Test Server Feedback

When something is drastically altered to the point it no longer resembles its former self it is now something new. Not to mention 'previously' its purpose was to reduce build cost (aka the barrier of entry) and 'now' its purpose is to reduce build time (ideally more isk/hour, which it fails at). There are very few builders in EVE that care about reducing the build time of a 12 hour job when they are going to install the job, go to bed for 8 hours, go to work for 8 hours, and then get home and log in. This new skill would only be relevant if CCP introduced a manufacturing build queue.

Agreed. Leave the premise of the skill for now, but up it to 3%.

5 days before release is too close to have a proper discussion about this, if you can get past all the people whining for SP refunds, as long as it's discussed for the next update rather than being swept under the carpet

Do it this way. Everyone will be in a better place to evaluate Crius and what a 'new' skill should do in a month.

Please be sure to also address the more fundamental issue that caused all this, which was the failure to communicate clearly the upcoming changes to the community. Unless you happen to have the time and energy to wade through multiple hundred post dev blogs, many of these Crius changes will come as a surprise.

I'm betting that this change and others is going to blindside many people who don't follow reddit or the forums as well. I know you guys recently released an info sheet of some sort that had some of the broad changes on it, but it read more like an advertisement/hype than an informational document.

There are a few options I see to allow this to 'work':

1) Give SP refunds and allow the players to choose what they think is important.

2) Make the new skill relevant. 1% per level is basically a joke and the only people that truly benefit from it would be those who maintain near 100% utilization of their buildlines.

3) Reduce the training time multiplier. I've seen many people say the skill in its current form is a barrier (17 day train for my cyno alt)... so why not make it less of a barrier instead of removing the ME bonus from the game, a game where specialization is promoted and expected.

4) Reduce the current bonus to 2% per level or something.

I feel all of these alternatives can be seen as reasonable to both CCP and the community.

Trading the old Material Efficiency skill for yet another cost reduction skill seems a bit incongruous. Granted, the cost reduction proposed with Advanced Industry is much, much lower, but it still smacks of another mandatory skill to train in order to compete. The time reduction proposal seems better to me; it offers an advantage to some types of industry without being a 100% requirement.

OK, so it seems like the best course of action right now is to leave the skill in its current state for now, and commit to re-evaluating it once Crius has settled? I'm likely on holiday for most of August, so I can book myself an appointment in the first week of September to start a discussion thread and figure out what sensible thing we can do with this skill once we all find out the emergent properties of Crius? This will be on a "if I don't post it within a week of when I say I will, you have my permission to make a big fuss" understanding.



So there's two separate communication issues.

The first is messaging to people who want input into the changes so we can make adjustments before release. This is a thing that we (at least, I) have been doing suboptimally through forum threads, due to a combination of having a lot of plates spinning at once and placing insufficient emphasis on reaching out to everyone (my approach has generally been focused around feeling I have sufficient feedback rather than around ensuring everyone who wants to give feedback has had the opportunity to).

The second is ensuring that everyone knows what is going to happen on patch day. This has been insufficient to date because the blog that covers all that is going out in the next couple of hours, and the patchnotes will be out in the very near future to cover it in even more detail. We've been holding this blog in particular back so that we can post *actual final* information the first time round (most people only read a blog once, even if we update it) to maximize the number of people that have a complete picture on Tuesday.

I particularly like this idea, as it's basically what I had expected the skill to be changing to anyway. Call it "Industrial Acumen" or something.

The point of the skill in the first place was simply reducing costs, only it did it in a very powerful way. Now the concept of waste doesn't even exist anyway, having the skill still be a cost reduction skill does makes sense - and it needs to not be too powerful to be essential, but powerful enough to be beneficial and worth training (for a x3 rank skill).

I don't have any numbers, but 2, 3 or 4% per level seems reasonable. Would it apply to all industry jobs, or only manufacturing?

I'm not a big time manufacturer, but I do some, and a time bonus would help, a little.
I tend to set jobs that run for a little less than a week. One day a week is "industry night" when I deliver jobs and set new ones based on what sold out over the last week. Usually I do not have all my slots used up.
With a time bonus I would set larger quantities. Each batch would be larger, so my sell orders would be larger. This means they would take longer to sell, and I would have fewer sell out at the end of the week. Result: less effort each week setting jobs and orders.
So even if you do not have all your slots running 24/7, a time bonus is useful.

Now if we go the cost reduction route, I suggest:

1) Even without skill there should be a plethora of items you can make and locations you can sell at and make ISK. This is so new players can get into industry. The places where competition is not so fierce that you can make ISK should not be few and far between, as then a new player cannot find them.

2) Getting to L3 is fast. At a skill level of 3 you should be able to make ISK most anywhere. That is, given the profit margin at the major trade hubs, those last two levels should not be a requirement for making ISK. Those last two levels should be an investment for those who wish to specialize.

So if we expect, say, a 5% profit margin at the hubs, then a skill that reduces costs by 1% per level (1% of the total cost, including material cost) would be acceptable. 1% of the total cost would be actually achieved by a 10% change to the install fee.

From exactly how much feedback? You mean the feedback from this young threadnaught that just barely got started last week? And you've known about you changing this skill for how long? It would be interested to know where you had gathered your 'sufficient feedback' from before last week, when you decided to go ahead and push the change to SiSi.


Just for giggles, exactly how many of the dev's involved in this MASSIVE overhaul of how ALL industry and research funchtions, are going on vacation immediately after they push this change onto TQ? Noting how much of the more final changes have even been tested by the players yet, given that SiSi has been for how many days? (No, Dev's internal testing does not count, as there have been LOTS of things already discovered that the dev's who apparently don't play Eve never even considered before, that were nearly game breaking)

How does this sound like a good system? Push out a very buggy patch that effects all of indy, then go on vacation for a month while everything is bassackwards on your live server for your paying customers? CCP will deserve every bit of poor press and loss of subscriptions when this whole thing hits the fan next week.

Just delay the whole thing till after everyone has come back from vacation and is ready to work again.

If 'current state' means your latest proposal regarding installation cost, that could be a working proposition.

I'd rather not have anything to do with the time saving skill.