Science & Industry

I'm pretty sure it's from the early April posts on https://twitter.com/#!/CCP_Diagoras

Nope. It's from my link, the Q2 2009 QEN.

OP, you have just been owned.

Next!

(Necro-kitteh is necro'in' ur traed!!11!!oneone!!)

You mean, what if CCP announced NPCs would no longer sell super-capital ship BPOs and you had to buy from specific LP shops something that leads to super-capital BPCs, but left the super-capital BPOs that exist in place, don't you ? :P
Super-caps could still be generated by any player without access to a supercap BPO, but it would be quite a bit more expensive than what super-cap BPO owners would be making them for.
Also, super-capital BPOs will most likely go up in price quite a bit on the free market after that removal, since, hey, limited edition, and offering benefits over the only other alternative.
It's almost as if you want CCP to remove everything that was once seeded by NPCs but no longer is... like, oh, say, some particular skillbooks ? I mean, those are also insanely expensive nowadays, but people still got them dirt-cheap back when NPCs sold them. Or how about space mine BPOs ? Granted, you can't use the items themselves anymore, but the BPOs still exist (and AFAIK you can still copy them and make items from them if you want, I might be mistaken though).

Also, you say it gave them a massive advantage.
Well, it would be inappropriate to say that it gave a MASSIVE advantage, since it actually gave them a MONOPOLY.
Again, I give you the concrete case of Cap Recharger II BPOs, which sold for as much as 200 bil ISK a piece before invention, and you could make that money back in pure profits in about 5 MONTHS OF PRODUCTION then keep on going until bored...
That monopoly no longer exists. It imploded the split second invention was introduced. T2 item prices have experienced a massive freefall in a matter of days after invention came around, stabilizing to prices radically lower for a long time.

You are correct about one thing though... it GAVE them an advantage.
Emphasis on the past tense.

Let's say there are 2 people, person A and person B.
Person A has 100 bil ISK.
Person B has a T2 BPO that makes 20 bil ISK per year profit, a BPO of a type that was recently transacted for about 100 bil ISK.

FIRST QUESTION for you - which person is richer RIGHT NOW, person A or person B ?

The correct answer is that they're equally wealthy, but their wealth resides in different types of items.
How person B got to have that specific T2 BPO does not matter.
He might have earned it himself in the lottery. He might have bought if from somebody else using ISK. He could have won it in a game of poker. He could have stolen it from an unsecured corp hangar. He could have looted it from a wreck. He could have scammed it away from somebody. He might have received it as a gift.
It really DOES NOT MATTER how he got the T2 BPO.
Either way, it's worth 100 bil ISK.

SECOND QUESTION for you (actually, a set of questions) - should person A buy the BPO ? should person B sell the BPO ? why ? or why not ?

The answer is simple, actually.
The flat (non-capitalized) RoI is ~1.66% per month. The rolling (re-capitalized monthly) RoI is ~1.16%.
If any of the two can invest 100 bil ISK into something that brings them more than 1.66 bil per month OR more than 1.16 bil per month with the possibility to reinvest with perfect scaling up of profit, then they should NOT buy the BPO, or if they have it, they should sell it. Conversely, if they can't do that, they SHOULD buy the BPO, or if they already have it, not sell it.
Do you notice how the actual price of the blueprint and what exactly does the blueprint manufacture is of a distant secondary importance ?
Also, just a hint : even 3% is a pretty crappy RoI for almost nothing done. 1.66% is beyond crappy for something you actually have to put any effort in, and for T2 BPOs, as much as you like to call them effortless, they certainly are NOT.

LAST QUESTION for you - since in the end, a T2 BPO is pretty much interchangeable with their market ISK value, from a purely economic perspective, how exactly would you feel about CCP arbitrarily removing a huge amount of ISK from your wallet ?

Can't we just report him for spamming and trolling instead?

Just ignore him and stop posting in his threads. He'll go away.

I wish I had taken my own advice earlier.

This level of stupidity is criminal so it should moved to COAD.

Good point Devs can see that and yet none of the posts are even locked or deleted it's as if there are many people unhappy with T2BPO and are posting on the forum, your Tinfoil hat needs adjusting.

Actually reading defendents of T2BPO particularly Akita's posts I'm more and more convinced that the right thing to do would be to leave T2BPO but allow invention copies to inheret their T1BPO's ME levels. That way invention would be on par with T2BPO but owners of T2BPO's would still not ahve to invent.

Do either of those proposals actually result in more or less money for inventors than the status quo? I'm not convinced either way, but I'm leaning towards less. The situation is far from straight forward and anybody who claims to have an answer will need to provide more than anecdotes and hunches to make their point.

improving the ME will just reduce the price of the products but on a long term it will just give you more competition and same, if not even lower margins than we have now.

imho, if you want to boost Invention, I would simply try to give manufactures some more power. Make it harder to produce T2 Ships/items, add more skills for the build them, increase the build time (orignals and copies). That way "beeing an Inventor" would be a more specialised role, and casual Industrialists would stop ruining prices and become customers.