The COSMOS missions work perfectly, while the structures for those mission items are all broken and only respawn after a server reset and then 1 more time again. It isn’t just one specific structure. It is all of the structures that are mission related. The worst offender for this frustration is the Caldari cosmos because all the value is packed into the two mission implants that you have to get the faction for, while the Amarr cosmos has the same issue, but is less farmed because two of the mission items are behind gates that require keys to even access that are consumed when you use the gate.
This is frustrating when as a player I invested time in training the skills to build the items from the BPCs, 4 million skill points, that only are useful for those BPCs. Also the content, while old features a little bit of everything that EvE has to offer, from hauler missions to combat missions and could become a really good area for player experience, specifically new players, since most of the content can be done in alpha state with ships that are available to alpha clones. The limiting factor for any player to do the content lies within the structures not respawning correctly currently and needs to be addressed in some way. While I understand that the CSM has taken this issue up in the past to get it fixed, the response was basically an acknowledgement that the spawns are broken in a way that is not easy to fix.
In the current state, the content is only available to players living in a time zone that is close to the server reset time, while those living in places like North America, can’t even do the content without GM intervention (nearly impossible to negotiate with) or buying the items off contract for stupid prices because the content is being directly limited by the code, which creates a strain on the niche market of those mission items causing prices to be severely out of control due to scarcity being created by a broken respawn.
I don’t really care if players manipulate the market to gain a profit, as there is risk, but when a player is able to manipulate the market on a single niche item because they live in the time zone that has the best opportunity to take advantage of the broken spawn, then that begins to become an issue. It also has the potential to start a downward spiral towards RMT if a meta shifts to favor those niche implants being used and items that require the items from the structures not respawning.
I hate to say this, but when it comes to the COSMOS content, CCP has three options to deal with the issue.
- Repair the issue
- Remove the content and Refund the associated skills
- Direct GMs to intervene directly for the mission items associated with COSMOS content as long as the player has made a valid attempt to get the item on there own.
People can say this is EvE and a monopoly is ok,. But this is how I view it. If all the tritanium came off of 1 asteroid in the game that could be mined in less than an hour, CCP would fix it immediately because tritanium is used in basically every item in the game. Players would be up in arms at how this not only directly affects the market, but the entire player base. It wouldn’t matter if the problem was difficult to repair, it would be repaired.
CCP has also shown that they will intervene in content when it made adjustments to the NPC Sotiyo BPC drops to limit it being looted only by specific ships because the alliances found out that greed is sometimes stronger than loyalty.
The same issue could be argued in this case from a varying angle, but because it is niche content, requires specific faction levels to even get access to the agents, CCP ignores the problem without seeing how it impacts the different parts of the player base. The broken respawn on the structures directly affects the niche industrialist that operates in that market because it has less competition in that item type. It affects the exploration player that spends there time opening the containers for the items required to supply materials to the industrialist that doesn’t want to get those parts themselves.
Then it directly impacts the pricing of the implant because it has been moved from the typical supply and demand dynamics into a limited supply that doesn’t care about demand at all.
I honestly don’t see the first option being implemented and the issue being directly fixed. Fixing the problem could create other issues that are just more damaging than leaving the issue in the game. So we can probably drop the idea of it being fixed directly.
Option two has the same issues as option one. Removing the content could create other issues that are just not feasible for the development to deal with.
The third option is currently already implemented in the game and is the most cost effective way to solve most players frustrations with the structure issue without having to actually do anything with to fix the problem. It really comes down to CCP and the Development team communicating to the GMs that the COSMOS mission specific structures have respawns that are broken in a way that is not easy to fix and giving a green light to help players work around the issue better rather than trying to treat the structures like they are working as intended. Now when I say work around, I mean that these types of petitions would be sent into escalation where designated GMs could just put the item required into the character’s inventory at some station. This does have its flaws, but even when the structures respawned correctly, most players didn’t really feel motivated to redo the content on another character. This also means that the player has to utilize the tools available to them to get the help. The disadvantage of this system is that it will create a slightly longer time in the petition system. But it does deal with an issue at least in a direct approach that both sides feel they accomplished the goal. The development team, CCP, and the GMs have a method to solve the problem without investing any time or resources into the issue and the CSM gets to finally have the issue be resolved in a way that most players might feel is important to the player experience.