I’m trying a career on eve echoes. It’s fun. 
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I wrote an essay like post having somewhat different take on scarcity’s impact on new players vs veterans in a separate thread. I guess the differences can be aligned with little adjustment on definition of words.
https://forums.eveonline.com/t/dear-players-scarcity-didnt-work/318938/126?u=zhaomin
I did not quite encounter that many TRUE newbie since I returned to Eve, many of the ones I encounter are returning players and many of them had Eve history of probably “Few Weeks ~ 1 or 2 years”. One common thing about them is that they do not likely have billions of stockpiles nor do they play to maximize ISK/hour. Some of them have short term goals of training into certain profession / ships, some of them just do it for the chills and are having little in-game ambition.
The impact of scarcity on them are the same in terms of player retention, the one with goals got worn out, the one’s without just leave at anytime. The middle class players like us with decent stockpile to at least ride out the storm, slowly lose faith as the uncertainties taking its toll on player numbers. Like you said:
Then as @Lugues_Slive said, the efficiency of Scarcity at achieving it’s intended goal is doubtful. Since Scarcity is defined as consumers have unlimited wants and supplies are limited, leading to scarcity. Let’s replace that “want” with “essential needs” then:
And people are doing exactly that, or
And we’re seeing the effect just like you said (we’re worried, CCP doesn’t seem to be though):
As I’m writing this, we’ve been a few weeks where weekday lows are hovering at around 13k characters logged in. This is not a regular summer drop, there are no COVID in the past decade cept for the past 2 years. People also compared Eve Summer Drop 2021 vs other games. Eve doing subpar is a fact. Minus Trade Hub Dwellers, Hypernet Spammers, Bots…etc. There’s almost guaranteed sub 10k actively playing players for a good portion of each day. that’s 1 person per system…think about the effect it has on a social game.
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Damn I love trolls who can’t reply in context, Ridley you are the ONLY reason I post on these forums. I get so much joy reading nonsence c r a p filled replies.
Oh and just to clarify, I have read many of your posts and from what I can see, the ONLY thing you care about is you.
I’d suggest before trying to troll me that you learn English grammar. Here I’ll give you a little preview of what it looks like. “As a 17 year veteran” is refering directly to ME. English is pretty simple if you actually READ what is written and don’t try to change the meaning to your own narrative.
In this instance it might have helped you to read the post I responded to as well.
Your mom can wipe the drool of your chin now.
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Watch out for the “you’ve lost your mind!” automatic rebuttal incoming.
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Ahhh battle Orcas, I remember them fondly
Sorry if I hurt you so bad it made you think I must be trolling. But your opening statement does seem to indicate, to a person that is concerned for the game, that you are talking about the game. But the rest of your post seems to indicate that you are only talking about caring about yourself.
If that’s what you meant or not what you meant is something you could simply clarify.
You might have me confused with someone else for some reason.
To be specific, as an example, I made billions off players that got popped by Trigs at gates. But several times I said that was bad for EVE…you know…despite all the ISK and fun I was personally getting out of it.
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To answer the OP question, my thoughts on Scarcity?
Well, it reminds me of TCJA 2017 and the US-China Trade War 2018, only in a confined much smaller economy. (I’m not American btw)
According to my WiKiFooo:
The impact seems similar to the chart:
and results are probably inline:
Meaning it positively affect the moderately rich and super-rich, but worse off for the workers. and quoting that, in the Results section:
Analysis of first-year results released by the Congressional Research Service in May 2019 found:[289][290]
- “a relatively small (if any) first-year effect on the economy”
- “a feedback effect of 0.3% of GDP or less,” such that the tax cut did not pay for itself
- “pretax profits and economic depreciation (the price of capital) grew faster than wages,” meaning shareholders benefited more than workers (Stockpilers benefited more than Average Joe players)
- inflation-adjusted wage growth “is smaller than overall growth in labor compensation and indicates that ordinary workers had very little growth in wage rates”
- “the evidence does not suggest a surge in investment from abroad in 2018” (attracting and converting new demographics of players into paying customers)
- “While evidence does indicate significant repurchases of shares, either from tax cuts or repatriated revenues, relatively little was directed to paying worker bonuses” (Reaquisition, consolidating stockpiles, newbies and regular players gets little in terms of incentives to play)
Then the Trade War (like iterations on Scarcity, btw, WiKi article has warned neutrality dispute so no need
to get worked up if it doesn’t match your views):
The Wall Street Journal in October 2020 found the trade war did not achieve the primary objective of reviving American manufacturing, nor did it result in the reshoring of factory production. Though the trade war led to higher employment in certain industries, tariffs led to a net loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs. The trade war reduced the United States’ trade deficit with China in 2019, but this trend reversed itself in 2020, with the trade deficit increasing back to its pre–trade war level, while the United States’ overall trade deficit has increased.
The above alone sounds like the bigger players, alliances, bloc’ers just respeccing and restructuring or even migrating to mitigate Scarcity’s impact. But that leads to loss of players (manufacturing jobs, whether we mean by industry in Eve or ISK printing), the effect is that we’ll just find another unhealthy equilibrium like how the trade deficit bounced back once the majority of big entities adapted.
Analysis by Goldman Sachs in May 2019 found that the consumer price index for nine categories of tariffed goods had increased dramatically, compared to a declining CPI for all other core goods.
Does this sound like the MPI / CPI trend comparison? MPI shot up to the sky and CPI/PPI/SPPI is stable and dropping for most of the longer term periods since 2019?
In August 2019, Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro asserted tariffs were not hurting Americans. Politifact rated Navarro’s assertion “Pants on Fire.”
Players feels hurt and leaving? “Let them quit!” CCP says…
Well, there it goes, it’s not supposed to be a mirror projection or direct one on one comparison, but I find lots of similarities.
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My thoughts on scarcity? Well, I think I know what CCP is trying to do; however, the way they are trying to do it is failing. Now to be more specific:
I think CCP is trying to reduce the overall wealth in Eve Online. There are a lot of players who simply don’t have to worry about ISK.
I also think that CCP never intended for certain ships to be mainline doctrines; seriously, I don’t think CCP intended for fleets to be full of titans. Now, I am not blaming the players for doing this. Developers never realize just how good players are at well… gaming games. If there is a way to do something, the players will figure it out. The biggest problem is the genie is out of the bottle and its going to be nigh impossible to get it back in the bottle. Now, they’ve made them so expensive that people are less likely to commit them… I suppose CCP could consider this a ‘win’ in a way because if they are just in stations then they aren’t being used in fleets… but if my assumption here is correct, CCP hasn’t really fixed the problem.
Going back to my initial point: I think CCP is worried about the overall wealth in the game. The issue is that scarcity isn’t fixing the issue. The people with an overabundance of wealth aren’t really being affected by these changes; if anything, its made them more wealthy because they have assets that are now worth more.
Scarcity hurts the players who actually don’t have much wealth… which if my assumption is correct, it means its failing at what CCP is trying to do.
And just to clarify: no, I don’t have a solution to this wealth issue… I don’t think CCP has a solution either and they are just throwing ideas against the wall to see if something works… which makes for an unstable economy. And an unstable economy doesn’t really hurt the wealthy, but it can hurt the people on the lower end of the spectrum… which again means that CCP is actually making the problem worse.
Again, this is based on a lot of assumptions. And I’m also not saying that I agree with these ideas if these assumptions turn out to be correct. Just stating what I think is going on.
TL;DR: Scarcity isn’t fixing the issue I think CCP has with Eve’s current economic situation.
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@[ZhaoMin]
Not really sure if those RL points and graphs are going to the get the thread locked or not, but I hope everyone will keep that in mind from now on so that it won’t.
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They done FAKED IT UP!
What I don’t understand is why all the drama? Scarcity? Making Industry unmanagable?
Just close the fakin game already. Just come out with official statement on camera and on forums, stating - “We are closing it, it was what it was!”
Don’t add 3 more buttons to the new players guie as in 3 more fast ways to discover HS ganking… Just… Don’t!.. It makes me sad… :C
Here is my prediction. Average below 10 000 players and PLEX above 3 000 000 ISK. There’s your flatline. There are faster ways to achieve that, just come out and state it. We’ll be waiting. Offline.
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I hear you and I hope not, it was meant to be apolitical and it happened in our time as something we can relate to from “economics” point of view.
I can try replace things with Great Depression but I’m not familiar with that and it probably don’t ring a bell even with Grand Pabbie players.
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I’ll just requote this here.
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Just inflate up, WoW didn’t make T1 epics harder to get when people started farming MC raids to the point where everyone became decked out with them… They introduced BWL and a new shinier T2 gear set.
It took 10 years for titans to be common place. Don’t try and make them disappear or harder to get, no new WoW player is going to want to grind MC 10x as much as a vet did to get their gear, similarly no new Eve player is going to want to grind 10x as much for a titan… Instead introduce T2 titans and buy yourself another 10 years. Rinse and repeat, mmo 101.
The big problem of course is this requires CCP to continual develop content, where what they really want is a totally passive income stream without needing to create new art assets etc.
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Limit Titans that can be built/owned by Alliance, 1 for every 1000 people.
Give the BS its own Bastion module but like a lesser version, idk, Barrage module.
Make Rorquals consume fuel, the more they mine, the more fuel consumed.
Stop other forms of scarcity, its damaging the player base, 14k people online? I’m running low on targets here.
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Sadly wrong again… Hurt me? I’ve been trolled by the best and you don’t even come close.
Your lack of comprehension for the English language though could only be forgiven if it isn’t your first language. In which case I apologise for my comments regarding your comprehension skills.
You actually took the time to highlight the parts of my post that indicate, I was talking from a personal perspective, not about the game in general.
For clarification, I firmly believe scarcity will end up doing more damage to the game than good the longer it goes on. But I can’t speak for the few thousand players left, only for myself.
I’ve read many of your posts and find the majority condesending, poorly worded and lacking any decent content but maybe that’s just me
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I have an eve echoe acount so… Its been fun playing EVE Online.
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wall of text incoming, tldr at bottom
That the macro economy of the game needed intervention was already obvious ever since the monopolization of technetium many years ago. That the problems were increased to a major degree with the introduction of Upwell moon mining, especially in hisec, is equally clear. Currently, according to the MERs, by far the largest mineral production occurs in hisec, thanks to the other elephant in the room, the near untouchable orca fleets and the relative advantage of them being in hisec of course.
Yes, scarcity was necessary as a first shock treatment, but in and of itself it is not sufficient. I believe supporting measures should have accompanied the first stage of the scarcity immediately, to guide and direct it. That would be the normal approach if the endpoint of the whole action plan was known. There is no good reason to let us wander around a desert for 40 years and expect us not to start doubting “the leader”.
The questions about the scarcity duration, however, are legitimate, especially when the almighty PCU drops sharply. In addition, a square peg square hole approach (current mineral distribution without cross-over) is anything but a sandbox philosophy or even “fun” - it may be fun to some, and no longer fun for some more, who may leave.
Take the changes to t1 battleship production. The very clear intention was to make them more expensive, via the new materials. The question “why” remains open, especially if the real problem was with the faction battleships being too cheap. Small time builders, who often engage in this as merely a side activity, are now confronted with additional hurdles - reactors are not available in hisec for instance. Underestimating the fun these players have, what makes them log in to the game, the satisfaction of being able to build at least a t1 battleship after heavy sp investment from the ground up, is not very empathetic of a game designer. There were other solutions for the faction bs, there always are, more focused and with less collateral damage (disguised as new “fun”). Moreover, market volumes for those faction ships haven’t changed significantly. So why these particular changes ? Who knows, they don’t tell.
If scarcity of basic materials becomes scarcity of “fun”, there might be a new and even more important problem. Even a simple Punisher requires isogen to build. Going out as a small time builder, gathering resources that were considered very basic for 18 years in hisec via the ore anoms, and produce a few very basic ships has become harder. Yes, one can get isogen in lowsec, and run the gauntlet, yes one can be smart about it and use wh connections to go ninja mine, yes, you can reprocess loot, and for some it will be fun, for others it will be a new tedium. Not all players are created equal.
As you pointed out in your own example, stockpiles exist and actually make you, as a veteran player in a particular position, even wealthier and potentially more influential. But that position is far from shared by all veteran players. The same is true for the (super)cap fleets the latest industry changes try to address. In war theatre #1, the southwest, caps aren’t fielded for decisive confrontation (not counting the 5 caps that were lost in a recent pos attack, lol) - the winner would have “won” nullsec for far too many years into the future if the other party lost a significant portion of their supers and titans.
tldr:
Scarcity, however necessary it was, is not a phase that can last much longer without a visible endpoint and clear communication - we stuck with ccp, now ccp has to stick with us. As anyone who was ever involved in change management in real life can attest, it’s far more efficient to go to the “new normal” in one fell blow than via a long series of smaller changes, piling up additional malcontent with every step. As ccp is not presenting any data on the effect of the changes, there is too much room for skepticism and players losing patience. That is my real concern, from the sidelines.
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The tone of my first post to you was unwarranted and that has set the tone for our exchange. But it was still unwarranted and I apologize for that, take it back, and shall endeavor to do better.
That said, I just got off a 30 day forum ban and am not a happy camper. Even more than scarcity, that led me to not subscribe this month and I have no plan to subscribe again, but we shall see.
But I have to say that I am amazed that you seem unaware of the sheer harassment I have dealt with since you say you have read my posts. Usually I am just hitting back.
We can certainly agree on that.
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That wasn’t so bad. I’ve read and written worse 
Now if only we could get something from CCP that made half as much sense.
I have a niggling feeling all this change is more about microtransactions (plex sales specifically) than actual game balance. I do hope I’m way off and completely wrong.
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For someone who have flown the New Eden skies for many years, current prices are out of whack.
May be opportunity for CCP to sell some stuff for cash, but it can also hurt player numbers, we may start seeing effects right now…
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