EVE General Discussion

I have removed some rule breaking posts and those quoting them. As always I let some edge cases stay.
Please people, keep it on topic and above all civil!

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1. People are stupid. Specilization is how the big bucks come in. I used to laugh whe people made snarky comments about miners or industrialists who mine thinking their minerals are free... until I reddit a non-sarcastic reddit post claiming that. I though it was all a joke until then. Everyone wants to do everything their own self to "save isk" when reality is that it's costing them time, and therefore isk, to do something that isnt their speciality.

2. There was more expression of wealth before SKINS came along. SKIN killed expression of wealth via faction/corp colored rare ships of the same class as T1 hulls.

So with all this energy you're putting into arguing astonishingly tedious pedantic debating points with Jonah, I take it your project has already been essentially completed and you're just waiting for a friend to finish proof-reading it or something?

Yes, I'd like to see the results of these calculations too. Very curious.

Yes, you did. You called it "fabricated bullshit", because you couldn't be asked to read it for yourself.

Pathetic.

I really like the post right above this one.

Also, I guess we can conclude that PvE comes absolutely nowhere close to demanding enough minerals compared to PvP.

Not that PvE (e.g. mining, manufacturing, and such) are bad.

People who buy supers and then indefinitely unsub them.

http://cdn1.eveonline.com/www/newssystem/media/65749/1/productionVsDestruction_2013.png

PvP Destruction is Eve's consumption and the sole driving Force.

Also, see signature link for more insight.

Regards,

Interesting argument. In the original claim OP suggests that PvE combat is a resource sink. In order for this to be true PvE combat would have to use more resources than it gains. There is a hidden assumption there that resources and isk are not connected. I would suggest that isk is a resource. In an artificial world like New Eden, each resource just comes down to a number and how it can be used. Put in minerals, out comes a ship. Cool. Minerals are a resource, they generate something. Simple.

Isk is not separate from this formula. Since it is an artificial world we have 'isk sinks'. Any time that a player 'spends' isk that does not go to another player. Put in isk, out comes something else. There are plenty of these, insurance, NPC buy orders, taxes, LP purchases. Isk in, goods out. Isk, in our artificial world, is a resource, whether you like it or not.

The disconnect between them is not a disconnect either, but a value ratio. What is worth more as a resource? Trit or isk. Currently it's about 5isk per 1trit. Even more interestingly the price (for Trit at least) has stayed pretty damn steady for the last 3 years. But this is the same between minerals, if one mineral has greater supply than demand compared to others it's relative value will decrease.

Why am I going on with all this bs? In the end OP's claim is that PvE is a resource sink due to ammunition costs. Even if we granted the assumption that more minerals were used than generated (ie no looting wrecks for reprocessing), PvE combat still generates resources (isk). Significantly more than it destroys.This will stay the case until value ratio of isk to minerals gets skewed to the point where each piece of trit is worth VASTLY more than each unit of isk. Massive amounts more.


That gets to my real contention with OPs argument. It seems to be suggesting, without directly saying, that resource sinks are a good thing. Cool, I kind of agree with that, but I don't think PvE resource sinks are a good thing. The driving force behind most PvE in eve is resource creation. The alternative motivator is accomplishment.

Accomplishment is a big PvE driver in many games. The first time doing an activity might be for the accomplishment of it. To say 'I successfully completed a L4 mission!'. Cool. Job done. In single play through games this works because you complete the game and move on. In games designed to keep players coming back to the game this works only so long as the developer can keep dangling an ever increasing list of accomplishments in front of you to do. Killing drifters was a big resource sink for a while as people worked at it as an achievement. To see if they could. Now the novelty has worn off and people are no longer spending isk to kill drifters.

Eve introduces content to 'achieve' on a fairly small scale. Adding bigger better new 'stuff' devalues existing 'stuff', and as CCP likes to mention often, it requires a lot of game development investment. So Eve uses resource creation as a motivator for PvE. For resource creation to mean something without rampant inflation there needs to be a resource sink. Eve does this well by pitting the players against each other and letting them destroy what the other has built. This keeps people coming back. If there was nothing to challenge the castle you have built, once you've built it you're done, finished. Move on to the next game. But if someone comes and knocks your castle down it becomes a motivator to rebuild your castle, bigger and better this time. And maybe even spend resources trying to destroy their castle.

If PvE WAS the resource sink, what motivator would people have to keep playing? If you had to spend resources to complete a L4 mission why would they do it more than once? If incursions destroyed more resources than they generated would people be compelled to run them over and over? I think this is the reason why PvP player retention is so much higher. PvE players don't like having their castle kicked over. Fine, but once you've built the best castle you can why are you still playing? Waiting for CCP to design you bigger castles? CCP will slowly do that, but I think they'll get more value out of their development time focusing on issues for the players who will stick around and keep playing with the castles they already have.

You say that isk is not a resource because you cannot use it, by itself', to make anything in the eve economy. In a real world economy sure, this is the case, money only has the value that some body gives it, but in Eve you can actually trade set amounts of isk for set things. BPCs from LP stores are probably an easy one to point to. You put in isk (it's not traded, it's actually removed from the artificial pool) and you get out a virtual 'thing'.

Then we have services. Fees for all sorts of ****. Repairs, sov, corp offices, war decs. All of these consume isk as if it was a resource instead of it trading hands as a traditional currency. It is entirely because Eve is an artificial world where isk is consumed that makes it different. We have been told it has a value because we know exactly what we can get for it.

Anyway, it looks like on the important point we agree. PvP is the biggest resource/isk sink, and we need it around to slow the growth of the economy.