EVE General Discussion

It was perfectly reasonable in 2009 and 2010 when me and others were asking for L4 nerfs directly in the mission sub-forum.

Since we brought in the only real and tangible numbers, CCP listened and they indeed quickly nerfed L4 missions (all secs, but more hi sec) which lost 15%-20% of their reward per nerf. Back at the time there were (if I recall correctly) 2-3 nerfs and then a later one.

Then came incursions and once again I and others noticed they were quickly destroying EvE's economy and another nerf campaign started. And succeeded.

Then came FW and their magic ISK fountains. I did not personally campaign (I was unsubbed if I recall correctly) but it was due.

Back to today: missions still *slightly* bring in too much ISK but for specific cases of outlier players who:

- keep researching the best LP/ISK valued mods
- keep grinding different standings up since those best mods change over time and are given by different corporations
- use high SP characters and good ships enough to survive full room aggro
- blitz.

Besides this is a kind of effort that needs a better reward than just spamming Caldary Navy missions in the same basic hub, making lots of ISK through blitzing is not an economy breaker, as LP items are an ISK sink and blitzing missions yields to no NPC deaths => no bounty => no faucets besides the smallish mission completion prize (easily undone by LP items ISK prizes).


It's also quite suspicious to see nerf calling on a specific niche of content that... is not in sov null sec.

I mean, those calling for the nerf *at the moment* are not former heavy missioners like myself who had foresight to defend EvE's economy, but entities that have no missions in their territory.

This is why CCP nerfed *their* own unique PvE content, as it's as bad for the economy as missions are (less people doing it, more revenue doing it though) as it's another ISK faucet.


To compound this all, as also recently discussed on Market Discussions, EvE uses the so called "wallets segregation" tecnique to make endless ISK production less of a treat.

The net result is that in these days we assist to a number of important markets going down (minerals), and PLEX staying steady. PLEX is a very good indicator of EvE's economy. PLEX is also a great tool for the Good Doctor to strenghten EvE's economy, as he has just to burn some confiscated PLEXes to undo inflative trends.


So in the end, it WAS necessary to nerf L4 missions, several times in a row, but now it's not. Not at the moment. An hot period like Christmas should be a better indicator, then the results being reported at next Fanfest would speak by themselves.

Those are the only results the count, those in the hand of the Good Doctor.

All the rest is biased talk that has no place in a serious economy rebalance.

(Edit: it's now 2+ years I don't do any mission any more. It's boring and low revenue content much useful to start up as a player but then proper ISK venues easily take over so I dropped them.
I am surprised seeing all those 2005-6 players who seem to still be stuck doing L4 missions like they are a mannah, it's not credible at all).

Good post, out of interest is the above the total number of missions run, and also how much isk did you earn in total for all of the above, because what I meant by ISK per hour was based on the number of missions run in the hour and the rewards paid out. What I see above looks equivalent to a mph rate when we're interested in the total distance drive etc.

Agreed, the LP store if anything is an monetary sink due to the fact that many items cost isk as well as LP, not to mention tags that might need to be collected or bought from other people.

Oh dear. Here are a group of missions I ran in a *dominix - yes the t1 space potato that has to stand still and wait for its drones to finish, and since my agent almost always puts the same mission in the same place, I worked into each missions isk/hr effective, the warps, jumps and dock delay. So times and rates are dock to dock, rounded UP to the next minute.

These are at 1000 isk/lp.

Serp assault (blitz). Elapsed - 9m. rate. 79.2m/hr
Ammar smash supplier (blitz). Elapsed. 7m. rate 99.5m/hr
Angel pirate invasion (full clear). Elapsed. 17m. 57.3m/hr
Serp Extrav (clear). Elapsed - 26m. rate. 52.9m/hr
merc Stop thief (store mission items at home base in advance). Elapsed - 5. rate. 56.9m/hr
mixed dread pirate (loot implant). Elapsed - 25 rate. 93m/hr
serp/gur worlds collide (use card). Elapsed - 19. rate 61m/hr
attack of drones (clear). Elapsed - 14. rate 62m/hr
merc damsel (clear and return with noctis). elapsed 28. rate. 68m/hr
ammar surprise surprise (return with noctis). elapsed 22. rate 59m/hr.
serpentis blockade (clear) Elapsed -23. rate 78m/hr.
+
mats for war (fly to station buy kernite give agent - counting kernite as a cost). Elapsed 4. rate 300m/hr

The same agent gives me 9 other missions that are in the 40m/isk - 50m/isk/hr range - namely, merc-righthand - angel unauth, blood cargo del, drones-infil, mordus headhunters (which I should use the ndomi for), angel extrav (domi not brilliant at it), serp score, mercdrone silence inf, angel smuggler intercept.

*its also a dominix, they "were" cheap, I can leave a spare with bouncers and angel tank ready to go, which avoids major futzing time between missions, ie throw cap boosters in, refill ammo yak to agent and go, 30 seconds.

The rest I can reject.

Some people claim 3000 for conversion, and I have no reason to doubt them. Someone getting 3000 for a conversion will crack 100mil/hr isk in a dominix, but its plainly clear I can beat 50m/hr with a poor conversion.

E.g. If you can run Serpentis Blockade in 23mins how much did that mission pay, because the 78mill per hour fig is only meaningful if you can guarantee that you will get that mission again within the hour.

Apologies if I've misunderstood your figures, I genuinely interested in your findings and would like to know more. Perhaps we can compile the findings of other interested people and come up with a study that nails this type of question once and for all.

78m / 60 * 23 = 29.9m. Which is what you'd expect given its got 20m of bounties, 3m of rewards and 7000ish LP depending on skills. My dominix shot a 15,889,438.00 tick during the mission.

I don't know how you come to a meaningless conclusion. I've pointed out, that _all the missions_ I do, have completions above 40m/hr rate. So it doesn't matter what I chain together, the average is going wind up falling well above 50 given enough sample time. I can reject the missions below 40m isk/hr rate, and I've explained one obvious step given how cheap a T1 BS is to limit docked time (particularly the fussy dominix with the drone loadout to change).

Also there are subtleties.

ie the more you blitz, the more often the 4 minute 20 mil profit materials for war comes around (ie the one with the effective rate of 300m/hr).

However if you ignore that, some missions - ie smash the supplier can be done either way, and if you full clear it, it takes about 45 mins including grabbing the noctis for the tags and pays at an effective rate of 75mil/hr for 45 minutes (tags) - which you might do to fill out the session so your next reject is free from standing penalty tomorrow instead of risking another one today.

and we are still using the low end estimate for conversion.

You don't salvage, don't fly to mission system, don't fly back to agent, don't sell LP loot at a trad ehub and certainly you never fly to said hub and back... you just pull numbers of your hat based on how long it takes from first shot to last shot and call that "data".

Its a list of the better missions, and not the precise order that I received them. They were interspersed with missions in the 40-50mil/isk hr range and a few rejects and the refit/switch ship times. As an aside, the figure above is actually reachable because my conversion is more like 1400, not because the agent would give me that nice a set of missions.

Houm... (60 x 9 x 4) + (60 x 2)= 2,280 million per month.

I'm not even close to that, thus I am a terribad mission runner and I shall better go do something else and stop embarrasing my kind.

…contain as much testing as my 2008 findings did.

They offer no methodology, no details or breakdowns, no ability to repeat or reproduce, no verifiability, no representation, an irrelevant sample size, and indeed pretty much nothing that would make it useful for… well… anything, really. It does contain an end result that is suspiciously close to what one would get if one ran L4s using an underskilled and poorly fitted BC, though.

Well I can certainly understand why buffing null wouldn't work. Especially if it's been tried and failed in the past.

As I've said earlier, it's less about the reward and more about the risk. However, and I'll say again....

Nerf the reward and people will just put up with it.

Nerf the security and people will probably just leave the game.


Having mechanics in place that enable people with sov to enforce a security close to what can be found in hi will probably be the only way you would get people to move from hi to null in any decent quantity.

Perhaps letting those with sov over a system pay a monthly amount (isk) for CONCORD support. Even if it's just enough to bring it on par with .5 systems.

However, if those in low/null don't care if people move or stay, then it's a moot point anyway.

Nerf the security and people will probably just leave the game.