EVE General Discussion

"its not a rule for gameplay"

I'd like you to expand on this.

So I just woke up from a couple hour nap -- has there been any actual updates rather than CCP Sreegs wading back into the murky depths of this thread and promptly getting trolled?

This is a story of what happens when the sandbox gets so complicated, it becomes possible for truly magical opportunities.
Greed IS Good

We went straight to plaid


When Eve Online: Inferno was released, most people were underwhelmed. Missile effects were pretty, but functionally useless; ship balancing was mediocre; the inventory revamp was a complete disaster, and most people were simply wondering what the point of the whole thing was. There was even a revamp to Faction Warfare, an oft-maligned, unfun feature of the game. Most people wrote it off as CCP throwing a bone to the few subscribers who stuck around for that sort of thing.

Most people are myopic.
But not the Snip. Don't use ethnic stereotype slurs. -Guard bal.

Occasionally you will see the odd forum poster that throws out wild conspiracy theories about shadowy figures controlling parts of the game, or in the case of the especially insane, Goons controlling the game. This has never been true...until now.

As we’ve said, in most ways, Inferno was a bust. But a throwaway blog about an obscure part of the upcoming faction warfare revamp was much more interesting than it seemed. A small group of market and game mechanics wizards sat in a channel, put their heads together and designed a theoretical exploit to game the system. It succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

The revamp to Faction Warfare in Inferno was the single biggest mistake CCP has ever made. It was bigger than guidance systems, which merely made us a couple of trillion isk. It was certainly bigger than deleting boot.ini, which merely cost CCP some bad press. It was possibly even bigger than Incarna, a potentially game ruining ‘expansion’ *** cash grab. Simply put, Inferno was released with a way to destroy the value of missions.


Inferno’s big design mistake was that it was released with a literal currency fountain, very nearly without limit. Unbeknownst to themselves, CCP had accidentally delved into the world of forex, providing a way to exchange one currency (isk) for another (LP) with only a few checks and balances built into the system.


The original theory came about as many of the theories in the Snip. Don't use ethnic stereotype slurs. -Guard bal do: Aryth wondering what the implications of X may be if we did Y. Every theory in the collective is always vetted, and so, Mynnna went to work on a super spreadsheet. This sheet would end up breaking down every niche of FW into its components and checking them for leaks; much like everything in Spreadsheets Online, once created, the sheet had to be tested via running the numbers countless times. Luckily, they added up.

It was time to wreck some pubby wallets :commissar:



When CCP originally released their devblog on Inferno and revealed the formula they intended to use, we sat in shock. I immediately stated a phrase I would repeat many times: “/10000 will not save them”. CCP made the assumption that rewarding a player 1/10th of the value of the player’s kill at 1K ISK/LP, for a total of 10K ISK destroyed CCP Value/1 ISK reward, would prevent manipulation of the system. While this was an understandable mistake, it turned out to be several orders of magnitude off.

We laid in wait. Much of what we believed to be true could not be tested on SISI. Patch day came and we immediately moved into action, enrolling alts into Minmatar FW & Amarr FW and moving freighters full of delicious zydrine/nocxium/megacyte into position. Goons had been invested heavily in minerals pre-patch, and with the massive recession all of EVE went into post CCP changes, Burn Jita, and Hulkageddon, we wanted to give them a way to cash out as well as get rich ourselves. Therefore, the test would start with a simple, yet hilarious murder of several innocent freighters full of extremely valuable highends.

Freighter Death

This also meant that we could cash out our hundreds of billions of ISK worth of minerals at prices far higher than on the market. For example, we cashed out Megacyte at 3300, Zydrine 1400, Nocxium at 900. So some of the very largest stockpiles of pre-drone nerf minerals no longer exists. Tying back into the mineral manipulation we have been engaging in.
The test quickly became even bigger than anticipated because upon release, FW turned out to have a bug that rewarded LP for both dropped and exploded cargo, doubling the rewards. So we went to work, sending hundreds of billions of ISK worth of highend minerals to Yulai to be blown up. Why Yulai? Anyone enlisted in faction warfare gets shot at by faction police of the opposing factions. Yulai and its entire constellation are owned by CONCORD, which is neutral territory. Thus, both FW alts could move through peacefully. Also, Yulai has an “Inner Circle” station, which was just plain funny. How fitting that Yulai, once the most important system in Eve, finally becomes relevant again.

Dear goons; again.
If anyone had come to ccp and asked "Can we do this?", you KNEW what answer you would've gotten. So, why you did it?

This is an exploit, that is a completely unintented use of game mechanics.
You can justify it in-lore if you want: Factions would never pay out un-earned rewards, and would launch investigations.
Think of CCP as acting in-game, rather than out.
Would the Minmatar let you do that? God, no. So, why whine?

But ... but ... we're here to destroy YOUR game.
lol

ahh I see. Still there is a small discrepency in your statements, The Devs knew about the problem, but you did not? it sounds like there isnt clear communications from the devs to your team that "Hey, this might be a problem, might want to keep an eye on it." type of deal. And apparently, not confirming or denying anything in this statement, that the devs knew about this from it's introduction on Sisi, I do not have the bug reports or such to view this so cannot say one way or another.