EVE General Discussion

I originally built my character to be a researcher. In February of 2005, I picked a Deteis and piled on the Intelligence and Memory statistics. I don't have an impressive killboard after years of running a small industry corp, living in large nullsec alliances as an industrialist and again in empire as a solo T2 manufacturer.

Unlike many, I didn't get into research for the passive ISK. I got into it for datacores, which I actually used to supplement my T2 production.

*Gasp!* Can it be?! Has CCP considered that people like me actually exist? Of course not. Everyone must be milking that 100 million ISK per month cash cow that is R&D agents.

Reality check; 100m isk a month is nothing, particularly when you consider that it's not free ISK... it requires skill books, training time, a lengthy standings grind with an R&D corp (Lai Dai doesn't have any stations with jump clones, can you believe it?) and a fair bit of time collecting datacores at regular intervals. It was always a thrill dumping my own datacores into my invention bucket, knowing that I was reaping a return on the skill and time investment I'd made previously.

Now, over 8 years later, I'm edging up on 130m skill points, I have a single account, and I'm being told that soon, people will be able to be "researchers" like me by pewpewing eachother in faction warfare. Here are a few reasons why this bothers me:


A) You're directly nerfing a profession (T2 manufacturer). You have this impression that everyone is doing R&D agents for the passive ISK. Many are, but some are not. Already, the rate at which you get datacores via R&D is only a fraction of what you need for a solo T2 production line... reducing it further makes R&D virtually useless.

B) EVE is supposed to be a sandbox. I see more and more where CCP is drawing lines in this sandbox and giving people those cookie-cutter sandcastle molds ("No, no, this is what it should look like") instead of encouraging them to make something truly unique. I agree with the 'mining with guns' change because of the way it damaged null-sec mining (I saw running Anoms suddenly become more profitable than mining in a Hulk in deep null) but I also think it was poorly handled (bounties... that's it? Not extra salvage dropped or something similar? Not like salvage and guns weren't already linked!) CCP, please, give us tools (not premade molds) and let us control this universe. Stop pushing us this way and that trying to make it perfect.

C) The reasoning behind it from a lore perspective is pretty frail. "Hey, thanks for blasting those Amarr scum to hell with your repeating artillery. Here's a bunch of highly technical Minmatar research databases as a reward." Perhaps I'm a rarity in that when I've got the T2 production line up and running I actually use my datacores, but what percentage of FW warfare players will use them for anything other than getting ISK? Is that your intention?

D) It ties T2 ship costs to FW, and thus specific races T2 ships will see price fluctuations on something completely unrelated to consumer supply and demand for said ships. Lets say Minmatar do better in FW, they get more datacores, market has more supply, Minmatar ship prices fall along with datacore prices. Now suddenly Minmatar ships are cheaper, but so is the ISK gain from being a Minmatar in FW. I see a can of worms here.

So, what would I do instead? I doubt I'm going to change any Dev's mind here... the intention has been announced so that means it's already being implemented, but what I'd do is to actually INCREASE the rate that datacores accumulate via R&D, by maybe 2 or 3 times. Obviously this will cause prices to drop significantly, so the passive ISK rate won't be any higher than it is now, but it'll also make going and picking up all the cores and distributing them a more time-consuming matter.

Actual T2 industrialists will have a reason to use R&D for themselves as I do, as they could actually do the majority of their production off of their own R&D. For those just looking for passive ISK, they can either elect to move all of the datacores themselves or put them up on the market locally and avoid having to truck all over space in a Transport ship, allowing traders to swoop in and redistribute stockpiles of datacores to market hubs.

But hey, what do I know, it's not like I've been playing EVE very long. I'm sure the Devs know what's right for EVE.
Carry on...

And return the T2 BPO cartel back to it's rightful place.

But that's just what they're doing here: datacores will still be available in hi-sec; now they'll also be available in lo-sec FW LP stores.

The are not called isk-sink, but isk-faucet. And even that is wrong.

Quoted for you:


Also, for the record, I disagree with the proposed change by CCP.

If you had bothered to read the thread you would have caught on on the sarcasm that was used in the naming of Isk Sink.

How in the world do Datacores add ISK to the economy?

ISK Faucets occur when NPCs pay ISK to Players (bounties, etc).

ISK Sinks occur when Players pay ISK to NPCs. (factory rent, etc).

Data Cores add no ISK to the economy and result in no ISK being removed. They're neutral on the sink-faucet spectrum.

What are you looking for exactly? If I was still a CSM my response would be something like this:

"You mean they're giving FW a reason to exist AND nerfing passive highsec income? Awesome."

Are you looking for that? I can give you that if you'd like.

What are you looking for exactly? If I was still a CSM my response would be something like this:

"You mean they're giving FW a reason to exist AND nerfing passive highsec income? Awesome."

Are you looking for that? I can give you that if you'd like.

You are painfully stupid.

Yeah maybe, I like other ideas put out there for lowsec and fw upgrading better but I'm happy they are at least revisiting FW instead of leaving it dead and buried. To clarify I mostly posted just to show that there are few people going to cry tears over the loss of a high sec no effort steady income mechanism. I did like the idea of not getting rp if you don't do the daily mission though, that was a nice touch. Putting things in to at least take some managing in order to get cash would be a nice change of pace.

I don't think this is going to really do much to improve FW though. Nobody does that kind of crap for LP, let's face it.