These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

EVE Information Portal

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

Dev blog: Researching, the Future

First post First post First post
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
DK Anaroth
Border Industrial Limited
#621 - 2014-05-02 03:28:33 UTC
Chi'Nane T'Kal wrote:
In my opinion, you should simplify the ME/TE system even further - and at the same time address the worst issues people have with the transition.

I propose:

Blueprint LEVEL - that is: no more differing between ME lvl and TE lvl

Blueprint levels would go from 1 to 10. 1% material efficiency for every level, 2% time efficiency, but both are always at the SAME level

That means, at the price of reducing flexibility slightly by removing a choice that was IMO rather underused (TE research was AFAIK always insignificant compared to ME research), you solve a lot of problems.


- instead of researching level directly, you could research blueprint experience, using the level as a calculated value
- partial research would not be an issue anymore, as every research second translates directly into experience
- conversion of old BPOs would be absolutely FAIR, since you could directly convert from accumulated research time to experience
- FULL market integration would be a lot easier with only 11 different blueprint levels

and on the technical side:
- you would only have to store 1 value (experience) for every BPO


Material research directly affects your profitability, while processing time research only allows you to earn it a bit more quickly.

I'm a firm believer of basing things on accumulated time as well.

If the processing-time side of things isn't as important then perhaps the solution is to simplify things even further, and instead just have a single percentage saving for the blueprint which reduces both the material and time efficiency equally.

One of the other complaints is that blueprints of a high enough level have to more than enough research-time to be the max level. A fairer way of dealing with that may be to introduce a soft cap, so when coverting a blueprint with a combined level above a certain threshold you only get a reduced proportion of those extra research points.

To compensate for either or both of those changes you would probably want to reduce the overall research-time progression, which would help with matching up to the actual effect of existing blueprints.
Takara Mora
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#622 - 2014-05-02 04:50:02 UTC
Am I understanding correctly that researching, say, a capital ship, from ME 9 to ME 10, could take multiple YEARS? ....

Does that mean the BPO would need to sit in a research slot, for multiple years running?

Would that really be feasible? Especially for POS's .... imagine never being able to move the POS, etc. while researching that ....

Will there be any option to remove the ME/TE job from the slot, without losing all of the time already expended?
Kusum Fawn
Perkone
Caldari State
#623 - 2014-05-02 05:14:16 UTC
Takara Mora wrote:
Am I understanding correctly that researching, say, a capital ship, from ME 9 to ME 10, could take multiple YEARS? ....

Does that mean the BPO would need to sit in a research slot, for multiple years running?

Would that really be feasible? Especially for POS's .... imagine never being able to move the POS, etc. while researching that ....

Will there be any option to remove the ME/TE job from the slot, without losing all of the time already expended?


Yes some bpo will take years after the patch to get the last ME level.
I would expect that this is not something CCP expects to actually have happen and thus not taken into account.

Its not possible to please all the people all the time, but it sure as hell is possible to Displease all the people, most of the time.
Elysium Foxx
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#624 - 2014-05-02 05:55:33 UTC
Ok, so I only read up to page 23 so this may have been mentioned.

Many people have suggested a 100 level ME system would be better for transferring current ME levels on bpo's to the new system, which I agree would be give a more accurate conversion. However, if a 100 level system were to be implemented it would then make it much harder to introduce a seperare BPC market, or integrate BPC into the existing market, as there would be too many combinations to deal with ( +bloated database ).

I for one would love to see BPCs moved out of the contract interface and into a market structured interface.

Even using a 10 point system as has been outlined in the blog would result in there being a lot of different permutations of available bpc.

So I guess what I'm saying is that sticking with the 10 point ME/TE method would make things easier if CCP did eventually move bpc to its own market space.
Seith Kali
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#625 - 2014-05-02 06:43:38 UTC
The 100 point system people keep talking about is simply interpolating an additional 9 steps between each of the current 10 steps, 10% ME bonus is still the cap. The only thing 100 points change is allowing you to incrementally research the last 1% rather than having to do the whole thing at once if you choose to.

It all seems pretty good to me. The only argument for a 100 point system is so that, with the copy bonuses, people can keep improving their supercaptials while still meeting production demand for them.

CCP needs to bear in mind that the copy changes double super capital BPO efficacy as well as T2. This isn't such an issue, but selling super BPCs was a viable sub-profession previously and it will suffer.

Greyscale, to address the copy on T2 BPO issue, how about a third set of skills/BPO stats? Copy speed? You could give us an 'advanced science' skill and allow BPOs copy speed to be researched. By capping the effectiveness or even the application of this on T2 BPOs you can keep them in line, whilst making copy speed improvements a choice up to the player.

Those of us who don't value over-research would have dedicated invention BPOs that only have copy speed trained, for example.

You could do something similar with max-runs, giving those who want to sell Supercap BPCs more choices with how they research and enhancing the currently cut-and-dry decision of "am I building 1 titan, get a BPC. Will I build 2? Get a BPO sell it later".

Apprentice Goonswarm Economic Warfare Consultant - Drowning in entitlement and privilege. 
Medalyn Isis
Doomheim
#626 - 2014-05-02 07:22:54 UTC  |  Edited by: Medalyn Isis
Shoogie wrote:
But is it? They are adding teams that can reduce material costs by 7.5%. They are also adding 2% ME for building in a POS. But we don't know how those bonuses stack with blueprint bonuses. If they add, you can get 9.5% ME on an unresearched Blueprint. This yields nothing on the small cost blueprint in question. But if you research that blueprint to 10% and it adds to 19.5% the cost savings could be significant..

This is a good point. I would have thought it would stack not multiply. Also the most which max teams can contribute to ME is 5%. But if you combine that with the Outpost bonus then you can still definitely attain 20% ME. Which is a pretty massive saving compared to the current system.
Agoma Akira
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#627 - 2014-05-02 10:00:33 UTC  |  Edited by: Agoma Akira
1. I understand ccp want to please the children that only watch the disney channel where counting goes up to 10 and not further. Bear

2. now clear something up for me please, the blog states that anything 10/10 now will become 10/10 after (the new perfect if I understand it).

this would mean that any nub nub with say 30 days of research on a cruiser, 15 days on a frig or 2month on a BS will get that.
how would this help by giving almost any print ingame that has some form of research on them perfect status....?

while researching from scratch after the introduction will be months and years again

pls clarify
Medalyn Isis
Doomheim
#628 - 2014-05-02 10:02:37 UTC  |  Edited by: Medalyn Isis
Another simple solution to the conversion of old BPO to new BPO problem could be that any time the BPO has been researched over ME10 is tallied up and then can be applied to a new BPO of exactly the same type.

That way no one is feeling they wasted their time, if they researched a BPO for 5 times longer than is possible in the new system, then they can simply apply all the extra research to get an additional 4 perfect BPOs of exactly the same type.

Perhaps this could be done on a petition basis and run for a couple of months after the release date if too complex to administer automatically.
Lena Lazair
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#629 - 2014-05-02 10:07:35 UTC  |  Edited by: Lena Lazair
Chi'Nane T'Kal wrote:
Blueprint LEVEL - that is: no more differing between ME lvl and TE lvl


I actually really like this idea, at least in conjunction with what CCP seems to be trying to do. It takes focus away from the BP and pushes that focus onto the external factors; teams/lumpiness. Want TE optimization for your level 5 blueprint? Find a team with that spec or use a POS with its build time advantages.

And bonus points for simplifying BPs to the point that we might actually get decent BPC tools in contract/markets someday.
Maki Nomiya
ACME HARDWARE
Exxitium
#630 - 2014-05-02 11:10:10 UTC
MyHaula wrote:
I would have preferred something a little more player driven. Keep the slot limitations in the stations and the ability to remotely copy and research BPOs. In place of these changes it would've been nice to see a finer granularity for players to rent out corporate POS slots to non corporate or alliance members. That would be very much in keeping with the sandbox player generated nature of EVE while allowing competition to drive down the prices of copy and research slots through providing additional supply.


Yeah this makes much much much more sense .... follows along the lines of making it a market that's player driven rather than forcing even more of the research facilities back to NPC hands. For Me and TE research it would be much more useful as usres wouldn't need physical access to the slots to use them.

Not so easy for copying tho Seriously... anyone with an expensive BPO like Battleship and above would be more likely to just stick those BPOs in their own hanger or a corp hanger in a research station and just copy them there instead of risking all that investment in the POS.

In a world building sense the whole idea that you can transfer your whole consciousness about the universe but can't look up blue Print details remotely seems flawed. We are capable of this sort of thing today !!

It would also make use of the option to set up access rights and costs on labs.... I don't think many people really use this as it's so complicated at present to set up and I'm not sure that even at alliance level it actually even works ?

If players beyond the corp are making use of the facilities in a POS then it may also encourage them to team up and come add to POS defense in the case of a war or attack on the facilities they are using too.
Dav Varan
State Protectorate
Caldari State
#631 - 2014-05-02 11:14:13 UTC
What percentage of researched blueprints will be perfect after the patch ? 99.99% ?

10me seems a very low bar to set for a bp to get translated to perfect.

Isnt the BPc market that has developed over the last 10 years going to get mowed flat ?

All pre patch BP copiers will be reveling in there perfect prints even when they've invested next to nothing in developing there resources.

New copiers wil be forced to spend long days and lots of money to get there new m10 Te10 which will be absolutelly neccessary to compete with the vast army of pre patch perfect print owners !


You are calling this completelly wrong.

If mineral requirement change on BP builds its irrelevant that happens all the time with item requirement updates anyway.
No advantage is given or taken from owners of similar BP levels.

What needs to be preserved is the time/money spent researching the prints.

New me of an old converted print should be based on the time already spent researching that print and where it falls on the new time scale of research.
Chi'Nane T'Kal
Interminatus
#632 - 2014-05-02 11:58:04 UTC
DK Anaroth wrote:
Chi'Nane T'Kal wrote:
In my opinion, you should simplify the ME/TE system even further - and at the same time address the worst issues people have with the transition.

I propose:

Blueprint LEVEL - that is: no more differing between ME lvl and TE lvl

Blueprint levels would go from 1 to 10. 1% material efficiency for every level, 2% time efficiency, but both are always at the SAME level

That means, at the price of reducing flexibility slightly by removing a choice that was IMO rather underused (TE research was AFAIK always insignificant compared to ME research), you solve a lot of problems.


- instead of researching level directly, you could research blueprint experience, using the level as a calculated value
- partial research would not be an issue anymore, as every research second translates directly into experience
- conversion of old BPOs would be absolutely FAIR, since you could directly convert from accumulated research time to experience
- FULL market integration would be a lot easier with only 11 different blueprint levels

and on the technical side:
- you would only have to store 1 value (experience) for every BPO

...
If the processing-time side of things isn't as important then perhaps the solution is to simplify things even further, and instead just have a single percentage saving for the blueprint which reduces both the material and time efficiency equally.
...


Which is precisely what i proposed? :)


I also forgot an important advantage of that system:
- new players are at less of a additional disadvantage compared to old players, because new BPO research will be paid in the same currency (research time) as the converted BPOs


P.S. I wouldn't be affected by what i proposed as I don't have any BPO with high research levels, so this is not a selfish request :)
DireNecessity
Mayhem-Industries
#633 - 2014-05-02 13:33:58 UTC  |  Edited by: DireNecessity
Seith Kali wrote:
The 100 point system people keep talking about is simply interpolating an additional 9 steps between each of the current 10 steps, 10% ME bonus is still the cap. The only thing 100 points change is allowing you to incrementally research the last 1% rather than having to do the whole thing at once if you choose to.


Not the only thing! The generous rounding transition currently proposed hands *massive* (months & months, years even) of research time benefits to those people sitting on difficult to research BPs about to jump to the next whole 1%. A 100 point system reduces the *unearned* gift to .1%. Granularity matters.

Unearned gifts on small things (say Damage Control 1s) is not terribly consequential but on larger things (say battleships) it's a big huge honking deal. Granularity matters.

Parodying you, "The 10 point system people keep talking about is simply interpolating an additional 9 steps between the proposed 2 point system (un-researched/completely-researched). 10% ME bonus is still the cap. The only thing 10 points change is allowing you to research in 1/10th ME increments rather than having to do the whole thing at once." So Seith Kali, in for a penny, in for a pound? Do you prefer a 2 point system or does granularity suddenly matter?

In the current system Abaddons have 2,496,660 levels of ME granularity on the trip to perfection. Claiming that dropping that to *merely* 100 retains unnecessary granularity is truly bizarre. 0 to 100 is pretty damn simple.
Dei
Cosmic Core Industries
#634 - 2014-05-02 18:04:36 UTC
With researching, one might assume that after an ME or copy job you would want to manufacture said item. In a starbase, these jobs require separate facilities. Now that remote jobs have been disabled I would have to go and move the BPO or BPCs from one structure to the other. Has this been taken into account?

Would be nice if POS transfers could be done remotely (inside the individual POS).
Darin Vanar
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#635 - 2014-05-02 18:05:19 UTC  |  Edited by: Darin Vanar
I would much prefer having blueprint experience, or any kind of granular system to the proposed "time box" 6 year, lockdown reasearch timers proposed in the dev blog. Please CCP, listen to reason. No one wants to play a game where they buy a blueprint, and (no matter how inefficient), to get the last level in order to get a perfect, you wait for the next 7 years.

What happens if, for example the servers have a major crash, or due to a technical mess up, all research in progress happens to be lost with no way of verifying player claims? You are talking about 7 year research times, after all. A lot can happen in 7 years, including your children growing up, advent of new technology, maybe even the second coming! Who has that kind of time?? I understand working in a game to get rewarded, but this isn't even work, it's basically -put this in a time box- and come back in 6 years and see the result.

Granularity is the answer here. For everyone, even with the 'crazy obsessed types' in perfecting everything even things that are not really meant to be perfected, no matter how much it costs them. Just by giving them something to work towards, you are keeping them engaged in the game and there is a feeling of progression with a granular approach. If you want to make things hard to attain. But a flat percent change with multiple years of training time in between, that's just nuts. No one wants to play that. Would you as designers want to play that?

Not to mention, it takes people who want to perfect something, completely out of the engagement part of how they decide to play their EVE sandbox. This would be their engagement time now: Queue research, oh, this will take the next 6y 11weeks to complete, oh great, well... install. The End. By handing them bits and pieces at a time, you kind of keep them engaged as opposed to taking them completely out of the game because the only thing they have to do now is.. wait?

As well, granularly researched blueprints can be traded among players and those points can be added as they change hands, but in 7 years.. Unlike in the game, in real life we are not immortals.

Lastly, I want to add that it would be nice to change the background for blueprints to gold once they have been perfected, for material efficiency, and if they have time efficiency perfected as well, change that to orange. It's nice if you have a lot of blueprints and you can visually get a glance of what is "finished" and what still needs more work.

So blueprint originals would go from a deep blue to a deep gold background, blueprint copies from light blue to light gold, and the really rare ones (ME + TE perfected) deep orange (BPO) to light orange (BPC) once no more work needs to be done on them. That's an idea for keeping a visual check on things.
Shoogie
Serious Pixels
#636 - 2014-05-02 22:08:55 UTC
I think I have gotten past the anger stage of grief over the old ME/TE system and have moved on to the bargaining stage.

I like the idea of perfect blueprints that the game will no longer let you research. I'm one of those people who feels the need to get my blueprints to perfect. I have a twinge of regret about all the blueprints I left "imperfect" in order to copy and invent because it was more profitable.

I don't mind losing the extra research time I put into my blueprints. If you wanted to give me something to compensate for my wasted time, that would be nice. But I won't rage about it. It was my decision to research my sentry drones to 1787 to squeeze the last pyerite out. Nobody made me do it.

What I don't like is the rediculous research times on the capital and supercapital blueprints. This is a game where players pay by the month. We get two expansions per year. When the quote says a job will take multiple years, nobody will take that choice. Taking away choices from players is bad.

Also, giving veterans blueprints that will never again be attainable hurts new players. At rank 3414, no titan BPO will ever be researched past ME6, and the existing BPOs will have a permanent 2% advantage over them.

So here is my proposal:
Titans become rank 480.
At rank 480, someone with metallurgy 5 and the balls to put the BPO in a POS can get it from 0 to perfect in 2 years, 16 days. Of that, 4 months 11 days was to go from 0 to level 8. 6 months, 2 days was to go from level 8 to level 9. 1 year, 2 months 7 days was to go from level 9 to perfect.

For people who want to do that research in the safety of an NPC station, they get their perfect titan in 2 years, 11 months, 6 days. They get to level 8 in 6 months, 8 days. An additional 8 months 20 days gets level 9. An additional 1 year, 8 months, 12 days gets to level 10.

14 months (POS) or 20 months (NPC) is still a ton of time and opportunity cost for 1% material savings. Very, very few alliances will do it. But it won't cause the shock and disgust of the current quotes: "27 years?! That is longer than I have been alive!" "This game wants me to push go, then walk away and ignore it for how long? That's stupid!"

Supercarriers become rank 320.
In a POS, with metallurgy 5, total time to perfect is 1 year, 4 months, 12 days. Of that, 9 months 18 days was the last stage from 9% to perfect. In an NPC station, it becomes 1 year, 11 months, 16 days from 0 to perfect. Of that, 1 year 1 month 16 days was the last percent.

Other capitals: Orca, Freighters, Rorqual, Dreads, Carriers become rank 160.
Those blueprints could get from 0 to perfect in 8 months 8 days in a POS. 4 months, 24 days of that was the last level. In an NPC station 0 to perfect takes 11 months 25 days. 6 months, 25 days of that being the last level.


I acutally think the rank 20, 40, and 60 for frigates, cruisers, and battleships is fairly in line. With Metallurgy 5 and a POS you can get a frigate to perfect in 1 month 1 day. That is 2 months 2 days for cruisers and 3 months 3 days for battleships. For those who don't want to risk a battleship blueprint in a POS, they can get perfect in 4 months 13 days. Of that, 2 months 17 days was the last percent.

With these ranks, the system still benefits the veterans who research their blueprints now, but doesn't create insurmountable permanent advantages for them.
Maxdig
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#637 - 2014-05-03 00:30:12 UTC
So if I want Perfect Fregihter BPO's at patch release what ME level do I need now?
Takara Mora
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#638 - 2014-05-03 01:54:13 UTC  |  Edited by: Takara Mora
Shoogie wrote:
I think I have gotten past the anger stage of grief over the old ME/TE system and have moved on to the bargaining stage.


What I don't like is the rediculous research times on the capital and supercapital blueprints. This is a game where players pay by the month. We get two expansions per year. When the quote says a job will take multiple years, nobody will take that choice. Taking away choices from players is bad.





To expand on this issue a bit ... under the old system, all research was done in ~37 day chunks max (for say, an Orca or Freighter BPO, etc., or something thereabouts) .... so regardless of how high you were researching the BPO, you still never "risked" more than about a month of research time/mats at a time ..... sure, you weren't increasing the quality much (in terms of % waste) each month, but at least if you had to move your POS or switch labs, etc., you only lost 1 month ....

Under the proposed system, it seems people might lose YEARS at a time .... not to mention clogging up station research slots for years at a time ... heck, the game doesn't even stay the same for years at a time.

A possible remedy for this, would be to allow partial research credits against the BPO's as they are researched, so if you are researching a Level 10 that takes say 2 years, you could "Cancel" the job early after a month or two, and not lose all of the research time up to that point that you've sunk into the new level ....

Any chance of this happening?
Kun'ii Zenya
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#639 - 2014-05-03 05:13:41 UTC
Takara Mora wrote:
Shoogie wrote:
I think I have gotten past the anger stage of grief over the old ME/TE system and have moved on to the bargaining stage.


What I don't like is the rediculous research times on the capital and supercapital blueprints. This is a game where players pay by the month. We get two expansions per year. When the quote says a job will take multiple years, nobody will take that choice. Taking away choices from players is bad.





To expand on this issue a bit ... under the old system, all research was done in ~37 day chunks max (for say, an Orca or Freighter BPO, etc., or something thereabouts) .... so regardless of how high you were researching the BPO, you still never "risked" more than about a month of research time/mats at a time ..... sure, you weren't increasing the quality much (in terms of % waste) each month, but at least if you had to move your POS or switch labs, etc., you only lost 1 month ....

Under the proposed system, it seems people might lose YEARS at a time .... not to mention clogging up station research slots for years at a time ... heck, the game doesn't even stay the same for years at a time.

A possible remedy for this, would be to allow partial research credits against the BPO's as they are researched, so if you are researching a Level 10 that takes say 2 years, you could "Cancel" the job early after a month or two, and not lose all of the research time up to that point that you've sunk into the new level ....

Any chance of this happening?


Slots wont exist anymore so nothing to clog up.
Owen Levanth
Sagittarius Unlimited Exploration
#640 - 2014-05-03 09:16:22 UTC
Kun'ii Zenya wrote:
Takara Mora wrote:
Shoogie wrote:
I think I have gotten past the anger stage of grief over the old ME/TE system and have moved on to the bargaining stage.


What I don't like is the rediculous research times on the capital and supercapital blueprints. This is a game where players pay by the month. We get two expansions per year. When the quote says a job will take multiple years, nobody will take that choice. Taking away choices from players is bad.





To expand on this issue a bit ... under the old system, all research was done in ~37 day chunks max (for say, an Orca or Freighter BPO, etc., or something thereabouts) .... so regardless of how high you were researching the BPO, you still never "risked" more than about a month of research time/mats at a time ..... sure, you weren't increasing the quality much (in terms of % waste) each month, but at least if you had to move your POS or switch labs, etc., you only lost 1 month ....

Under the proposed system, it seems people might lose YEARS at a time .... not to mention clogging up station research slots for years at a time ... heck, the game doesn't even stay the same for years at a time.

A possible remedy for this, would be to allow partial research credits against the BPO's as they are researched, so if you are researching a Level 10 that takes say 2 years, you could "Cancel" the job early after a month or two, and not lose all of the research time up to that point that you've sunk into the new level ....

Any chance of this happening?


Slots wont exist anymore so nothing to clog up.


THANK YOU.

It always gets me how people can discuss stuff without knowing anything about it. I mean one should think the complete erasure of slots would be shocking enough to stay in someones memory, but apparently I'm not cynical enough.