EVE General Discussion

Just gunnar throw this out here ...

Raven was once 60 mill and a drake 20mill

Plex was 600mill

More players played back then

While there is nothing you can do to encourage group two to risk ships (*An idea with which I totally disagree, by the way. See below.), neither can group two expect to not lose ships. The more groups twos you have, the more group ones have something to do.

* Remove PVE fits from the game. The number one problem is not that mission runners hate to lose ships. It's that they have no option but to lose their ships. A PVE fit can not defend against a PVP fit. If the AI in missions were tweaked to use less ships but use them to fight as players do, then group twos would, on occasion, welcome mission gankers into their sites since they might have a fighting chance against them.

Secondly, switch the onus of the tutorial to show that you can lose your ship but still come out of an encounter better off than when you went in. CCP leaves it up to the player to figure out that your ship is not your avatar, it's just a tool. But by the time they figure that out, it's too late. It should be one of the first things you hear in the tutorial.

Mr Epeen

The problem is that PVE (both mining and missions) simply doesn't cause a huge number of ship losses. I have 3 mining ships that I paid for... 1 barge, 1 hulk and 1 skiff. I've lost maybe 3-4 missions ships, mostly in the first few months of playing the game.

Players who come for PvE don't create huge long-term demand. They do as they upgrade their ships as they come up... but they don't buy 20 Vexors (like I have in preparation for FW). What they do is provide minerals (through mining or reprocessed loot). That drives prices down, not up. The number of mining/mission ship losses in high sec is minimal statistically.

The key for driving ship prices is to drive PvE to low/null/wormhole space and to drive players to PvP (such as in FW). The total number isn't really an issue when it comes to price... rather the importance is the percentage that are losing ships. And ship loss happens mostly outside of high sec.

*** edit *** Note that I'm not saying having more players wouldn't be good. I'd love to see more people playing the game. It just wouldn't drive prices up (at least not beyond an initial surge). It's the percentages of players engaging in different actions that drive that.

There are a lot of ways to address deflation - increasing demand by blowing more stuff up is only one. CCP has already made some moves that should address some of the underlying economic issues (the Rorqual nerf and upcoming PLEX changes for one). That said, there's nothing wrong with creating more incentives to PvP to try and stimulate additional demand.

The problem as I see it is limited incentives for those who are more risk averse. There are very clear economic incentives for people to PvE, mine, explore or manufacture. However, the incentives for PvP tend to be less concrete. With the exception of territorial disputes, people mostly PvP for the joy of winning against an opponent. If they make a little isk doing it, that's just a bonus. There are obvious exceptions to that (highsec ganking for example, which is mostly driven by economic decisions), but this isn't a system that appeals to people who are more risk averse. They need a concrete REASON to PvP.

To that end, I'd like to see Thunder Domes set up all over lowsec where two combatants could battle on equal terms with ships of the same class, and nobody could warp in or out until one of the ships was dead. It would be more like perpetual tournament play. You could have 1v1, 2v2, etc for various ship classes. And there would be substantial prize money involved - enough to motivate economic players to PvP. It would be similar to FW plexes but with restrictions that guaranteed some degree of balance and wasn't dominated by LP farmers.

I agree with you 100%. However, I think it's understood that "risk averse" in this context is specific to PvP losses. The same person who will risk a billion isk in the market to make 50m isk may be far less willing to risk a 50m isk ship against another player for bragging rights. You will never get some players to PvP (and that's okay), but there are others who will if they have the proper incentives.

On the other hand, such economic incentives could have the second and third order effect of destabilizing other parts of the economy. Economic policy is hard whether you're a game developer or a country.

Why is it so bad that people who trade or produce make less income?(also, are they actually losing income?, if they are, why are they continuing?)

Well, It might be bad for producers, but not bad for the "economy." One problem with having a game that is based on economic production, is that over time production will get more efficient and require less people to produce enough goods for the people. In the real world, this is a great thing. Having only 1% of population be farmers and provide food for the rest is a great thing.

Despite what some are implying here, falling prices is not a sign of a weak economy, on the contrary, it's a sign of a very strong one. One must remember that our goal is not merely to make ISK, but to acquire the things isk can get us. Its things we want, not ISK. (in the end)

Assuming prices all around are falling, than perhaps it means less people are needed for producing and trading. This is a consequence of having a game with a vaguely realistic economy. For those producers, they will have find something else to do, or innovate by finding things the market wants and needs. What do lower prices mean? It means consumers get cheaper ships and modules. They get to go out and fly more and for cheaper. This is a great thing, and the alternative is far worse. Having really high prices would making flying more expensive and hurt consumers.


Now, for the exact reasons why prices may rise or fall are due to numerous factors, perhaps, things like Rorqual change or alpha clones wanting t1 ships or something else entirely, but it don't really matter. Just let the economy go where it will. There is no economic crisis to see here.
If your a producer, than I say to you, you've done a great job, maybe such a great job that you can retire now and do something else.

Any activity linked to PvE activities harms the ship and requires repair over time. This repair module, like nanite paste, will take several things to build and then applied in a station or even carried around like paste is today. T1 is made up of minerals and some minor PI and T2 is made up of minerals, T2 products and greater PI products. All this simply does is create an expense cost. Same as upkeep or maintenance.

PvErs then arent losing something, business costs are simply going up based on usage. The more you use a ship the more you must pay for upkeep and maintenance on it.

It also keeps PvP ship costs down specifically as they will pay for their costs simply through PvPing only. If used for PvE they apply at the same rate. Shooting other players or flying around incurs no cost, shooting red crosses or rocks or anything PvE incurs cost.

I would also raise component costs on PvE ships in minerals.

Rollback the ABC low end changes now with the rorqual and lower Spod spawn rates in null slightly. Should numerically suffice for a slight bolster of low ends rather than the null sec glut we are seeing currently. Though it might not be necessary going forward it would be where Id look for that change.

To make things go boom more. Change probes on dscan to only show "probe" but not differentiate the type of probe. A greater change would be to make combat probes and core probes the same probes and use the same launcher, rolling in the core and expanded launchers into one launcher. Could go the way of the new relic/data modules if youd like with new fitting reqs or even ship type bonus reqs.

Being able to fly or warp significantly beyond the regular star map. A location where you can probe down things to find that are lucrative but hard to find in the vast nothingness of space but the price of going beyond the "fringes" is that dscan is drastically reduced/limited and local disappears even if in K-space as you pass the "boundaries" of regular space. Then simply have ppl run into one another more there by purposeful accidents where either one kills the other or the environment/NPC can destroy both much like the sleeper site sort of thing but using perhaps the new mining convoy NPC AI escalations.


+1s for Pedros assessments amoung a few others.

More PVP?

The players are leaving because of too much ganking and disturbing of their view of the game and you want MORE?

The players like PVE and MINERS will stay only if they can play undisturbed by PVP and their strange hobby so a BAN of PVP in high outside of wars is at stake NOT making it MORE dangerous for them....

So no....your idea is the LAST ccp should do....

Sure, something like that might work, but generally speaking people don't lose PvE ships very often, and people rarely buy a lot of ships for PvE, so in order for PvE to put a lot of demand on the ship market it either has to result in a lot of losses, which is untenable for reasons I've already gone into, and these have to be *new* ships which means there has to be a reason to buy instead of just re-purposing a mission ship or something similar.

Overall I just don't think this is very likely to work.



Yes, I am, because that's the reason the vast majority of people do PvE, and the rest find it fun largely for the ways in which it is substantially different from PvP. PvE outside of being profitable is a power fantasy and an optimization problem. Neither of the type of person who goes for this sort of thing is likely to enjoy losing ships on a regular basis or is going to stick with an activity that they routinely fail at.

The AI in Eve, even with the newer AI changes, doesn't offer nearly the same type of challenge that PvP fight does. It just can't. PvP is an almost infinite space of possibilities. From the Flavor of the Month fits to "Why the heck did you have *six* Heavy Neuts on a solo Abaddon and how did I die to that!?!?" The work that would be required to make Eve PvE a PvP-like challenge would be huge, never mind the issues with having the server run NPCs realistically that CCP went into at Fanfest, and any PvE like that has a strong chance of not appealing to *anyone* rather than appealing to both the PvP and PvE crowds.

Something like a "lose various ships" achievement might be a fun addition, but it's far more likely that something like that would be gained through PvP, and it wouldn't be a terrible "Eve" thing to reward that beyond the achievement (the Tutorial Opportunities not withstanding). Also while that might cause a temporary uptick in ship demand as a few players rush to get the achievements it likely wouldn't provide very much demand in the long term as most players would just get the achievements in the normal course of play, and once gotten they provide no further incentive.

Mr. Black Pedro, as in industrialists player I agree with your assessment about fighting over stuff, however to understand that others like me and other players out there is when you look out towards null/low/WH as a high sec dweller (in my case), that the task of making a home in the other zones looks (and is), insurmountable, the power blocks are too powerful, then you have all the others, pirates, pvp'ers, etc, all hunting, all blood thirsty, all looking to kill it if it moves, now nobody absolutely nobody will want nor like this, take away sovereignty, don't allow them to possess it, make it so if they want to live there then they need to be vigilant, 0.0 is safe, too safe, sure you do get big fights and skirmishes, but people only fight when they need to making it more consensual PVP then spontaneous non-consensual which implies AT ANY TIME, having SOV means there are times you are more vulnerable at different time rather the all the time, I will admit I don't understand the mechanism of SOV really well but that's how I believe it works, if there was no SOV and hot drops can happen anywhere at anytime this would certainly get distruction.