So CCP failed to achieve its goal.
What they attempted to prevent in Yulai, happened in Jita instead.
CCP broke Yulai (partly because they didn’t have the technology they do now, so the load on the server caused them lots of problems).
Then, following the Yulai event, the introduction of warp to 0, which helped during the removal of the super highway, Jita emerged anyway.
Since then, CCP have taken a ‘custodian’ approach to the game. They don’t define how the players use the environment. They only define what the environment is. So a repeat of the changes that broke Yulai won’t happen again. CCP don’t see that as their role anymore.
This is where the whole “emergent gameplay” concept first entered EVE.
2 Likes
Good post.
But what about if Jita is also creating that same increasing pressure/deleterious effect as it was, is, and going forwards.
Jita shows no sign of abating in growth. It takes a bigger share of trade every year.
Not even the introduction of Citadels has abated that.
It didnt work.
Jita happened anyways.
Correct, and hence CCP ran with it, as they learned players do what players want, so they let the players trade in the various trade-hubs & when they grew too big for the servers to handle (market orders put a big strain on the servers) they removed agents, asteroid belts & production means, in order to reduce server load & allowing trading to go smooth & to prevent implanting a population cap.
And currently, Jita is so massive & huge that it is simply too big to fail. It reinforces itself. Not even an event like ‘Burn Jita’ puts a dent in Jita trading beyond the days itself and even that dent is minor really, quite shocking if you realize what massive amount of resources are used for a Burn Jita event
It did work. It broke Yulai.
I already wrote that Jita emerged anyway and CCP no longer see it at their role to try to dictate what the players collectively do with the environment.
Instead, they manage how the environment is used through business processes (eg. they reinforce nodes in advance of major fights, they have Jita on its own reinforced node, etc.) but they don’t define what the players should do.
1 Like
Part of the problem with Citidels is their “cost” of being unreliable.
An NPC station Won’t lock out factions they disagree with. An NPC station Won’t become so much high velocity shrapnel, costing everyone with property some notable fraction of the properties worth to get back.
Still, for some trades, those NPC stations, set up in the very next system over, have started to take trade from Jita. The reason is those NPC stations have a much lower tax than does Jita.
It’s not moving any further away, because proximity to Jita is part of what makes those stations profitable. It’s like when a new restaurant opens up…across the street from another, established, popular restaurant. (Of course, such is usually good for both restaurants, after the incumbent quits moaning about it. Districts become targets for people to visit for their variety.)
If you wanted to somehow hinder Jita, you’d have to either raise the price of doing business in Jita, or have some product that was not for sale, not even by players, in Jita.
…which kind of breaks the game model by itself, since you can easily buy PLEX and LP purchased items from players in Jita.
Yulai was broken by killing the “supergates”.
That didnt work to prevent Jita becoming the same.
Which has already been stated. So what?
CCP no longer (since way back then), see it as their role to define what the players should do. They won’t break up Jita.
I am beginning to understand why he gets so obstinate. It’s costly to be wrong when you’re not allowed to be wrong gracefully.
I think we can sum up the issue thus:
Yulai was the previous megahub.
CCP killed it by severing the “supergates”.
Jita is Yulai v2.0.
Perhaps its time for CCP to take steps to kill it too, before it further eclipses the trade profile in EVE.
Come up with some magic bullet that won’t kill the game, and present it to them. I suspect there are those at CCP who would like to spread trade around a bit.
1 Like
He gets what he gives, right since he first started here. No more, no less.
We all tried other approaches. They didn’t work. We all just copped his crap anyway.
2 Likes
Killing Yulai didnt kill the game either.
It worked, as it killed Yulai, the central tradehub, which was designed that way by CCP.
But players are players and they like a central hub, so Jita became the new huge tradehub by players.
CCP accepted this player-made decision.
1 Like
Yulai was a player made decision too.
Nobody forced them to trade there.
CCP killing it was not a player made decision.
It was CCPs.
You do realize she has always maintained, at least in this thread, that CCP No Longer makes the game that way, not that they never did.
1 Like
Yulai was a CCP made decision.
Early on in the game, before the player base could really support it’s own economic development and trade, ships, modules and other items were sold by NPCs. That included a lot in Yulai early on (as well as other places).
That, combined with the superhighway, created a CCP made trade dominance of Yulai.
The game didn’t hit 100,000 subscribers until 2006. Back in 2003-2005, there was a lot more support for the community from NPCs than there is now.
2 Likes
You get offered a central system with a station & a gate network that links the 4 major faction spaces together in a single jump from that station: Only a trader that hates money won’t set shop there. Everyone else who likes making isk from trading would set up shop there.
People who like buying stuff from other factions would also visit Yulai, easiest way to access other faction space and because they got to pass Yulai anyway, can as well stop & shop there.
As noted earlier, there were other tradehubs still beyond Yulai back then, but they were smaller & centered around concentrations of lvl 4 agents.
So now we have a “player made” trade dominance in Jita.
All that changed is the responsible party, not the problem of a megalithic hub eclipsing trade.
Might as well as have left Yulai as it was for all the difference it made.