EVE General Discussion

Another reason why the NEX store is such a fail: would have worked wonders as an ISK sink. Take a random NEX item, make 10 different textures for it, and introduce it as an LP store item: I will guarantee you New Eden would be poor in it's entirety the next day, but at least everyone would wear a fancy tophat and entire corps would wear the same Quafe shirt.

I still want a cap that says "Chief Engineer"

Less seeding needs to happen not more. A great asset of this game is the player driven market. Remove that and you hurt eve as a whole.

They should add more forms of ingame advertisement for corps. *shameless plug*

Or better yet, just create a nerfing forum and let all the pointless bickering happen there.

A proper isk sink would take the money from the people that have the most, perhaps a tax on alliance leaders once they have a certain amount of people in there alliance, sure you can be TEST and blue everything in null, but it'll cost ya. ISK sinks that affect the poor people in EVE (yeah I know its they're fault) aren't necessary, those players are already poor. The entire concept should be pulling out of ISK pools, not pulling out of everyones puddles.

Tippia already listed that.

One radical idea that I've seen that I like (though I can't remember the source), is to remove as many ISK sources from HS activities as possible. Missions pay out LP only, HS rats pay out LP, etc. The concept is essentially that ISK doesn't properly act as a currency in EVE, so treat it like the commodity it is and have Null export ISK while importing other things.

I know I proposed something along those lines, but it was in private.

It works pretty well when you drill into the numbers, though. LP redemption from missions is one of the biggest sinks in the game already, at about 5-6T/mo. Mission rewards and time bonuses are a faucet of similar size, so those already cancel. Meanwhile, the bounties faucet is in the vicinity of 25T/mo. I have no way to tell how much of that is nullsec ratting and how much of it is highsec missions, except to know that the number of rats killed in the busiest highsec regions exceeded that same number in the busiest nullsec regions by a factor of ten. Given the similarity of anomaly rats to mission rats, it wouldn't be unreasonable to say, hey, 90% of the bounties faucet comes from highsec.

But here, we'll assume it's merely half, and that 25T/mo remains accurate. If CCP were to make a pass on missions and remove bounties from all the rats, then replace them with LP at a ratio of 1000 isk:LP, then we've eliminated half the bounties faucet and the LP that replaces it counterbalances the other half (operating on the assumption that LP is redeemed in stores at a cost of 1000 isk/LP).

LP isn't always redeemed at that cost, faction items cost more or less, and the replacement ratio would have to be settled on based on whether CCP wanted to buff or nerf L4 income (if a mission runner can't get at least the replacement ratio in value for his LP, his income has been nerfed), but you get the idea - CCP can, with one stroke, neutralize the bounties faucet.

Whether it's the best way to do it is another matter, but that's something for their economist to decide.


e: All numbers used in this post are courtesy of CCP DIagoras' old twitter feed, so they're about 9 months out of date at this point, but probably still representative, ie bounties are almost certainly still a double-digit isk faucet, etc etc.

1. Given that CCP is working to constantly reduce the amount of NPC influence in the market (and that this is a higher priority that removing ISK sinks, See: PI), how do you set up player manufacturing of the crews such that they remain an ISK sink? (Maybe just have the crew upkeep be the ISK sink, and the manufacturing be player operated, though that brings with it other issues of whether you have to pay upkeep on inactive crews and, if so, what happens to crews on market or in contracts, and what's stopping people from escaping the crew upkeep by keeping their crews locked away like that?).

2. Combat bonuses whose benefits are not lost when you lose your ship and cannot be stolen are bad, mmmkay. No clones for crews.

3. If you're introducing this as a way to create an ISK sink, why turn around and suggest removing the ISK sinky part?


Other than that, I think that crew slots could have some merit.

Valid points.

1) Crews are LP only for hire and ISK for upkeep.

2) Crews are lost when a ship goes *poof*.

3) Think of crews like rigs. Lost when replaced, can't be repackaged with a ship. As far as players trading them, that's not a sink nor faucet, that's redistribution of ISK already in system.

**EDIT**

Possibly have a skill tree for crews? Crews could have ranks, Basic, Advanced, Elite.
Skillbooks are an ISK sink . This tied to the removal of NPC bounties paid in ISK and paid instead with LP would be a smooth system for pulling out ISK, available to a broad range of players.

Heh, maybe tie in a way for crews to perform better with Exotic Dancers and Quaffe in the hold? (Finally a use for them?) A morale upkeep if you will.