EVE General Discussion

I was farming for escalations a couple of weeks ago, many times in a row and got nothing. I chalked it up to bad luck. In fact, the spawn rate of HiSec sites is severely depressed or people are knocking them out enmasse. I think I saw a dev blog on spawn adjustments, maybe on drop rate as well.

HiSec is already ISK resource poor, so if they are cutting down revenues even further, I guess the intent is to push everyone out to Lo/Null or make more money of the HiSec players since it's harder to PLEX there. If that's the case, I don't get it because it means that even CCP doesn't understand why players stay in HiSec. They nerf it too much and they risk those players just not playing any more. Ah well, if it is a nerf, then we'll have to deal with it.

Well, no matter what the theory is, I have seen an insane drop in drop rates from these. I understand a string of bad luck because there are plenty of times I go 20-25 sites without anything (dread spawn, escalation, etc.) but 77 (now 79) and then to hit the escalations with nothing is pretty bad.

I am sure things get tweaked here and there, nothing we can do about it. I do know that if the drop rate was a "tweak" (or nerf in this case), that sure takes some of the option of excitement out of hi-sec life and playing the different things other than mining and mission running.

We (corp) have all been on for about 8yrs or so (army vet buddies) and spent most of our time in low-sec and wormholes. We took a long break but were sitting around getting trashed and said "let's fire up the EVE stuff". A LOT has changed in 2-3yrs. Some good, some bad... The game sure is easier to grind than the older days. We decided to stay in hi-sec for a while since most of us are oil field workers and techs. Not really enough time to run a low-sec operation.

The human brain can't deal with true randomness. All the proof you need is to watch these forums every week for the newest "did something change, I'm getting less loot!?!?" Thread lol. I've seen a version of this same thread every week for my whole nine years here. Hell, back in the day I was the author of one or two of them.

There is no conspiracy, no behind the scenes manipulation, no unannounced change aimed at forcing anyone to play different. What does exist is the fact that we chose to engage with game content that offers random rewards.

Notice how you only see these threads when the results are negative. No one posts when they get improbable drops or back to back to back escalations.

There was an announced rebalance of some exploration site with citadels.
Probably they are still tweaking them.

RNR is R

No way in hell I would post a positive "dude I am killin' it out here" thread.... Locator agents get rich off the forums

I wouldn't have a problem with CCP making intelligent decisions about changing the drop %'s on a regular basis. It could help keep a 'balanced' supply of loot so items don't become oversupplied. It would make sense to vary chances by region or time zone to keep a few players from getting in a routine and monopolizing sites.

It would be a bit dastardly, but it wouldn't be that hard to program it so a players chances change based on the accumulated exploration wealth every 22 days. Or based on character age so newbros could make a decent income from Hi-sec data and relic sites.

But we'll never know without open source code.

NO

RNG is still R.

Yes. You are not the first one to mention this btw. Escalations happens extremely rarely now and dreads are dropping crap.


EDIT: 1 or 2 patches back, it was functioning normally. Now it's back to getting nothing for weeks again.

They really don't touch it very often though, imo the prices of most deadspace items are inline with my longterm expectations about the rates they dropped at 2 or 3 years ago.

As a point of interest, I looked up my old spreadsheets from living in vale a couple of years ago on my other account. I ran 1144 anomolies to completion, for 29 escalations (~1 in 39) and a mere 18 commanders. The longest streak recorded was for rally points of 216 rally points in a row _without_ an escalation.

In the same time, in the system I lived in (and the odd ninja from nearby unused systems), I managed to complete 15 ded 6s, 34 ded 8s, 17 ded 7s and 7 ded 10s that were direct spawn ups. ie gun-probing wasn't as effective as probing you just get paid for the probing time.

From memory ( I don't have records for that period), highsec dens have always had an unusually high rate of commander spawns and escalations, but even so, the longest run of no escalation was still in the region of 160 - when the RNG decides its your turn to get nothing, it really is your turn to get nothing.

People that are bringing samples of less than 100 to this thread of a less than 10% thing only have a reasonable sample for how often they don't happen (ie somewhere between 75% and 98% of the time). Its not a very accurate estimate for how often they do happen, because they've only sampled it 10 times.