What are your thoughts on sarcity?

Communications Center General Discussion
161

Funny how EVE universe was mineral scarce even before scarcity.

According to Wikipedia the mass of all asteroids in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter in our Solar System is 2.39×10^21. Only 10% of them appear to be metal-rich, suppose we reprocessed them with 50% efficiency.

1.19×10^20 / 2.4×10^9 (mass of an Avatar titan, the heaviest one) = 50 billion titans

Estimate total volume of material that is contained within the asteroid belt: 4.87×10^8 km³
Hulk can mine around 2094 m³/min = 1.1 km³/year

In 18 years of EVE, suppose we had 5000 miners mining 24/7, we would have mined 99000 km³ which is 0.02% of total material volume.

To finish off the Belt it would take another 90000 years. But then there are moons. Earth Moon’s mass is around 300 times that of the Asteroid Belt.

Damn Joves!

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162

The mainstay issue of this comparison is that it’s assuming that EVE’s asteroid belt implementation is anywhere near representative of what actual asteroid belts are.

They’re not.

EVE’s asteroid belts are small agglomerates of larger, harvestable, particulates of a much, much larger and far less dense series of planetary rings.

This comparison also drags in another issue: EVE’s asteroid belt implementation is done for the sake of trade and exchange.
If we were to look at how materials and elements were distributed throughout our solar system, you’d see that our entire solar system, Oort Cloud included, can be said to contain our entire known periodic table of elements. From hydrogen to plutonium included.
Logistics and technological barriers aside, our solar system is capable of autarchy from the rest of the galaxy.

So, no. EVE was not ‘scarce’ before ‘scarcity’. It’s just that the scale needed for the simulation to be possibly structured realistically would break SEVERAL fundamentals of both practical gameplay and sensible game design.

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163

I still blame Joves for mining too much. They didnt care about future generations.

164

Makes zero sense, either because I’m most likely not explaining it well enough, or you’re not going the extra mile beyond your own perspective.

I’ll try again, see if we can see eachother this time.

The rich/poor divide was ever increasing before scarcity, I don’t refute that, and the point I was making by this is that it will continue to increase, even with scarcity.

The rich have massive stockpiles of stuff already, that the poor doesn’t, so, logically, it follows that the poor will burn through all their stockpiles at the same rate than the rich do, but the poor will be stockpile-depleted much sooner than the rich. Right ?

So yes, we have continued mutual destruction to thank for here, and I could even argue that with less population, less destruction, so less stockpile depletion on both sides.

Meanwhile however, the rich will make do with scarcity and continue accumulating the best they can with all their top-of-the line tools, on top of what they already have, while the little guys, the poor, will find themselves continuing working at their own lower level.

So the rich/poor divide in itself, will not move an inch.
Scarcity basically scalps off some of the supply tops, equally on each rich/poor side, but the divide remains, and will remain.

I could argue that being at the bottom will continue feeling a lot more disheartening than when remaining at the top, and where my speculation says that CCP / PA could cash-in on that player frustration for a quick buck, at some point in time, as they’ve shown a strong tendency to monetizing the divide for some time now.

When that effectively happens, no one can know for sure, not me, nor you, because that depends on variables and decisions internal to PA/CCP, and forcing me to go into fallacy, is not honest no.

It’s something only you came up with to pleasure yourself at “winning” an argument you’re refusing to understand properly to begin with.

So since you’re being a moaning child about it, I’ll indulge you to an estimate of up to a year.

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165

Not only for the last 2 years, this happened probably since the game got on the market. I play for 11 years and always, whatever I was looking forward to do and trained towards to got nerfed into oblivion before I could profit.

I always hated that but there were playstyles left I could look forward to, however, with those fast paced changes recently I also lost all interest in planning, looking forward to some future playstyle…

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166

Maybe that happened because you trained towards profit? I’m training towards fun and see all the things I train towards become even more fun the moment I can fly it.

Recently I unlocked the ability to fly a Sin and 3 hours later conduit jumps and buffs were introduced!

As it was on the test server before it wasn’t a complete surprise, but I did start training Blops before the changes were announced. Similarly I started training into T3Cs and now they’re getting buffed too with the SP loss removal!

167

Sorry I might not have been clear about what I meant. ‘Profit’ was meant as for being able to use those newly learned ships/skills/whatever

168

CCP threw both of those out with the empty beer cans years ago

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169

No. Players do not burn through stock at equal rates.

As per all the QQ threads ‘i cant fly my bling pvewtfpwn boat waagh waagh!’ and never ‘i can’t afford T1 frigs’

And any null bloc that wants to remain competitive must replace capital losses and pirate/T2 doctrines that are disproportionately more expensive. They are disproportionately harder to replace. What are they going to do, not defend their space?

Meanwhile new player ships like frigates and destroyers are widely available in hi-sec because the only non-hisec mineral they require now is isogen.

Hi-sec mining is relatively unaffected. And was even boosted via hi-sec moon mining. Hi-sec mission running is completely unchanged.

Nullsec has been gutted in all areas. DBS/ESS and some asteroid belts have been completely removed from the game. And their ‘top of the line tools’ like the rorqual have been nerfed several times over.

No poor player is making QQ threads about scarcity. It’s nullbears and industrialists that refuse to adapt (i.e have no business being industrialists).

End of July’22. I’ll put it in my calendar.

170

It’s not entirely a complaint, I actually love small fast ships. For me flying things that feel like they are struggling to move kind of sucks. I like being able to have tons of slots to work with while fitting stuff, but I really love being able to move instantly so going backwards from flying battle ships back to tiny fast stuff has been kind of great in a lot of ways.

171

Well first of all, the rate would really depends what kind of stocks gets put to risk or becomes the norm in small to larger fights from now on.

What I assume we’ll see, or already seeing, is T1 cruiser and BC fights becoming the norm to defend space, with all the more more expensive tools being simply put away, or extremely rarely used.

Which is why they simply wont use those kinds of doctrines anymore, due to the risk of losing them and turn to the cheaper stuff, which they can afford x100 times over compared to little guys.

The supply itself wont budge very much, for the rich folk anyway, they’ll just adapt to minimize the risks on their stocks, like they’ve always done.

“Fly only what you can afford to lose.”
Ever heard that from somewhere ?

For the little guys though, touching any of those blocks with something higher than a handful of expensive T2 doctrines to match, compared to the blue donut’s inflated T2 doctrines supply, does not help at all in sealing the divide.

Yet there’s still tons more money to be made in Nullsec comparatively to Hisec, just not in the same way as before, and believe me, the Nullbears already have adapted to that better than you think.

172

@Daichi_Yamato regarding to rich/poor divide and whether the gap is growing/shrinking. I agree with @Verlyn because IMHO, while T2, BS, Faction vessels are disproportionally more expensive, it is more expensive for “Everyone”. But the access to the new required raw Materials and Reactions means Everyone must go to places “out of their comfort zone” if they want to continue even to make intermediate materials for the final product.

Not everyone wants to join cartel/null bloc’ers and most sane people don’t want to waste time on almost certain guaranteed forfeiture of their investment (time) at some stage in the short term.

So the big guys have “Control”, means “Monopoly” / “Cartel” over the chain of supply, this is no different than the Tech moons, we all know how that ends. :slight_smile: (Current Dev team probably doesn’t as the economist professor left long ago, and current team probably didn’t all work on Eve Development at that time, annnnd…they probably don’t read (their own game’s) history hehe)

As to Ore packs, I’m not sure, but it would be easier for CCP to just remove industry and mining already and kills the sandbox completely, they can then surely just sell ships and final products and it’s probably more attractive and easier to maintain.

(Just want to say I LOOOOOVE Elite’s Deep Core Mining, it’s so satisfying and EPICCCCC each time when I blow up a nice juicy asteroid, that shake, the shockwave…man, Eve don’t come close at all)

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173

Dont care about it anymore - I left because of it.

174

Just to say, Scarcity has been done over and over, it’s actually not something new, but its effect is probably sub-optimal to put it in a good way. Why, well, because the tools to generate wealth/ISK hasn’t been addressed by this round at all.

From what I remember from my time of playing. First it’s the Great Drone Poop nerf, back then was it ER that’s generating insane wealth via GUN Mining? That was pretty out of control back then and CCP dealt with the supply issue by cutting it completely, entirely for the Ecosystem, drones loot/salvages are mostly worthless compare to what it was, fair game though. (I still keep whatever alloys I got for nostalgia)

Second was moon redistribution, the Tech moons to be exact, that was what made some real imbalance in null and started affecting the whole system as people form blue donuts and some individuals within these mega entities got extremely rich and controlled the supply when there are no wars to contend such systems/regions. CCP redistributed the moons and my impression was, some ppl got angry leading to Burn Jita event? But, at least, that redistribution makes things fairer for everyone once again.

I took a 5 years break after and now we’re at technically another phase of Scarcity or “Resource Redistribution” During the years I was away, CCP introduced OP Rorq and other things as I heard and no consequences Alphas that failed to do its job of - Converting new players to paying customers, instead it is almost pretty much used in “Abusive” ways by older players as means to farm the system or carry out activities and literally mitigate penalties otherwise would apply to a normal players. They infest the systems everywhere, from scamming, advertising (and seems very automatic too…), botting (mining, ratting, anomaly farming), multibox ganking to otherwise some lucrative careers (say, abyssal and null ratting…yet, L4 is the only thing they got taken away).

In a way, I think this (Free Alphas) is also a big part of the problem of causing too much abundance of supply, as players are really good at finding out ways to game the system. How does scarcity really achieve the goal of making the system more healthy? usually 12mth + is classified economically as mid-long term depending on context of changes. Scarcity (this round) has been going since late 2019 and the tools to farm the system this time has not been taken away, how does it really benefit CCP as a company in financial ways, a proper breakdown from investor report regarding Revenues from Subscription vs Store could probably tell the story better, I’m sure someone can dig the report out, I’m just not that good at doing it.

One thing is sure, people are less dedicated and more casual, less consequences are suffered and people win Eve more often. I won’t judge whether for a company, CCP is being healthier or not, but I am more skeptical on its benefit for Eve given how long it has been going yet to really make a dent to the problem of stockpile overabundance. Because this time, they did not effectively remove the tools that caused the problem.

Imagine, daily average players has dropped to 17k (3 weeks ago it was 19k) and what portion are subscription paying accounts (include plexed for sure) and how many are just Alpha disposable accounts? We won’t know unless CCP put those data in MER, but (by rational thinking) it really has to be a significant proportion for the latter to really make it worthwhile to focus on for the longevity of Eve.

175

All actual asteroid belts are different, and these ones are in New Eden, which is very, very far away from our solar system. Maybe this place is just a really resource poor part of space.

In fact, it might be possible to posit that its even in another dimension, which would explain a lot of seemingly inconsistent things.

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I just have different opinion on whats happening. Increasing amount of monetization attempts is clearly not about any forest, but about cach cows.

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That’s not happening yet. But is sort of the long term goal of scarcity.

If it did happen, that would be amazing for new players who can quickly fly relevant doctrines.

They’ll use them until it becomes unsustainable. Which isn’t quite yet by the looks of it.

This completely contradicts what you are saying above.

Null sec still has more risk than hi-sec so yes.

Don’t forget that the risk in hi-sec is almost non-existent. So the rewards are set to match. Can you imagine what the DBS would do to hi-sec? So count yourselves lucky.

And if null have adapted so quickly, what’s all the whining for?

Not everyone uses them equally.

Nullsec use them in doctrines and burn through their ‘stock’. In hi-sec you buy it and it probably won’t be lost for sometime, if ever.

And roaming in small gangs in lowsec falls somewhere in between that. Long story short, null burn through stock at an accelerated rate compared to the rest of the game. They have so much more destruction per capita than hi-sec.

As someone who doesn’t like forming up with blocks i totally understand that. So i adapt my gameplay.

Same way players had to adapt during the quantum cores change.

Unlike before, hisec has a monopoly on trit. And low has a monopoly on nocx.

Scarcity is not the same thing as moving the tech moons around.

178

I need to ask too, does that put me in you group of people that shouldn’t be here?

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179

Scarcity is good for the game and needed, gives us more reason to fight over things and makes it so everything isnt always so easily obtainable and abundant ( and makes production more lucrative.) Scarcity is GOOD.

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180

Scarcity is good for the game, we need more people in t1 frigates and less people in keepstars.

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