EVE General Discussion

Are you seriously saying that the truth of their statements doesn't matter, just because of who is saying it?

That was hilarious. If anything guaranteed an incoming nerf to incursions, it was showing that such a tiny percentage of the community generates such a hugely disproportionate amount of the isk. (And hell, incursions don't just give isk)

We could probably use any of a number of different terms: nerf, balance pass, update, redesign, etc.

Opinion here about what the outcome should be, irrespective of what it's called, is consistent to either: 1. stop trying to nerf highsec; and 2. adjust the risk:reward balance so their is more risk or less reward.

The only thing certain is that eventually CCP will come around to looking at Sansha incursions again. The active development that CCP put into the game means that it's inevitable.

Of late, CCP appear to have been moving more towards evidence driven/data driven design and a lot of what we've seen with adjustments like the new NPE, identification of ships to rebalance, sov changes, etc. has involved CCP collecting log data to inform their decisions.

As a result, when CCP Quant posts this:

"You can see some interesting and unexpected things like the fact that only 1.5% of players run Incursions and 13.8% of players engage in PVP on any given day. The former is especially interesting considering the fact that incursion payouts were the 3rd largest ISK faucet in September, at 8.3T ISK, which you'll see this later in this blog, and on top of this is the added value of Concord LP payouts for clearing incursions."

Even though he isn't a dev, I'm fairly confident that when CCP do rebalance incursions, the data that Quant found unexpected and interesting, is exactly the same data that the dev team will use when they look at making changes.

So for all our discussions here, of the choices between status quo, making incursions an even larger ISK faucet, or toning them back; I think CCP will choose to tone them down.

There's a lot more data that I hope CCP also use when they make these decisions, but from all I see from devs and designers like Nullarbor, Punkturis, Karkur, Rise, Fozzie, etc., they are all pretty smart people.

I only said that because most (if not all) the complaints against hi-sec incursions stems from null sec players. I've been re-reading all the posts in this forums and can clearly see that incursions are broken. But I've yet to read a proper post stating how to fix them without destroying them. And still waiting.........

Edit: So what if they are broken. I can't see the harm in one little broken aspect of Eve being this big a problem since it's only run by a very small commute. Even if they are changed the only thing I can see happening is that null alts would find something else to grind isk for other than farming anoms 23/7.

This will start a bit off topic, but hear me out. I am in a kind of abstract mindset processing this, so sorry if I get a bit repetitive or all over the place.

On the tweetfleet, myself and another were debating about the jump fatigue. I made mention about force projection. After much banter on the topic, it got brought up the issue of supplying being the real kind of hate on. Suddenly, at least for this discussion, it became clear. Nullsec lives off highsec. Not unknown, but the nullsec did not want to be self sustaining, nor was it really feasable. Highsec industrials, highsec manufacturing, and then add in isking to buy it from the marketeers plus plexing. Nullsec cannot survive in.. nullsec.

How does this relate to incursions? Plex, while ending RMT has been the big change to dynamics. Not much we can do about that. It is isk pure and simple. The only way to change this is to make nullsec and other areas more reliant on their area for non isk income. It is odd really, but a flow of resource map is required. Isk influx needs to be maintained to prevent pools, and is the only means of open trading. Contracts of course being a closed trade.

LP really is the best reward that eve has. The LP market contains everything players would need to fit ships. Mining and mission salvage gets the rest. Mining again, does not inject isk into the system, but still has value and subject to isk vs risk. So, what does this all lead to?

Isk should not be a main form of income in any direct sense. If you are a new player running missions, LP should be a major means to get the basic stuff. Ship insurance acts as a bit of an injector. Surplus gets used to sell. But here is where it gets important.

More localization of the rewards. A smaller income of isk means that the isk is used in your own LP store, or to buy what is needed from other people. A player then becomes more self sustaining. Isk can be used for essentially other faction things, but if you want that new ship, you will have the LP well before you have the isk. Surplus LP converts into items that other factions might want, etc. Not everything available from one source, or sometimes better stuff from another faction.

For example, lets say you are a minmatar player. Building a tough ship, but some of the shield stuff from caldari is better. As such, surplus LP will go to stuff the minmatar specialize in and that would go for sale. The isk from that sale, and your more moderate isk from pve will go to buying caldari shield tech. Flipside, if you are caldari, well the minmatar have more powerful missiles and ammo lets say. Gallente blasters, amarr passive armor, etc. It would be a very complex tree.

Now we can expand it. The Sansha incursions. Gimp the isk out big time, but dramatically up the LP. However, change exchange rate or remove the LP exchange? Concord get's its own LP store. Suddenly, the LP is what is used to get new stuff and upgrade ships. What it offers? Well the higher end implants, etc to make one more combat effective and sort of universal. However now since the LP is restricted, you cannot just farm it to get the iskies for plex. Tons of farming means a flooded market, and as such, self regulating. When it reaches a certain level, farmers will go elsewhere.

This notion again can be expanded to other areas. Improved negative pilot security and pirate faction standings. Have piracy earning lp so if you are working for a particular faction, it becomes more that you will fly and fit there stuff. Want to FOTM, going to have to run for that different faction, or hope that your sales of pirate specialized gear does well on market. Out in nullsec, the mining and such would need to be changed to make factory style production of T1 and T2 ships the best bet for your war efforts.

I don't like your attitude that something you know is broken is ok to leave broken. I heard the EXACT same thing with high sec lvl 5s (CCP acknowledged it was a bug but took 3 years to fix it).

Broken is broken. This broken thing affects people like me because it creates upside down incentives (ie I'm more encouraged to keep an alt in high sec to make safe isk than I am to move that alt to null to help me make isk and defend my ratting space).

And It creates an 'indestructible funnel" of wealth from high sec to null/low sec pilots to use. Income at that level should be attackable without needing a mom popping fleet. Point blank, if you want the kind of isk people get form incursions, you should have to take a risk.

To your credit, and unlike most, at least you did admit they are broken.

You want to remove incursions from game altogether? If content if this caliber is remove from the game then it needs to be replace with either better content or equal content quality than the former. Otherwise there be would a risk of say 3-4k players unsubbing because you removed their content from the game without compensation for lack of this content.

I'm explaining that position, anyway.

Incursions should preferably be replaced by something that has some significance in current lore, that is neither easily farmed or absurdly lucrative.




Yeah, carebears have been wholeheartedly advocating for the deletion of entire playstyles for a while now, so you can't even claim moral high ground on that.

Second, if you think three or four thousand people run incursions, or care whether they exist, you're nuts. They didn't even get that many unsubs when they finally got rid of the ISBoxer cheaters.

It kinda does, huh? The second I heard about those, I knew the writing was on the wall for the current incursions. They even call it the same name for goodness sakes.

There's no point defending that particular golden goose anymore, it's going to get the axe.

I feel like this is a good example of "us and them" mentality at work. You paint the people calling for a nerf to payouts as "mean nullbears" and yourself as part of a group of "victims" and by doing so you turn the argument into something bigger than the actual issue we are discussing. You've also got a slippery slope argument in there which is based on nothing but your own fear of other groups.

I have been all over eve (and currently live in highsec btw), and I keep on coming back to incursions as there is simply nothing else out there that pays as well. Something needs to be done and since income is all relative the simplest answer is nerfing incursion income somewhat. I have put forward a number of 17.5m per HQ site as a starting point, works out as 80m/hr (15min/site) with good groups (10min/site) getting up to 104m/hr maximum. Obviously vanguards and assaults will need to be scaled in line with the new values.