No, it most absolutely certainly is not an ISK sink. PvP is an ISK faucet due to insurance payout.
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Major materials sink. Insurance doesn’t cover the modules blown up in fights in the least. And for fits involving some green, purple, or red… that won’t be coming back anywhere near as fast as some cheap junk that is just meta and T2.
It only approaches a significant faucet for basic doctrine fit T1 fits where you get the majority of the ISK value back. For all flying around in shiny stuff for PvP its mostly a sink.
For what it’s worth, as much as I find your conversational tone to be immature and caustic, and as much as I feel you fail to understand what you are talking about, I do strongly agree with the sentence above.
The only problem is you have a definition of “active play” and “varied play” which clearly includes a hidden clause for carebear miners to avoid justice for their illegal mining sins. You literally wrote that it is a “mistake” to permit involuntary PvP - but the entire basis of EVE is founded upon the fact that illegal mining is risky and punishable by neutron blasters and fast tackle. You feel the game is based upon PvE, but it is absolutely a PvP game, with PvE offered only as a means to entice miners to their death.
Unfortunately, due to bots and the aspirant ways of the miners, excessive farming means that the reward for mining is quite low. The solution to this dilemma is to make mining even more dangerous, much more dangerous. If mining becomes dangerous enough, even elite PvPers will consider mining, such is the law of supply and demand.
The fundamental problem with EVE at this point in time is that mining is far too safe. The rewards are too low, because the market is over saturated by bots and AFK miners. A new player thus has insufficient incentive to mine, while carebear protections ensure that new players struggle to attack and kill miners. Fortunately, James came to save high sec and teach the miners to bump and gank! Those who follow him will thrive, and the rest must perish according to the natural law.
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- Material is not ISK.
- Modules represent horizontal ISK movement, not vertical ISK movement (vertical = faucets and sinks)
- PvP is an ISK faucet period, regardless of how you fit your ships.
You need to learn what horizontal vs vertical ISK movement is bud.
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How do you define “illegal mining”?
Anyone mining without the permission of the locally dominant alpha PvPer, who is able to kill them with ease, that miner is in serious risk of getting wrecked.
I would suggest every miner find a friendly PvPer and purchase a mining permit, paying taxes in order to support the navy which guards civilization. Every PvPer loves his citizen miners, and will not hesitate to purge the system of illegal miners, so that citizens can enjoy VIP access to the belt.
In some regions, the price of a mining permit is measured in billions of isk per month. In high sec, there is one low price: 10 million isk per year. Such is the mercy of James.
Props for adding the manic RP to the MMO that is EvE. CODE what does that stand for? Cowards Oppressing Defenseless Entities?
Being a null bear miner I was curious how you defined it. Some of you guys were breifly venturing out our way. Please do come back we miss you. Since the Blackout things have gotten very quiet. Good news, Local is back so you can find your way around again. Looking forward to more fun with you guys.
Cheers!
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It does not stand for anything my friend. It is a code, a codex of law, the basis of civilization. In olden days of Terra, human civilization was founded upon the code of Hammurabi. In New Eden, it is the CODE of New Halaima which governs society. The code of Hammurabi said, “An eye for an eye…” The CODE of New Halaima says “10 million, or risk bump.”
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Noobs who mine stationary will learn at some point one would hope. If not, you are the karma they deserve. Please keep it up, player count has gone down dramatically and I am grateful for all your dedication and support of my play style. Who knows, maybe you get 95% of new players to quit in a week instead the measly 90% that do now.
Exactly. As James wrote:
By enforcing a system of just laws, I give the miners liberation from their own worst instincts. And through this process, the miners can be molded into better people, the kind worthy of joining the new community of EVE.
I have an confession, I’m a bear, a bear that dreams he is a wolf, but I’m just a fat lazy bear. The risk of ganking is important to me because it added risk I needed to play and log in.
One winter I built a carrier all by myself. I mined everything and hauled it into a quiet lowsec system.
Had a few pvp fights to clear it and then continue to freight the stuff. I wish I had time to do that again.
Meh, after listening to the CSM notes, I’m pretty sure CCP knows what the issues are and how to fix it, but the CSMs and old guard aren’t going to support it. Video games evolve over time and what was acceptable and tolerated by the players is no longer the case.
Example (diablo franchise):
- Diablo 1 = character dies, all their stuff explodes onto the ground, restart from last save or be resurrected
- Diablo 2 = character dies, revive in town, all stuff on corpse which could be collected where they started or game restarted and picked up in town.
- Diable 3 = character dies, revive at location selected by players, items take a 10% durability hit which can be repaired.
Blizzard figured out that people don’t want to loose their stuff and adjusted the death mechanics to support that. If we look at the death mechanics for various MMOs:
- EVE (monthly fee for full access) = loose ship, everything on it and potentially your cybernetics
- Runescape monthly fee for full access) = seems to be one keeps at least their 3 most valuable items with ways to save more
- Black Desert Online (purchase to play) = Loss of exp (PvE only) and potential for gems breaking, criminals loose big.
- WoW (monthly fee for full access) = nothing permanent other than loss of a minor amount of gold and flask buffs
- Final Fantasy XIV (monthly fee for full access) = gear durability loss
- Tera (free to play) = chance of crystal breaking and temporary loss of stamina
EVE’s fundamental problem is with the PvP death system and all the stuff that cascades with it. CCP wants players to loose ships to offset the ISK income faucet. PvP (ship v ship) is not profitable and requires PvE to support PvP (most other games do not require this). Those who want to PvP don’t want to spend hours in PvE to support PvP and those in PvE don’t want to be someone else’s “content”.
For a new player, the game goes like this:
- Play tutorial, get all psyched up to do something
- Go run a some missions, mine or sites, get bored
- Look at skills to see about getting upgrades, figure out they have to wait at least several hours to get all the skills to fly the next thing on the list
- Fly to low sec to explore the game and maybe engage in PvP, get blown up by a gate camp. Alternately, they fly more missions until they’re bored.
- Eventually loose a ship, get bitter about loss
- Leave game to play something else.
If someone wants to play a spaceship based MMO, they have choice between EVE and Star Trek Online; both of which have issues. If someone could add some competition to this space, it would be well accepted I suspect.
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I’m on record as being quite cynical of the CSM in general. Still, I find the universe a strangely interesting place. I read the CSM notes and I felt the CSM were advocating really well [ for a change].
The moments in the notes where CSM pointed out an issue and CCP basically had no data was really telling.
As for your comparisons to other games you have totally left out the reason many play Eve - which is the interaction with other human beings.
Too many pilots playing today don’t know the feeling of accomplishment or even the complete burn this game can present [I’m still burning from recent events] that can come when you decide to organize yourself into social groups who throw rocks at each other.
Talking to yourself again Andersen?
If I couldn’t lose my ship and everything on it, I wouldn’t want to play anymore.
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I’d bet of the overall video game population, the majority don’t want to loose their ship without 95%+ compensation, a fair number don’t care either way and the minority actually like the super difficulty.
If you look at the annual report for Pearl Abyss (owners of CCP), we’ll see how EVE is doing in the only metrics that really matter, money. EVE is basically flat 1Q19 to 2Q19, with those quarters being up 16% from 4Q18. In the meantime, Black Desert showed 58% growth over the same period, 17% if you take 2018 peak against 2Q19 peak. In addition, Black Desert makes 9x the revenue of EVE. There are no mentions of future EVE products in the financial report. EVE is stagnant and the small fish in the companies portfolio. EVE will either change to attract and retain more players or not change and become a maintenance game until it eventually dies; where the parent company will leverage the IP for future products.
No need to leverage any IP for future products - just roll back the last 4/5 years of dreadful decision making at CCP and neglecting core product and you have a functional product not this cash grab horror show as the game has now become per se. The rollercoaster has no more ups and downs - CCP have taken us to the path that’s the big screamer as it goes down now and there’s no ascent at the end of this dive bomb.
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Looks like a spot on analysis. I for one don’t like losing my stuff. However since I like PvE I am easily able to replace it. The new player experience seems to be rolling around to the idea of auto replacing more items. I am sure it has an end point but its development supports your conclusions.
Competition for EvE has arrived both direct and indirect. Some have arrived others coming still others on a distant horizon. EvE is loosing its exclusivity to competition. While arguably still the best Space MMO other options are available. As to the social argument, EvE never held any exclusivity on that.
While an indirect competitor, Frontiers Elite Dangerous is very engaging. For me the direct compare is the mining experience which is far more immersive. Unfortunately the industrial aspect after harvest is lacking. however the flight experience is downright amazing.
While I am not giving up EvE anytime soon, I do see ED getting some of the 90% of new EvE players that quit within a week of starting.
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auto replacing item ???
if only we could auto replace ccp hilmar and the last 4/5 years, but alas, the game is where is it now and i’m not sure who else to blame.
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