Scarcity, indy changes and the recent “age of prosperity” beg to differ. If you want a truth and fact to chew on, scarcity, indy changes and scarcity v2 have broken the economy and you are at the helm of these disastrous changes.
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Unfortunately the current view of CCP (overall) by a large proportion of the player base means that when you say things like this we no longer believe you.
You (CCP) have lost the trust of the player base, things that are said by dev’s about the game and changes that are made to the game trigger so many WTF moments by the players.
We simply don’t beleive that you either a) understand the game as it is played or b) don’t listen to what the players say.
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Going to be trying to catch up on the VoD today for the stream, was preoccupied most of yesterday.
That said? The forums has largely, and likely always will be the majority domain of the vocal and belligerent minority.
I for one am a vocal supporter of the changes that we are currently experiencing/have details of, for the most past, which places me in the minority of the minority.
Maybe my opinion will change after I watch the VoD, maybe it won’t.
But ■■■■■■■ seriously, HTFU. If I can survive(and even thrive on) these changes with a small group, so can most of you with your alt armies or large player groups. Christ even solo industrialists(at least solo gatherers) are largely better off than pre-patch, but god forbid you have to make choices that affect how your efficiency works out.
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ffs. It’s not about surviving. We aren’t in concentration camp and forced to play EVE. It’s a game. Game that is no longer fun and on decline. We are vocal about our concerns because we care about stupid game that for many is important part of their live. And instead it dying, we want it to prosper again and be fun. But hey, if you are happy with any garbage they threw your way while pulling carpet from under your feets… I’m not gonna judge.
ps. many if not most people complain not about mining changes but about company attitude, their decisions and lack of any meaningful information. While completely ignoring playerbase.
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You said that CCP does not manipulate the PLEX market. However, previous CCP devs / employees have stated that CCP takes PLEX from banned accounts and sells it.
Has this policy changed, and when?
Repost #1 because overzealous ISDs removed this.
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This 
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Scarcity firmly ending in Q4 is a truth, fact, or a priority?
You must have something awesome hidden in your pocket then, because Q4 is about to end, and all that’s came out of you is a major mining nerf, with a promise of further nerfs to R4, compression, structures, ihubs, PI, and whatever else that players still bother to do that you can find.
You promised prosperity. Where is it?
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So are there any links or even time marks for the graphs shown in this Q&A? I’d like them for reference but haven’t time to sit through hours of discussion to get fuzzy low detail graphs.
Thanks if anyone can help out on this.
The rorq’s ability to defend itself hasn’t changed. And it remains the only mining ship that can jump from system to system to hit multiple moons in the same day.
Until they put in the industrial portal generator, rorqs are still going to be used in significant numbers.
Yeah, this entire stream was pretty much pointless. A whole bunch of Rattati proving he has no idea how the game works, trying to sound like he has a deeper understanding none of us could possibly have, and Swift trying to pull his entire leg back out of his throat periodically. I feel sorry for Paragon, having to sit there and act like he wasn’t bashing his brains out for almost the entire thing.
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I checked the time mark provided by @Small_Kitty_Paws (TY SKP!). The graphs are OK there but not good resolution or labelling. I’ll see what I can get out of it anyway.
One thing that made me laugh was Rattati saying something like “This is us using the information not available to you to help us fix things”. I mean, players have been telling them for years that Rorqs and Orcas were majorly broken, but, ya know, we didn’t have “access to the information” so what do players know, right?
Edit: Heck, here’s a couple posts from before those changes even went live:
Posted - 2016.10.04 17:59:23 - [15] - Quote
"Perhaps consider removing the drone mining bonus from the industrial core, and then compensate by further increasing the command bonus it provides.
The optimal setup isn’t going to be rorq + fleet, it’s going to be a gigantic fleet of rorqs all using siege to clear the entire belt/anom in one cycle. This will generate billions of isk per hour for multiboxers, and the risk will be tiny considering the rorqs can be cyno’d around citadels, logged on after a scout sets up bookmarks, and logged off after pulling in infinity ore.
If the siege module gives crazy bonuses to other ships, it might coax expensive toys onto the field for mining op. Content!
If the siege module turns the rorq into a mining ship that is 5x better than any other mining ship, it’s going to get immediately and permanently multiboxed to death.
Love,
~Coelomate"
and also:
Posted - 2016.10.04 18:21:26 - [25] - Quote
“Hold up guys…you hear that? It’s the sound of a thousand Russian renters stripping entire regions clean in a day.”
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and why does everything have to be about Null sec?
STFU crybaby
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Genuine question here and you’re well spoke so I hope I can get a good answer.
Is there something wrong with the Rorqual and Orca going back to being a support asset? I remember Rorquals being cyno’d from POS to POS in Nullsec for their compression and system-wide boosts. I get that CCP bamboozled players with the Rorqual being a cancer that incentivized players to multibox excessive numbers to CCPs benefit. So is it that players bought into CCPs new OP meta and are mad that they’ve been milked for cash?
I’m sure that with everything CCP that the issues aren’t as simple as players are just spoiled now on Rorquals are are upset, but there’s multi-faceted problems with their game and vision.
I read a lot of players being upset at CCP for not releasing new ships and new content but honestly they need to fix what’s currently in the game first… the past decade we’ve seen lots of systems and meta changes that haven’t been kept balanced well. Things like citadels, rorquals, and sp farming are in general the largest offenders in my opinion.
This game to me has always been more about the narrative and player interaction rather than a game style that I’ve depended on CCP to develop or script for me. I think that largely I’d be correct in saying that CCPs developed and packaged content is always sub-par and that players themselves make their own fun. I mean it’s a sandbox…
I’m mad at CCP too, but not because of any of these changes. I’m mad at them for outright being too incompetent, lazy, and/or greedy to keep what they have implemented for the past decade in check. Change is good but it needs to be balanced - something that their out of touch developers fail at.
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Because your worthless 5 man j-bear corp won’t keep the servers paid for by itself, pubby.
Interesting thing about this graph is that barges and exhumers have not improved whatsoever compared to before scarcity. The end of the graph shows the same composition and usage numbers for barges and exhumers that were there before scarcity hit the cluster. With 2 exceptions: the Skiff and Procurer numbers have fallen far below their values from before scarcity. Most barges and exhumers mine the same amount that they mined during scarcity even. The only exception is the Mackinaw, which sees a very slight usage increase compared to before scarcity.
This graph negates anything CCP said about the need to kill the S/P so that other barges and exhumers can be used more. Painting this as an improvement borders on tragicomedy.
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Is there something wrong with it… that’s a semi-complicated question and you’re going to get a bunch of different viewpoints across null. Obviously, a lot of Rorqual pilots are of the opinion that they’ve spent a lot of isk on their rorqs, and a lot of time skilling into it. And many of them have been paying subscription fees to keep those accounts in Omega while they trained and even through things like the Blackout, anomaly nerfs, Rorqual and Excavator nerfs, and then the ‘scarcity’ economic rebalance that happened completely separately to all of those pre-Dec 2019 changes. As with anything that people have to invest time, money, and effort into getting, they don’t want to see it devalued.
And that’s the thing. It’s not that they feel they’ve been milked for cash—that was never any great secret, after all. CCP was heavy-handed enough when the Rorq changes + injectors went in that everyone knew it was a cash grab, and certain CCP devs were honest enough to carefully avoid denying it, all with a wink and a nod. The thing the players are annoyed about is a bit different… and it’s really two bits.
First, they’re annoyed at the waste mechanic. Sure, it got renamed, but it’s still waste. It’s still completely framed in a negative way that gives negative reinforcement. Whenever you use the tools that get you the most throughput, you get told, effectively, ‘AND HERE’S WHAT YOU WASTED’.
Negative feedback produces negative emotional responses. It’s why the auto industry, in looking to changeover to electric vehicles, focuses on ‘EVs get all this MPG!’ rather than ‘Yeah, so, congrats, you avoided X emissions from your tailpipe. Here’s how much pollution had to be created to make those batteries… oh, and here’s how much went into generating the electricity you used to charge the car…’
That’s not to say EVs aren’t more eco-friendly overall, of course, because the oil companies play the same game when they don’t tell you just how much the average person in any given nation pays (either directly or through taxes) in health costs due to petroleum. They’d rather we all focus on the relatively low cost at the pump.
How people react to something depends entirely on how it’s framed. Give them a bunch of negative framing, and they’ll see it in a negative light. That’s why they had to revamp the waste mechanic to make the higher-yield options more wasteful in the first place.
Initially, the T1 stuff created more waste. That got changed because people pointed out (many of them, the very mining corp leaders who’d be making those decisions) that it could negatively impact how willing people were to welcome newbies. After all, newbie points laser at rock, laser collects 100 ore, burns another 100 ore, mining corp’s out 100 ore, compared to the guys w/faction lasers.
Now, imagine if, instead of ‘we’re doubling all the resources, but there’s a chance you’ll burn extra’, if it had been framed as ‘T2 modules and faction modules have a small chance to perform extremely efficiently. When this happens, yield will remain unaffected, but collecting 100 ore will only remove 50 from the rock’… then there’s no perceived negative effect. Only a potential bonus reward for the people who’ve invested time and effort to be really good miners. Toss in a ‘we’re increasing the yield in rocks by 50%’, and miners are probably giddy as hell over the changes, even though it’s actually less ore out there than we have now.
Framing matters. But it’s only part of why some rorq pilots are a bit ticked off. Another part of it goes back to that whole ‘devalued’ thing… but not devaluing the rorqual. They feel like their investment was devalued. Not the thing they got, mind you, and not in terms of money. They feel like, as paying customers, like that investment of time, money, and effort wasn’t respected by the company that wants them to keep paying.
It’s not unreasonable for customers to want to feel like the company respects them. And it’s not unreasonable for them to decide that if a company doesn’t respect them, that company doesn’t need their money.
Now, to side-track a bit and answer your question for myself… Personally, I don’t have much problem with Rorqs and Orcas going back to primarily being support vessels. As I’ve said in a reply to an earlier thread, I think Rorquals should not be the most common mining ship in nullsec, and I think the comparison holds for Orcas in highsec.
But I do think that they have to bring more to the table than just their support abilities—they have to be able to mine. Absent the ability to mine, the only person bringing a Rorqual is the guy already flying a dozen hulks, who wants the boosts. So the ‘aspirational’ part of capital industrial ships becomes ‘I aspire to run a Rorqual once I’m already multi-boxing basically as much as I can handle’. And of course, it’s the same w/the Hulk in HS.
And that’s not really all that aspirational, you know? New players don’t try out EVE and tell themselves ‘I can’t wait until I need to pay for 10 or more accounts!’ So the big boosting ship needs to be able to do something for itself, something so the guy running 1 account in a corp mining op has a reason to be the guy bringing the booster. Because yeah, it’d be lovely if everyone pooled their mining yield and divvied up the cash evenly between the entire group… but these are people, and 9 times out of 10, people just ain’t that nice to each other.
Right now, those big ships can do that. They can mine. Or at least, the Rorqual can. We’ll come back to the Orca. A Hulk mines more than a Rorq, but the hulk also has to empty its mining hold fairly often. 11,500m3 being filled at a rate of 141m3/s (max hulk strip miner yield) means you have to empty the hulk every 82s. With a cycle time of 40s, that means basically every 2 cycles of the mining lasers. That gets to be a lot of clicking. Can’t even do something else for a minute and a half, or you’re losing efficiency.
Everything else, the Rorq still gets more yield/s. It just doesn’t do it without generating a lot of waste residue—without burning a whole lot of rock. And that goes back to the framing issue. Because we’re being shown what we’re doing in a negative light.
How groups are approaching this depends a lot on just how accessible resources are for subcap miners. I can’t speak for everyone, obviously, but the way some groups in null are threading the needle right now is that higher-quality resources, or resources that are close to home, have a definite bias toward subcaps. Rorqs might get told ‘you don’t mine the R64 ore’ or ‘you don’t mine the name R64’, like the Bountiful Loparite. The good stuff gets saved for the subcaps, because they waste less of it. And then it takes 6 hours to clear a single moon.
As the resources get further from where the miners live, the Rorqs get more leeway. Someplace far enough out that the Rorquals need a midpoint cyno? Or even 2? Go nuts, use the excavators. Just get it mined, dammit, because it needs to not be completely wasted.
And that’s a matter of mobility. The Rorquals can get there, without much difficulty. To get subcaps out there, you have to jump them out there in Rorquals, and have the pilots run around like headless chickens in shuttles, trying to catch up and get into their barges and exhumers. Because you might need to do 3-4 moons in a day, even at the longer mining time, and you can only jumpclone to the Rorqual once in that time. (Honestly, the clone vat bays in both Rorquals and titans are… pretty useless, as-is. But I digress.)
So what you wind up with is the places where you’re more likely to see killable subcaps… are where the defense forces are strongest, and able to come to the rescue the fastest. Because the places the defense forces can’t easily get to… neither can the barges. Which means the predators that would feed on barges basically starve.
Those are the same guys that argued against the Industrial Conduit Jump, because they felt it would make miners ‘too safe’. As if the Rorq is just going to sit out there among the asteroids not sieged. You know, sit out there without like 80% of its defensive abilities available, and 90% of its mining and boosting capabilities. A booster… that can’t effectively boost. Yeah. That’s gonna happen.
If they want the miners to be where they can be caught, then the miners need to be in ships that are easier to kill, out where defense forces can’t just take 4 gates and be on top of you, and the miners need to feel safe. Because that’s how you get them to be lazy, sloppy, and dumb. And that’s when they die.
Now, just to loop back to the Orca, for the highsec comparison. In HS, with a boosting Orca, the Hulk maxes out about 101m3/s. The Mackinaw, just shy of 70. So what does the Orca get, to make sure that it’s worth the solo Orca pilot’s time?
28.3m3/s. Less than half what a Mackinaw gets. 3.3m3/s more than a Covetor, with T1 strip miners and no mining upgrades, gets. So, that feels right, yeah? A 2 billion ISK ship should get slightly less performance than a 52.1M ISK one, yeah? After all, it’s not like the Orca pilot has to spend more than 3 months training up to be able to fly the ship and provide the full level of boosts… or, you know, train Fleet Command V to max out the range on their boosts, which is even more time sacrificed to making that cheap-ass Covetor outperform him.
So, yeah, I think the Rorqual’s in a better place now than it was… but the Orca kinda got violated in the stern section with a rusty chainsaw. It doesn’t need to be massively better… but it does need to outperform a damned minimally-effective barge.
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A caution about interpreting that chart as ‘no change’: That’s volume mined by ship type, not volume mined per ship of type.
In other words, if 100 Mackinaws were mining 2000 ore per day (just to keep the numbers nice and even) before scarcity, and 10 Mackinaws are mining 3000 ore per day now, that’s actually one hell of a jump.
And that chart doesn’t give us ‘how many ships of each type are producing these numbers?’, so we have no idea. It is, in fact, yet another example of CCP’s charts being incomplete to the point of not actually being useful.
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That’s what Rattati openly admitted on the stream as well (cut out some info because players are too good at drawing conclusions). But he claimed that the numbers are all up and better than in the past. Selectively interpreted and ignoring pre-scarcity figures, that might be true, but taking the whole picture of currently available and visible data into account, it is nothing but eyewash. This may change in future graphs if more barges and exhumers start mining, but to date this graph disproves any of Rattati’s claims until he shows more data (which he supposedly would soooo love to do).
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Wow, thanks for the reply. I definitely can sympathize with the players feeling they got shafted after investing time and money into a particular ship, play style, or meta.
I agree with you, I think framing and how players are going to pick apart and perceive game changes is important.
Thanks for your insight, opinion, and examples.