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Risk vs reward, we can't have that in a sandbox mmo-rpg.....

Themepark carebears tears are delicious.

100 billion each.
Given they crossed 800 million briefly today, when the cartels start cranking up the ISK in the new area exclusive to them, were no fighting occurs, and with their being 1 billion households playing Eve by 2017, 100 billion is the low end for plex.

All because CCP had the wisdom to wreck high sec for the sake of the null sec cartels. Who would have thought such a thing would have happened.

It is crazy how the disincentives to play are mounting. High sec mining and ice mining are not viable activities for a new player who wants to experience success mastering the game basics with better equipment. Gut check that against what the representation of high sec is. Basic game logic is so fouled that the disincentives to grief are trivial and these changes are an extension of that broken logic.

Why extend the risk for those of us who have put in a lot of real hours making significant investments of time and energy playing by the game logic? Now industrialists are being forced to expose years of built up assets to a risk of loss that is unreasonably disproportionate to the amount of time invested by moderately successful industrialists. There is a basic lack of parity here being made worse.

It costs a company more to acquire new customers than it does to keep existing customers happy.

First appreciate the blog, it is nice to know the general vision you are attempting to achieve with a particular patch as it gives a broader picture to evaluate the changes. I do think you should continue to publish these however, I would like to see it before the patch. While I think this was generally conveyed in an earlier blog, maybe it should be published earlier with a clear intent before the subsequent blogs.

As far as the information in the blog, I’m not sure you are going to achieve one of your goals because if you achieve one, you don’t achieve the other.

The first goal is that “industry should be easy to understand” and the second, “industry should be interesting and skillful. You should feel that *you* are "good at industry", rather than just that your character is.” To me these goals are contradictory and based on what I’ve seen in Cirus, you did not achieve the first goal. The second goal is a bit closer, but again I’m not sure you fully explored what you could do to fully achieve it.

On the first, industry in EVE is complex and dynamic, which then relies on a complex and dynamic market. The thing is, industry will never be easy to understand – and that’s OK. There is no beginner industry, intermediate level industry, and advanced industry – There is just EVE Industry, and it is complex. CCP should own this and stop trying to create a simpler industry but instead try to match the complexity of PVP. Think about fitting a Rifter and flying out to fight…how many choices did you make for your modules? How did you fit? When you get in a fight, what tactics do you use? What ammo do you use? How do you fly? When do you overheat? CCP owns a much more complex and dynamic PVP system than many other games. Do the same thing with industry - Own the complexity and make it better.

The UI is an improvement and the removal of extra materials and R.A.M.s does get rid of unnecessary and needlessly complex parts of industry but you added Teams and Dynamic slot costs. Those two things make industry even harder to understand, but are steps in the right direction. Furthermore, the things the community really wanted in the UI was a reduction in the number of clicks and shortcuts to make tedious decisions, well less tedious. There is enough complexity with industry already that I should be able to select 10 of the same blueprints, enter max runs and click “Build”. But what we got was a rehash of what already exists. This is where I wanted to see the focus but you seemed to get caught on this “easier” goal when you really should have just focused on the complex nature of industry and improve on it.

On your second goal, I think you are getting close with the dynamics of line costs but you missed the mark with teams. Teams could have been done so much better and I’m afraid what will happen is we’ll figure out “the code” and then only a few teams will get used over and over again while the others won’t provide equal benefit. This will directly impact your second goal because then industry will fall into rote calculations again. Player run teams could have been a much better option and add even more complexity to the game where personalities make a difference.

To achieve this second goal though, one thing you could do is add some sort of mini-game (not like hacking) to the invention or production process that will affect the outcome in some way. One idea might be where you may have to target some sort of laser on a moving target for 30 seconds or something. That way player skill could be added to industry.

In the end though, this expansion will be interesting and add complexity and more dynamic changes to production but I really think you could have done more with this if you really got away from trying to make things simple. There is a particular type of player that likes EVE and they don’t play the most popular MMOs in the world. I really think you should just accept that industry is like almost all other things in EVE and set your vision on that.

Thank you Greyscale for spelling out the idea behind where CCP wants to go with Industry and giving us key points of what that means. We are only at page 6 and we have seen many specific replies to those key points expounding on how different styles of game play interpret them. Which is something you touched on in your post explaining what good feedback looks like.

I however have only general feedback related to the posts content. Please post more of these; however, please post them well before the teams have spent weeks/months going down a path that they could have gotten input on before starting their work.

This would have been an excellent pre-cursor at the beginning of April to the 6 part broken down dev blogs that started at the end of April. Those 6 dev blogs about the key points you mention in this blog would have had a deeper context and people could have started out even more constructive in their feedback.

I've said my piece about the changes in other forum threads, the only thing I want to re-iterate here is that if you re-read this dev blog about the principles of the change through the eyes of a leader/content creator for a group of industrial focused players there isn't a whole lot of "We", "Us", "your corporation", "your alliance", or the concept of teams(of players) doing things together. There are a whole lot of 'you's referring the player singly and that is unfortunate as I believe what keeps people playing Eve isn't Eve by itself its doing it with other people.

Again, thank you for this vision into the CCP teams principles of the Industry changes and please pass on that more things like this can only help players understand the motivations/principles of the CCP team.

CSM folks who pass thru this thread, breakdowns of the vision/direction/principles like this are always information your constituents I'm sure would appreciate and you might be in a better place to explain your interpretations of the vision/direction/principles as understood from working with the CCP'rs more directly.

Fluff piece - the devil is in the details. (If I want to read "feel good" fluff about best intentions, then I can go visit the Star Citizen website & forums - save me.)

A lot of questions have been asked about the details of the upcoming industry changes; few have been answered by the devs (although I will give credit to the Goon economic cabal for trying to hold CCP's end up in the forums).

C'mon, folks... a devblog doesn't need to be a monumental masterpiece of creative writing. Break the stuff into smaller pieces - even a devblog consisting of a single paragraph to cover a single sub-topic - and post it. Bad grammar, poor spelling, all lowercase - all ok with us.

We're hungry for the details, CCP - please feed us!

Everything in this post is dead on. The GUI feels like the kind of thing that happens when a designer is put in charge of something that needs to be functional above all else.

This is somehow simpler than what we have now?

Sisi is, as usual, so broken that it's hard to even tell how any of these changes are going to affect anything as you still can't even get accurate price quotes on anything industry related, let alone any sort of insight into the dynamic impact of these changes.

The barrier to entry for new players just went up, not down. The time to research those last few levels on BC/BS/cap BPs just went through the roof; but good news for any old players with 10/10 already, we will feel absolutely none of the pain that new industry characters will in trying to catch up on our insurmountable leads. Nevermind the cost of running multiple large POS's to remain competitive in hisec mfg as compared to the one small research POS you could manage before.

Yes, EvE online seems more like chess than checkers in many ways.

The rules regarding movement/use have some complexity, but not greatly.

The actual complexity comes in the actual play.

As somebody who will NOT be leaving high sec, I am watching all the aspects of the game. Industry is a big part of it. I will be adjusting and adapting.

This is a surprise?

EvE online is no longer a game for the new player (if it ever was). Nothing in the game is of "entry level" anymore.

A good example is the ease in which experianced players prey on noobs in high sec (ganking). Sure, the players who enjoy smashing helpless and inexperianced can (somewhat rightfully) say there's difficulty in setting up the ganks. The problem is their actions STILL convince new players to leave the game after the free trial account expires.

IF (and that's a big "IF") a new player stays after his trial account, industry and mining are two big reasons he might continue playing. CCP seems determined to make those as unfriendly as possible to the new player.

Probably the rock which is sitting on top of the rock you have been living under.

Those devblogs are two months old and the devs did not have all of the details figured out at that time. This is part of the reason why the industry changes were delayed to Crius and not released in Kronos, as originally planned.

In addition, there are a number of issues which were raised by the devs in the original devblogs, but never followed up on by them - not in later devblogs nor in the forums.

For example, I'd like to hear if CCP Greyscale has made any final decision with regards to reimbursing, or not, ME/PE levels above 10 on BPOs. I've posted the question a few times in different forum threads, during the past couple of months, but I haven't seen an answer from CCP yet. (If CCP Greyscale did post an answer, perhaps I was indeed under the rock at the time - in which case, I apologize.)