Greedy Goblin

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Null ratting vs Highsec missioning

Null ratting has lower ISK/hour than running level 4 missions in highsec. Considering that the latter can be done without danger of PvP (unless you go purple), this is serious design problem and nullsec posters rightfully call for fixing it.

Except they are totally wrong. CCP didn't make L4s inherently more profitable than null ratting. Actually they provide different kind of rewards (LP vs ISK bounties) and the market valued the L4s above null ratting. The market says, null ratting is easier than running L4s. You can disagree, but the market is always right. If L4s wouldn't be harder, null ratters would just switch to it, decreasing ISK and increasing LP production, therefore decreasing the relative profitability of missions. If everyone would run missions, LP would be dirt cheap, therefore missions would have horrible income/hour, just like veldspar mining. When I found a way to farm lot of Thukker LP easily, I ruined its price, as a proof that the market guarantees that things worth exactly as much as they should.

Why is null ratting easier? Because of multiboxed AFK Ishtars, (super)carrier ratting and botting. Highsec missions need active participation, therefore a non-botter player can run one, maybe two security missioner pilots. Botting in highsec is problematic because awful lot of players are around and they gladly report you. On the other hand, you can have as many AFK ratters as your computer can handle and most alliances explicitly forbid petitioning blues.

I run multiboxed mining missions myself, while running a solo miner in mining missions would be dumb. Why? Because the income per pilot per hour is about 30M, pitiful, it's only profitable if you heavily multibox. Just like nullsec ratting, they become much more profitable than security missions if you run them properly mechanized, meaning stupid amount of multiboxing and lot of computer-time.

The "highsec missions earn more" complaint actually means "for a normal player, there is more income in the security missioning profession than in null ratting or mining missions, since these are taken by multiboxers and botters".

The solution is - obviously - changing the game in a way that makes multiboxing harder and strike harder on botters. Nerfing highsec missions wouldn't help the normal nullsec players as their competitors aren't the highsec missioners (they produce LP, not ISK), but their own alliance mates running 10+ accounts 10+ hours a day.

Since CCP just went nuclear over force projection, I'd remind lurking devs to my farming-fatigue idea.

10 comments:

Provi Miner said...

yes and no, you could try to bot rat in provi but you will die fast. Again your tar brush is to wide and splatters people far and wide. I know there are some multi boxer miners, and I know some people who use two toons to run 10/10's but I don't know of a single botter in Provi. I am sure there are some just I have never seen them. As for 1 to 1 I can rat far faster in null then I can lvl 4 mission in high in the same ship. In fact the cost of ratting in null is on tick for tick bases is far lower in null. You don't need three different ships. Just saying it is not a cut and dried as you make it seem. (yes I know provi is a special place).

Easy Esky said...

There is a ground-swell movement against isBoxer recently. I have doubts unless there is a Rage something truly malignant discovered then it is here to stay.

Half the tripe levelled about nerfing L4 is more driven by the possibility of tear generation than a perceived imbalance of incoming earning. Same can be said for Incursions - despite numerous commenting by CCP about the parity of bounty; armchair pundits still decry Incursions as a leading cause of inflation of isk.

Anonymous said...

@provi miner

i know some botter in provi.

but you are right. not the majority is botting. only some... and not all eve players can farm ano 11hours a day. i guess most are casual players with a life..
so your assumptions are only correct if you go for the extreme. you can allways go for extremes in games. surely it will benefit you, but you have to pay the price in rl.

Anonymous said...

I live in null, it is easier than L4 missions.

However; very few people AFK rat anymore because of the interceptor gangs - you have to pay attention.

I don't care about high sec income,I use to run high sec incursions because a) they were decent fun and b) they were good isk.

Now I can dual box and make the same with way less effort.

I've not idea why people moan about null sec ratting income.

A concerned Minmatar said...

Being very asocial, you might be forgetting a psychological reason that people would stay in null. Anything you do in null automatically has higher percieved status (in the eve culture)than the equivalent activity in highsec (or even low).

This might make the ratter stay in null in spite of lower income, as switching to high would feel like an admission of failure.

Arkanon said...

you speak of lvl4s to null ratting but you've missed a very important factor, mainly incursions.

for nearly 2 years now, while my main and other avatars have been in null, ive had a avatar for incurs running, and its been...surreal.

the isk/hr is unbelievable, better than carrier ratting, better than super ratting (which doesn't really happen)atleast from what ive seen)) i dont have to watch local/intel channels like a hawk, & its totally safe.

those who die in incurs fleets are people who went afk in the middle of a site 90% of the time, the other 10% is people who dont do basic research and have a improper fit, actual ganking of a runner is both extremely rare given how we run 24/7 & only towards those with officer mods (so gank magnets), in nearly 2 years of flying a faction/deadspace vindi ive never died once, to anything.

personally speaking, i actually want to get out of it, that's why ive made 2 dedicated ratting alts going towards carriers, dualboxing carriers is before corp tax, close to the conservative average what i make in incurs pure isk wise, so in actually its lower but i dont care, getting fed-up with listening to fleet comms, never liked the idea of buying someone elses avatars which is why i made new ones for my ratting, take close to year before there ready, so until then its still gonna be the 200-320mill/hr in isk/lp and the damn fleet comms sigh.

Arkanon said...

I wish to add something to my comment more along ratting lines, firstly though incase of any confusion, when i use the word "avatars" i mean what most just use "chars" its a bit of a RP term so not everyone might know it.

when you talk about the ease of ratting i wish to point something out, mainly not all ratting is what can be called "ishtard afk" from my own experiences living all over null with various CFC/N3 alliances i can see (including myself) there's plenty of more active ratting involving T3s/pirate BSs & carriers.

yes there is plenty of afk ishtar ratting going on, and yes theres also ISboxer multibox ratting but im trying to point out the middle ground that exists quite prevalently through out null and this is called netflix.

pure afk ratting (which really only works with ishtars) is that the player solely has to warp to the anom, he can then leave computer to do whatever, but what can be done is you simply dualbox with netflix/eve.

the methodology behind this is simple, you have in your field of vision netflix open simultaneously to EVE, so you ratt while watching, with this you can fly a ship of vastly higher performance than a ishtar, exactly what depends on how well you can manage, it has limitations ofc, with ishtars you can do detailed work with keyboard & mouse while with netflix you can just watch, so it is ultimately a leisure activity, a fine point i know but a very important one, you can even manually (non ISboxer just small client windows) dualbox like this, dual TP navy phoons was really hard, single vindi was doable but tricky, dual mares/machs was ok, now favor dual missile or drone based ships, dual snakes has been working, its all relative on how much you can do while still not engrossed enough to be watching the show, im also going to point out here that "ishtard afk" style is for a carrier impossible due the lack of fighter auto aggro.

you essentially combine your watching of tv shows with ratting, cancelling out the ratting nature, personally its given me a excuse to watch all the star trek shows as much as i want with various other randoms thrown in (special props to farscape).

in addition, i wish to highlight something ive been pondering mainly the benefits to this sort of isk making, that ratting is inherently bonding to a corp, you are by its nature there logged on in the game seeing whats going on, can react if something happens, most importantly your in your corp, talking in corp chat if your doing netflix/music & can pause it to go on comms for a chat, ultimately this is entirely for those that actually want the active social parameters of a corp, for those that do, ratting knits you into the fabric of it, this has impacted my thinking regarding null ratting-incursions, better money/inane fleet comms vs lower money/corp enmeshment (& no fleet comms ofc).

i know that for some people this all meaningless, i respect that, but for those it isnt, this is a important factor to a ingame function that i now moderately feel should receive some more attention, incursions is widely seen as engaging people into large metagame communities that span the whole of EVE, to a degree ratting does the same for corps.

Angry Mustache said...

There is an fact that undermines the logic behind this statement thou.

Commodity based rewards such as LP do derive their value from the market, demand for certain LP products greatly affect the isk/lp of different LP types.

But the market is not always right in MMO's, due to certain immutable elements of game design. No matter how you try, a certain rat will only grant a certain amount of isk, and certain activities will give more isk/hour no matter what the supply/demand situation looks like.

One of the fundamental problems of Nullsec Ratting is that the reward is almost entirely isk given by the system. If ratting was the only source for the game to inject isk into the economy, your argument would be valid. As it stands, numerous activities also inject isk into the game, many in ways that give more raw isk than ratting, for example, incursions and wormholes.

As long as incursions and wormholes dump isk into the economy, nullsec ratting can be made very difficult to multibox/farm, and it still won't pay as well as L4 missions because the value of isk is largely not decided by ratting.

Anonymous said...

Sorry people, u r all doing it wrong. If you think that running Lv4 missions in highsec is difficult, you are a terribad pilot.
Check evemission.de or eve-survival.org so you know what to expect.
With the buffs to Marauders. lv4s are easy as piss a you are never outtanked in any mission.

Now, I think there is a bot on the market for missions that uses the IS software, haven't gone into the matter, but when I sifted through the info there, it uses the eve item databaseand so checks the triggers, scramblers and so on. the makro can then be programmed to priorizs the different threats. Apparently the same technique is applied for beltratting, where the bot software recognizes the BS and kills tehm of and only kilss frigates if scrams are used... At least that is what I have understood, but since I haven't gone deep into the matter I might be wrong.
So botting as possible with any repetitive activity in EVE.
If I were to use a makro, I would use it on trading since that is the real cancer in EVE. The most riskless activity that generates the most income...

If you want to doe your lp/isk conversion successfully, you need to inverst a lot of time, in which you cannot actively play EVE, but hey, that might be ok for traders as they do not actively play as well....

Talvorian Dex said...

A very good point. And I utterly agree with you - the market is an honest appraiser of value, much more so than players or design strategy.

I'll be curious to see the changes to the market prices of various null-rat deadspace and faction modules after the three rounds of null-changes have their full effect.

Hint: Buy now for a big payday later.