Pi market is dead

Communications Center General Discussion
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Well, not really. CCP only says that’s what they’re interested in. They’re either outright lying (because they’ve never targeted rich getting richer in any effective manner), or they’re 90% clueless about how their own economy works.

All of CCPs changes hurt new players more than established players, and certainly more than the truly space-rich sitting in major blocs in Null. There isn’t a single change or mechanic that benefits new players proportionately more than wealthy established players.

The actual change in demand and economy has been clear in the MERs for months now: players are playing less, producing less, using less, and in fact leaving the game.

Whoda thunk that if you show players whose goal is to amass resources in the game that CCP will change core mechanics, create NPC hunter-killers, and destroy those assets en masse, that those players might react by losing interest in the game?

Not CCP, apparently.

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84

Neither you, nor CCP, will ever be able to come up with an in-game mechanic that players can engage with that would “address income/wealth inequality”.

The difference here is that CCP understands it, and you don’t.

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@Kezrai_Charzai

Since negative wealth is impossible, generally destroying wealth does reduce wealth inequality.

And wealth equality isn’t the only goal here either. It’s also to make losses meaningful to vets, to rebalance risk/reward and create meaningful choices.

Small groups are finding things more difficult than before sure. Because they’re having to make choices they didn’t have to before instead of having things handed to them nice and easy. Things they probably never should have had in the first place.

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I’ll take “Hyperbole and Reductionism for 500, Alex”

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Why in the world do you think I want to address income/wealth inequality?

Except you have it backwards. CCP has made this an explicit reason for these various changes. I have made no such suggestions.

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I’m a T2 manufacturer based in Amarr., the following is somewhat subjective and reflects a lot of the recent changes: the change to re-list fees varying market behaviour, the change to citadels which impacts demand, the changes to resource distribution which impacts material costs and the increased separation between Amarr and Jita which increases spread New Eden wide.

In my view, the changes made have been positive.

So, subjectively:

The market has moved on the Sell side from “large orders doing 0.01 ISK dropping” to smaller orders sizes - where 50-100 items was common, it’s now more often less than 10. There are good reasons for this because of the re-list changes - a smaller sell order is more likely to be completed without needing to re-list. Because this requires a little more attention - steadily feeding goods to market rather than choking it - the supply side seems to be lower.

My profitability definitely has increased - I’m probably making twice the profit per item than I did before, but it doesn’t feel as if market prices for T2 goods have generally shifted much - though small changes do massively impact the profitability of an item. I’m not sure I can attribute that to one thing though.
I’m definitely not complaining!

Supply side: some materials (Morphite) have gone up substantially - I remember a year ago (or so) it being less than a third what it is now. And it’s still slowly rising. That’s a significant cost in the T2 business. I’ve seen shortages in some of the supply chain stuff - especially in the period after the fall of Niarja, but that seems to have resolved as supply lines have been re-established. The Amarr market seems to be in good health - I can almost always buy what I need.

PI output is unchanged: so items are being produced at the same rate and added to the market. I think there is an over supply now. Robotics for example has dropped about 15% in the last couple of months - they are used both for T2 production (T2 life is good!) and for Fuel Blocks where it feels as if demand should be reducing. A drop in T2 production and a drop in Fuel demand means the market is over supplied by Robotics and that should put downward pressure on prices. I’ve a feeling that Fuel Block prices aren’t going to move because Ice is being a little restricted and it’s impacting supply and that’s balanced the reduction in demand.
I do occasional work supplying Fuel Blocks and that seems to be supported by my last manufacturing run. Fuel Block manufacturing is definitely “high capital small margin nonsense”.

So - AND THIS IS ALL SUBJECTIVE WITHOUT EVIDENCE - I think there is an over supply problem in PI and that there is probably going to be some attention to reducing it’s output. probably by reducing the rate that raw materials are extracted in PI since all PI products are ultimately source from there. It is the one major resource that hasn’t been changed in the scarcity changes - it will also reduce the “very passive” Custom Office income to Corporations and Alliances.

As I said, all based on my subjective opinions…

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92

When the british empire lost the US, it started to use opium to compensate for the losses and balance the trade deficit.

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Teckos made the point that the supply was always there, something that I agree with, and I think you do too. My point was that the main driver for PI was the demand for fuel for structures and of course the demand for PI materials to make them.

Quantum cores was just the final knife in the back, nah more like sledge hammer to the face of most small hisec indy players who were already finding it not worth doing.

We agree and I think it is a bad thing for Eve.

Actually you just made a comment about the over supply due to being passive and low risk, which is not totally true, because PI always created content, be it POCO ownership or people going into lowsec and NPC nullsec to do it. In fact I wonder just how many people are giving up on that?

I think that this was what was going to happen as soon as quantum cores were announced, and I believe that this is now becoming apparent.

Get ready to laugh…

It is a boring grind, I stopped doing it some time ago when I was still active. People will find it not worth doing, for an example one of my contacts has stopped his PI activities in npc nullsec

Totally agree on that in terms of quantum cores.

I think it is a risky thing to do to remove a whole gameplay from small groups.

Still it is a case of watch and see, if I come back in May 2021 I would be interested to see just how many structures are left in space in hisec, I am not expecting that many…

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Just to support that, QC introduction caused (through my unwillingness to pay as a fear-induced reaction) me to reduce my structures from 3 (was 4, this happen during a WH eviction where I lost another, unrelated though) to 1.

In general in Devoid at any rate an overall structure reduction was definately noticed at the border region, I noticed this because I was watching structures Id traded to others slowly close down, in most cases I noticed they went abandoned and were then destroyed, rather than removed.

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Which is the worrying part, I wonder how many just gave up completely.

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Now, I dont discount a little self-destruction. Part of the fun of structure trading was to buy a previously public structure, then destroy it and see what fell out.

However, the sheer volume of derelict stations and the time frame over which this took place puts the possible number of those into the minority, just using eyeball accounting.

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image

Highsec structures are down by 30% since the summer (source: adam4eve.eu). Significant but not catastrophic or anything.

We’ll see come January whether there is another leg down, but I think it is expected that given the recent structure changes and the nature of the activity, there was going to be a change in price for these materials. Dead is a overstatement, but it ain’t going to be like the boom time of structure deployment again until either new structures are released, or a new demand for PI is introduced to the game.

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98

I’m not that worried about there being fewer structures. There was a lot of spam and little commitment.

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ESI gives only data on structures with public access. So this data should be taken with grain of salt.
It also don’t show destroyed structures but number of public structures. Owners changing access lists, will result in drop on graph.

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Sure, but there is no real reason to assume it isn’t a reasonable representative sample. Maybe private structures have a slightly higher attrition rate, but it can’t be too far of this sample. And if they are private, why should the rest of us really care as we can’t use them?

Destroyed structures can be seen here:

or the equivalent for the other Upwell classes. Destruction rates look unchanged since the summer. And owner’s changing access lists and making structures private would only overrepresent the reduction in numbers by making structures invisible to the ESI. Unless you think massive numbers of private structures are being taken public increasing these numbers?

I’m not sure what the issue is here. Ok, PI is going to be worth less when much of it’s demand is driven by structures, but the whole purpose of the Quantum Cores and the other Structure changes this year is to make them more meaningful and worth fighting over. You would completely expect a reduction in structures if they are to be more valuable, and even a 50% drop from the summer would still leave close to a thousand public Upwell structures in highsec, not even to consider the private ones or the rest of the game.

As for PI, well oh well. Supply changes and so does demand. If it isn’t worth the effort, stop producing it and use your clicks somewhere else.

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101

Wow, the “destruction is good” mindset really does seem to destroy people’s braincells at an astounding rate. Somebody should probably look into this.

Your comments are not only lacking in thought or insight, they’re self-contradicting. Let’s take them one at time.

“Reducing wealth inequality” means shifting wealth and assets from the hands of the rich to the hands of the poor. “Destroying wealth” in no way accomplishes this. The currently wealthy can protect their assets, can manufacture and sell to those who need to replace assets because theirs were destroyed, and have the infrastructure and resources in the game (scout alts etc.) to avoid the consequences of most of the new style of destruction CCP favors: NPC death squads and mechanics changes.

The people most affected by these types of change are the casual players, the players without a huge alliance to back them, small gangs, etc. In effect, those with less resources are disproportionally affected by these types of changes, making the rich relatively richer, and the poor relatively poorer.

It’s hard to believe that CCP can say something as stupid as this, and that people like you believe it. First off, the wealthier and more ‘vet’ you are, the less these changes affect you. They have the alts, the tools and the connections to get around these changes and adapt and carry on. They also have the wealth to ride this out, or even to speculate and profit from the changing situation.

The people who can’t easily adapt, can’t gather resources from multiple sectors of space, don’t have scout alts and cyno alts and intel networks… those are the people being hurt here. Not the wealthy. Not vets. These changes also do nothing to rebalance risk/reward, since the big money was always in Null and will remain there. Recent changes most strongly affect high-sec, which is where the casuals and new players live.

Now you get to contradicting yourself. So basically you start off saying these changes are to balance inequality, and then a few sentences later you’re saying “Yep, small groups are hit harder, and they should never have had good things anyway, so screw them”. So in effect, only large groups and alliances should have wealth and resources? So rich get richer, screw anyone with less, because hey, they don’t deserve to have what they got anyway?

It’s possible you’re as blind and ignorant on how these issues work as CCP. It’s possible that you are so in love with the idea of ‘destruction is good’ that when CCP does something as stupid as this, you just cheer them on without thinking.

On the other hand, it’s also possible you’re as two-faced as CCP is, trying to sell these changes as “good for the whole game and balancing inequity” when really the end goal is “move out of high sec and join a Null alliance or get shafted. Oh, and pay for a couple more Omega alts while you’re at it.”

Whatever, you’re welcome to hold any delusions that make you comfortable. The MERs and player numbers are already showing the actual result.

(PS: Not a complaint on my part, since recent changes have virtually no impact on my own quite minimal activity in the game. Simply an observation on poor game design, and poor understanding on the part of the ‘destruction is good’ cheerleaders.)

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102

That is an awesome graph.

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Seems like i touched a nerve.

No it’s true. Destroying wealth generally removes wealth inequality as we all approach zero. Or don’t accelerate away from zero as fast as the case may be.

You think I’m contradicting myself because you equate wealth to difficulty.

I can understand that there is a relationship between the two, but they are definitely not one in the same.

A small gang may have taken down a structure they originally put up for convenience because of the changes. But it may not have been destroyed.

More difficult times for them yes. But their wealth is unaffected. In fact, the running costs of the structure are no longer a wealth sink for them.

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If you believe that, then let’s have a game of monopoly where i hold all the hotels on the board… let’s reset our wealth to the start amount and then start playing - let’s see who wins!

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NB: No wealth means no hotels for either participant.

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