EVE Information Portal

I started doing T2 invention and building when Crius was released so I don't have any perspective on the world without teams. I was only doing small scale stuff like shield modules and a few others and teams helped me out quite a bit. Even as a solo player i was able to bid on and win a few teams that directly aided in what I was building.

The main issue I had with it was trying to figure out what teams I needed to build what I wanted to build. I had to use a third party tool for that. took a little work but I was able to figure it out.

The auction system was also a big hindrance. No way to see if you are out bid.

I have pretty much stopped building things because the prices have crashed on everything I was making isk on. Teams helped me keep it going a little longer so I guess I won't be building any time soon. I am just going to research all the BPO's I have to max me/te and check now and then to see if the market has changed.

As someone who uses teams on a daily basis and buys teams every week. I am sad to see them go. I loved the teams and liked to hunt for a good team.

I agree that sniping teams is an issue, but its also has to do with people not wanting to pay enough for a team I reckon. If you can save 2 billion ISK wiht a team in 1 month you should not try and bid 100 mil on it. Bid 500 mil and not many people will go over that simple as that.

I have managed to get pretty much all the teams I wanted(and teams I didnt want and just lol bidded on them to deny them for others) by actully putting some real value on them. Battleship team that would save me 10 mil per battleship and I can make 30 battleships a day should mean that that team is worth more then 100 mil lol. In the 28 days i can have that team I would be able to save 8.4 billion ISK. So i should probally spend atleast 500 to 1 bill to make sure I got that team and ride the free ISK.

Yes freeloaders are a thing. But they have to move to your system, they are restricted to what you build. Notice too many free loaders in your system? Finish up your builds when the teams run out and move your BPO's to a new system.

In the industrial landscape, the cost index was a push to get pilots to spread out, where teams were a pull to attract pilots to specific systems.

Moving forward, how do you intend to counter the cost index now that teams have been removed?

This... is really bold. I really like the idea of removing cruft before it becomes entrenched and impossible to manage.

Good on you!

-Liang

My point of view is that I don't fully understand why they are being removed.

I can see how the system industry index and manufacture ingredients might be balanced around their existence, but a simple removal of teams would not fix that issue. You'd have to rebalance everything to counter their removal, and that sounds like more work than CCP is able to do on them right now.

The complexity that teams add is minimal and entirely optional. I think it could do with better explaining, as most of the people I have talked to don't know how to get them, use them or see the benefit to them as being big enough to bother, but they also don't feel that they suffer for not using them. I will admit to only having spoken to a small group of people with similar play styles and backgrounds (HS industrialists and miners), so there is likely nuance I have missed.

I'd really like to see them get reworked, and made more useful though.

I think teams were fiddly and unnecessary. Kill them and don't bring them back.

I agree that teams are unnecessarily complicated in their current state. I feel this has a lot to so with the following:

When hiring a "team" you only want them for one or two of their four attributes.

Mostly people don't want an entire team, just one specialist to help on the specific job they're doing.

Having to pay for the entire team just to get that one specialist feels bad. It doesn't encourage me to do it again.

The communal bidding process makes the whole thing completely unpredictable and that's another negative experience.

The industrial landscape should be fluid without being chaotic.

I propose that when you re-visit "teams" it should look more like this:

Specialists

Players recruit individual NPC specialists, not entire teams!

Specialists are exclusive assets, not public. They work for the player who hires them and nobody else.

Players can recruit multiple specialists and group them together to make their own teams.

The number of specialists a player can put in a team is determined by skill level in "Industrial Team Leadership"

Only 1 specialist or player-made team can work on a particular job at the same time.

The number of teams a player can have is determined by skill level in "Industrial Team Management"

Specialists will start with small bonuses, but these will increase as the specialist gains experience!

Specialists will not automatically despawn after 4 weeks; instead they will re-negotiate their contracts with you...

Recruitment Process

There will be a finite number of specialists in the game.

CCP will be able to graduate and/or retire more specialists as needed.

Some should graduate and retire each month to prevent saturation of highly bonused specialists.

Each specialist will have a list of job preferences e.g. Salary expectations, Location preference, type of work, etc...

Players will be able to create a job advert and any matches from the specialist database will submit an application

Close but not quite specialists may propose a slight change e.g. a higher salary, minimum contract length, etc...

The player can then accept or decline the NPC applications.

Contract Re-negotiation

Specialists gain experience as they work.

e.g a 1% TE bonus to cruiser hull manufacturing might improve to 2% after 100 jobs

Instead of despawning after 4 weeks, specialists will try to re-negotiate their contracts with you...

This will take the form of some condition the player must satisfy to retain that specialist for another month...

e.g. a higher salary, working closer to home (move NPC to system), promotion (put NPC in charge of team), etc...

Skills & Experience

Bonuses gained by an NPC whilst in your employ will be capped at some reasonable level

They must be maintained by having the NPC work on jobs

The bonuses will decay over time if you do not give the NPC jobs to do

These bonuses would provide an incentive to try and keep your specialists by re-negotiating their contracts

If somebody fails to do that however, the improved specialists will become available for other players to hire!

I realise that the above is a complex system, but I feel that it addresses and improves upon the main problems with the current system and that it models the real world quite well. Well I would sign off with "that's my 2 cents" but it feels more like my $2k lol

I do not agree in shutting down the team - auction - system at this point. It is not worth the money and time.
As some other people have mentioned, it does not harm anyone in current state.

I personly would like to see the teams make a difference. But it is too convienent to simply ignore the them.

Correct me if I am wrong, but your Initial goal was that teams lead to a better distributed industry in eden.
A system should differ from another.

I suggest as following changes:
1) Refirm Teams under the System Goverment control. The teams move around like a bunch of vagabonds. No wonder no one trusts them. My clan would rather hire locals then just some unknown people. You never know what you get. Maybe you end up with an Amarr team. Unacceptable!

2) Instead of auction teams with fixed skills, let industrials fund the training costs for the team skills. A certificate system would be in order, like we have for capsule pilots (OOC: I refer to the same way a pilot will train his skills, I think that concept works well)
Corporation within a system fund the trainingcosts.

I think that may work and with time system shape and differ from each one. Of course I only scetched the Idea. I think there is a lot of details to line out for this. But it is the way to go. It would be nice if we could talk more in this direction then in throwing money out of the window. At least this team thing already cost a lot of money, dont you think?

You are wildly exaggerating there; to make use of teams just required the player to perform a few simple calculations on top of what you would normally have to do.

ANYONE WHO SAYS TEAMS AREN'T WORTH THE PRICE YOU PAY




YOU DON'T BUILD ENOUGH


TEAMS SCALE, THE MORE YOU BUILD, THE MORE YOU SAVE AND THE MORE YOU CAN PAY FOR A TEAM AND STILL SAVE


YES, I MEANT TO BE ALL CAPS!!!!!