Well I guess one idea could be, you would write out the payouts for various methods of pve in game right? then write out the costs to do said events, and make a scale…
Its all about proportions or how thigns get divided up equally or in some kind of scale,
I agree that there are more isk efficient ways to run missions. I would just like to remind that for industrialists that can do full clears efficiently, certain factions do drop a lot of loot and salvage, and a “fun” way for them to boost their income is to turn the salvage and melted “worthless” loot into more marketable items. “Worthless” loot can pile up quickly and is often worth significantly more in minerals than sold on the market. Bonus is that you get all your Tech 1 minerals from “worthless” loot without ever having to break out a mining laser.
here is your mistake. It actually decreases their income.
Seems like payouts have been on a decline in many areas. Most of the recent events have been almost worthless as far as isk goes. Our regular content favors the high skilled players, as it should, but I dont think things have gone up in profit in the years I have played.
If we are comparing with the cost of plex then everyone has had their respective wages cut. 
As I said previously isk favors those that earn from multiple sources.
Wut???
im against the idea of increasing lvl 4 payout, seeing what kind of wealth a RL friend playing as alpha could make. Its amazing how many ships you can have doing lvl-4’s if you dont lose ships to pvp. The blingy stuff should be off reach to casual players.
Remember, I already acknowledged that full clears aren’t the best isk from missions, and my post was in the context of “fun”, there are people in industry that make stuff at a “loss” just cause they enjoy making things. With that said, it just seems if you have salvage and melted loot lying around, you can just sell it, but it should also be worthwhile to turn them into products, otherwise it would seem that no industrialist would be making anything.
Whatever the case, people are going to do what they feel is fun, however, you are pretty good with the math, and if you want to post how to maximize the loot and salvage, it’ll probably be informative.
you literally said “boost their income” and I replied exactly to that .
No full clears either in many cases. Cargo delivery, the Recons, Dread Pirate Scarlet etc. Blitz them. If you have the means to place multiple 1000dps ships on field that opens up a couple of other options.
Salvaging is at best meh, it takes a while to build up enough minerals to actually make something. CCP gave salvaging a one-two punch compared to previous.
If you want to get technical about it they nerfed Angle missions specifically and drop the loot to a about a third of what it once was AND removed drone pooh.
For reference I would fill a Noctis TWICE running an Extravaganza with the bonus room, I also used to build a couple megathrons a week out of drone pooh dropped in level 4s Pre-nerf I would set my missions for a week and just farm the tar out of them.
Blockade, Vengeance and the like I would just not complete until the last day before failing them, every downtime (and I got home from work right after downtime) they would fully respawn for the farming again.
Plex was 450-700 and I managed to have about 2-3 bill on the market at any given time…with my trusty pre-nerf Mach and my alt following it in a noctis.
Those days are over, its not worth effort…takes over an hour for am MTU to collect a decent wave and odds are that some jerkoff is going to shoot it if you aren’t sitting right on top of it.
I have to agree with so many in this post I’ve been eveing for 16yrs and CCP HAVE actually reduced the rewards for L4 Missions. Market items have increased with time and inflation but Mission rewards have actually reduced.
CCP knows people over time made “easy” isk and have over time been slowly reducing the payout including passive Alliance income via passive moon mining 'harvesting" ccp believes it will stimulate the game lol if isk was a bit harder to earn 
The thing is that there are 30,000 turbobears sitting in Delve and CCP can’t figure out how to reign that in.
(Should be easy, make Rorqs as “clicky” as a carrier to stop people from running 8 at a time.) Duh
Once i was doing lvl4 mission for like… eternity as it seemed. Was waiting for my friend to come and help.
I was new, flying Dominix with assorted tech1/meta1 modules/drones and large t1 railguns. And the mission was Serpentis Blockade. 
I see a lot of truth and a lot of miss-information, you can blitz some missions and generate income, but the reward for those missions has dropped, Burner missions some are ok, but others are almost impossible without faction mods and max skills.
Another problem which in part has always been around, skill up, re-invest get quicker, you get noticed, it used to be harder to scan, its not now instead of taking “The Ships Crew” they shoot the mtu or bait you, so grinding like mad to generate 100m per hr is not true unless your in safe deadend corp held system.
You wont make much doing exploration until you get the cloak, its far too easy to get popped, I am just posting this, as the other me has joined a big corp, all you hear, “just lost 10m got popped getting back” or even as they hack, it take time to learn the ropes. As part of a bigger corp I thought great loads to do and load to do it with, not so, being ready to get into fleet you get left when they decide they have enough, try mining while you wait, belts are stripped bare by NPC miners.
If you do manage to find something to mine, you get CODE or some ***** keep bumping you.
compare that to capital farming rock havens, it make empire look lame, where are you going to generate income to replace pvp ships, or have enough floating isk to get to null.
Lvl 4 missions used to be bread n butter earnings to fund this, endless nerf’s means buying PLEX to convert is CCP’s preferred way to fund playtime, someone will point out a video showing 100m in a wallet in 60mins, but be honest most can’t or don’t get this, as for the new invasions, looks like CCP tried to get PVP in the back door, you rarely ever get to loot or salvage, its free for all, I did wonder if it might be a good group thing like incursions used to be.
This is why wormhole space with a 0,0 static is amazing 
Oh, and we are recruiting 
Yeah, I’ve done a lot of level 4 running in my 11+ years and the attrition of rewards ( in addition to the introduction of better rewarding activities) has made me branch out and try other features. Mission running has always been the fallback and rejuvenate oneself activity that is sandwiched between more adrenalin producing fun. However, the relative stagnation of the mission feature due to CCP deciding they had more important things to develope really compounds the slowly reduced money/fun generating power they once had.
Now days, there are far more effective ways to earn isk. Example:
Invasion activity in a perimeter system,solo, 95 minutes, travel time ( one way) 8 minutes, minus ammo and drug cost netted me 254M isk last night, which is insane when compared to level 4 mission running. Still, that’s a maxed skill/ship activity, something many players are yet unable to do. I can understand their frustration.
When you play something solely for the reward,
then you’re not actually enjoying the game.
You’re enjoying the reward.
That that’s not actually good for a game should be quite obvious to you.
What needs re-balancing is our broken society, that is infested by cancerous farmers who don’t play for playing’s sake, but for satisfying their primitive minds and lower instincts. CCP not understanding that this is literally killing the game for profits, because primitive minds are easily milked, is a huge ■■■■■■■ problem.
There is always going to be someone who will complain about rewards being too low. Always. There is no actual way of fixing this. Upping the rewards changes nothing for the better and just makes the problem worse in the long run.
Increasing the rewards will always end in a situation where people will complain about rewards being too low once prices have adjusted. Prices will adjust to the new economic situation and then it’s full-circle. Also there’s the fact that people will accept the new rewards as the norm eventually, so someone will eventually come asking for higher rewards simply because “it’s not enough”. This isn’t a phenomenon limited to ganking/safety.
The only way to actually satisfy people is to lower their bar. Once it’s too high, no amount of increased rewards are going to change anything for the better. The current economic situation is already being caused by rewards being too high across the board, so what do you think is going to get better when CCP yet again gives in to the farmers, allowing even more money into the economy?
Hint: Nothing. Things will just keep getting worse.
What CCP should be doing is lowering the rewards, not increasing them. Lowering the rewards will remove a ton of farmers, which will help lowering prices of things including PLEX, which will make the currently “low” rewards look more balanced and will help improving the atmosphere of the game.
■■■■ Farmers.
Can you actually give a good reason why this should be the case? There is plenty of ISK to make in EVE, via various activities. Anyone crippling himself by solely running lvl4 missions is basically making a bad choice while blaming CCP for lack of “reward balance”.
Little ragey there my dude
That’s the definition of playing.
Are you telling us you don’t play the game ? If that’s the case, how can your opinion be relevant ?
No, it is not the definition of playing.
If you don’t believe me, ask an experienced chess player.
Chess can not actually be played mindlessly, thoughtlessly, driven by lower instincts only.
Yet chess is being played.
Also, how you jump to that conclusion is … interesting … but I’m not going to dive into that.
Please try not to be like this when you talk to me?
Thank you? 
What ? Nobody talked about mindless. You were talking about to satisfy your primitive instinct, and that is what playing is for.
A human being is driven by a lot of basic instinct, those create the “need” for things and later on the “will” for things. Satisfying those primitive instinct is needed to build a personnality : you don’t create a personality when you are in the NEED but when you make the choice of your WILL.
Some of those instinct are to remain alive, but also to have a feeling of growth, to have rewards for your actions in society, to feel in a secure environment. Playing games allow you to satisfy those NEEDS in a world that does not allow to satisfy them out of simulated environment.
People who do martial sport tend to be less aggressive than people who don’t, either in words or in acts. Martial arts are a way to make aggressive people lose aggressivity.
People who do competitive games (at higher level) are able to accept criticism more easily than people who don’t ; but it’s correlation and not causation, I don’t know of study that proves that starting competitive games makes you able to handle criticism more easily.
But what’s important is that when you PLAY a game you satisfy your primitive needs and thus allow yourself to become a human instead of a beast. True there also are issues with those, but your “broken society” is actually the only way to have a society that is not broken. Remove the games, people will start killing each other.
if you want some informations about that, you may read this short wikipedia page
This article partially contradicts what I’m saying as it eg says
The original hierarchy states that a lower level must be completely satisfied and fulfilled before moving onto a higher pursuit. However, today scholars prefer to think of these levels as continuously overlapping each other.[3] This means that the lower levels may take precedence back over the other levels at any point in time.
It’s just a difference in opinion.