy it out right there is no incentive for me to get into tech 1 crafting to sustain myself.

I agree with you that mining is a great option to build the thing or the mission reproc method. However if I can sell the materials for 500 mill vs a built ship for 300 mill then its a better profit to just mine it and sell it. Once again no incentive to build it my self. Thats the biggest barrier to new industry players in my opinion is that its actually no profitable to sell or do the tech 1 stuff for the most part. There are a few things that are and do sell but unless your actually seeing or know how to find what those are its a perceived barrier rather than challenge to overcome to new industry players.

Your null sec corps and such will always have the advantage. Like I said that shouldn’t change. I am saying that the advantage shouldn’t be so large that it makes no sense for a new player to get into industry at all other than mining. There is a ton of other activities that will net that new player more ISK than the Tech 1 Crafting ever will. Currently running L4 missions or even T1 and T2 Abyssal nets me more ISK than trying to craft or mine the matts for any T1 BP will net me in sale. For me industry is about getting into the bigger stuff or T2 crafting other than that its not really worth it for me.

New blueprints, new reactions, ect. Older players can afford the investment to buy all these the second they are released. They wont have to guess what ones are going to be better to get or not as they can just buy and build them all thus allowing them to set the price, flood the market, or what ever they want with these new things. So yes that helps solidify their hold on the market. Nothing wrong with that. Just seems like the changes are designed with that in mind vs actually making it accessible to everybody including newer players.

Once again not saying any of that is wrong or needs to change. Rather I am stating that we need to find a way to encourage and keep the new players that want to get into industry the correct incentives to do so. Perhaps I am phrasing it wrong or not explaining my self properly as far as my point of view goes.

True, however the prices of ships are still cheaper than selling the stuff to make said ships (for the most part depending on ship and where you get your matts you can make a very small profit). As long as scarcity continues that will be true. Ending scarcity will lower the prices of materials due to larger supply hopefully making it now more profitable to make the ship or fittings than it is to sell the materials.

Right now lets say I mine up (including getting rare matts out of null/low/wh or ratting) all the stuff needed to make a battleship if I can sell all of it and make enough to buy the battleship plus a decent amount of the fittings or all of them depending on how I fit it. Then there is no incentive for me to actually take the time to make the item myself for personal use or to sell it. Even if I dont make enough profit from selling the matts to fit it if I am making more selling the matts then I am from selling the ship then there is no incentive for me to even make the ship.
Thats not counting the cost of the blue print either. If we increase the supply of the materials then we make it more profitable to build the ship thus encouraging more people to make stuff not even to sell but to use for them selves. Either way that gets more players into industry making stuff.

Basically at the end of the day I want new players to stick around, I want new industry players building and selling stuff. Having talks about it helps us find ways to make that happen without screwing over or taking away the advantages that the older players have earned.

New players doing these things benefits all aspects of the game. CCP makes more money, we get more people to shoot for the pvpers, it gets more people out into low pop systems, more mining going on thus more ganking going on ect. Basically more new players equals more player driven content, and thats not a bad thing for the game.

*Edit added * without going into low/null/wh or buying it that I had cut out **

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Working as intended.