Player Features and Ideas Discussion

TL:DR Synposis: LP rewards consitute the largest chunk of an intelligent mission runners rewards. However the isk reward per LP is grossly different depending on which empire faction you run missions with, due to variations in the market costs of faction insignias. Two solutions are given to this problem.

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A little while ago an ex-corpmate was bragging to me about how he had, some years back, bought up the entire market stock of a particular republic fleet insignia, and then reintroduced those insignias back onto the market at a vastly inflated price. He noted that the price has still not recovered from his actions. This discussion led me to look deeper into the insignia system.

I will give one example that is representative of the situation. The price of the five different Caldari Navy Captain Insignia, with the rough cost to buy in Jita compared to the price NPC's will give for the same insignias:

Capitain I - Price in Jita: 65,000 // NPC buys at 20,000
Capitain II - Jita: 110,000 // NPC 25,000
Capitain III - Jita: 3,550,000 // NPC 30,000
Capitain IV - Jita: 40,000 // NPC 30,000
Capitain V - Jita: 70,000 // NPC 25,000

If the NPC price is taken as an intended baseline market price, and perhaps the value CCP intended them to sell for, we can see that the Captain III insignia is inflated by almost 120 times this baseline.

Looking now at the Federation Navy Tracking Computer, an item that requires a relatively modest 18,000 LP and 7,200,000 isk to claim, because the Captain III insignia is so overpriced the cost in insignias alone is 500 million isk. This is insane, and completely prices the item out of the market. They and Shadow Serpentis equivalents actually sell at around 350 mil (these are the only faction TC), so even if you had somehow collected all the tags you needed, why would you build the item? You would sell them to market, rather than actually losing money on your LP.

Putting aside clear market manipulation, the larger picture is that mission runners for one faction are at a great disadvantage compared to another faction. Another example, the price to make a Federation Navy Armor Explosive Hardener is more than the Imperial Navy Armor Explosive Hardeners sell for – even though the two items are identical. For Amarr mission runners, it is possible to get up to 3000 isk/lp. A caldari mission runner can get maximum of 2000 isk/lp. My initial review of the gellente LP rewards indicate they can get less than 1000 isk/lp. I have not looked into Minmatar. Considering that LP rewards constitute the majority of a mission runners income, this situation is grossly unbalanced.

I should add at this point, that the above figures are all from buying the insignia. It may have been the intention for mission runners to collect their own insignias and use these for LP rewards. However this is generally not a good idea in the long term, and many people don't bother, as the negative impact on standings from the faction you are killing is so high. Besides, even if you do these missions, clearly there are not enough insignias to meet demand.

Under normal market conditions, the supply and demand equation would kick in, but this does not apply here. Missions are given on a random basis, so the insignia supply is limited while demand is always high – what else are mission runners going to do with LP? This creates excessive price inflation and makes it an easy market to manipulate.

So, two solutions to the problem:

1 – Remove insignias entirely from the LP rewards requirements.
- By far the best option, insignias are an unnecessary aspect of LP rewards that add nothing to game enjoyment, and will always be open to arbitrary market forces and manipulation. Note that I am not saying that these market fluctuations are necessarily a bad thing in themselves, but they will always lead to inbalance between the different factions and their LP mission rewards. And really, why should we have to go through a middle man to collect LP rewards?

2 – Greatly lower or eliminate the negative faction standing from missions that drop insignias, give more anti-faction missions and selectively increase ships that drop specific highly inflated insignias.
- A less severe option, but would also work. However, total drops would need to be significantly higher in order to meet demand.

CCP, I hope you will take this on board and do something. I not just whining, I have run missions with Amarr for ages and get decent LP rewards, but the situation is broken. Such severe imbalances between different factions rewards is something you must want to avoid.

Thanks for reading!!

MastaRob

This.

Indeed, if the OP had done more research into the stores themselves or the forums, he would have noticed that this topic comes up occasionally and is generally ignored by CCP. Its not the Mission running that is the problem or the use of tags in the LP store, but the amounts and numbers needed for each item,

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=197563#post197563

and post 59


but read the whole thing as its pretty much everything you've been wondering about

The best LP store/tags solution I've seen

tl;dr: Let people chose anti-navy missions or anti-pirate missions when they request a mission.

No you can get tags from running complexes in faction war. That aspect of the supply and demand is fine.

The reason the lp store is fubar is because incursion runners can now dump all their "super lp" into the best lp stores. Thus the demand for the tags have increased but the supply hasn't yet. This is why the profit margins on all the items is slimmer even though the prices of the items on contracts has risen slightly.

And indeed there is a cap on the increase the tags can go because ccp increased the pirate faction loot drops in null sec. Caldari shield hardeners aren't going to go up in price much more than dread guristas. That means the tags can't go up in price too much either. Which means people will still be hesitant to farm them.







Both proposals dumb down the game horribly. The tag system presents a choice players can make and it has consequences. It adds to the complexity and dynamics of the game.

The solutions are:

1) stop having incursions spew "super lp." If the incursion/concord lp store is saturated then people should be looking to other forms of pve. That is how a self balancing systems works. But for whatever reason CCP didn't want incursions to have any of the balance other systems in eve have.

2) Limit/restrict the modules that drop as faction loot in null sec. That will leave items that the faction lp stores can make profits on. CCP may already be doing this I don't know.

Post 59 is about faction guns. The problem with faction guns is that they do not fire tech 2 ammo and they are way more expensive than tech 2. Its one of those lp store items that is not really competitive. Comparing the cost of the tags to whatever minimum that is made up by ccp is really irrelevant.

Should ccp consider the bottnecks in tags and ask whether they are good or bad? sure! Should they consider whether some items int he lp store are obsolete due to much cheaper t2 or dead space / pirate faction goods? Of course. But as long as incursions are dumping bonus "super lp" on top of players who are already getting obscene amounts of isk for high sec incursions the profit margins for the lp stores will remain slim.

If the idea is to say that the only way to make isk from pve in eve is to railroad everyone into doing incursions, then, well they are doing it right.



I think we are on the same page here.

You are right that fw complexes should have an adjustment of the tags dropped. Doing a minor plex in faction war will not net you enough to pay for your ammo assuming you are pvp fit and using tech 2 ammo. And yes doing this with reds in system which most people in low sec are doing means the pay should be better.

CCP should give better tags for Faction war plexes. The faction war missions currently give lp and are a diffferent sort of bird.

/sigh
Post 59 is about tags, not the gun itself,
[Gallente lp stores]
because the small gun requires the same tag set as a sensor booster and tracking computer in the exact same numbers. and as the tc and sebo are much more useful those will be the items people trade tags for. its not that people dont want the small faction guns, its that the small faction guns are priced out by the cost of the other modules that require the same tags.
its not about obsolete items, its about price points. and bad requirement distribution
its not about super lp because that has absolutely nothing to do with the tag prices. which are 90% of the items cost in the first place. having more lp doesnt mean you can use less tags, (although thats not a bad idea)

there used to be some difficulty in obtaining certain corps lp which is why they had some special items in their lp store (5 run bpc of mag stabs or webs) for pure lp, I grant you Incursion lp didnt help that but its since been changed so you need tags.
tags which you do not get from incursion/ incursion lp


Its more about the tag requirement distribution then anythign else. what are all those midshipman tags good for? why dont they buy platings? not enams but anp's? a quick look at the market can tell you which tags are not used for the lp store.

change the requirements to match the item being bought, frigate tags for frigate modules, cruiser tags .. etc,
for specialty (non ship class dependant) make them the dessy and bc tag drops

It is indeed about the guns being bad due to the price point they set for them. You can't look at one without the other. If they made the guns extremely powerful much more powerful than t2 guns then they would sell.




Super lp is a problem because it increases the demand on the best tags without increasing the supply. This isn't even really controversial.


the other issue is just the fact that CCP is basically giving this super lp away almost as a free gift on top of the imbalanced isk rewards. Basically they threw out millions of extra super lp into the game and now we are supposed to wonder why the profit margins for lp items is tighter. Again that the incursion super lp woudl have a negative effect on people who did the research and increased their standings with most choice npc corps should not really be controversial.

Like I said they basically demolished any semblence of complexity or balance when they decided "well instead of making enough unique items for this store we will just make it so this lp can **** on everyone else's lp store." I can only assume that was done because of the limitted resources they had for eve at the time.




I don't care if ccp wants to manipulate the tags. But manipulating the tags will not increase your profit margins for very long as long as incursion runners can cherry pick the best items and dump their super lp on that item. Like I said incursions - likely due to limitted resources combined with a desire to get allot of people doing them - used a hamfisted approach to their rewards that basically ignored the more nuanced traditional ways to make isk in eve. The LP stores are hurting from that - as well as the increase in null sec pirate faction loot drops and likely as well from the agent quality changes.

OP, there's even more to this imbalance.

For instance, look at Republic Fleet 100MN Afterburner Blueprint, available from Minmatar LP stores. Then, look at Federation Navy 100MN Afterburner Blueprint, available from Gallente LP stores. Both blueprints produce identical modules, stat-wise.

BUT, the Gallente version requires Industry V plus some other skills. Minmatar version requires Industry I only, and no other skills.

FURTHER, the Gallente version requires some manufactured components to make the modules, plus the Meta 0 version of that module. The Minmatar version only requires minerals, which makes them MUCH simpler to make.

Balanced? Hardly. Gallente get really screwed over by their LP stores.

The problems with the lp stores did get considerably worse after incursions. But I am objective enough to realize that other things happened around that same time.

1) CCP indicated they would increase the faction loot drops in null sec. and 2) they the agent quality changes. That made it easier for people to access all the top agents and by making them all quality 20 put allot more lp into the game generally. Moreover the changes to the social skills also made it easier to collect lp.

These 2 things in addition to the super lp that incursions introduced hurt our ability to make a profit through smart planning and research into the lp store.

As far as the null sec faction drops keeping the prices low you still want to blame tags. But the tags aren't the issue any more than isk itself. The problem is that as long as there is a supply of comparable items coming from low sec the price of the lp store items will have an upper limit.

CCP can do a few things to help the traditional lp stores.

1) have null sec drop predominantly a certain type of mod so players need to look to the traditional lp store for faction modules of the other types.

2) Give incursions more in their own lp store but and end the super lp transfer stuff. The new unique items should mollify people who are running them but it will allow people using the traditional stores to still be able to have some profit margin without them dumping the lp.

3) Adjust the costs of the items and perhaps even the bonuses of some items. And yes they can adjust tags along the way. I am not against that. Its just narrow minded to see "the tags" as the sole problem. They aren't and they add a complexity, without which, eve would be more appealing to the dumb.





I don't know what you are talking about. The faction guns suck they always have. You have to compare the value of an item *and* the cost. If faction guns were as valuable as carriers then they would sell even with the current tag prices as they are.

If you think I am trolling then it is because basic economic concepts are beyond your reach.

Lack of lp is the main reason why I and others do not sell the items from the better lp stores. But now even the better stores have a very slim profit margin. In the past that would lead to people no longer farming missions from that corp. Over time the number of people with lp for those items would diminish and then the profit margin could go up again. Then people would farm it again.

But now thanks to incursions “super lp” the amount of lp that can be used in any of the traditional lp stores is still farmed and so this self balancing does not work. The top stores profit margins will remain buried.
There are some stores that are broken and overfarmed that is true. There are many items that are not worth the cost or even close. This is true and should be looked at. I agree ccp should look at that but its not an "either or" problem. You keep looking at only portion of the issue.

It is not weird to believe that if ccp gives an influx of lp the profit margins for the items you can buy with that lp will shrink. In fact, it is weird that you keep thinking that this increase supply of items will not effect the price.