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so a 2-unit multi-run of acolyte II's will cost 4 robotics (etc etc), instead of 1.5*2=3?

that would double their value
/me is away gonna clean out certain markets....

This Dev Blog should be renamed Eve Online: A Eulogy

You're taking a decade of, while not perfect, functioning mechanics and throwing them away just to change it.

There has been a decade of iteration on the current system. There are countless players who've made websites that take an intimidating structure and break it down into easy to swallow chunks. There are calculators for every aspect of manufacturing, and blogs to explain their mechanics. People were proud to call the game spreadsheets online, and it was a point of pride to show friends what you've made, or a nice surprise when friends gave you yet another tool to help you along. Players also gained a sense of accomplishment knowing that after some study, work, and often some mistakes, that you had conquered the beast that was industry in Eve Online.

Does anyone really think that the average industrialist, new or old, will be better off losing all of these out of game features, that will probably never be updated again to the scale we have now in favor of this new system? Do players really thing they can depend on CCP to create these tools? The only thing that needed to be changed was the UI.

Do we have another decade to spend on players to create sites and guides to muddle their way through CCP's perplexing scaling mechanics? Will anyone take the time to update them? Does CCP even have a handle on their own new mechanics? A lot has changed since it was first proposed, most of it because the people who thought of it, did not think the entire thing out. They showed their massive disconnect with their player base when they thought that people wouldn't take the time to online and offline dozens of modules in a POS just to save some isk. When they were confronted with the realization of how far people will go in this game, they decided to scrap the entire idea all together and pass it off on some lame excuse that it was difficult. They changed batch costs, because they couldn't even articulate with any degree of success on how it worked.

Then for me it was the blueprint ME/PE shaft. I've spent months researching blueprints to obscene levels to gain a very small advantage. Just like people spend a month to train skills that give guns 2% better damage, or reduce the sig radius on their interceptor another little bit. This game is based on diminishing returns, and celebrated those who were devoted enough to spend that much extra time to gain a little advantage. The prints weren't that much better, but when it came time to sell your copies in Jita, mine were the ones that sold because I had taken that extra time to make mine stand out among the crowd. Now, someone who's researched their Drake print for a month, ends up with the same print you've spent 6 months or more to research.

That's only the mechanics, the entire roll out of this patch has been insulting. One team wants to raise the barrier to entry, the other seems fundamentally against it. There is no cohesion it seems at the highest levels. The explanations on changes were confusing at best, spread out, and all discussion was lost in a sea of noise on threads where very little was accomplished. To think that the original plan was to put these changes in over a month ago just shows how little serious thought has gone into this change. Then to try and sneak in a ridiculous skill change that anyone with any kind of grasp on their player base would never have attempted just again shows the amount of thought that these changes have received. And then to tell their players, who have long since grown tired of the meme, that it would be looked into “soon”

This attempt to create Hello Kitty Noob Twitch Space Adventure Super Fun Time Online is not only going to alienate a lot of older players, but raise the barrier of entry to newer players as they will suddenly find themselves devoid of the knowledge that was meticulously crafted by devoted players over the last decade. They are also going to be forced to disperse themselves around the galaxy just to get a decent manufacturing price, and then forced to move on once again when the price gets high. A new player will gravitate to a hub to build if simply for the fact they can’t afford a freighter. I hate to draw real life analogy, but Ford isn’t forced to move their plant every month to remain competitive, they’re forced to ship their product to where it can be sold, as industry should be.

I can understand attempting to justify one's job with the ever present threat of constant layoffs over your head, but I fear that your attempt to seem busy has doomed us all.

And no, you cannot have my stuff.

Just wanted to jump in here and explain the happenings with Sisi recently.

So, Sisi has been down a lot this week. On Saturday, our security certificates on the test cluster expired, leading to the "Danger Will Robinson" message. We resolved this on Tuesday and the server was open for a very brief window. Then we did some funky stuff with databases, which ended a little calamitously, causing us to be down again. Cue Wednesday, where we were up but in VIP for a lot of the time. People with VIP access are - CCP employees, ISD volunteers, outsourcing QA partners. Thursday hits, and we go down again to apply the new mirror. The mirror was unpruned, which means that it contains things such as starbases as they are on TQ. This is considered privileged information, hence not allowing players onto the server. It was unpruned because the team needed accurate data on the jobs stored in starbases and such, to allow them to accurately time their DB scripts so that we can correctly estimate downtime for Tuesday's deployment. Unfortunately, a failure to sync meant that we ran unoptimised versions of these scripts, so we had to refresh the mirror once more this morning (again, unpruned, so VIP essential) and perform the script timing task again. We have now concluded the test, it went very well, and the team are in the process of cleaning up their stuff and pruning the mirror, at which point we will be open again to the public until Crius launches on Tuesday.

If you have any more questions about Sisi, mirrors, VIP, or anything test-related, feel free to drop me an evemail, as it's unlikely I will check this thread again.

o7

Patch notes and details on downtime now live:

http://community.eveonline.com/news/patch-notes/patch-notes-for-crius/
http://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/eve-online-news/crius-release-to-be-deployed-on-july-22nd-during-extended-downtime/

Change is always good for somebody and bad for somebody else.

The only thing I really object to is how CCP is marketing these changes. While its true that CCP hardly ever does anything for just one reason, I suspect the Crius changes are more about keeping CCP itself and EVE as a universe healthy than CCP wants to admit. Nothing wrong with making coding more uniform and easier to change. CCP should not fear telling players that -- because without CCP there is no EVE !!! But when its being done to streamline CCP coding operation, for long term game balance or to retarget game to a larger audience -- do not apply spin doctoring to say its primary thrust is helping most current players as individuals do things better (well CCP has been good about getting some of that in with all revisions but its not necessarily the main thrust).

One big reason for industry changes is probably a long overdue economic rebalancing between NPC ISK sources and sinks in the EVE economy. Total ISK supply is likely out of control because most the original NPC market goods except BPOs are now made by players. So currently NPC ISK sources are adding far more ISK via rat bounties, missions rewards etc than is being taken out by purchases from NPCs. So the big hike in industrial costs is probably intended to create a more stable economy by consuming ISK at NPC stations. Incidentally this opens the door to CCP introducing more rewarding PVE as the cost of ammo and replacement ships go up.

Note also that changes to copying times means that effectively every BPO has the same maximum rate of output whether production is directly off BPO or via BPC. Before Crius, faster production of copies meant that if you had the lab slots to copy... the number items produced by a BPO could be several times more by using BPC to copy. Plus of course BPC could be moved around to where you wanted items produced without fiscal risk. Net effect? Larger corps and alliances will need to by more BPOs to sustain item manufacturing rates. Sinking some more player economy ISK into the black hole of NPC wallets.

Plus there will be pressure to move BPOs around to save 2% copy costs and research time (no station slots but still toon skill limits on numbers of jobs). So there will be increased excitement of BPO drops in PVP and a tiny but significant rate of replacement (especially Titan BPO yikes!).

Also increased ship prices may more "efficiently" tap those people with RL money to spend on PLEX. IDK if that is true but more PLEX sold for whatever reason makes CCP more fiscally healthy and guarantees the life of EVE itself.



Secondarily this set of changes also forces conservative people to look more closely at costs of using POS for industry and research. Probably not actually cheaper in high sec or even lo sec, but a much narrower cost for gaining the greater flexibility of POS operations. Enough so people can justify POS for the extra stuff NPC stations do not provide...stuff that eventually makes POS profitable in lower security areas (moon mining in 0.4 etc).

CCP probably has all sorts of reasons for encouraging POS use beyond responding to demands of the small group who always wanted these particular changes. First its key to CCP long publicized desire to have more people move to null (not many stations out there). So boosting the number of people comfortable with POS helps CCP achieve their VISION for EVE and CCP hints there are a bunch of features and ideas dependent on moving the bulk of people to null. Plus distributing people to null systems still has some effect on server load balancing and thus CCP costs for operating EVE (good for everyone if CCP is profitable with lower overhead costs).

But I suspect the most immediate impact of POS change on EVE is more PVP excitement. Face it POS are wardec bait especially if more large ships are being manufactured at POS in hi sec or low sec. Who wouldn't want a BC or BS drop? And are they spend the time to copy or did they risk the BPO? Or you can just take the same bet and keep the structures. In any case EVE subscriptions should go up some as EVE sees more POS battles in hi sec and low sec (more POS and more valuable ops in hi and lo sec).