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At this point I would say a complete "PI / POCO devblog" with all current, live data is in order (and perhaps links from the old obsoleted ones to this new one). Lots of people still read the old devblogs and get misled by them. The statement "Taxes are fine, no bug, don't petition" did little more than cause enrage within the less-clued-in highsec carebear crowd.

All the data was out there before the patch was deployed. Granted, some of it hit SISI only a day or two before Crucible launched, so you had to be "on the ball", testing on SISI or following the related player threads very very carefully. The important tidbits were in PI related thread where players spelled out to CCP the fail in their tax plan by pointing out that 5%->10% tax rise would, in practice, be something like 0,3%->0,6% on low tier goods as the tariffs were so borked. I was shocked when CCP realized this themselves and did the logical fix; base taxes on real market prices. Granted, the prices they used were already speculation-inflated, but they were still way more realistic than the initial ones.

Personally I curse having missed the implication / magnitude of the tax change even if I knew about it before the patch and would have invested every single liquid isk I had into PI goods. Now I only secured my own industrial operations against patch day shock with large stockpiles (3 months of fuel etc) and left liquid ISK for other patch day speculation. Sure, that also paid off handsomely ("quadruple your liquid ISK by being first with cloaky hauler load of fuel block BPOs at Jita, see all of them sell at 40M/print in less than five minutes" being the most hilarious one - and somewhat scary as going through Tama, even in a Prowler, 2-3 minutes after server boot, with billions in BPOs in hold, is something you would usually not do, but every second counted and all that)... In retrospect I should have liquidated some other assets that would not move due to patch and invest more. Need to be more bold next time

Still, there are enough math-deficient PI producers left in EVE (or ones that are doing "dump everything to market, stopping PI" ragequits) that it is still possible to make ISK by trading and speculating in PI, but at this point the profits you can expect from it are no longer astronomical, so the capital need is pretty big.

This is one of my biggest gripes with the security status system. A lot of game features depend on the sec status, but they all treat the step from 0.45 to 0.44 as a minor change, while for gameplay, it's huge.

It would be really good if there was a (much) bigger rewards difference between high- and low-sec (and also null-sec).

There was some speculation based on the first devblog, but on the other hand taxes themselves are now being factored into market prices. The end result may be that things are just about right. I'd give it a few months to see where things equilibrate towards, and then see if anything needs changing.

p.s. non-goon smart, frequent posters about PI include Jack Dant and Scrapyard Bob, if you're seeking out ideas and feedback.

You guys are all missing the point. These changes have NOTHING to do with making the game better for US (the players) and EVERYTHING to do with what CCP MUST do as a company to stay in business.

Lemme break it down for you, its really not that hard to follow:

1. CCP dreadfully mismanages their game, pi_sses off lots of players, looses accounts, looses revenue, defaults on and has to re-finance a major loan. Therefore, CCP needs money; LOTS of it, FAST.

2. Cut expenses. Easy. Layoff tons of staff (always a company's biggest expense) regardless of what it does to production value or added content to the game. Tell the players we are doing it for the EXACT reason we are ignoring, i.e. the player's benefit.

3. Generate much more revenue with the assets we already have. Easy. We (CCP) are already the biggest real-money trader there has ever been in the game, and we (CCP) directly control the PLEX market with dev-alts who buy up the PLEX. By doing this we: contorl demand and the market, and by simply "trashing" the PLEX that we buy on the dev alt accounts we directly turn "worthless" virtual currency into real world money. But, we need to do this MUCH FASTER than we have before, so, hold massive PLEX sales.

4. We (CCP) know that the Trillions of isk we are pumping carelessly into the economy is going to cause a problem. So, easy, MASSIVELY increase isk sinks in the game by:
A. Massive tax rate increases on PI export. Taxes are, and always have been, a DIRECT isk sink.
B. Make POCOs player owned, so they can be LOST, thereby creating an entirely new level of isk sink to the PI-POS system.
C. Mess with the POS fueling system, increasing resource usage overall, and add BPOs for said new fuel; all DIRECT isk sinks.
D. Hold massive PLEX sales so that they are more attractive to buy.
E. Contorl PLEX market so that prices skyrocket, thereby isk being sunk at increase rates for people who pay their subs that way, and making them more attractive to the people who get their isk that way.

There are several other levels to CCP's corruption here, but you get the point.

The bottom line is this: CCP is in financial trouble, no matter what they try to spin and say. They have MASSIVE debts because of dreadful mismanagement at the highest levels. By takeing those debts from the banks (that they HAVE to legally pay) and passing them on to the players in the form of PLEX (that they (CCP) can DECIDE weather or not to pay according to their EULA), they are, in effect, giving themselves the OPTION to skip out on their debts and/or pass those debts off onto people who have no legal authority to call them in.

If you haven't stayed informed as to what is going on with CCP in the real world, it is likely difficult for you to follow my very simple logic. If that is the case, I am sorry. But, if nothing else, I hope the post has raised your interest enough to go out and find out MORE about how the ugly facts of the real world commonly bleed over into and determine our "reality" in our make-believe worlds.

Peace all.

Out.

And you read my threat to quit....... where? exactly?

Keep reading things that aren't there. CCP likes players like you, especially when they put out promises about "no plans for gold ammo".

What the hell am I doing? Feeding another troll.....

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In the U.S. costomes, money is collected by the government. We are just handing money to a corperation. That corperation doesn't pay the planet or any government anything. All they are doing is moving are stuff to and from the planet and taking 15%. Multiple times if you import and export. Who gets the money if you CC Launch?

First, thank you for providing some insight into the mechanics and issues involved, including the temporary break down in communications.

A few points, I'll keep it as brief as I can (I know, I know, not really my style but I'll try):

1: How often will tax rates be calculated/adjusted? Hopefully frequently, and automatically, based on local market prices over a reasonable period of time.

2: POCO being player owned in High Sec would be excellent, and would be a fine target during war declarations. I know this may be problematic considering fitting into DUST mechanics, but if possible I believe it would be worthwhile. Obviously, some may disagree, feedback would be in order.

If they are made available, I think that it would be highly likely that High Sec Empires would limit how low the tax rate could be set. This would prevent the incentive to try your hand at low sec PI from dropping too low.

3: The initial outlay price of POCO's is a minor stumbling block for many solo/small corp PI producers. They want to participate but the initial outlay of ISK combined with the risk of losing it immediately is holding a large number of people back from participating.

I realize that the price of POCO's is fairly arbitrary, and I'm sure a great deal of research went into it before hand, but personally I'd rather see POCO's going up and down all the time (and from a large number of PI users both large and small) because the costs are more manageable.

They make a great target for smaller scale attackers (roaming gangs) dedicated enough to spend the time to take them out, but the people putting them up to begin with may need the level of financial risk lowered a bit for POCO deployment to be as widespread as we would all like.

4: Perhaps making it possible to place the equivalent of a "For Sale" sign in the POCO screen when you are interested in transferring ownership of an existing structure would facilitated transfers of POCO ownership among the smaller PI industrialists. Or some mechanic to list them on the market or in the contract system.

If this were done it would also be nice to see how long the POCO has been in use at that location, to give you a sense of whether that particular one is a relatively "safe" investment.

I believe he is speaking about the bulk of PI producers, that are based in High Sec.