Not sure what graph you guys are looking at, but I’m seeing a continued upward trend in bounty payments. Yes, there’s a big drop-off after the DBS change as bounties get transferred to the new ESS, but there’s been steadily more and more isk produced over time since.
So it is clear that the DBS is not having the effect that some people are claiming of making ratting pointless. You only have to look at the ADMs of busy regions to see this is not the case. The steady increase in ESS token creation also shows that people are using that side of the mechanic more over time also.
That doesn’t impact what Oskar’s saying at all. He’s talking about the introduction of the modifier itself, as well as the portion of the bounties that goes to the reserve bank—which is not part of the autopayments. There’s a huge dropoff that comes in at that point, both because part of the bounties are going to the reserve bank, and not paying out, and because the modifier means the bounties themselves being awarded are smaller.
Personally, I’m kinda curious as to whether or not this data takes into account the DBS communication problem that happened last month, where the DBS system wasn’t actually reporting back to TQ for a number of weeks, so bounty payouts in heavily-ratted systems were much higher than they should have been.
Yeah, thanks for that Arrendis. The large drop-off seen in Nov/Dec 2020 appears to be in the region of 1.75t / day to 0.75t / day - a drop in activity combined with a chunk of isk moving to the reserve bank (and some small amount being lost to bank robbers!)
However, I’m sure anyone looking at just the line on the graph will agree that there is a steady upward trend since that drop. There’s no point arguing that that’s not the case, as it’s patently there.
Also interesting to see the number of regions with high ratting numbers - comparing MERs from the pre-DBS era, you can see that while the individual regional totals are down from the days of 12t per month coming out of Delve, there is a much bigger spread of regions pulling 2-3t per month out of the rats (or, well, Concord technically).
In this way you can very strongly argue that the introduction of the DBS system has led to some desired outcomes, in that there is a bigger spread of ratting activity across the map, and activity levels are continually increasing as people become more familiar with the system and how to use / abuse it.
Indeed, if you look at the MER from March 2018 (Monthly Economic Report - March 2018 | EVE Online) you can see that the combined payouts for Bounties, Commodities and incursions is 90t for 2022 Vs 94t for 2018. Obviously the distribution of that income is different, but the total isn’t the “massive nerf” that people complain about.
It’s not going to take a genius to figure out what is going to happen to the prices of low sec minerals. I hope CCP have this on their radar to solve. Admittedly Crokite sites weren’t spawning in our area for quite some time, but that seems to be fixed now.
If players are building more themselves and using less middle-men, that would not necessarily affect the amount of production or mining there is in the game.
Im totali dont get it does you people actuali argue that farming isk for buying ships thats used primary for pew pew is a bad thing??
Im mean is it realy bad for people to ENJOY THE GAME ??? Or you some how expect people to farm 2 years for one vexor and be afraid of loosing ship so much that NOBODY will do PVP ever??,
Not sure what you are on about here chief. Looking at the MER there’s plenty of ratting going on, just not all the same old cycling the anoms type of ratting of days gone by.
Supers are pulling more isk than ever before chaining Crab beacons. Clever subcaps can farm the high DBS in staging systems while still getting out before the gank comes in (or stage somewhere off the beaten track without too much competition).
As my previous post stated, there’s clear evidence that the total Isk faucets in the game are almost fully back to where they were in 2018.
If you can’t figure out how to make isk with all these options available to you, I suggest you ask about in corp or whatever, as there’s options aplenty.
It’s a combination of things. Ratting gave less isk/hr overall, and that drove some folks to stop completely and either quit the game, or find other revenue streams—like setting up bear-holes and farming sleeper components, which we see rising as ratting is dropping. The initial big boost in Overseer sales, mind, is likely people cashing out the stuff they already had and just hadn’t moved yet (stockpiles like that can be a kind of ‘rainy day fund’, after all.
Meanwhile, those who continue to rat often moved away from super/carrier ratting into cheaper, more disposable hulls, just because the reward wasn’t there for the risk, which drives numbers down even further.
I’m very much not sure that can be attributed to the DBS, though. You’re comparing 2018 to 2022, and there’s been a lot of things happening in nullsec over that time. From the burning of Tribute to Vily’s 14 Month War of Extinction, the rise of FRT and the formation of Fi.RE, TRI’s resurgence, and of course the creation of PAPI with all of the regions they set aside for rental… there’s really no way to say ‘oh, this is because the DBS’. A lot of the moves in the north were because FRT and Horde had to establish a pecking order and figure out which of them got the choicest region(s).
Nah, clever subcaps just understand that by the time the Myrmidon or Vexor dies, it’s paid for itself a dozen times over, so why bother avoiding the gank? Get it over with quick and get back out there.
Yes, there is an upwards trend in the graph. It literally shows you exactly where CCP has buffed the DBS formula over time.
It nicely shows that there are less people making bounties this quarter than last one and significantly less than last year.
It nicely shows what a buggy mess the DBS is when it spikes like crazy in february and right now due to the backend having broken down for months.
And it nicely shows how it drives more people into the abyss or crab holes and away from open space.
I’m certainly no expert, but I feel the numbers are skewed by the wealth and resources of the old and experienced players who measure daily income in the hundreds of millions (or more) of isk and the new players that struggle to replace merlins and ventures.
While the isk source might be “recovered”, the upfront cost to access this resource has doubled or tripled. That’s just a guess… but…
Cost of Ishtar vs Cost of old VNI? The old ratting VNI was a cheap way for a newbro to rat. (Also a dirty botter, but that’s another topic.)
Cost of a carrier? Cripes! To risk that much for the paltry income you have to have enough wealth that you’re just flying a ratting carrier because “Why not, I have a bunch of 'em in my hanger anyhow.”
Building your own ships from parts you got yourself? Even I used to be able to do that. Now you need a bunch of refined goo and crap I have never even heard of to build ships. It’s not something a newbro can even attempt anymore.
Now the freebie drugs have expiration dates and can’t be traded. When I was a newbro, I didn’t do combat, I had little idea what drugs were for or why you would use them. But when I got some in an event, I ran to jita and sold them. When I got fancy battleship or titan skins in an event… run to jita and sell! Money from wealthy players playing their games going to the new players who are a year from having enough isk to waste on skins.
Having players with trillions of ISK is how it is. It seems to me that the throng of new players running solo or in tiny amateur corporations used to have more mechanisms to get ISK from the relatively few super wealthy.
Just looking at “isk is isk” missed the point of “who is holding that isk and which hands are they passing between.”
Not entirely, for sure. I definitely don’t disagree that the null landscape has changed significantly! However, I don’t think you can fully discount it either. Seeing literally every system in Delve and Vale with max ADMs says a lot, don’t think that was ever the case previously. I could be wrong though!
Again, reasonable!
Not sure how that is demonstrated, care to elaborate?
Nah man, Myrms are cheap. So are Vexors.
Only faction and BS on up. And that’s being reduced as we speak. Also relatively easy to produce much of that stuff with low skills, not to mention profitable - have made a killing from reinforced carbon fibre and pressurised oxidisers since they were introduced, both requiring low level PI and R4s easily accessible by anyone of whatever skill level.
This has been the case for many years, and I don’t see the harm in making login rewards things that you can use and not trade - means the rewards can be better without breaking the economy. Think of the new player getting a multi-billion isk skin for a ship they can’t fly yet - straight away generating a target to aim for.
End of the day, you can view everything negatively or positively depending on your mindset, but the past will forever be the home of golden sunsets and infinite fun because you only remember the good bits. In any event, we’re never going back to those times.
Don’t know about Vale, but Delve’s max ADMs have nothing to do with the DBS, and far more to do with ‘we got invaded’. People make an effort to keep the ADMs up all over.
When the DBS was introduced you see bounty volume fall from about 1,6t allt the way to almost 0.5t.
Significantly less than the DBS floor would suggest and ofcourse not all of null went all the way down to 50% so there is your first chunk of people who either quit EVE or moved their income to Abyss or crab holes.
Those players are outright gone from null sec or at best found joining alliance fleets.
What remains are semi afk crabbing alts used to keep ADMs up while you’re watching netflix - just the type of player least likely to give you gud fights.
Around March you see where PAPI was most busy trying to keep up ADMs in Delve.
If you take into account where CCP buffed the DBS formula this upwards curve gets a lot less spiky.
The Beeitnam war ended in August so goons went back to crabbing and you see CCPs latest buff to the ESS before bountys are sloping down again untill winter season.
The big spike in february is where CCP fixed their server backend, wich had my home system jump from 110% to 169% while many other systems crashed completely.
The effect was ofcourse that everyone clusterd up in the systems that had enough PVP to generate a bonus, thereby crashing that bonus right down again.
And the spike you see right at the end is CCP rebooting the DBS again to whichever was highest before or after that bug fix.
So those last two are not buffs but just the server catching up to itself.
The Bountys for march are just below what they were in october while the DBS modifier overall is at the highest average across space it has ever been.
The average pilot is getting higher payout but all combined are making less money than they did same time last year.
It follows that there are less pilots now then there were even after the initial nosedive, the difference being camuflaged by the sum of buffs to the DBS formula.
