NM, will open a thread for this.
While arguably highsec has been neglected at times, it’s hard to argue that is the case lately. The last expansion was a PvE focused one accessible by everyone, and the one before that a highsec PvE focused one. And the real major effort of the last few years is structures, which are usable everywhere.
Yes, I get not everyone is happy with the result of those efforts, but CCP has not ignored highsec as of late, nor is there a shortage of mining. Mineral prices are declining, even cratering for some, and the MER shows almost unbelievable levels of mining and production as compared to the past. I don’t think we have seen the repercussions of this unprecedented opening of the wealth faucets, and I worry a little for the future of the game’s economy.
As for the OP, as was said the infinite and nearly perfectly safe nature of L4 missions means they became a significant source of minerals for New Eden and the loot tables were nerfed to end ‘gun mining’. A reasonable decision to help miners earn more.
As discussed in another thread (https://forums.eveonline.com/t/the-black-market-in-eve-making-all-items-player) I think there could be room to add back some more loot drops if CCP stole the ‘Black Market’ idea from another game and set it up so that NPCs pay players to build the items dropped by the NPCs in missions and elsewhere. A lot of work would need to go into it, and likely bounties nerfed elsewhere to pay for the program, but would help integrate and stabilize the economy, and shift some of the ISK faucets to go directly to industrialists.
But for now, just use your LP and ISK to buy whatever it is you want. Loot drops not only erode gameplay for miners, but also industrialists whose work is devalued by infinitely spawning modules dropped by NPCs.
I wouldn’t necessarily say that Resource Wars and Forward Operating Bases have been well-received by high-sec players. Rather, I suspect it’s been the opposite.
But let’s look back at the past few expansions:
May: Into The Abyss
• Abyssal Pockets
• Planetary Interaction
• Outposts and Conquerable Stations
March
• Marshal black-ops, Monitor flag cruiser
• T1 Battleship PvP pass, Battlecruiser PvP and Cruiser PvP pass
• Entosis link changes
• Sov changes, jump fatigue
• Structure tethering, cyno changes
• Chat system
• ESI API
February
• HAC and AF PvP balance pass
• Major structure update (Upwell 2.0)
• Moon mining expanded to wormholes and high-sec
• Burst projector superweapons
• Standup fighters
• Structure combat module rebalance
January
• Misc updates
December
• Alpha clone expansion
• Jump drive, fuel block, T2 changes
November: Lifeblood
• Guristas shipyards, capital ships
• Refineries, refinery reactions
• Mining ledger
• Resource Wars
• Forward Operating Bases
• The Agency
• T1 frigate, destroyer and cruiser PvP pass
March was just a regular update. I am referring to Lifeblood:
http://updates.eveonline.com/date/2017-10-24/
But even the monthly patches haven’t ignore highsec as in February highsec moon mining became a thing. That was a very real buff to highsec miners.
I will agree that highsec was effectively ignored for quite a while there, but it’s hard to claim that any more. I think the real reason for the decline in highsec activity is just that nullsec income was buffed so much with Fozzie Sov and the capital ship rebalances. Highsec players either moved to nullsec or gave up trying to scratch out a living as they were outcompeted by a reinvigorated nullsec.
This is all off topic though. The question of the OP has been answered.
They used to drop more, but then CCP lowered the loot drops. The reason is that mission runners produced too many minerals.
Mission runners often don’t sell the loot piece by piece, but they scrap it to then sell the minerals. It’s faster and often pays better, because there aren’t always buy orders for every module in an area, or when there are then they’re too low priced. Traders also know this and they often set up mineral buy orders, which in the end makes this profitable for both.
What also plays a bit of a role here is that mission runners will sell their minerals more easily than a miner. Miners care for every m3 they mine and expect a good price for their ore and are sometimes willing to fly it all the way to Jita. Mission runners, since they get ISKs, LPs, scrap materials and loot don’t care quite that much for it and unintentionally help in lowering mineral prices, simply because they sell it at even low prices only to get rid of it.
So now missions drop a little less loot and miners are better positioned in the mineral producing market.
If you feel this is wrong then remind yourself that lower loot drops does make certain items more rarer and thereby increases their value. You should then perhaps not scrap them all, but look out for the valuables ones and take your time to get these to a buyer who will pay a good price for it.
Maybe some aren’t spending cash directly but a lot of the null playstyle results in a ton of income to CCP. If I had to guess most of the whales are nullsec players. Rorqual mulitboxing plus skill injectors for more roquals churns a ton of plex. Then there are those that have to “keep up” with other people but are too lazy to rat so they drop $$$ on plex to have the biggest shinys. Then there’s SP farming, I’d guess most of the SP farms are in highsec but where’s all that isk going? I’m sure some make isk to make more isk, but I’d also guess a bunch of it goes out to null to fund more citadels/supers/whatever.
pretty much the reason I’ve spent so much time in and around eve.
yea probably, it’s just so boring and the income is awful.
Thats why recently, after I get what I can out of scrap, I use the minerals I get to build and sell ships for FW.
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Until the procurer/skiff were made to become flying mining bricks. Oh wait, people don’t fly these much. If mining sucks because of gankers, then why don’t people chose to fly a brick miner?
The reason is simple: ISK/HR. Mining in Highsec doesn’t pay well with a hulk, so people won’t reduce their yield just to become a target not worth an attack.
Not at all. The removal of Gunmining was an attempt to fix the problem with Highsec mining. The ISK weren’t good enough and that change did fix that to a degree (by increasing mineral prices). Moon mining in Highsec has probably helped with that as well, but time will tell by how much.
Mining in Highsec does not suck because of gankers, it sucks because the ISK is bad and that’s a good thing (for the game). It provides an incentive to band together and if you do that right, you can mine with rorquals in some defended region.
No, the real problem here is that most of Highsec players don’t want the multiplayer component. They do not like to band together, and they do not like to not earn isk because they have to defend someone else’s valuables or to rely on other people to defend theirs… That is why Mining “sucks”. It’s not a good solo activity because it pays crap and that is why a lot of people don’t do it.
Even if you mine with rorquals => the isk is nothing compared to a supercarrier that earns at least 50% more than you do if you suck Gneiss-roids all-day-every-day (which you can’t) for a higher investment in ISK and skills. No Super yet? Fine, a well skilled Thanatos can make more money than a well skilled rorqual too, just take a third of the isk and similar SP investments and you are better off with ratting.
The “Ganking” just sucks because you can’t AFK in safety because of it. You can mine in safety in Highsec, you just need to extract when Code enters the system OR fly Skiffs and laugh at them.
Edit for sanity:
it has been said a quadrillion times already: It doesn’t matter how you pay your Omega. Every Omega is worth money for CCP, no matter if purchased with Cash or with Cash-by-proxy (Plex).
this so much. The reprocessing window helps with sorting out, marking the valuable ones with an exclamation mark… 
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Heh, what a bunch of bull. First you say I’m incorrect then you basically state the same thing, just presented it with the usual CODE / Null Sec propaganda crap.
Here’s a more condensed version of what I said pertaining to the thread topic of why there’s almost no loot in missions:
10 years ago there were plenty of player Mining Fleet Ops active in high sec space. In 2009 Hulkageddon (a coordinated suicide gank of empire mining ships) started and within the next few years a lot of Industrial players lost interest in piloting Mining Ships in High Sec space. Because of that ‘Gun-Mining’ got noticed and CCP, in their futile attempt to get players mining in High Sec space again, made various changes to game mechanics, most notably a constant nerf to loot tables resulting in the near extinction of mission loot drops that we now have.
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come on… he is not saying what you are saying.
He is saying that HS sucks only when you compare it to NS mining, and he explains what balance mechanisms make this considered “as wanted”
Well, from what I understood, what you’ve said is that CCP doesn’t attempt to fix the problem, which is wrong.
CCP tried to fix it and since those fixes, Mining is significantly better DESPITE the buff to mining through rorquals (which should drive prices down again).
AND they also tried to fix ganking. They have redesigned the mining ships so that every player can now chose if he pays a premium for tank, convenience or yield. Not CCP’s fault players usually don’t pay the premium for tank (paying the premium = sacrificing yield).
maybe I understood the wrong thing?
I mean, I do think that none of these high sec shenanigans have anything to do with a drop in players whatsoever. For me, it just boils down to Plex prices. They are way higher => players that could “F2P” via Plex in the past simply can’t earn enough on a weekend to plex their accounts anymore. Highly questionable that you can do it with HS mining either.
wasn’t jsut for mining.
Some of this was to placate industrial whines. Some had this strange idea T1 mod making the path to a fortune. They reason’ed because meta drops so plentiful it was hurting their sales.
Some t2 builders as well whined. Blah blah people use meta over our stuff that has a higher fixed cost (moon goo stuff and all that jazz ).
But the angle missed by the indy’s and CCP was yeah…T1 sucks and meta gear was used because it was cheaper…and better than t1. And versus t2…meta was cheaper and many times while not as good as t2…was good enough for desired effect and fit easier.
Pvp’ers know this well…some items have to be t2 (like weapons)…many 0ther items can be meta gear and its okay to make grids work better. My old mantra…train to fit t2 fit everything but don’t be scared to fit meta gear. Tank skills to fit t2 makes meta tank mods better as well kind of thing.
So even with some price increases on the favored meta items, its still bought up. It was still better and/or easier fitting we just pay more sometimes for it now.
A supercarrier earns atleast twice as much as 1 rorqual if not 3 times more problem is you can chill and die of boredom with 10 rorquals while minerals add up while ratting with super will hurt your damn wrists.Also you’re way safer in a super
I’ve been running a lot of lvl 4 missions in low-sec. My Mobile Tractor Unit loots while I kill rats. Often, after a wave / pocket is finished, I will run salvage drones while waiting for a minute or two for the tractor to pull in some remaining ship wrecks, repairing shields to max, charging cap, reloading, etc. It doesn’t really slow me down much, but can easily add several million in loot/salvage to a mission’s payout.
MTUs are your friends.
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yes, i learned how good they are when running the extravaganzas… i got used to the MTU’s in null, and i take full advantage of them in High, and utilizing my noctis as a straight salvager.
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if you are in lowsec you should be making so much LP that sitting around for a few mins in each pocket should almost always be losing you income. Not to mention the increased risk of getting caught by hunters.
IIRC max LP mult between NS and HS is 3.25(for syndicate systems vs a 1.0 HS). That means at most you get 3.25 times more LP in null sec than in HS, for the same mission.
The highest mult in HS (compared to the worst) is 1.87 for lanngisi, meaning a 1.74 mult between 98q and Lanngisi.
then of course you should also note that the LP worth can be better in null than in HS.
Thus I just ran the number, for both average daily and direct normalized LP worth.
Average value, NS is 10k isk at best, and 3.8 in HS at best, meaning a mission that nets you 20M isk in LP in Villore would net you 52M isk in LP in N5Y (2.6 mult).
Direct value, NS is 7 in n5y while HS is 2.7 in gelfiven. (2.6 mult too)
What that means is that if you can make missions 2.6 times as fast in HS (because geography, because officer modules, because implants you could not afford to lose in NS, because less roaming ganks, because you can dual box missions without having to press V every 5s) then it’s not worth to go in NS.However this only takes into account LP worth, because direct isk worth is 1.74 times
An additional factor to take into account is the value of the LP. If you can run missions for a popular pirate faction your LP could be worth much, much more than any LP you can get in HS.
already taken into account. With truesec and lp worth, best nullsec offer is only 2.6 times better than best HS offer.
Is volume taken into account as well? I mean sure you can get the occasional crazy isk/lp in HS, but the volume for those items are very low. For higher volume stuff you’re looking at a lot lower (but still a decent bit over 1k) isk/lp. Basically what isk/lp in HS are you comparing to isk/lp in LS/NS?