Here’s a super radical concept: Do, aim and train for activities that you ENJOY doing (and no, “because it makes good isk” is not enjoyment, it’s a potential side effect). Lower the amount of “passive income” stuff because, really, it’s just boring Farmville second job play styles. If one thought they’re interesting and cool they’d still do them.
You can be casual but you don’t have to be like an NPC grinding away in the background. Enjoy actually playing the game and accept that change happens so if you aim for OP stuff accept that it will be changed soon™.
While I appreciate the sentiment I would just point out a complicated indy setup is about as far from passive as you can get because it requires a lot of planning optimisation and constant stream of different game activities, buying things, selling things, creating things, moving things. The Indy depth to EVE is very unique in the MMO sphere. I enjoyed as a playstyle very much from char creation & put all my SP in to various aspects of it over a few years. CCP then did a lot of changes to many components of my playstyle such that I no longer feel any motivation to do complex long term investment playstyle that supplied markets.
I can’t get those skillpoints back without significant cost & loss. I now have a very once burned casual attitude to EVE & just do a bit of simple combat sometimes, like maybe if there’s an event, or a few missions.
You can still do all of those things, it’s just that some things are better procured from other players than trying to do everything yourself because that was made difficult on purpose, this isn’t a single player game after all. You can hate that change and dislike that some of your characters or SP’s are now “useless” but if you enjoy the concept of industry then you can simply adapt and adjust and keep on trucking.
Scale down, refind focus, git gud, expand. Till the next thing you do gets nerfed, rinse repeat htfu.
If there would be enough new players coming in to Indy (& associated fields) then the markets would be ok.
If not many people had left indy (& associated fields) then the markets would be ok.
The markets don’t seem ok.
I offered some insight for whatever anecdotal value it has on why I left indy & am v. unlikely to ever go back.
The market will be fine. Gaps happen, things move around and fluctuate. Some seeders leave or change while others pick it up. Whenever a proper equilibrium is reached for effort/play style and income people will jump into it. Be they new players or older players who feel this is the right moment for them.
Do what you enjoy doing, if you don’t enjoy it at all then stop doing it. The rest is all silliness.
Or maybe, you could take the index into account when doing your math.
And yes, I regularly change base, to the point I have several places with 100s of B of materials that I have not used for a year.
scaling down is basically making no money.
The index grows with the root of your activity, so in order to have half the index, you need to have a fourth of the activity.
Well the best way to see if markets are really adapting just fine would be to look at trade volumes for non Jita systems vs Jita for a couple of years preceding the changes & compare those volumes for the period following the changes.
If you can’t get your product you shop somewhere else. Jita will always be the last to see stock problems because of it’s dominance, but if it’s dominance is increasing as a proportion of overall game activity then it shows wider problems with stocking of other trade areas.
People have done that and decided not to produce certain things any more, or stop producing at all.
Yeah thats totally fine for you as veteran, having “several places with 100s of B of materials” and not even caring if you don’t use that for a year. Please realize that newcomers in the business are far away from having that kind of luxury. All they want is to maybe have some own POS or Astrahus in Godforsakatani (0.8) at the edge of a forgotten Highsec region and do their little industry stuff there. Now go tell them they have to move every month because they are runining the profitability of their own home system by doing the stuff they have set up the base for. They will agree unanimously that this is a stupid system, demotivating people from doing industry because they feel overly taxed and punished for their activities.
Essentially, why do indy when every mechanic penalizes newcomers & disadvantages them against veterans. Even more so after that set of changes to indy, structures, mining, trade routes etc.
Can you explain me how did the changes hit you exactly?
From my understanding, prices went up, PI is now used much more than before and empty ooffshore tradehubs are an opportunity. Or not?
The only thing I see that can hurt industrial players is the ore redistribution which means that you either need to mine in all 3 types of spaces or buy the missing crystals from the spaces you can’t mine yourself. Which however shouldn’t be a big deal, if you are in highsec then you can buy the crystals in Jita for good price. If you are in null then you surely have a hauling network of your own or someone else in your corporation is hauling things from and to you anyway.
Lately I noticed that Jita prices are rising up, at least for stuff I am buying a lot. The profit on those is sometimes 500% at Jita itself before it stabilizes. Market is probably no longer saturated by old nullsec overproduction and prices seems to be good for producers again. But I might be wrong about that, I didn’t train or tried industrial career so I don’t know what the maxed skill manufacturing costs are to tell for certain.
What you’re basically saying here is: “Hey, I don’t do industry and don’t know how it works. Explain both the old and the new approaches to industry so I can understand the difference.”
Not really worth going in to, here (at least for me), so hopefully a bit of googling will tell you why many people have given up on industry. (I’m not one of them BTW - I found industry boring even before the updates.)
Eve is a game that frequently messes with anybody’s preferred playstyles. It is important to have a variety of fun things to do. One of my leisure time activities is to run level 1 missions in nullsec. I use a T1 fit T1 frigate and I have all of the blueprints in a hangar out there. If somebody blows me up, I just mine the minerals to build a new frigate. It is actually exhilarating, not having a cloak, not having a scout, knowing that if you lose your ship you will need to mine for a long time in a corvette to get the minerals to rebuild your ship.
Incredibly, CCP managed to crush even that playstyle with the mineral distribution changes.
Yeah, this is how I started learning lowsec. I created a to-be-throwaway alt moved there and just started mining in venture, then doing lvl 1/2/3 anoms and later running distribution mission. It was so fun doing this all without any “attachment” and worrying about losing that I keep playing that alt time from time even now when I am no longer in that part of the space. I tried it in null as well, but didn’t like it that much - way too strong npcs for low-SP chars to deal with and much less sites.
Then use your brain.
I know, it’s easier to complain.
And FYI newbros are a pathetic excuse. If cost index were lower, they would be lower for everybody and the price would go down for everybody alike. So nothing would change for your newbros.
Don’t believe that I started doing indus in a different game. I started, made mistakes, learnt, analyzed. At first I did not have 100B of materials . I still experienced, and use my brain. I lost a lot at first, so yes indus is not for newbros - I think you can start doing correct indus with a capital of 100B approx. No newbro-targeted change you can think of would change a thing.
If you want something to work for you out of the box, then Eve is not for you. Improvise, try out, adapt, and learn. Or die trying. You are not entitled to make money with any gameplay.
It’s really massive to explain all the changes & effects. I could write for hours & don’t really want to. Here’s a few short things.
I was building near Amarr & could like a 9 jump hop to Jita then back or something, Trigs made that like 45 jumps each way.
Going through Uedama with heavy loads became a different experience & factored on profit/loss.
The BPO library I’d spent years researching for efficiency+time of course was subject to all sorts of changes.
The access to resources like ores & PI changed a lot.
Anoms in HS for rare ores which I liked doing for variety in solo orca mining radically changed with redistribution.
I used to love my orca, skilling it thoroughly felt like a massive achievement. It just gathers dust now.
All sorts of mining skills changes. Sitting stationary in an orca (running indy module) is now boring AF compared to having bookmarks to start at 1 end of a belt and work along minimising drone flight times.
Fuel changes to player stations meant various kept running out, which turns off modules midjob which kills a research job or deletes an manufacturing job.
Reliable player stations have system costs that make profit very hard.
Ores moved, all sorts of skills changed & new ones required. refining changes etc. availability dropped sharply.
Most of all resource prices went through roof while module & hull prices stayed static. 98% of items I used to produce became negative profit.
I can’t even be bothered to resubmit my PI stuff. I don want to have to go travel & deal with it when I’m not building anything anymore. Yes, I am sure there is adaption I could have made to every point listed & hundreds more I can’t be bothered to list, but I did adapt - I took a year off & skilled combat in that year. I adapted by never wanting to do any level of indy again. From everything that is said very many others adapted in the same way, especially across my newer players alliance. The most common response from many people to anyone asking about industry play is “That’s a hard road, you may want to reconsider”
There is no player station. EC are structures, not stations - Jita is station, not structure.
And the trick is : don’t use structures.
Also I agree WRT orca. Same, I have full skills and implants, one is rusting in Jita, the other I can’t even tell where it is. but it was before the change, when I tried moon mining and realized it was a chore, with people stealing from it, deccing it, gankers waiting for it… the cost was higher than the benefit (which was, none). CCP is too slow to realize abuses and that “higher risk” is not the same as “losing money”.
Yes, indus is hard, for a lot of reason including the hidden costs that people can’t realize (I built it myself so it’s free). I’m still doing indus though, I think it’s one of the most scaling activities (no mining of course).
station structure citadel w/ever - places u can dock - some are player places, some are npc places. npc places are expensive. player places can be quite unreliable or used v heavily with higher system costs.
I’d advance the theory that not having good stepping stones for newbros to come through the indy route easily is part of the thread topic, it’s partly why the market needs revitalising but isn’t revitalising. There’s always player churn, there needs to be routes that new 1’s come through.
Stations are placed by CCP at downtime and belong to NPC corps…
Structures are placed dynamically, can be destroyed ; can be player or NPc - eg diamond sotyio is NPC structure, same for FOB
They are completely different things, just because they offer service (among them docking) does not mean they are the same. eg stations don’t have tethering so you need insta BMs
newbros can’t “revitalize” a market. Indus needs a lot of experience and money.
Newbros can install in a backwater system and do indus there. There they can learn - but don’t expect to make a killing, because it’s a highly competitive area, just like mining, with low risk. That’s why the benefit is low.