Market Discussions

Yes they do. The AFK will stop reading here and flame me, but you won't

Although AFK mining will always generate an accounting profit (your ISK quantity goes up), AFK mining is one of the worst activities imaginable for making money.

This seems counter intuitive to some people - if you're making money, you're winning right? WRONG.

You see, there is this really cool thing called "implicit cost" also known as opportunity cost. When you do something you give up the chance to do something else. Normally, this is par for the course and totally ok. But AFK ice mining is special.

AFK ice mining is like collecting cans on the street to cash in at an aluminum recycling plant for some nickels. The entry barrier is nonexistent, any moron can do it. This, combined with perfect information (current ice prices are known to all and the locations of ice belts are readily available) means that ice prices are as low as they can possibly be in the market.

But we all know that miners mine themselves into poverty, they've done it since the start of EVE. They complain that they don't make enough money and ask for more yield, which causes them to make either the same or often less than they did before. They then proceed to ask for more yield again

AFK takes stupid up to 11. AFK miners are collectively mining themselves into mediocrity because "I can make teh isk while watching Kaylee on Firefly" mentality.

They may be making accounting profits but the facts are they make zero or worse economic profits. Quite literally, you'd be better of doing any other activity than AFK mining.

But since AFK miners only understand a wallet blink, they will think they're gaming the system by making money afk. But in reality they're selling themselves as short as you possibly could.

So, AFKers, you fail economics forever.

ah i love you GCSE business students.

once your teacher has covered motivation theory, come back here and realise how amusing and incorrect you are.

Your knowledge of economics is impressive to a human being, I'll grant you that.

AFK mining lasers and bots don't care how impressive your mention of motivation theory is, though.

AFK mining lasers and bots aren't motivated by anything.

It's the worst but it's better than making zero ISK and it comes with the equivalent effort of staying logged off.

So to talk along your line, the opportunity cost of making little ISK with zero effort is more favorable than making zero ISK with zero effort.

Not on a macroeconomical scale, it isn't.

Devaluing professions through non-stop zero-effort resource uptake is not good for Eve.

incorrect assumption #2; the computer is only on in order to play eve.

in fact, if i did it your way it'd cost me more money on my bills because i'd have spent an hour playing eve and i wouldn't have got anything else done so i'd then have to spend more time with the computer on to get things finished...

I am not that much of a miner (I trade) but in any case, trading while mining justifies the electricity.

Watching a video while mining => the computer uses like 5 more watts out of 700 it's using anyway so.... who cares for those 5W?




Hey, in most other games mining is not this hideous farce we got in EvE.
Make it less craptastic of a mechanic and you'll magically see people willing to actually play it.

You mean as opposed to now, where tons of people are playing it "AFK" or by "macro"?

You really think all those subs won't change status if mining gets an "interestingness" buff? You really think they'll be excited?

Sometimes, Vaerah, I don't see what the points of your posts are.

I think that miners simply need more yield to make prices go down. A tier 3 BS should not be over 250 mill dammit! They're supposed to be 150 D: and tier 2 should be 100 and tier 1 be 50 and BCs should be in the teens and high 20s D:

The mining profession isn't very much of a popular one and thus a relatively small % of the population does it. If this % stays roughly the same as the game grows then there will always been a obligation for the small mining population to keep up with the non-mining populaton's needs.

Give them more yield per person and you get lowered mineral prices and eventually everything levels out and the miners end up making exactly the same ISK they made with last season's best mining ship but the economy as a whole will benefit from lowered prices.

Hopefully, since the cost of living, so to speak, would go down then PLEX might too.

Only the last question deserves any answer.

Effort is described in terms of work, or force divided by distance, to achieve it.

In this case I'm going to use Joules (J) for the unit. Nevertheless, a zero value here is equal to a zero value for any other unit of work I'm familiar with.

I hope that helps.