EVE General Discussion

Evening,

CCP Soundwave - “We’re going to be tinkering around with minerals. Personally I’d like to see some changes to ice, for example. There’s a lot of interesting opportunities there. I think ice is very underplayed as a very tactical resource. Like it should essentially be the oil of Eve Online... It would be good if it was something that people thought about instead of something you get from endless mining barges in Empire that may or may not be piloted by people.”

Source : http://nosygamer.blogspot.se/2013/04/ccp-soundwave-and-ccp-solomon-on-twitch.html

TL;DR : Suggesting Ice should be like Oil is an unwieldy comparison and mostly pointless when you arn't going to follow through with it.

I am going to repeatedly cite wikipedia in this thread. If you don't like it, leave now.

Just in case you didn't know Soundwave, Oil IRL is not infinite.

Oil :
- Located in deposits varying in size/value that vary according to geological processes.

- Distributed (according to geological processes) in a variety of places around the world. Source

- New deposits have to be discovered and then exploited.

- Widely used (Source).

- Essential for international shipping of people, goods and resources. (Importantly food.)

- Deposits are finite.

Ice :
- Located in uniform deposits varying in size/value depending on extraction risk.

- Distributed according to where ice was pre-patch - in set locations.

- New deposits respawn in the same systems.

- Used for capitals, POS fuel and jump bridges.

- Non-essential for international shipping of people, goods and resources (Eve before capital jump drives)

- Deposits are infinite (respawn every four hours).

I do not particularly disagree with the current iteration in Odyssey. It's the usual CCP blunder but that's not news.

But I thought it important to point out that the players who have taken up the quote above and now ingame are saying "Ice is becoming the oil of Eve." are incorrect and that it is interesting to watch a Dev make a statement and then have that statement not followed through on at all while the player base thinks it has.

To make the comparison between the two; if the new Ice in Odyssey has its properties given to Oil IRL, that oil would:
1. Be found in deposits that are more valuable the harder it is to extract i.e. Oil under the Arctic would be worth 10x oil in Texas. (There are variations in value IRL but extraction risk != value).
2. The deposits would be found in a set few locations that are arbitrary.
3. Those deposits would be depleted and renewed on a regular basis in the same location.
4. It would be used primarily by the military and no-one else.
5. It would have no bearing on international shipping, plastic products, agriculture or people transportation.
6. A single well could extract forever in one location - the oil would deplete and then reappear.

Also : The point could be made that Oil IRL isn't "essential" to shipping as in sailing ships certainly made some effort towards it in the pre-industrial era. The main differences here are that oil moves ships that move food. I'd be interested to see if a galleon could viably refrigerate produce for a trans-Atlantic trip.

That's it. Flame/troll away.

I think you shouldn't have wasted 30 minutes of your time overanalysing what Soundwave said. Oil is only an example of a resource that keeps the economy driven, and if you're going to spend time attacking every single comparison to IRL, you truly have a sad life.

Interesting, let's remove warp drives from ships and replace them with solar sails for environmental purposes in Odyssey 1.1

I think he was making an analogy to oil's geo-political & economic importance, rather than the specific mechanics of extraction.

And they allowed IsBox into the game, too. Which makes that statement even more hypocritical.

So if CCP is concerned about botters and multiboxers camping an icefield, wouldn't it be common sense to nip that in the bud? It already was a chore to mine ice as it was, and players resorted to having 20 or so accounts to mine it.

Cause + Effect.

The PLEX leveling scheme might help, but as long as IsBox is out there, this issue will keep popping up. There's other resource schemes out there, and a basic one is cheap resources but plenty of them. That might tie in well with the freighter changes as well.

Also, long term, we can and are finding replacements for Oil and ways to reduce consumption where replacements haven't been found (compare the fuel used per ton of shipping Freight 10 years ago to today for an example).

We cannot do the same for Ice products in EVE.

QFT.

O_o

Variety of good points in here.

Like the geo-political idea, but it's still missed the mark somewhat. Making something rarer doesn't really promote political impetus. A variety of the ice miners I know are simply "Off to null sec", and various others are unsubbing.

Edit:

#1

"Every single comparison" - I've been thinking about one. This one. Ice/Oil. I don't see any others. Let alone "Every single comparison".



And a variety of good points in here. T2 I had not considered. Which is quite short-sighted considering I both mine moons and produce T2



This is a lot more like "Oil" would be - a necessary resource that is difficult to acquire. Not a "less common" static version which is what today's patch is doing.



And I'm not so sure about this. Certainly "Infinite" in regards to our useage IRL, but it certainly isn't all drilled from set locations which deplete and then reappear.

This is a pretty great thread.

Any thoughts? Was your idea never acted upon, or has it been?

Care to enlighten this dull mind of mine?