EVE General Discussion

I came back to the game a few months ago and started to aim for T2 Ice harvesters, a mining ship and decided to do some solo ice mining to build up some slow but steady isk to get back into the game.

I noticed the ice belt and spawn changes, was like ok np multiple systems have ice, it spawns every 4 hours etc, should be fine.

Wow was I wrong. First I made the mistake of trying Caldari space, first thing I noticed was the amount of risk free cheap ganking going on has increased by a lot. Ok np I can work around that, im active not afk and fit correctly etc etc, not an issue.

Then I found the real problem with ice mining, solo farmers with 15-20 accounts, freighters, orcas and a crap ton of macks, retrievers, skiffs just going from system to system sucking up all the ice for themselves every 4 hours, logging off and then instantly logging all 15-20 accounts again after 4 hours respawn at the exact same second....

Your lucky if you get 2-3 holds of ice before it is all gone. So CCP have really ***** new players with ice mining and anyone that wants to solo mine or even small corps have been completely pushed out of the ICE industry and market by solo mega account farmers and ice belt changes.

Ok ok....maybe im over reacting? Maybe I just need to leave all the caldari systems behind even though it's the best priced ice for high sec...maybe I need to try the other regions and systems?

Same bloody problem in all gallante, minmatar and amarr ice systems. I scouted the majority of them and especially before and after downtime, all you see is either no ice belts left or almost gone with one guy in each system with 15-20 accounts, freighters, orcas and macks or skiffs.

I even started to add them all to watchlist and every 4 hours they all log on same time and log off the exact same second every time a system spawns, rip it out in less than an hour and move on to the next system or log off. This happened in every single region basically making it impossible to do any ice mining. I checked almost all the ice systems in high sec and this happens in pretty much all of them, travelled well over 100 jumps across 4 regions and same issue everywhere I checked.

One guy even has ganking alts, he logs on with his 10 ganking alts....ganks any orcas or miners, then logs on all his mackinaws and farms all the ice, switches back to ganking all other miners in area and back to farming all the ice, does it every day...I must admit that is pretty genius but still. Unless you hire some kind of ganking / merc alliance/corp there is no counter to this kind of thing. Even then they make so much ISK per day on multiple ice belts solo, they can buy 100 macks....lose them and buy 100 more...

So CCP can sit there and say "there is enough ICE for the game", yeah for one guy with 20 accounts....

GG CCP, ICE mining for anyone but 20 account farmers, botters, ISBoxers is completely gone from EVE Online.

In b4 locked for "ranting" and "mining sucks don't do it #rekt #tears"

You changed the ICE belts to stop farmers and botters, all you did was hurt the players that were actually playing your game as intended...hurting solo players, small corps or anyone beside mega account farmers, botters and isboxers....you failed CCP.

I am actually thinking of changing professions completely and joining the gankers to target these farmers....now I understand why ganking has increased alot...

EDIT:

Just checked.

Right on time...just after DT

Checked 4+ systems so far and pretty much all the same...

http://i.imgur.com/t9sB4Uf.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/J3mdQqU.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ZrBw0Lq.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/GhRWNd7.png

Each one of those is one guy each controlling all those....they have no issue openly admitting it.

Go see for yourself, scout all the different regions in high sec, every single ice system. You will see similar pretty much everywhere especially before and after DT because ice belts after DT respawn even if its within the 4hrs....so before downtime clear belts with 20+ accounts....after DT instant respawn, do it again....$$$$....

Need to be able to gank asteroids if you ask me. If they can blast away at them with mining lasers I should be able to blast away at them with any weapon of choice, and reduce them to unrecoverable clouds of dust.

+1 as long as they dont respawn after being ganked

I can contact you in game, give you a system with all the names of characters/accounts if you like, you can add them all to watchlist then watch as they all log on 3-4 times a day every 4 hours on the clock at the exact same second.

Plus the fact one of the guys himself freely admits it in local chat and even discussed it, he even went as far as to blame CCP for forcing him to do in high sec since he can no longer mine in 0.0 with his 20 accounts for whatever reason....

Just go look and you can see for yourself around ice systems in all the reason, it is there plain to see....

I used to live in 0.0 a long time ago but I don't have the time to play as much plus I did not like the changes CCP have made to 0.0 life. Which is why I took a break and came back, decided to give high sec life a try....

Also one of the guys who farms the ice belts with 20 accounts says the reason he is doing it in high sec is because he can no longer do it in 0.0.....because "CCP"....he did not explain further than that but I will ask him for more info.

I also dont believe the story with 20 accounts in every ice belt... But still I would say that all this multiaccounting is complete BS and its just sad that CCP not just allows it, but also encourages it(with game mechanics like the cynos)! Basically selling the quality of the game for some extra money.

1 person = 1 account = 1 character = maximum game integrety


When you complain about the skill system, people will tell you "go back to WoW, because you are a brat and want everything NOW and intant gratification blablabla" but then you see those people having 2+ accounts with different characters actually being able to do all possible stuff ingame, basically baught their way to victory and no need for specializsation.

Oh, something probably most do not understand: Multiaccounting does not necessarily generate more € for CCP but burden the beginner and solo player ingame economicaly more.

More multiaccounts -> more overall isk and items -> less value for 1 hour playtime

If there was no multiaccounting, beginner and solo player would accumulate a lot more "relative wealth".


As a soloplayer I ask myself: why play a MMO if every 2nd account is an Alt and most dedicated player are not in need of player interaction, because they can do everything themselves with their army of alts?

This is the main point: The skillsystem and alting makes player interaction and specializsation less relevant. And this is a big flaw in a MMO.

When people makes guides where alts are part of the main strategy, sh't already hit the fan.

And I am sure all this alt stuff will backfire one day. The growth of a game is dependand on player to player advertisment and if there are few player and mechanics which deters beginner and solo player, the player to player advertisment might collapse one day and start a snowball effect. Because of this its probably a good idea to keep the "effective number of players" as high as possible and not just look at number of accounts.

I never understood why timer based mass spawning was decided as the best option for EvE harvest-ables, its vulnerability to be exploited by mass harvesting weather automated or not is quite obvious to anyone with MMO experience.

The tried and tested solution for mass harvesting exploitation used in many of the MMOs reviled in this neck of the woods is round robin random distribution, when one node is exhausted another node spawns in a random location at a semi random time. it also causes less load on servers since the spawning is incremental, rather than spawning masses of nodes simultaneously.

Round robin random distribution would easily nip mas harvesting in the bud by simultaneously invalidating botted/multiboxed fleets while giving smaller/solo actors a chance at the resources without having to alarm clock to hit the 4h re-spawn. Even semi randomizing the re-spawn timer within an hour or two hour window would make the mass-harvesters job more onerous and unreliable and can be implemented with a few lines of code.

Die in low/null.

While avoidance works for the individual player, the situation still remains the same and is a detriment to the game.

Random resource distribution might work in a theme park game like WoW, however, in a player driven sandbox game such as EVE, where almost everything is player made, the economy would fall apart if you just randomised the resource spawns. There's also the fact that when everyone knows where the resource is, everyone has a shot at getting it, that is not the case if the spawns are just random.

Op - The solution is simple. Firstly, find one of the systems where there are less ice mining characters. There are many such systems, some single anomaly and some are multi anomaly, where the ice spawns can last for up to 4 or even 5 hours at a time before it is all gone. Do some exploring and find these systems, there are quite a few such systems. Secondly, if you want a bigger piece of the pie, make a few alts so you can collect more material in the same amount of time, many people do this. Yes, some do use quite a few accounts but many of these are easy to mess with if you use a bumper machariel.