EVE General Discussion

All commerce invariably flows to Jita.
All hubs and stations are more or less just relay points towards this superheavy commerce blackhole of the universe.

Its the Rome of EVE and its only a matter of time before a Carthage arises to challenge its ponderous monolithic monopoly.
Though having such a huge trade hub has its benefits, it actually limits the potential of free enterprise and enterpreneurship throughout the universe as well as making the market vulnerable to manipulation.

I am all for as player driven an economy as possible, but this is an artificial system that has hardcoded limitations.

Imo, the crux of this artificial system, is the relative ease of transport of materials. (With lack of incentivising local trade as a secondary and somewhat indirect factor)
Consider comparison to IRL movement of materials around the world, today and historically:

-Risk. Is somewhat present, yes. Piracy/ganking takes its small part. As was the case along the Silk Road, its a long and dangerous transit from the edge of space to the cradle of wealth. But the sheer volume of material moving there provides safety in numbers against the proportiinately small amount of predators on the road. Furthermore, security along those routes, specifically between the nominal empire trade hubs, is very efficient as provided (free of charge) by CONCORD on high sec routes. (Even thoug this is punitive in direct effect, it also provides an indirect preventative deterrant to piracy).

-Time. Time is valuable in EVE, primarily as a limited player resource. IRL it takes sometimes weeks or months to move shipments across oceans between trade hubs, or at greater cost by air freight. If there was no penalty on auto-pilot the provlem of centralisation of commerce would be even worse. Time is a key consideration in whether you take your stuff to Jita, or instead do business at a local hub. However, it rrally doesnt take that long to take your goods to Jita, for millions more profit from the greater pool of players there, than saving some minutes or hours by doing it locally. This is a tenuous balance, and a very direct investment/profit equation. Can you make more ISK by trading/acting locally, in the time it would take to go to Jita instead? I thinnk unfortunately, all too often, due to the nature of the games current artificial system, the answer is its more profitable to schlep to Jita.

-Cost. One of the core differences between IRL hauling and movement of commodities and EVE, is fuel and other associated costs.Im sure its far too late to implement either a gate use cost, or make gating require a special fuel unit, but it bears mentioning as an example of how EVEs economy is an artifical model with its own intrinsic limitations when comparing to IRL models.

-Geographic availability of resources. Many items in EVE are only generated in specific regions of space. This is good, but becomes largely irrelevant if all those items, no matter where they come from, are more cheaply aquired from Jita, rather than in their source regions (again, due to the relative ease/profitability of simply taking what you generate locally,to Jita, rather than trading it locally)

Overall, what Im talking about, is I wish there was more incentive for trading locally, and more indirect detractants to the time/risk of simply moving everything directly to Jita. Currently there is too little of both, respectively, to the result that even the artificial systems of the game (namely the servers and region handling of Jita itself) cant "sustain" the economy.

I think its a warning bell that the economy is suffering, and that local trading is not incentivised enough.

Sure, CCP can just make Jita able to handle more and more players, but that is treating a symptom, not the cause.
Some will argue that Jita queues will incentivise trade locally elsewhere, but really that is not a valid argument unless the queues start extending into 10s of minutes of waiting. Furthermore, this argument is invalidated internally, because it is NOT player behavior that is causing the Jita queues, it is the artificial environment of the game, namely, the server and code capacity. This is an indication that the games internal balances are being exceeded. That the artificial world of EVE cannot handle what is happeneing in Jita, means the games internal reality is not balanced ELSEWHERE, which is resulting in this behavior.

Local trading needs incentivising. The current artificial systrms of the game are not sufficiently nd conducive to this, resulting in simply taking everything to Jita, which is creating a systemic "problem" in that not even Jita can handle it all.

*snip*

I think its a warning bell that the economy is suffering, and that local trading is not incentivised enough.

Sure, CCP can just make Jita able to handle more and more players, but that is treating a symptom, not the cause.
Some will argue that Jita queues will incentivise trade locally elsewhere, but really that is not a valid argument unless the queues start extending into 10s of minutes of waiting. Furthermore, this argument is invalidated internally, because it is NOT player behavior that is causing the Jita queues, it is the artificial environment of the game, namely, the server and code capacity. This is an indication that the games internal balances are being exceeded. That the artificial world of EVE cannot handle what is happeneing in Jita, means the games internal reality is not balanced ELSEWHERE, which is resulting in this behavior.

Local trading needs incentivising. The current artificial systrms of the game are not sufficiently nd conducive to this, resulting in simply taking everything to Jita, which is creating a systemic "problem" in that not even Jita can handle it all.

Some interesting points there and it's also worth mentioning that CCP have made changes in the past to incentivise players to spread out rather than cluster together. The removal of agent quality was meant to encourage people to move out of the old mission super-hubs like Dodixie and Motsu and we have recently seen the change to take the pressure off Osmon by introducing the Sisters agents in Lanngisi and Apanake.

Some interesting points there and it's also worth mentioning that CCP have made changes in the past to incentivise players to spread out rather than cluster together. The removal of agent quality was meant to encourage people to move out of the old mission super-hubs like Dodixie and Motsu and we have recently seen the change to take the pressure off Osmon by introducing the Sisters agents in Lanngisi and Apanake.

As an example, high-traffic in Jita was yesterday from 15:20 until 22:00.

We are stuck with the peak and we are stuck with the load, unless game mechanics are changed.

SELLING your items in other trade hubs is actually more profitable..

Jita holds the lowest sell orders and highest buy orders because the volume of traders assert pressure towards the middle. If you go outside Jita, you can put your sell orders higher and your buy orders lower because the same pressure isn't there.

So if you are a trader rather than a casual consumer — if you sell using sell orders and buy using buy orders rather than sell to and buy from existing orders on the market — you sell your goods for more and you buy your goods for less than if you did the same in Jita.

Courier services might be able to transport multiple contracts out of Jita (to their service hub) so that would be less load. Also, they may be able to enter Jita during low traffic hours. As an example, high-traffic in Jita was yesterday from 15:20 until 22:00.

Why should NPCs be handed a job players can do perfectly well on their own?