Greedy Goblin

Monday, February 20, 2012

Found my "why" in EVE

Posting about EVE and reading the comments finally pinpointed a problem that worth seriously investigating. It is "ganking" or "being mean". Most games let PvP only if both parties agree and reward the loser too with some game item or currency. In EVE and in real life anyone can initiate PvP (with certain risks and costs), and the loser will be looted. Socials call this "evil" and "mean". They praise ethics against it and demand some powerful entity (usually the state in real life and the game developer ingame) to stop these "mean people".

While there is totally pointless violence both in real life and EVE, most of the violent actions are motivated by some reward. Also in real life and EVE you have costs to pay and if you just spend all day with pointless violence, you end up starving (and unable to continue violence). I don't think that anyone farms 10 hours doing something that he hates just to be able to fit a ship for pointless ganking that provides him 10 minutes of fun. I think that most of these "mean guys" are successful pirates. They gain huge amount of income from their victims and it allows them to do some wasteful ganking on the side now and then.

Who can be pirated on? The morons and slackers! I will prove that New Eden is not a hostile place. Yes, I lost a ship and will lose ships. But the amount of losses are small compared to the gains. Replacing my ship did not take more time than an average wipefest raid in WoW. The bad reputation of EVE is made by Arthasdklol who could "progress" in WoW (getting new shinies when everyone else), but in EVE he was destroyed. I don't consider pirates evil or wrong, they are a completely natural reaction for the existence of weak but fat targets. Kill a pirate and another takes his place. Kill the moron and piracy goes away!

I think that if you are not a moron or slacker, if you can think and act a-socialy, you'll be fine in EVE. I'll document my journey from rags to riches, of course without buying PLEX in the item shop. I will prove that those "terrible griefers" that make EVE "awfully unwelcoming to new players" are just preying on the morons and slackers and cause little problem to players with brain, even if they are new.

Let me clarify, I'm not trying to prove that you can progress in EVE, that's trivial (whoa, you can progress in a video game?!). I'm trying to prove that despite EVE has the reputation of mindless violence, you can progress without being better in violence. Actually you can collect masses of wealth without ever firing a gun. You can afford to hire people who will shoot for you.

Also, I will prove (no "trying" here), that M&S is abundant in EVE, even if not so obtrusively as in WoW. Maybe they are not infesting the endgame, they don't run corporations or own star systems, but they are there. The pure existence of profitable piracy proves it. And the success of goblinish businessmen will prove it too. The players of EVE like to think of themselves that they are the elite of gaming. Thinking high of yourself because of membership to any group is a very bad thing and usually leads to losses. Being great needs more than joining some group and especially more than subscribing to a video game. Arthasdklol can do that. And if he can, he does, we learned that. I mean, who else place an overpriced buy order few systems away from a normally priced sell order?

You might notice that this post had a new label, "EVE business". There will be many other like that, hopefully helping goblin-minded people to start playing this great game.


PS: Tobold always whined that he did not get donations for his blog and his work is not paid. Now look at these:
You can also see that only after a week of playing I already had 50M legitimately, but of course gifts are always welcomed.

43 comments:

Ry said...

Heya.

Wouldn't it make more sense for you to buy some ISK via purchasing PLEX with real money? At an exchange rate of approximately ~~ 1 USD -> 25 million ISK, it seems like you could ramp up your ingame ISK inflow by purchasing a solid amount of starting capital using RL money.

Gevlon said...

What would be accepting that you CAN'T progress in EVE as a new player, without buying power in the item shop.

My point is that you CAN do it.

Denethal said...

Ry: There's no need to do that. Within a months time, you'll be able to fully pay for gametime by plex gained purely in-game.

And if you're a new player, you won't have any useful skills to utilize the plex fully anyway.

Steel H. said...

Haha, 50 mil in first week, good job. After 1 week I think I was still running around in noobships thinking 50k reward was awesome!

I still see you haven’t yet understood the sandbox 100%. You are close, but not 100%. In the sandbox, there is no Arthas or Deathwing to serve as a final purpose. No instanced battleground to give you a defined objective. No anything. There is just ships, with guns on them that blow up other ships, and the emptiness of space. …??? So players have to create their own Arthases. Why did Arthas kill all his kingdom, why did Deathwing destroy the world? For the evils, for fun, they were bored, who knows? Why do s*** in EVE? Any reason any disturbed mind can possibly come up – profit, not profit, fun, hate, grudges, the joy of killing, the thrill of hunting, e-peen measuring, whatever an imagination unconstrained can come up. In the endless space there is no limits, no rules, no borders (other than those that are self imposed) – human stupidity, folly, cruelty, madness can expand indefinitely.

I’m in 0.0 alliance. I see fleet announcements come up all the time: “I’m bored, let’s go find shit to kill, bring x ships, fleet is up under y”. This weekend I’ve been on several roams that trekked to other corners of the galaxy. Roaming to find other people looking for other people to kill, go in other alliances capital systems to mess with them, find systems where massive fleets are clashing. We jump in with 100-200 battlecruisers, sort by distance, start firing. Half the time I had no idea who it was that I was shooting at! And then I got my ship blown up. It was awesome! There are players who have more money/SP than the old gods, can fly any ship, they have done and seen it all, bored and jaded out of their minds, they will do fleet roams in billion ISK strategic cruisers, leeroy into fleets 10 times their size, drop supercapitals on gangs of frigates, invade other empires. Why? Why even ask?

And yes, people do farm very unpleasant things (PvE in EvE is horrible horrible horrible) for (even more than) 10 hours to have (even less than) 10 minutes of PvP fun. “I hate ratting!!!”, “two more incursions and I can buy that x ship I want” – I hear those all the freaking time. Actually it’s what you do in EVE if you are a pvper. Actually this was brought up during the latest CSM discussions with CCP as a major problem with EvE – that people hate doing PvE to get money to blow up PvPing - imagine that. Of course, in hisec, you get your ship concorded, so you are less motivated to gank for no reason, but hey, a destroyer costs around 2 mil, and you can kill haulers and mining barges and stuff. Then you have things like the goons ice interdiction. They spent a fortune in bounties and reimbursement, and although they made some of that back via market and extortion, it was mostly done out of boredom, megalomania, desire to sew terror and grief, and to create content, and …. Think of it as the zombie event or the elemental invasion event, only player driven, unscripted, unrestricted, with real impact. In EVE, Arthas farms you! (and is more megalomaniac to boot)

Did you read the Mittani’s articles I gave you?

Alkarasu said...

@Gevlon
"My point is that you CAN do it."

That point do not requre any further proof, in New Eden it's kind of common knowledge. The only thing that can slow down new player in EVE (and it does it for everyone), is the speed of SP accumulation, as even quite clueless player can quite easily make more ISK, then his skills allow him to spend, in his first year (in fact, clueless one will spend a lot of his time training skills, that won't allow him to even undock something expensive, or capable to carry something expensive). EVE is unbelievably easy for anyone careful enough to fly safe and not afraid to do little grind from time to time.
Getting to some greatness, fame and untold riches can be tricky, though, but that's not a beginners stuff anyway.

Sega said...

Although I totally get the point you're trying to (and going to) prove, consider this: you will be paying a monthly subscription for EVE. What you could do instead of it, is investing a (half) year of subscription money in buying PLEX, exchange that for ISK, work with the ISK you get and then monthly exchange ISK back to one PLEX to pay for the subscription.

The way you're going now, you'll never have to pay any RL cash beyond that first investment.

Steel H. said...

Speaking of PLEX, your goal here is to be in a position where you can pay for your accounts with PLEX, bought with isk that you make in game, a.k.a. play for free. That’s how the “upper classes” do it. There are players who haven’t given any of their real money to CCP for years. And then there are large amounts of players who buy thousand of dollars of real money in plexes and sell them to make ISK in game (anywhere from buying titans to e-peen in, to can’t stand farming EVE PvE, or any other reason). From a goblins point of view, it's crystal clear. PLEX is God’s, Devil’s, and Ayn Rand’s ultimate tool of destruction right there on this planet(which one?). It transfers money away from the blob of people you’d call M&S, and gives it to you. EVE is full-free-to-play – if you know how. You like?

Ry said...

Ah. Well, now that you've proven it - why not go buy some ISK, if you intend to keep playing EVE?

I mean... surely it is more efficient to use your time to work at your job, generating what is presumably a decent amount of money, and then turning that money into ISK.

Unknown said...

One early milestone for gathering wealth would be to get enough ISK/month to reliably buy PLEXes and therefore become self-sufficient. It's not something that you necessarily want to do if you have a decent RL job, but it's something to aspire to if you have more wits than resources.

And if you read up on the various exposes on alliance diplomacy or some Eve piracy/spy/scamming blogs, you'll see that there's plenty of high-level M&S in Eve as well.

Kacper said...

Hello,
I was wondering what your definition of moron is (let's leave slackers aside for now). Can you define it by way of some level of IQ? Or is it socials that are always morons?
(You seem to hint at it in the sentence: "I think that if you are not a moron or slacker, if you can think and act a-socialy, you'll be fine in EVE."

The reason I'm asking is your hypotheses and the way you're trying to falsify them.

These are:
1. You can succeed without violence in EVE.
This one is fair enough.

The second though:
2. There are M&S in EVE.
If you plan on proving this merely by succeeding (i.e. outsmarting other players), you'll by implication define "moron" as someone less smart than you. Which, as an educated guess, I would say be at least 95% of the (adult) human population on Earth.

In other words the fact that a very smart person can have success playing MMO X doesn't mean that even a significant portion of a population of that MMO is made up of retarded people, i.e. IQ < 80.
And surely doesn't mean that this particular MMO doesn't cater to the elite, elite being simply people relatively better (smarter, more dedicated) than those playing other MMOs.

Clockwork said...

So in the first paragraph you basically argue that there is nothing wrong with strong-arm robbery. Pretty sure even Ayn Rand would think that Property rights are worth protecting.

Also plenty of people in EVE spend an hour or so mining or farming so they can fit a few throw-away ships to PvP. The number of "successful" pirates in EVE is extremely small because of the difference in cost between the ship you used to pirate and the loot you get for doing so. If you pirate in small frigates sure, you can break even after a few kills but anything larger tends to require many to break even. (( See http://community.eveonline.com/council/transcripts/2011/CSM_CCP_Mettings_7-9_12_2011.pdf )) In addition, piracy is not fast; it involves a great deal of waiting and scanning. I'll save you the time of dismissing the CSM as more "M&S" however.

M&S are not the only people who get hit by pirates in EVE. I don't think you consider yourself one and you were a victim of piracy...lost your ship and pod according to the killboard.

That and plenty of the pirates out there in New Eden aren't doing it for profit; as a poster in your previous EVE post pointed out they are "looking to blow up internet spaceships". The "fat" targets are a nice perk but not the goal.

And your claimed goal is redundant; plenty of people in EVE have already made billions of ISK without firing a single shot. There are plenty of goblins already inhabiting the game. I can see how this will pan out; we'll see some more screenshots of you gloating about flipping someone's merchandise (someone who probably was just trying to offload it quickly).

I'll leave the Mexallon question to others as I am not as familiar with the trade game mechanics in EVE but it might have something to do with him wanting the Mexallon to be at that particular station and thus was willing to pay more.

And the vindictive P.S. was amusing, course getting ISK in EVE is a bit different from getting donations IRL.

Anti said...

in fact the Morons and Slackers you are seeking are exactly those players who fund their bad gameplay via PLEX and RMT transactions.

they justify it to themselves that they are skipping the "grind" to play the way they want to (badly).

i wonder how big the market segment is, of "good" players who also use PLEX and RMT to skip the ISK making parts of the game.

considering i was able to earn enough ISK while playing trial account(s) to activate with PLEX. and that i have yet to pay any real cash to fund my 5 months of playing.

i know CCP is happy to have the PLEX using public. the buyers (sellers in game) pay a premium over the normal monthly subscription cost.

Gevlon said...

@Clockwork: I was doing something moronic, that's why I got pirated. I learned from it, while a moron keeps doing moronic things.

I'm sure that there are griefers out there who consider blowing things up fun, but they either must be profitable pirates or must spend most of their time doing profitable trading/farming to keep being able to blow things up.

Of course others made billions. However I will post my businesses openly, so anyone can copy them and I'll still make billions. And those who copy them will make a bit less but still hundreds of billions.

@Anti, Steel: Wednesday post

@Kacper: since I'm going to post everything I do, to "be as smart as me" takes nothing more than reading. So in this case "moron" will mean someone who can't read or don't think he has anything to learn so refuses to.

@Ry: you are slow. I mean to prove that you can amass billions of wealth without buying power in the item shop.

@Sega: but I'd still have to pay for that first investment and that's still against the point I want to prove. Anyway, since a plex sells for 450M, the donations already provided me 1/3 Plex.

@Steel: that's just short-mindedness. There is a defined goal in EVE: POWER. Unlike WoW, EVE can be won. If one alliance controls all the stars and you are the leader of that alliance, you won EVE. If you are the CEO of the N corp that form that alliance, you are in the top N winners.

Alkarasu said...

@Gevlon
"I mean to prove that you can amass billions of wealth without buying power in the item shop."
Proved already. There are multiple guides on the net with easy to reproduce steps on how to get to your first PLEX on trial, through very different means too. What you can aim for is some method not yet listed there.

"If one alliance controls all the stars and you are the leader of that alliance, you won EVE."
Good one, really. No one ever done that, and the first one to achieve it... yes, that's a worthy goal.

lancore said...

Well, as a professional scammer who makes his money by separating wealth from morons, I guarantee you there are enough "m&s" for everyone

And that's great. Their tears are my content.
Making those people give you all their money and contract all their assets to you for free just by talking is an increadible great feeling.

Steel H. said...

Yes and no. Holding soveregntity control in nullsec space is just one goal, for some(and controlling all of space would be impractical, for a mess of reasons). Others (most players?) swear off any business with sov - it’s too much of a hustle, logistics problems, and actually it’s not that PvPish. Take what is considered the most bad-ass/”l33t” PVP alliance in EVE, Pandemic Legion. They are all veteran players, all sitting on tens/hundreds of billions, all can fly any ships with maxed skills, and they all fly supercapitals – yet they abandoned sov building and exist as a mercenary nomadic alliance, their goals are good fights, causing mischief, tipping wars (and badposting all day on forums). Others are nomadic PVPers or pirates who roam through space looking for stuff to kill. Yet others are empire griefers, war-decing carebear corporations and ganking freighters, miners, mission runners. Others… The most violent – PVP active areas are actually lowsec and NPC 0.0, where sov is held by npc entities, there is no ‘control’ to be fought over, and all you do is PvP all day just for the sake of it.

You seem to have missed that EVE is by design and intention a PvP game – it’s mainly why PvE in EVE sucks so much. The main goal is not power, is blowing up other people’s pixel spaceships. Think about WoW’s early days, when there were no BGs, arenas, or honor systems. Players created their own PvP content – they raided their capitals, fought all day between Taren Mill and Southshore, fought at the entrance to Blackrock instances, ganked each other in STV, and so forth. There were no goals there, people PVPd just to PVP. Every other forum post I was reading while playing wow was lamenting this golden age of “world PVP” that Blizzard then ruined with BG instances and towers. Not to mention how “world PVP” is the buzzword for every new MMO launched out there. Well, this is what EVE is, all the times.

Royal said...

Your definition of "winning EVE" is flawed. Nobody would deny at this time that it would be easy to achieve (take a look at this http://i.imgur.com/Sjl7a.png and a map of how it would look http://d35dgn2pdc8wsn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/WCkzW.jpeg)

The only reason this doesn't happen, is because it would be so terribly boring. The political and military aspect of the game would become extremely dull. New players would find it impossible to begin their 0.0 life, because they would be absolutely crushed by the giant coalition. CCP would have to step in and make some serious changes to the way the game works.

So your idea of "winning EVE" would pretty much actually be "losing EVE".

The only real way to win at EVE is to have fun while playing it. It's actually a common joke among players that since EVE is a terrible game in which fun can't be had, the only way to win at EVE is to quit playing. Thus, "Winning at EVE" actually means quitting.

Alkarasu said...

@Steel
"Others (most players?) swear off any business with sov - it’s too much of a hustle, logistics problems, and actually it’s not that PvPish."
What the point in doing something everyone does? What the meaning of an achievement, if everyone have it? Why pursue a goal, which is practical, but easy to obtain? You can go down the road everyone goes, but where's the challenge in it? Your points are sound, for an average, and even for most of above average players such a task is an extremely boring and unpleasant activity, much better to board your Tengu (or whatever you have for that purpose) and go blow stuff up just to see things get blown up.
But sometimes you just want to be the one, who did something no one before managed to achieve, or, at least, try for the top. It's impractical, illogical, but, if you are really into it, it's the most fun you can ever get.

Anonymous said...

I've been wondering.

If you contract someone as an escort, what happens if he just decides to gun you down and take all your stuff, if he gains more that way?

Reputation? Contracts are not only verbal (made on chat)? Or something else.

I don't play eve, so I don't know but this looks quite interesting.

recollector said...

If EVE can be won its just a matter of personal perception.A member of Goonswarm, or AAA or any big 0.0 alliance can consider himself a guy that won EVE, or a guy who made hundreds of billion of isk can consider himself a guy that won EVE, or a very good low sec pirate, or a guy who is skilled to build capital ships, or a perfect miner, or, a spy who destroyed a big alliance, or a guy who runs class 5 wormholes, or lvl 5 missions, or a guy who scammed another guy, etc.

However, each and everyone of them CANNOT win EVE on all off the above.Its not like in WoW.In WoW, sanme guy can be top 1% in pvp AND top 1% in PVE.

EVE is totaly unfriendly with morons, and, to some extent, with slackers.

A moron who starts EVE will never understand the basics.At a point in EVE, anyone MUST start to PVP, because EVE = PVP.Anything else in EVE is grinding (mining, hauling, trading, manufacturing, ratting or doing missions).

The moron will quit EVE when he will lose a ship that he invested almost all his isk.He will see the shiny T2 and will believe that the SHIP and not him, will kickass in pvp.
Being moron, he will NOT have 2 or 3 or 4 ships to fly, because he is a moron.Once he loses his best ship he have, he will wrongfully consider that a cheaper or less powerfull ship will also be lost, and, since he invested so much time and isk on a ship that was lost in hours, he will stop playing EVE, because in his small brain, its not fun.

A slacker will play a bit longer, because he KNOWS that low sec is dangerous, but at a point he WILL go there, he WILL lose a ship...BUT he is also smart enough to have another ship in reserve.Still, he will quit EVE because he will also run out of time and isk, because he is a slacker.

As i said, EVE is PVP.I know people that managed to stay AWAY from PVP for years, doing only missions and ship manufacturing.
But PVP in EVE is , ultimately, the reason why EVE still is there.
And not the PVP per se, but the fact that the PVP in EVE is complex and simple in the same time: you can be FC (fleet commander), damage dealer, scout, logistic pilot (healer), tackler, etc.

In EVE PvP, you MUST do what the FC tells you to do, EVEN if you think he is wrong.In EVE pvp, you MUST fight even if the odds are against you (the Fc might have a stand-by friendly fleet couple systems away, be he didn't said that because of the SPIES.

Without massive PVP in EVE, there is NO REASON to trade, to mine or to manufacture ships, weapons, ammo, etc.

A fleet battle in 0.0, with HUNDREDS of ships AND thousands of weapons destoyed (and such fights are almost on daily basis) is the reason why EVE is keep going as a game.

EVE cannot be won.If you think that it means you did not understood the game.You will understand EVE in the moment you will realize that EVE cannot be won and the PvP is the life line of the game.

Those in 0.0 are the reason why EVE is still a game.Without them...EVE will be just a spaceship WoW.

Anonymous said...

Well, like that you have started playing EvE it is a truly great game. I manufacture 10 billion worth of t2 items a week, and often find my self in a position where i need a small amount of minerals delivered quickly. If none of my usual haulers are available i will make orders like yours.

I simply do not have time, to move such small amounts of minerals. But i do need them. I have a gross margin around 10%, which means that stalling my production pos's would be very expensive compared to simply offering a higher margin on a small amount of minerals.

SO instead of calling people stupid, you can caunt on some of those orders, being too small for some players to want to stop doing what their doing, and move it htemselves. In other words the opportunity cost is simply too great.

Bobbins said...

To make money in Eve is very easy. What is hard is not getting side tracked with less profitable ventures. Making Isk is a time sink and effectively managing your time is essential.

PS. Any ideas on getting some Material Research slots the public ones are hell. My first starts in 27 days! Anything with such pent up demand on it should have some profit it somewhere.

mbp said...

Question for you Gevlon. Will you restrict yourself to legitimate business or will you allow yourself to indulge in scams? As you probably know scams are allowed withing EVE as long as they stay within the rules of the game. My impression of the game is that just like in the real world the majority of "criminals" are nickel and dime scammers who make less than legitimate entrepreneurs but a few of the most gifted scam artists make billions.

Anonymous said...

Gevlon,

I don't think you've fully grasped or appreciate the nature of logistics in EVE Online. Since everything, except isk, requires time to move from one point to another you must account for that in all your actions.

You, Gevlon, are filling in the gameplay of logistics. You are doing exactly what that buyer is looking for, a person to transport goods from a trade hub to a remote location. The buyer is probably an industrialist who is managing a couple of production lines or he spends his time away from the station he produces at to run missions.

So rather than cut his time to go out and haul the materials to where he's producing goods from he puts out a buy order somewhat above market price in order to entice traders like yourself to haul the goods out there for him. If he sets his buy price too low then he makes himself more vulnerable to the whims of the market. If he set the price at 55 isk, for example the profit to you would have only been around 500k. That would not have been enough profit for a lot of traders and that profit could be erased if sell orders creep higher. On the other hand, by posting a 69isk buy order that's about 30% over market price he has a nice buffer over the market price and makes it a lot easier to induce traders into moving the goods.

Now, we could sit and argue over the optimal price point above the market rate to induce traders to move the goods but the buyer did post something that requires 2500m3 of cargo space to move to a station where there’s probably not much other sell opportunities. If I’m right in assuming that this is high-sec space I think 30% above market price is about right. 2500m3 is at the low end of industrial ship capacity since anyone who is concerned about hauling will be maximizing his cargo capacity. Most industrial pilots won’t need to worry too much about ganking so they’ll fit for cargo capacity. At each skill level of industrial an optimal fit for cargo space is Amarr Bestower @ 1 (20,257)/2 (21,221)/3 (22,186), Minmatar Mammoth @ 4 (27,129), and Gallente Itty V @ 5 (38,433). That’s about 12% of the cargo space of the Bestower. The buyer would need a significant markup to lure those guys to haul the stuff to the station for him unless he’s lucky enough that his system happens to be on the way for another trade route. So if he doesn’t lure them then he’s reliant on characters like you that haven’t yet invested heavily in a hauler.

Ask yourself, would you have bothered with moving that cargo if you had a Badger II with 20.6k of cargo space? At what point (cargo capacity of your ship) would you start to think it wasn't worth it?

Also, it would be worth check out what the price trend in Mexallon was. He may have set his buy order when Mexallon was at 60isk apiece and just hasn't been in system to adjust the order to a new price to reflect the current market. You are, after all, limited to only viewing stations located in the same region of space. That's why Jita became so popular, it's very close to jump gate to 3 or 4 different regions for quick and easy price comparisons.

David said...

@Bobbins - Lowsec stations usually have free slots, or very short queues. Standard precautions when traveling to lowsec apply. Or set up and operate your own research POS, with all that it entails.


@Gevlon - You seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that piracy in EVE is profitable. It's not, really. People do it because it's fun - that is their "why". They generally engage in some other ISK generating activity in order to support their pirate lifestyle.

Making ISK in EVE is so easy, that having yet another project proving how easy it is seems redundant. Other than the initial activation fee, I have never paid for a monthly subscription, supporting two accounts with PLEXes from the second month.

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: if you check the screenshot, the amounts do not match. I bought the whole package from the 53 ISK seller, sold the guy as much he had buy order for and dumped the rest to Jita. I run a Badger II already and it carried some other thing (Rich Plagioclase if I remember correctly). So if I'd have a Charon, I would still make this few-system detour as 4M is good money. Simply I'd have more Rich Plagio next to it.

Anonymous said...

I'm trying out this game. Gev, any specific noob tips would be helpful. Like posts about how did you make your first 50M - so far I only know about the arbitrage method and repeating the tutorial quests.

Akely said...

I would pustulate that if you are enjoying the game you're already a winner.

Still, I'm looking forward about reading more.

Dangphat said...

Gevlon:

If and when you have the chance to kill a newbie when you are in suitably tough space ship, will you?

Gevlon said...

@Dangphat: why would I, it's just waste of time. If I'd enjoy blowing up things, I'd grind NPCs.

@Anonymous: a series of posts will come.

Anonymous said...

I'm really befuddled that you fail to see that you are adding value for both buyer and seller when making such deals. You are risking your captial and do the legwork for both parties, provide convience and save them time, hence you are payed a decent premium for doing so. Beneficial for all three of you.


It is unnecessary to call everyone you were able to make some pocket change off (while providing them an actual service) morons or write them embarrassing "Moron of the week" style emails. The proportions in EVE are much higher than what you are used to from wow. Sure this was a pretty sweet deal for you, given that you are just starting from scratch. For others it isn't worthwhile, given the low volume.


Also it is fairly possible that some freighters full off minerals where dumped into the buy order before you even got to see it and you where just filling in the leftovers. You will soon learn that the available volume plays a very vital role for most buyers, not the price alone. 100k of some mineral at half the usual price, only one jump away doesn't help you much when you need millions of it.

That is also the main reason Jita is favoured by so many, since more volume moves in this place than in all the other major trading hubs together.

Anonymous said...

Open pvp was the model Ultima Online launched with. The world pvp was amazing then. You traveled in groups for safety, and made alot more friends that way. There was also weight limits on loot, and you could get so overburdened you couldn't move. If you died whether to a player or a mob you were free loot to the first lucky soul upon your corpse. And everything was lootable.

This led to dedicated PK guilds and Anti-PK guilds who "policed" them. I was in the syndicate guild on atlantic server for a bit before forming a dread lord guild with some friends. We ganked mercilessly and got very wealthy from it, affording keeps and houses of every type.

When stealth was introduced for thieves, you could camp by peoples front doors and when they showed up to log off at home you could follow them inside when the door opened, wait for them to log and then invite your crew over for a house looting party. Ahh good times.

Samus said...

Since PLEX can be bought for 450M, shouldn't your goal be to make more than that using methods that require no skill, proving only M&S actually pay money for EVE?

Steel H. said...

What Samus said. Well, not sure about the no skill part. There is a wide spectrum. Some people grind missions and rocks all month in order to afford a PLEX, so that they can pay for their account in order to grind some more missions and rocks. Others make tens-hundred of billions in clever scams, espionage, corporate theft, market moves. One big supercap transaction scam can set you up 'for life'. If you have what it takes though.

Winning EVE is actually a phrase used for the most daring, spectacular and expensive scams. The kind that make the gaming and not-gaming press. Stuff like this: http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/09/11/eve-online-player-steals-45-000-worth-of-isk-in-massive-investm/

or here is a hillarious recent one: http://www.evenews24.com/2012/02/10/boodabooda-winner-of-eve/

Goodmongo said...

Is ganking in real life sort of like armed robbery? And therefore the victims are just M&S?

Anonymous said...

There are plenty of "newbie challenge..how much can you make from 5k isk in a month" threads, that has been done to death.

Of course it can be done...as can pvping as a 2 day old character. Specialisation is the key. None of my characters have insane SP, and I have been playing for 4 years. I know what I want on each char, and specialise them, then stop training.

There are also plenty of people in eve who pvp without ever undocking, market pvp is some of the most cutthroat, especially once you get up to playing the mineral markets with the big boys.

It takes a special kind of person to analyse data in a station though. What kind of special is dependent on the viewer...some see it as boring, waste of time, sad etc, I see it as something I can do while doing something else.

It would be interesting to see the graphs for the items you are selling/buying as well, I havent checked wallet transactions for a few years in eve.

As others said, the guy was probably not babysitting his market orders. Out of my 250 open orders, I keep an eye on maybe 20 of them, which are for high speed trading, the rest are just fire and forget region wide prices, or selling off items which I got at 50% below regional value at 20% above what I picked them up for (I have no idea what station value is, only for the trade hubs)

Fire and forget leads to nice surprises, nothing quite like waking up several billion richer than when you went to sleep!
So, as the price can change on a minute to minute basis, assuming that because someone has something up for the "wrong" price now, that it was the wrong price 90 days, or a week ago is an flawed assumption.


Honestly? I am most surprised you arent selling the 100m rifters, as you want to exploit M&S, and failure to sort orders correctly, along with the other idiocy that occurs because people do not learn how the market screen works is the source of some very nice surprise income.

Caramael said...

Yep, doing stupid stuff in EVE will result in punishment sooner or later, which is going to cost you ISK. Though EVE is *a lot* less binary than WoW is. Things are very often not what they seem, because of the enormous amount of different, viable playstyles.

Here's a lesson I learned yesterday, costing me about 2M ISK, becaus I did something stupid: created a courier contract with colleteral too low, and ISK/jump too low. What happend? An experienced courier took the contract and trashed my stuff on purpose. The best part of it was the convo afterwards though, I was glad to find someone willing to teach me. Well worth the price.

And just today I made another mistake, costing me a Drake, five T2 drones, and a couple of millions in fitting. You can be sure as hell I won't make such a mistake again (I'll spare you the details).

NoizyGamer said...

Since you like flying around, don't forget to do distribution missions. If you do them for the right NPC corporations when you finally get around to placing sell orders you will get charged less isk. Also, the amount charged for reprocessing items in a station can be reduced to zero. Then reprocessing minerals people sell for too little can become really profitable.

Also, I like the way you PvP.

Anonymous said...

I've never played EVE. I'll admit it. But I've read a lot about it - and it does look enticing sometimes.

Sure there are M&S in EVE. But I don't think finding them in high-sec is going to be hard because pretty much I doubt they would leave it. I'd be more interested to see if you can find M&S in low-sec or null-sec.

Bobbins said...

@David
Thanks for the reply. The travelling in losec with an expensive blueprint original seems to carry an (unacceptable risk) so the POS is probably my ultimate goal. This is still a long way off so I will probably be buying some researched blueprints through the contract system.

The research queues would have been 'fixed' in many other games however in Eve it seems they are working as intended and are at least partly punishing players for using them inefficiently.

Kristophr said...

Careful about overpriced buy orders ...

The margin trading skill can allow you to place buy orders that you cannot cover with your existing cash.

Players with and alt with that skill will place inflated buy orders that the alt cannot pay for.

They will then place a sell order ofr a large amount of the goods that alt asked for at a higher than normal price at that same station.


An unsuspecting newb buys the goods at a somewhat inflated price at the same station, and then, when he tries to sell to the alt with the profitable buy order, discovers that the alt is penniless ... and that the buy order fails.

Congrats ... you now own 10,000 overpriced widgets.

Kristophr said...

Ry: making enough ISK to buy PLEX and stop paying to play is easy.

Fit a t2 tanked faction BS, and do Incursions. You can make a PLEX in a week or two. Doesn't take brains ... you only need to train to fly the ship, and learn to only shoot things in the order the fleet commander tags them in your overview. Stupidly easy.

Of get into a Wormhole corp doing class V wormholes ... and make that PLEX in 2 or 3 days, at a greater risk ( wormholes = wild wild west ).


People who sell their PLEX in game are either lazy newbs ... or PVPers who only want to do one-on-one PVP, never want to trade, mission , or build, and need to fund their habit.

Kristophr said...

David: Suicide Gankers make plenty of money.

They have their confederates watch passing ships, using passive targeting and cargo scanners to look at loot going by.

If the ISK value in a type of ship rises to a certain point, a bunch of cheap ass t1 ships with suicide fits will blow it to hell in highsec, and the cargo ship standing by will disappear with the loot.

Do not underestimate human ability to turn a viciousness into cash.