Science & Industry

Free ore? Nice, them may give it to me...............

I do a bit of everything in the game and what i really hate is when i see people come on here and post that what I enjoy doing in a sandbox game is wrong.

I thought the whole idea of a sandbox game was to do whatever you want. with no true end game content like they have in other MMOs you set yourself your own goals. Some people set themself a goal to PVP, others to clear missions as quickly as they can and others set it to be able to mine and produce things from start to finish.

Just because people have set their own goals different to what others have doesn't make it wrong, just means what they want from this sandbox game is differentto what you want. If people who can't understand that or don't like should head back to other MMOs where everything and everyone is the same.

A lot of people keep confusing "free" with "worthless".
Mined ore is (or at least can be) "technically free" (as in, not having paid any ISK for it, or at least negligible amounts of ISK), but then again, so is ISK itself and just about anything else inside EVE, so the term "free" has very little practical meaning in EVE.
What mined ore isn't is worthless (or worth less than market price), so turning it into something worth less than its original worth is a net asset value loss, and therefore kind of silly (with very few exceptions regarding certain unusual relations between speed of mining vs speed of selling minerals vs speed of selling manufactured items).

However, I would NOT agree that they're destroying the economy, not as long as more mathematically-aware people stick around. What they're actually end up doing most of the time practically is donating ISK they don't realize they had to people who know how to value stuff properly.
Sure, it might shut out a small portion of profit-minded manufacturers from those particular items, but then again, if such below-cost (or very close to at-cost) items persist on that market, the profit from manufacturing those items would have not been worth bothering to begin with, so nothing of value was actually lost.
If somebody puts up an item below mineral value, a trader or somebody skilled in reprocessing should shortly pop up and either relist the item at a price closer to the usual market levels or reprocess it and sell the minerals individually. Either way, the original "MIMAF" producer loses the potential ISK while the trader gains it (minus applicable NPC fees and taxes), and the consumer gets a nice enough price - everybody else wins except the original MIMAF manufacturer.

This effect is caused by people who are bad at math and/or lazy and/or conditioned by other MMOs.

They can't be bothered to do the math, they just work on basic assumptions on how MMO crafting systems work.

In the past, they have learned that in MMOs you make money by gathering resources and then crafting something that people buy.

So they go and buy a blueprint for something that they think people will buy (Rifter is a good entry level BPO and the person in question can probably use Rifters himself and these guys love when they can craft some "free" stuff for themselves on the side). So with the BPO on hand, the noob goes like this; "hmm to manufacture this requires this and that and that material... okay, I can mine most of this stuff here in highsec. I buy the high ends and mine the rest, make Rifters and PROFIT!!!!!"

And funnily enough, at the end of the day when those Rifters sell, the guy gets ISK. He is happy and keeps doing what makes him ISK. He mines, refines, buys a bit of high ends and manufactures more Rfiters, selling them and "raking it in".

The point of FAIL here is that he never bothers to (or is incapable) do math and figure out how much the input materials for the manufacturing process are on the market. It doesn't even cross his mind that the Rifters sold on the market by others (which he ends up undercutting to make sales) may be priced at below what he would get if he had just sold the ore or minerals he mined. "That would be just silly. Why would the market price of Rifter be lower than the materials?"

...and the scrapmetal reprocessors and users of Rifters thank these idiots for providing below-cost ships to fly and/or reprocess. Usually the price hovers just above the "worth reprocessing for raw minerals" level and well below the "cost of building if materials bought from sell orders".

Same actually extends to large parts of T1 manufacturing - more expensive the blueprint, less of this you end up seeing but even with battlecruisers and battleships you see prices that are usually "at loss" with unresearched blueprint. So whoever is manufacturing these is churning them out from minerals obtained through lowball buy-orders (some hauling effort required) and using a well-researched blueprint. He still makes a profit, but the margins are razor-thin. On the other hand, once you get everything set up, it is "easy ISK" that keeps on flowing with fairly minimal gameplay effort.

I view free-mining as a glorious form of PVP trading. It's the industrial corrolary of a suicide gank (although smart players with good refining skills can use it to their advantage).

I just have to wonder if mining is so worthless and everybody stops, where will you get your fuel for your caps and super caps?

This thread makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

So glad to see the generalized "opportunity cost" argument being debunked (like it should)

Anyway:



Akita makes a good distinction between "free" and "worthless". It should be noted that someone who places his widget on the market for less than the sell order price of the minerals is not, necessarily, exhibiting a "minerals are valuless" mentality. (This is why the "then give me your minerals free" response to a MIMAF agents is a sign of a weak troll and not a reasoned argument)

Where many people, including Akita it seems, go wrong is conflating worth and value. As Akita says people with more mathematical skill, desire, and/or information are able to profit from MIMAF agents because they value widgets higher than said agent. This is only true so long as the value they precieve the widget having is actually borne out at the time of sale. Prior to the point of sale the widget has no "worth"; merely an expected worth or value (these two are distinct). If the "smart" marketeer has a sufficient hold upon the markets, either alone or in concert with others, then the anticipated value is very likely to be the same as the worth. As said marketeer moves towards less market control, however, the lower the expectation can be reasonably held that he or she will value correctly under these circumstances. This is doublely true when there are large inventories needed to be sold and/or there is low volume of trade. The difference between expected worth and real worth seems a semantic quibble until you consider the real disparities in market power across the EVE economy.

The second idea worth articulating is the idea that, with sufficient skills and standings, ships = minerals from an economic standpoint. This conceptual framework, however, lends merit to those people selling below mineral sell orders. So, while it may be true that you may reproc a ship into minerals and sell the minerals for a higher price than the ship itself, there can be very good economic reasons why a person would rather sell a batch of 100 Harbingers at 5% below current mineral sell order price as opposed to taking the extra ISk. When it comes to ships there is likely to be some sub-set of sales that will be used as ships. Since this sub-set will be turned to exploding pixles as opposed to minerals, there will be less of an impact on short-term mineral prices; which can be a huge boon to the industrialist who happened to produce those Harbs behind the 8-ball but wants to insure the price of other products in the near future. This is in addition to competition stratagies that become available when one agent has a material advantage over another (normal market mechanics) or those that arise from dumping practices.

And finally- there is an opportunity cost incurred when you do not dump on markets. The venom spit by, mostly, people who got a "C" in microecon 101is priceless!

The question should be 'do they matter?'

People will care for several different reasons but in the end, do they matter? A lot of people continue to blame them for low margins or what have you but I'm not convinced there are enough of them to affect the market in the way some argue. If they were then no one would complain because they could just buy their underpriced items and reprocessed for profit, hence a self correcting market solution. Probably more of a case of 'I cant make tons of isk doing what I have done for months anymore..blame them!' than anything else.

Do mine (and please mine more, the mineral prices are going up! ).

Do build. People need modules and ships.

Just don't build and sell something at a price that is lower than what you would have got if you would have sold just the minerals instead. That gives you less ISK and generally indicates that you are either lazy or bad at math. It also gives away ISK to people who just then buy those things and reprocess them into minerals for profit. You wouldn't want all those ships and modules you just carefully built to be immediately tossed into a reprocessor and torn to shreds - and only because you sold them below the mineral cost.

"pvp" pilots who are enjoying to kill something that is not challenging ,they need a reason to justify their actions, it doesn't matter if the reason make sense.