Again one of those blinky statistics that has just the purpose to distract people from the reality that this game needs a 180° change or will perish…it’s not that CCP has a choice,this not about doing it or doing it not,its about doing in NOW or it will be too late…
Lift the curtain and the wooden scaffolding that carries everything regarding this report comes into view…
But at first take off your blindfolds…
I suppose to rising trade value mostly comes from PLEX or related items as they make up by far the largest portion of the overall trade in hubs (IIRC at least 50%). Another part could be Mutaplasmids, as there is quite a lot of gambling on those and with it the opportunity to bulk sale old stacks of faction items.
S’what I get for being up too late!
They may have wanted to, but I never saw any sign of them succeeding. But Mach supplies aren’t currently hitting CCP’s bottlenecks. Buy every Mach on market in Jita. 24 hrs later, the exact same number will be offered. That’s a clear sign that it’s not a natural shortage.
I couldn’t possibly tell if that’s true as a believe for all the individual members, but since any definition of “healthy” could be so that it fits individual preference, it’s hard to work with this at all. Specifically this would touch the question of wether or not a divide in wealth has negative influence on the healthyness of the game.
I’d say yes, but at the same time an objective discussion about this is neither possible - nor is it really necessary. All that counts is wether players subjectively feel that a divide has grown out of proportion, not by players outsmarting them, but by the game rules giving them an artificial advantage over others. Not just a few people claim that this has in fact been happening for a while in EVE Online, specifically the combination of rules/mechanics concerning Sov Null, the Rorqual, Skill Injectors, Bounties, Bots and a number of PVP mechanical changes. Are there different opinions about this? Naturally. Are some of those unhappy with the current state of things motivated by still having an agenda of their own within the game? Probably. As long as it is like this for the most part - it’s fine.
A sign for unhealthy influence on the game will probably be when less and less people are talking about it - as it may show that they’ve given up on correcting CCP about what they perceive an unfair advantage or a limited choice of playstyle. This again could either mean that they’ve adapted to that (and the MER does not show that) or that they’ve grown indifferent towards the game.
Indifference breeds indifference and it may evolve to a cycle of negativity with a certain gravity. Now, you can blame that on the players who opened their mouth and they may or may not be fair. Personally I think it isn’t, but again that does not matter. What matters is wether or not this perception and resulting indifference grows strong enough to limit the amount of proactively playing groups and players and thereby limiting the choices of everybody else who may want to interact with them. In such a situation it would finally depend on the definition of “healthy”, as some people would probably claim the game to be healthy even with drastic drop of interaction.
I can’t answer that for other people, but I can say that for me it looks like the combination of total ignorance towards Lowsec and Wormholes, the perceived ignorance towards botting, the widely perceived nepotism towards Sov Nullsec and the recent initiative to make High Sec safer, is steadily leading to less and less choices of player interaction on the one side, and more indifference towards the game as a whole. Surely, this will look different from the perspective of the Highsec safety admirers or Sov Null people, so in the end it comes down to the consequences in the longer run. There may not be any or you may wake up in a couple of months or years wondering why your own players feel more indifferent after being spoiled by game mechanics for years and their designated disadvantaged opponents chosing to drop out.
We’ll see. For me, it does not really matter, as I don’t understand CCP’s vision for EVE anymore. I used to be both excited and naturally sometimes pissed about certain changes - but after calming down, they made sense, as they required all of us to adapt anew and challenge ourselves and each other again and so forth. Now, I haven’t seen that for a while. Not a fan of conspiracy theories, I don’t even want to know why - it doesn’t matter for me. EVE has become too unbalanced in terms of gameplay choices and looks more like a single-solution game then ever before - and that’s fine, but not for me.
So if GSF members are fine with this, that’s cool. It’s a personal choice in the end.
Machariels were just an example, let’s forget about them and simply look at the MER:
However, it does make ISK more valueable and I’d say this could encourage botting, just as it does heavily devalue any non-Rorqual, non-Sovnull based sourcing of base industrial goods. To me this smells like whoever is planning these things CCP-side is trying to get a hold of the situation by escaping forward, giving in to the temptation of giving people what they ask for, rather than what challenges them.
About the oversupply: it’s true that it practically does not become an oversupply as long as people don’t try to sell their stuff - sitting in their hangar it couldn’t count as supply.
That’s not wrong, but it’s the start of a circular logic, because following it will end with N=N, rather than N+1 vs. N-1. I’ll agree that a unified mankind would be the base for the highest efficency ever seen, but as soon as we make artificial divisions between people and form groups who compete (as we like to do in EVE or like we still have in real life), it depends on a lot more factors than just mere size. Out of any context such as group history, inner structure etc. we could agree that it’s quite safe to say that N^x will give you less capable experts in activity Y than N^(x+1). With context, this can look different.
Likewise, on a less abstract and more hands-on base, there are many things where you don’t want N+1, because it becomes more inefficient to work on the same thing with more people. The “perfect” amount of people to solve Task X is not the same as a larger pool of people in which you may still find that “perfect” amount, unless the group has no other obligations and especially doesn’t need to take care of its members.
Now, EVE is a game and everybody (afaik) is free to chose to not play it. Everybody who plays it, makes that choice. To me that means on that level the game is fair - as opposed to a street fight which you didn’t choose, as an example. Now say you have a street fight which everybody freely chose to take part in with a set of rules similar to game mechanics or whatnot. It’s probably going to be a lot more complex than EVE, because of physical limitations of real life that don’t exist in EVE. A simple example is line of sight - you can’t punch an opponent through the head of your team mate in real life. Because of that, a much smaller team can win against a much larger team, because there are limits to the advantage of a larger team in that game, which can be evened out by the smaller group through better preparation, better technique and so on.
Many games have something like this. Take chess. 10000 people are not necessarily better at agreeing on a smart move on a chessboard, than 100 - while the former has a higher potential pool of good ones, the theoretical advantage might not meet any reality. Furthermore, you’ll have the problem of decision making - and if 9999 follow 1 leader, it comes down to 9999 being useless for the process.
EVE is not like this, which is partly good and partly bad. Good, because people can take roles and work as a team. Bad, because there is absolutely no limit to the N+1 logic, apart from pure coincidence.
If that was only true for one of the many layers of the game - I’d say it wouldn’t be an issue. The fact is, that it is true for any major part of the game and these different parts actually amplify each other, as I think we all know. Skill Injectors, Rorquals, Citadels, Fighter damage application, to name just the first few that come into mind.
N+1 in one layer of the game would be acceptable, but in reality it is more like N^x vs (N+1)^x, which is way more drastic than N+1 vs N.
No doubt about that. Smaller groups means people have to take more responsibility on average. That in return could mean that you have or develop higher “quality” in small groups - on average. My question in regards to EVE is not wether N+1 or (N+1)^x is an advantage; it surely is. My question is if it should amplify as much as it currently does across all layers of the game.
Not every group of the any size should be able to solve the same problems in a group-based game, yes. Size does and it should matter, no doubt about that. All I’m saying is that it matters too much across all layers and thereby has in itself too much weight and influence when compared to other aspects such as quality. That doesn’t mean that a small group necessarily has greater quality on average - it doesn’t matter. To me it matters that the solution to the game is as simple as amassing as many people as you can and you meet no specific challenges for ever growing size. Seems weird in a multi player game.
Sounds good 
Except that’s just not the case. You don’t encounter any game mechanics issues for growth, but growth itself is a challenge. You have to keep meeting the needs of that larger pool of people. You need space for those people. You need to provide ways for those people to get the fun they’re looking for. You need to adjudicate or minimize conflicts between those people…
Growth beyond Dunbar’s Number is hard, without artificial roadblocks being thrown in the way, too.
Would it be possible to get the data on purchases and jumps? For example, every time a purchase has been made, we’d have: the region (of buyer and seller), system (of buyer and seller), security level, the item, quantity, amount, and the number of jumps to the items purchased? I think it’d be neat to see a rough expectation on the “willingness to jump” for certain items given certain events taking place within each region and/or system. Basically, what I’d like to do, is come up with a Willingness to Jump Index for every item. Just a thought! 
Isotopes are still good as caps use for fuel and they are needed for the fuel blocks as well though right?
Machariels were getting so cheap, that they were fast becoming the only BS doctrine to fly, so they got hit hard with a supply nerf (and materials to build were increased as well.)
Oh sure, it’s not just one challenge, but many challenges and that’s true for any group of any size. Actually, if a group already has some kind of stability, can provide safety or is simply large enough it provides gravity, which makes it partly easier to grow more. In smaller groups it’s more likely necessary for people to fulfill more demanding ciriteria, while in larger groups it can be okay to simply join without much further requirements.
So yeah, instead of saying there are not specific challenges, I should have said the long version which is: the specific multi-layered advantages of larger and larger blocs (does not count as group anymore), tremendously outweight the specific challenges of organizing such larger groups. With the extreme density of available ressources, many of the challenges you’d encounter with large groups in real life are not a matter. If you want a specific example, you’d normally not see the largest metropolitan area being self-sustainable with food, energy and all kind of natural ressources. In EVE, this is possible. There is a much higher mechanical incentive to seek strength in numbers because you find undepletable ressources in the same dense space, that provides a strong military position.
That’s why we have mostly seen wars of old grudges, including mostly tasteless propaganda, unreasonable amounts of salt, rl threats and such, groups breaking apart because someone finally touched them, rather than emergent gameplay with conflicts around precious parts of space. The game is solved.
Cost had nothing to do with why Machariels were the only BS doctrine in use. If it did, then changing the material cost would have affected that, and it didn’t. What impacted how widespread the Machariel is was the change in slot layout. They made it into a ship that got no better tank than a Megathron, instead of doing literally everything better than every other battleship in the game.
Null is too big for all those people anyway, cut the amount of everything, claimable space, bounties, anomalies, asteroids, everything by half and it will feel less farm worthy and competition will start to feel heavy, encroaching on carebear and botters safespaces. Also make missions respawn with gradually stronger enemies while you farm them one by one. If you make too much of them. And hauling missions pay less and less if you make only them, farming the same stuff to extend only bots would farm.
Lets fight with grind, bots and RMT at the same time.
Some thing along the lines of this, could actually have very interesting effects, as for the very large groups this would mean to make meaningful decisions between either less ressource allocation, less safety due to higher spread-out or higher need for military alert. It could lead to more necessity of fighting over space and that’s not a bad thing, even if after the long period of dense-space-farming, such a change might make it harder for smaller Sov entities - but you can’t have everything I suppose.
We were more spread out. It didn’t make things less safe. It just meant there was noplace new groups could get into null without getting crushed by the big blocs. It didn’t lead to ‘more necessity of fighting’. If anything, it led to entire regions, plural, of contiguous space where there really wasn’t any danger to anyone.
Once again, you’re describing the incredible stagnation of the 2014-2015 ‘blue donut’ period. There were steps taken specifically to force us to shrink our footprints, to increase population density and open up space to new residents. And they were needed. Badly. Here:
In this image, everything from Fountain (under Fatal Ascension) to Vale is a patchwork of CFC/Imperium alliances. Everything from Querious and Period Basis to Immensea, Scalding Pass, and Insmother… is NCdot’s renter alliance. Darkness, Kadeshi, Nulli, Fraternity, GClub, those are all N3 Coalition, along with NCdot. From Dream Fleet up through xDeath is either the DRF, or (in the case of Brothers of Tangra), PL’s renters… administrated by xDeath.
That’s what you’re talking about going back to. The only big ‘war’ in that period was the Halloween War, when the two non-DRF blocs fought over Wicked Creek and Immensea. Everything else in there? Pretty much perfectly safe. Static.
Stagnant.
Shrinking space to try to make things ‘feel’ more spread out will just bring that back. Because, once again, human nature is in play. People go on and on about how much they want ‘content’, but what they mean is that they want ‘content’ that doesn’t threaten the way they make their ISK. The Imperium wants our space to be safe for industry. PanFam wants their rental space stable enough to get people to rent in it, and on and on. The PVP ‘content’ people want is always at someone else’s expense.
No, shrinking space and additionally nerfing income streams in null only. So it will became less of a grind fest. Equalization of space across the board and removal of grind proliferation. But still leaving some null claimable and free for pvp. All the capitals would have to be also nerfed and anti capital weapon developed.
It won’t be less of a grind. It’ll actually be more of a grind, because people will still need the big toys to compete, but now it’ll take longer to get/replace them. So people will use them less.
Again, this is a situation we already had.
I think the real problem is not speed of resoures gathering (rorquals) but the amout of resources available everywhere. Industrial index imo should work quite opposite to what it does right now. More you mine less and less resources should be available in a system (less belts, smaller rocks).
It may force miners to spread out, make themselfs more vulnerable and perhaps even force large powerblocks to fight for systems.
Right now there is so much weath in every singke reagon, that even goons are not able to mine it out entirely and every single region coul probably support entire eve population in terms or resources.
No, because people will destroy them with ease. Titans online would become obsolete as tactics. You forgot to consider my post in its entiriety.
But CCP doesn seem to see any urgent problem, like with wardecs. Untill time will come of course, but then it may not matter so much anyway. 
No, they won’t. They’re not going to get nerfed badly enough to be obsolete, because if you tell that many paying customers ‘hey, you know that stuff you poured all that work into getting? We’re making all the time and effort you spent on it worthless’, you lose those customers.
Not gonna happen.
So if they’re not useless, they’re still the ships with the biggest buffer in the game, and that means they’re still gonna be the ships you need to be able to kill. And the best way to do that will be… with other titans, because anything else dies so much faster.
I’m not ‘forgetting’ to consider your post in its entirety, I’m saying none of this plays out how you seem to think it does. Not one single bit.
And again: We were spread out. We didn’t fight over systems. We established borders and had massive zones of relative safety behind them. Fighting happens at borders. Smaller footprints means more entities having more borders. There is more conflict now than there was in the blue donut era, and ADMs and increased population density is a big part of why.
People dont play for titans but for fun. And titans online became gradually boring, that is why goons started to use subcapitals, to then complain they are dropped by caps from enemies. Its just like that. Caps are not needed for gameplay anyway. Game started without them, and without rorquals. And growed. Now it doesnt grow anymore and people complain the capitals online is a stupid choice for CCP to make.
Goons will adapt anyway, dont be afraid.
Uhhhm… no.
We use subcaps because it’s a lot easier to get massive numbers of people into subcaps.
We used subcaps initially because we didn’t have caps.
We use them on our SIG deployments now primarily because it’s a lot easier to fly a bunch of interceptors somewhere and have subcaps JF’d into staging than it is to get capitals moved across highsec, and because they’re easier to replace.
This isn’t an issue of ‘being afraid’. I know we’ll adapt. We exist in a state of constant, low-level adaptation. I’m currently in the process of revising all of our fleet doctrines.
There’s two parts to the ‘you’ll lose those customers’ calculation. The first is the sunk cost fallacy. People fall into it all the time. ‘I’ve spent all this time/effort/money on X, X is valuable and I must place importance on it’. And as much as it’d be nice to say ‘hey, you know, this isn’t fun, I’m gonna get rid of X’, people generally don’t do that. They hang onto X because X must stay valuable, look at all the time/money/effort I put into it.
The second is that the players do value the fruits of their efforts. They do value the things they’ve worked hard to get. And CCP making a sweeping change that makes those things ‘obsolete’ is a massive red flag. It tells the players ‘we don’t care what you think is important. We don’t care what you’ve worked hard to get. We don’t care. We’re going to screw you over whenever we feel like it’.
And CCP isn’t that dumb.
