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These are interesting topics for discussion, but we haven't seen that kind of self-reflecting analysis out of CCP since prior to the Tyrannis expansion. CCP has gone silent on any and all game design elements which might be seen as a weakness in their catalog of expansions. And thus all of the insanely dramatic ISK faucets and sinks put into play are barely touched upon from an economic impact perspective.

I don't know if it is a cultural (Icelandic) thing, business management decision or simply lack of available resources to discuss all of the economic changes that have taken place in EVE over the past 1 - 2 years, but it is a sure bet that CCP's customers are discussing them.

At the peak of Goonswarm sponsored Hulkageddon, in the deadliest day of all, they "did" the ice system where I was twice in 24 hours. It's still about 20 hours of pure boredom. Imagine the rest of the year.

Economy's already running at something like a 25T/mo net faucet, another trillion or so (or more likely less, frankly) from the drone regions isn't a big deal. But easily accessible and large scale isk transfers such as mining (or FW before it) takes isk that, yes, exists already in the game but may have been stagnant, and transfers it to the miners, where they spend it on things, including game time. FW before it, same effect, just different vector.

Drone drops from the drone regions were a massive supply of minerals that is no longer there, they allowed the game to enjoy a much higher level of demand than it would have otherwise been able to, and now that demand is being applied to a much smaller supply.

I don't often unironically take a dig at CCP as I think you guys do a great job and you engage with the community more then literally any other game developer ever. Properly engage too, not just reply to tweets with one word comments on a leaked screenshot, actually making changes based on opinions.

That said this devblog is total rubbish. The links between cause and effect of any of the figures used are not what the blog says they are, or at least there's no evidence to prove it is what they say they are.

Let's look at the points:



Considering these are the earliest mining ships people can just into I wouldn't put too much on these figures. Firstly they are effected by changes in production cost (I believe) and secondly if the changes were to make mining a better option for income on an alt people will be looking to buy these.

Interesting the ship that is high yield and low hold (i.e. the ship designed to be used for "team" mining) is the one that dropped off in terms of production...



If by "similar pattern" you mean that Mackinaws (high cargo hold, "low" tank) now form a much high percentage oh ships produced then yes you are right. Unfortunately that's not the point you were making.

What the figures actually show is mining ship production has dropped off (implying that either demand isn't as great, or the spike pre-changes is enough to satisfy demand for quite a while) BUT Mackinaws now form a disproportionate percentage of mining ships produced, in fact if you look at the graph they form a pretty similar percentage as hulks did when "everyone only ever used hulks" which was the "cause" for the change.

This would imply that Mackinaws and Procurers are the new used ships of choice (as otherwise why bother including the figures for ships produced?). If only we had those figures! Oh wait, we do...




This statement is just wrong.

Firstly the graphs don't imply anything about useful mining alternatives. they shows that the two ships that now show overwhelming use are the two ships that allow for the "best" AFK mining. The retriever far outstrips (no pun intended) it's brothers in terms of mining barges and the Mackinaw has overtaken the Hulk in terms of useage for miners. Now the decline in useage of Hulks is not as steep as the mining barge decline, and Mackinaws have not yet hit the disparity of useage that Hulks once had, however exhumers are much more of a significant investment for miners, so no-one is going to be in a rush to sell off their old hulks.

Further this has been measured over just 3 months, I suspect the delta between Mackinaw and Hulk usage will only increase over time.



The only observation worth reading in the blog.

The blog then goes on to talk about mining indices, however the only one that has significant changes is ice prices. Which again is the best source for AFK mining.

So in short what the Dev Blog should have been saying was that all the mining changes have achieved is that over a 3 month period:

1. The production for exhumers is down, the production for mining barges is up
2. Procurers and Retreviers form the largest part of mining barge production
3. Mackinaws form by far the largest proportion of the exhumer production
4. Mackinaws and Retrievers now form the largest part of the mining ship population
5. The only mineral price to be drastically effected is ice

To me the conclusion should be that AFK mining has been given a significant boost (as the high cargo hold ships are the ones dominant) and that is what more players are now doing (as mainly ice prices have decreased which is the best AFK mining source). The reason that AFK mining has increased was due to the favourable ship for AFK mining (high cargo space) also having a "medium" tank preventing as many deaths (which is why production has slowed, as there is less demand for the ships).

Further more I'd expect that over the coming months the Hulk figures will continue to slowly erode (as old hulk players leave, new mining players start in mackinaws moving from the massive retriever boom) until eventually they replace the Hulk in terms of disparity between that ship and all of the others.

I have to say I am really disappointed with CCP, this is a sham of a devblog. I'm not actually against AFK mining per se, however what I am against is mis-representation of statistics.

I agree with this as a guy who has 100mil/hr null alts. Why would i spend my time on active hisec mining when i can make 100m/hr with my null alts on anoms.

And yes only reason i do mining aswell is that i can do it semi-afk. Meaning i can watch tv or read eve forums etc. while still seeing my display. Also ive mined while pvp'ing on my other alt...

But as i said before its just not the mining miners need to do. He need also refine, haul and sell. These things need alot skills and standings, isk and time. Lets say you need standings for refining you need to go do missions to get those standings. You need skills which take long to train like refining, mining mods, mining ships, tank skills etc. Then you basicly need to have freighter which costs 1,4billion and is long train aswell.. Or even orca but thats even longer training. Then you need to actually sell them stuff you mined, refined and hauled which can be tricky aswell.

Anyways what im saying here is that if someone is so jealous to highsec miners why dont he go try himself how little isk he will be making with all that time and effort spent to get hes stuff sold on market. Even if hes able to be semi-afk somewhere during the process..

In short the changes to mining from elimination of drone poo drops through to the mining ship re-balancing & new mining frigates were unnecessary and were a fix to a mining system that was largely UNBROKEN. To some peoples eyes mining was 'boring' but if they find something 'boring' then I suggest they do something else in New Eden.
A side effect of these changes(Largely the drone poo removal.) was the increase in the prices of high sec ores/minerals which was needed to make mining a more attractive career. I think probably the 'fixing' of mining process should probably have ceased at that point. I still don't understand the reasoning behind vastly increasing the amount of minerals needed to make ships and hope CCP don't carry this process through the full range of ships. If you carry this idea all the way through to Titans there will be epic 'QQ' from the nul-sec community.

I am still waiting for you fix something that is broken in EVE Online. Namely the Corp/Alliance 'Roles & Permissions' interface with a view to making it very user friendly. Also the 'Roles & Permissions' interaction with all elements of POSes (Player Owned Stations.) which will need to be fixed BEFORE modular POSes are implemented. Put user friendlyness before eye candy please. We all love eye candy but if something doesn't work it doesn't matter that it looks sexy.

The point of Eve Online is to be an asshat, hth

Because if we don't the miners will completely devalue their own profession due to over-mining.

Just look at the trends since the barge buff.



As supply goes up, value goes down. The only way to counteract this trend is to either increase demand considerably or to reduce available supply.

High-sec ice miners want neither to happen. They want profits now. This can be seen through market analysis of all the ice products. They want this profit so badly that they're not only willing to ruin ice mining for future miners by creating an overwhelming glut of ice products, but also at the expense of their own rate of pay. Their activity has literally cost them the majority of their actual ISK paychecks.

This is simple economics which is beyond the "peaceful" world view of the bot-aspirant miner. By asking to not be interfered with, you are asking players and CCP to directly screw over players who haven't started playing Eve yet but who may wish to engage in mining as a career.

Yet we're the griefers...in a spaceship macroeconomics game...good one.

This is nonsense. A big war or bunch of super cap construction arrays will chew through quite a bit of excess minerals. AND the loss of minerals from the removal of drone droppings has got to be filled in somehow.

Furthermore, those in the north with nearly uncontested access to technetium moons (and possibly exhumer BPOs) have the potential to profit greatly from the market churn of those tech 2 mining barges. Your ganks are creating more of a market for the materials that you control.

So, any noble bullshit about helping the market and greater game economy through ganks, falls on deaf ears. That is not to say that ganks are not legitimate gameplay -- they are completely legit. But let's be truthful about things.


And yet people are willing to pay the higher prices for ships in order to PvP or partake in other activities. It is not clear that your scenario of greater supply is taking place. And if it is, buyers are willing to shoulder the higher prices up to a point.

Utter bullshit when it comes to the 'noble' practice of ganking. Call it for what it is: griefing and profiteering from the market churn on tech 2 products. Again, those are legitimate activities in EVE, simply not of the noble type.

Good luck my friend. It took CCP like 6 months to fix the Unified Inventory with absolutely no comments from the devs or staff.


And free bump and +1 for you as well.