EVE General Discussion

So, we took the same basket of data (I used Feb data and came to roughly similar conclusions. So, good post. I'm afraid not enough people will read it, when it really ought to be read.

In one of your linked posts you assume bounties to mission rewards is a 4:1 ratio. Where do you generate that number? The last time this was done in depth and given a forum post it was closer to 2.25, here.

I used to give 2.5 as a number to people for years as a way of roughing out their expected income from missions, and traditionally over estimated by a bit. I adjusted down to the 2.25 and it's been just about bang on. I just started re-running missions after returning to the game to get some isk sorted out and have seen a 2.3:1 bounties:mission rewards after about 20 missions.

So, your 4:1 ratio seems dramatically inflated given my recent and historical experience. Do you have empirical support for assuming a 4:1 ratio of bounties to mission rewards?



I also, really, don't think Incursions are that big of a deal. Contrary to the general consensus (which seems driven by a PLEX cost panic more than anything, but as I pointed out above seems to be linked to a leveling off of new supply), I actually think where prices have gone up they've gone up because of destabilization of the drone regions, technitium prices, POS fuel costs (fuel being unshackled from the NPC market), and the rise of mineral costs (drone regions and suicide miner ganks in Empire, and macro miner bans increasing to a 3 strikes, you're out policy).

I think Incursions adding isk to the game is actually a good thing and it doesn't seem excessive to me. Certainly not enough to drive any kind of major economic disruption. The benefits in the game of having large groups of people having to work together and doing things that help train them for PvP fleets is great for the game overall.


This, again, seems to come down to people panicky over the price of PLEX and looking for a simple way of explaining away their frustration.

Just loose previous experience — Kefira kept much closer track on the exact numbers than I have ever done. Also, note that I'm trying to give an upper bound for how much ISK comes from mission runners — if the ratio is as low as that, then that just means that incursions are that much more imbalanced.

I think they are, due to the immense amounts of ISK they inject from such a low number of runners. Again, the average incursioner injects at least 30× more ISK than the average mission runner; if your ratio is correct, we're up to something along the lines of 90× more. That is a big deal. Not just to the economy itself but to the viability of other activities and the versatility of EVE gameplay.

Incursion rewards need to be drastically cut (as in “in half” at least) and need to be almost completely turned away from being ISK-based, or they will continue to be directly harmful to large portions of the game.

Zimbabwe says “hello”.

A titan running complexes in 0.0 gets about 100 million a tick (so 100 mil every 20 minutes - that's 300 mil an hour). A carrier gets something like 60 million a tick. There are lots of guys out there doing this, right now, with multiple accounts. With covert scouts sitting in nearby systems and closely monitoring alliance INTEL channels ready to warp off to a POS to get safe at the slightest hint of a threat.

There is a major corporation in a major alliances that during their carebear ops run Level 5 missions with Motherships. They're not worried about anyone attacking them because they can drop one of the largest capital ship fleets in the game on the heads of any interlopers. They kind of want to be bait.

You're going to try to get me panicked that Incursions are a problem? No. Sorry.

The absolute amount of isk being put into the game by Incursion runners only seems problematic when you look at it as a per-runner stat, as an absolute number it's quite low. But 0.0 ratting is a far bigger input of isk into the game, and if you're going to hang your hat on using per-active participant, complexes are a much bigger dragon for you to slay, even accounting for risk. I've lived pretty much my entire Eve career (6 years) out in 0.0 with some of the biggest alliances in Eve, and can count on one hand the number of ratting ships I've lost. I've lost more to falling asleep in belts and dying to rats than I've lost to pirates (and that's still less than 5 in total), so this "omg but the RIIIIIISK" stuff kind of rings hollow. In 0.0 you don't take anything you can't afford to lose, and if you ever do lose it, it's pretty easy to replace since you make so much damned isk.


And, not to be a stickler here for forum threat titles/themes, but what exactly are you arguing here that contributes to this specific thread? I'm not against being swayed by a good argument, and I'm more than open to facts and data here. But so far, nobody's actually demonstrated that there is a "problem" with the economy, that the problem is inflation, and that inflation is caused by Incursions.

Rising PLEX costs? It looks to me like they're getting back to the old pre-PLEX 30-day time unit value that they sold for when there was only an out of game ETC market. Is that actually a "problem"? For individual players who made the mistaken assumption that prices were at some kind of "natural" norm rather than an all time low. But anyone who went into funding their playing by selling isk should have understood and accepted the risks. The Eve economy can't be governed because they got used to historically low prices.

Rising mineral costs? Lots of products are still lower than the costs that the old mineral market that was shackled to NPC goods that could be refined would suggest they ought to be. Instability in the drone regions and the recent banning of macro miners (along with a new policy of severe, permanent bans for repeat offenders), is a more viable explanation.

So, I don't know, I guess I look at this chart and I just don't see what's going on (whatever it is) as surprising or even problematic based on the historical evidence. (and yes we need updated data)


EDIT NOTE: Yes, I did make a few changes here about 30 seconds after I posted this. There was some stuff that was grammatically horrible in what is now the 4th last paragraph and added the 3rd and second last paragraph since I accidentally cut them out of my draft before I hit POST.

I built a crap load of Providences and Obelisks a while back at around 450 per.

Now I'm selling then for a billion + each.

If the economy is broken, it's for everyone but me.

Mr Epeen

Welcome to Eve!



Cap ships ratting. It blows me away too, and yet they still do it.



So, I take it we're at the point in the conversation where the only rhetorical option you have is argumentum ad hominem?

What should the premium be for things that require group cooperation and coordination? What should be the premium provided for a large amount of role specific training?

You think it's too high. I don't. That's just a difference of opinion. I think the benefits to the game, providing isk to groups, to large groups, that have social benefits, training benefits, and possibly political benefits for the game are all a good thing, worthy of their pay-outs to incentivize them.

But you haven't demonstrated that there's a problem with the economy, what that problem is, or that Incursions are the cause.

The Center for Advanced Studies must have the worst philosophy department in the galaxy.

No, don't flatter yourself. I read threads that Tippia posts in and I read threads that pubbies declare war on goons in, and your posts in both struck me as particularly dumb. You're one of those people who likes to throw around big words that he doesn't really understand but has seen other people use a lot, which makes you amusing for a few minutes. Oh dear, not anymore though.

I dunno. If you can still play the market to your advantage then the economy is not totally destroyed.

We are now seeing the consequences of RMT (PLEX) mixed with unlimited ISK creation (Botting). Either one by itself might not kill the game, but the two combined will screw it.

Botting will never be removed enough to matter. So that leaves fixing the PLEX system.

How, you ask.? Simple really. Remove the RMT aspect of it. PLEX is redeemable for game time and not tradable. You want 30 days? You buy a sub or buy a PLEX with cash or ISK (good ISK sink as a bonus) from CCP. How the GTC system got so screwed is beyond me.

Fixing illegal RMT by supplying legal RMT may fix CCPs short term financial problem, but it does nothing to fix the game.



Mr Epeen

…you mean aside from me providing numbers.

I already have. Go back and read it.

I've been concerned about them ever since the early estimates about earning potential arrived; I've been deeply concerned about them since I collected and compared the numbers that CCP provided.

Good job on missing all of that, though — it really shows you're on the ball here…