EVE General Discussion

This will get me in trouble with the forum curmudgeons, but here's the one thing that will be sure to raise ship prices and increase ship destruction.

Attract more people to the game and give them stuff to do that will keep them interested in staying. I'd like to see 100,000 plus online when I log in. Not the 20,586 that I'm seeing right now.

Mr Epeen

Agreed. Things were going really well for EVE online, 6 years in a row constant growth. But then it sort of plateuet, and player count seemed to begin to drop. Why is this you think?

Chart of player count

However, having 20,000 players online is no small feat, as we can see when we compare it with other games. It puts it in top 20 on steam.

Link



I thought i was the only one who was concerned about this. The irony is their actions seems to have the opposite of the intended effect.

Unless all the people coming in do manufacturing and mining.

Then the ship prices will drop even further.

To make prices go up you don't just need numbers... you need numbers who are focused on a particular aspect of the economy... the one that causes demand for ships in this case.

Prices are collapsing because of whats happening in nullsec.

Changes to mining meant that massive chunks of highsec ore where not leaving anymore.

Trit collapse along with everything else and now all the prices are in free fall

Nothing to do with nothing dying.


Remember when Nox cost 120 isk each and some moon mining changes in nullsec kicked out all the larpers so there was no supply moving into highsec and those prices just shot up.


Same story different time

Ship prices dropped largely because of the huge influx of minerals from the Rorqual. The prices will go back up when mineral prices recover. That's already started but it's going to be a little while longer yet before the market flushes out the excess it built up over the months of Rorqual strip-mining, and probably won't get back up to pre-Rorqual levels given the amount they're still mining.

You're not going to get players to actually risk more ships beyond what they're already doing. The two major limiting factors on ship destruction are Null wars and personal player income compared to ship cost. Ship costs are hardly "crashing" and incomes haven't changed much recently. There's also no major Null wars currently active.

PvE incentives don't work because any PvE dangerous enough to result in a net gain in ship destruction would have to be lucrative enough that it would cause major problems for the economy, since PvE is generally fairly safe since it needs to be ISK-positive over the long run.

No, the price of everything is falling. Three of the four economic indices are trending down, and the only one heading up - the Secondary Produce Price Index - is a direct result of the massive requirements for PI and salvage by the new Upwell structures which makes up a large portion of that index. Further, I picked the first 6 ships that came to mind to test this assertion by the OP, and all of them were down in price significantly over the last 12 months except for 1 (the Guardian for some reason). This all has a strong smell of deflation and will make it tougher for producers of all goods.

How is this possible when we have record levels of ISK being flooded into the economy? My guess is that PLEX and skill extractors are acting as massive sponges soaking up much of the excess free ISK while the increased industrial output along with decreased destruction numbers keep depressing prices.

There are still plenty of profitable niches to be an industrialist, but it is not simply that markets are changing in response to cyclical forces. There is a systemic weakness in the economy of New Eden, and it should be a little worrying, especially if you make your income by production or trade.

I am not so sure about this. The economic numbers show the vast majority (95%+) of wealth leaves the game by people quitting and leaving it to rot in their hanger/wallet rather than being destroyed. If new PvE stimulates players to buy new ships or modules, it will still serve as demand for the market all the same as PvP losses, even if it is never destroyed. As long as the player never sells it back onto the market, then it is effectively consumed.

Sure, that's not as much demand as a player who loses an expensive ship each play session shooting other players, but if the PvE was interesting and varied enough to make a player invest in a new shiny ship every few weeks or months to add to their collection, that could be a significant source of demand for the market, especially given how much more PvE than PvP takes place in this game. Even if it just ends up collecting dust in their hanger for the rest of time.

"Not worth doing for the isk" does not mean you have to be ISK positive when you are done.

To the underlined. This is a hugely unlikely hypothetical. But even if that unprecedented event happened, it would be a good thing.

Mining ships would go up in price significantly due to demand. Many would be lost due to wardecs and ganks. Gank ships would also go up in price as there are many more being used to keep the miners in their place. Mercenary corps would be destroying many more ships as industrialists hired them to punish gank corps.

But that's moot anyway as if you double the amount of miners in the game, you will likely also double the amount of people joining for the easy kills of mining ships.

There is no argument calling for the stagnation of the player base that will stand up to the most basic glimmer of critical thought.

Mr Epeen

Lets consider two groups of players.
The first group gets a big rush from winning. They get a big rush just from the experience, even if they lose. For this group, losing a ship is not a big deal.
The second group gets a gentle feeling of accomplishment from winning. But losing can be devastating, and is not something they want to experience when playing a game for fun.

For both groups, these feelings are gut reactions to events, not something that one really has any control over. What each group does have control over is what they do in game. Group two players do activities that minimize the chance of a loss.

There is nothing you can do to encourage group two to risk ships. Its not why they play the game. Most of these players are also those who do mining, industry and PVE.

So, we should concentrate on group one players, those that have little issue with losing ships. But they will not do so without reason. We need to give that group reasons.

What would be the changes? I'm not sure. But think of things that give reasons for those who don't mind losing ships to go do so. Don't try and get the risk adverse to risk ships, they just will not do so.

Cheap minerals is cheap spaceship, chap spaceship is lower entry PvP. It will be ok.