You realize that prices aren’t set by CCP, right? CCP isn’t like the Cominform setting grain and gasoline prices in 1949. All of those things that are “x2-3 more expensive for you and your mates” now? That money goes to other players. Which means that just as things have become more expensive to buy, they have also become more profitable to produce. Which means that players are making more money than they did before.
Maybe you should focus your efforts on diversifying your income streams, instead of grinding the same mission over and over again, and complaining on the forums about how you can no longer make rent every month.
More expensive doesn’t necessarily equate to more profitable.
If an item now needs more man hours of gathering to produce it doesn’t mean people earn more isk/hr , in fact economic pressure means people now want to pay less per hour as everyone ’ feels the squeeze ’
Raw material prices, mining income per time unit as a proportion of total economic output, and value added profits from manufacturing have all gone up after scarcity was implemented.
The only players “feeling the squeeze” (aside from the ones who fund their gameplay through PLEX) are the ones engaging in static, low-end PvE content like high-sec missions and Veldspar-mining.
So why do people say that capital production is no longer profitable or do you think that these changes are an effective of people diversifying there portfolio and producing other things ?
ISK faucets are stable or raising (remember dropping player count?)
With above graphs in mind, maybe inflation better explains your raising profits? You just happened to be on a receiving end of it.
One of the basic rules in game design, player motivation and rewards systems, is that you can’t simply cut rewards let alone demand more effort for less reward. Without reframing, without changing the references, without changing activities. They kept the same boring mining, same boring pve, same boring relic exploration, made them more time consuming, with less reward.
This is game design basics. This is psychology basics.
EVE used to be unique MMO with player driven economy. Now it’s just like another mobile P-o-S with power creep, built-in inflation to destroy stockpiles and drive away veteran players, newbies grinder to sell more starter packs.
But they influenced those prices with industry changes. Caps not requiring half as much minerals. Insane cap building prices > no resource sink > resource oversupply. People leaving cuts both supply and demand. Etc, etc…
Here, a table made from from MERs data. Regional trade value, decembers 2018-2019-2020-2021 with deltas. Data may not be as demonstrative as it would be month to month, but one can get the idea. Player activity substantially dropped over 2 years of scarcity. I’d dare say due to scarcity.
I just replied in general terms because I can’t divulge any specific goals because that would influence the whole ecosystem. Anyone can study the relationships and macro time-series and try to understand when a part of the game was healthier than at another time and come up with their own definitions.
This is a very accurate description of what the thought process and execution was, including the reaction.
There was a problem, we can’t go back in time even though the feedback was valid at the time, and the only way forward is tackle the problem and move on.
I agree with the sentiment here, the value creation is now done by more players, through gas, PI, which are not as easily scalable as raw ore. In some way, the economy is moving from a 19th century “raw resources” focus over to manufactured goods, logistics and specialization, i.e. globalized trade, which should be a good thing in an economic simulation.
To be honest I like EVEs compexity in industry. But your numbers seem way off though. And you did not communicate if that’s the case and they’ll be iterated on. For almost a year now. People stopped building faction ships and now buy them off of LP store, bypassing industry.
PI-alts, reaction-alts becomes a “requirement” if you want to try and stay independent. Being independent is now considered bad I assume, and you’re supposed to buy things on the market, pricing is way off then. And you could easily tweak drop rates, loot tables and BPC requirements, but you didn’t.
So far you’ve managed to kill off some playstyles people were enjoying. You’ve also created demand for other playstyles, I admit. Why not some new exciting activities, why reuse old boring ones again?
The problem you’re left with is that EVE’s little military-industrial complex is still lacking the “military” part. Great for social progress and prosperity in real life, but terrible for a pew-pew spaceship video game. There are no soldiers, no mercenaries, no privateers, no bodyguards, and no bounty-hunters. There are barely any real pirates left, in EVE’s classic sense of the term. No one’s genuinely fought over resources since like 2011. The only combat/destruction that happens is during staged null-sec conflicts, and the borderline-meta gameplay of high-sec suicide-ganking. And of course all of those fancy new deadly NPCs do pick up some slack because of this (they have to).
It’s okay to not worry about the economy so much. Players will adapt to different yields and material requirements, but they won’t adapt to boredom. Other aspects of the game, like faction warfare, high-sec wars, bounty-hunting, and low-sec in general need urgent help. Stop paying attention and catering to the revolving-door crybabies begging for more Veldspar and fewer diamond rats, who want nothing more than to turn this game into a space-themed Cookie Clicker. I know hundreds of ex-EVE players, and not a single one of them wants to come back to the game because everything that made it fun during its first decade is gone. And stop it with the pointless login campaigns. Give us a reason to actually go beyond the character selection screen, instead of getting burned out by claiming limited-time freebies every day.
I’ve never seen you post in GD before, so I feel like this is a rare chance to express my sentiment.
Thanks for expressing, Destiny.
Only I fear that your words will fall on def ears.
If he was open to consider players’ input the game wouldn’t be in the state you describe in the first place.
He wasn’t in charge when EVE went through changes that got us here, and isn’t responsible for them. These changes happened during the 2011-2016 period, and include ultra-farmable incursions, new null-sec mechanics leading to sovereignty stagnation, CrimeWatch, turning FW into a grindable PvE activity, and culminating with the implementation of citadels.
What he’s been responsible for over the past two years has largely been necessary, if somewhat shoddily executed. The better play might have been to use some psychological tricks against the player base, by increasing material requirements as opposed to decreasing yields, which probably wouldn’t feel so “upsetting” to so many players. But what’s done is done, and reversing course now might do considerably more harm than good, despite what the yield-focused miners and null-sec bot operators say.
A few specific parts of scarcity were questionable (e.g. T2 production being affected to the point where high-end T2 ships are prohibitively expensive compared to alternatives, in terms of price/performance ratios), but otherwise I agree with the changes.
