You probably heard of my suggestion (many times mentioned on the blog and on the official forum), to place an account-wide time limit on simple farming activities like mining and ratting to stop no-lifer activity.
Now I want to address a common counter-argument and further point out why no life farming is bad. It's the Sirlin-esque "don't be a scrub, the option to do it is there for you too". The "scrub calls winning moves cheap" is indeed a central point of pay-to-win and farming all day is indeed a winning move in EVE. However Sirlin was talking about PvP moves and referred to the fact that every move has a counter move and a scrub would realize it if he'd try to emulate the "winning move". The fundamental difference is that in PvP one must lose, even if the game is reduced to "winning move vs winning move". In PvE, everyone can succeed at the same time (see also: everyone is a big hero in WoW).
Let's see what would happen if everyone would take this advice and start ratting/mining/missioning 10 hours a day with multiple accounts. The answer is quite simple: soon everyone would have a titan that he won't use because he is busy ratting/mining/missioning 10 hours a day with multiple accounts. No, it's not an exaggeration. If we count with 50M/hour, than a 4-account multiboxer makes 2B a day if he "plays" 10 hours. That's a titan in 2 months.
At this point PvP losses would be meaningless, so are kills. Unless someone literally suicides titans, he won't lose anything he can't replace a single day. If everyone would no-life in PvE, EVE would be an extremely boring and content-less game. Remember, the reason why EVE PvP is exciting and WoW PvP is boring is loss. Someone will forever lose his ship. He likely be mad about it. Or simply unable to reship (that's why SRP is given). If everyone would have hundreds of billions, this would all go away, and EVE would be nothing.
The problem is that until everyone is doing no-life PvE, doing it is indeed a winning move. You can literally keep a PvP alliance in ships single-handed. We shouldn't wait until most players do this. Losses should remain relevant in EVE.
Now I want to address a common counter-argument and further point out why no life farming is bad. It's the Sirlin-esque "don't be a scrub, the option to do it is there for you too". The "scrub calls winning moves cheap" is indeed a central point of pay-to-win and farming all day is indeed a winning move in EVE. However Sirlin was talking about PvP moves and referred to the fact that every move has a counter move and a scrub would realize it if he'd try to emulate the "winning move". The fundamental difference is that in PvP one must lose, even if the game is reduced to "winning move vs winning move". In PvE, everyone can succeed at the same time (see also: everyone is a big hero in WoW).
Let's see what would happen if everyone would take this advice and start ratting/mining/missioning 10 hours a day with multiple accounts. The answer is quite simple: soon everyone would have a titan that he won't use because he is busy ratting/mining/missioning 10 hours a day with multiple accounts. No, it's not an exaggeration. If we count with 50M/hour, than a 4-account multiboxer makes 2B a day if he "plays" 10 hours. That's a titan in 2 months.
At this point PvP losses would be meaningless, so are kills. Unless someone literally suicides titans, he won't lose anything he can't replace a single day. If everyone would no-life in PvE, EVE would be an extremely boring and content-less game. Remember, the reason why EVE PvP is exciting and WoW PvP is boring is loss. Someone will forever lose his ship. He likely be mad about it. Or simply unable to reship (that's why SRP is given). If everyone would have hundreds of billions, this would all go away, and EVE would be nothing.
The problem is that until everyone is doing no-life PvE, doing it is indeed a winning move. You can literally keep a PvP alliance in ships single-handed. We shouldn't wait until most players do this. Losses should remain relevant in EVE.
14 comments:
Wouldn't prices then skyrocket to adjust to the masses, and "equalibrium" then be reached fairly quickly since EVE is mostly player driven?
Only for non-farmable materials like moongoo and PLEX. Everything else will stay in price since if 10x more ISK is ratted and 10x more veldspar is mined then ISK:veldspar ratio won't change.
If structures were worth a damn, conflict might not have to be a zero sum game. If owning structures was key to being competitive in markets, and war decs had some intelligent limitations, then it would make sense to seek out and oppose the competition. It would make sense to pay people what it was worth to gain that advantage.
Compared to squabbling with others over regions, it might seem like small potatoes, but I think the small potatoes are just as important for keeping the servers humming and individuals engaged.
Actually the ISK:Veldspar value isn't that important.
All T2 stuff get's its price from Moon-Goo.
A Procurer costs 20m, while a Skiff can be 10times that.
So rather you should use a T1:T2 ratio, as that is the place where there will be huge changes if everybody start no-life'ing
So PvE is bad, but trading and manufacturing to make isk while sleeping is not no life?
Everyone should trade, it is the best isk/hour available.
At first thought, I thought the same as the anonymous above. I think Gevlon's right though, but for the wrong reasons.
You have to think about demand as well as supply. If 10x as much veldspar gets mined, unless everyone starts buying 10x as much stuff for no good reason, the price of veldspar will crash. But then all the PvE farmers switch to something else, preferably something that pays ISK and not goods.
In the case of "everyone farms 10 hours per day", I think prices for farmable stuff would balance out at roughly an equivalent ISK/hour to missioning or ratting. Which is presumably more or less where they are now.
Mission loot and salvage would crash, and as Gevlon says, prices of non-farmable stuff would skyrocket. Presumably that would include T2, since it's made with moongoo?
What if everyone in EVE "no-life'd" trade?
Even though the isk and veldspar ratio does not change.
Everyone has a titan and no one fly's them means no titan losses, so there is no demand for new titans. Ammo production for the win heh.
But offcourse that is a extreme example.
Or am I mistaken in that vieuw?
I must say your capability's to analyze and even better to think of solutions to issues is inspiring. Be it that the wrapping is a bit rough. I know your not in it for the praise but still felt like saying it.
Have you ever considered leading or creating a "ruleset" for a corp/organisation in EvE. And see how it can effectivly do the activity's it wants to do for fun but in a correct win style? Example Mining op (the activity the corp planned on doing) with tanked procs and tanked orca (the way they do it)
A organization that punishes members that bring a mack, fail fit mission boats, fail fit pvp, auto pilot and moron hauling. Of all the people you have a grasp on the dangers and know of a effective way to do things. Losses will always happen but the scores will show the actual strength as shown in your many graphs. But then it is a entity you directly controll or made?
Just wondering cause I'd totally rally to your banner :)
Newsflash: If everyone did boring stupid stuff in Eve, then Eve would be a boring stupid place!
so plex/t2 would skyrocket in price compared to t1 and there might be a sizeable increase in deadspace vs faction
unless the in game roids gave out from the increased activity which would skew the ratio towards deflated isk?
Still fixable though. Just make the ability to gain a mission from a npc based on that npc's corporation having a standing contract arrangement (or issue a corp a set number of contract vouchers that are redeemable for missions) with your alliance/corporation, based on pvp objectives. (ie the npc corps will only allow one alliance/corporation to be contracted out for missions, or give one corp a set amount of mission vouchers redeemable for missions ).
Or greatly increase the rewards for favored player corporation contacts vs unfavored instead of disallowing non favored corporation contracts.
Hell they could even use the entosis link mechanic with global flagging and make the random objective spawnpoints in highsec.
@Frostys: they would ruin every margin and none of them would make a penny.
@Ael: indeed. The problem is that boring stupid stuff is very powerful.
korean mmos are full of this gateways. and they have cashshop to get access to that timewalled content.
if you fatigue. people will multibox. (You know the assassins with 10 decced out chars, looking all the same on stream, dailycapped every token or rating or currency system of a game)
if you set fixed count missions per NPC agent. nolifers will get the most access.
if you limit Ore spawn like the demand relatetion like ice, no lifers will get it.
if you limit anomalies, unrated and DED .. same thing, camp X accounts in the best spots and run them and get the best chance for loot.
You can make everything a race. in that case a nolifer will always win in what ever scenario you can imagine. It isn't space-wow (yet) that might counter nolife.
I would like a solution. but 100h a week over 1k accounts will beat the EVE game in what ever scenario. You could call it pay2win.
Of course there is a counter to nolifer: PvP. He can camp the best spot if he is blown up doing it. He can get to the ice spawn first but he'll leave it in pod. The problem now is that others have no reason to care. Let him has his spot, I have mine too.
Limiting time indeed leads to multiboxing, but that costs PLEX-es/$.
But *everyone* doesn't no life PvE, and there doesn't seem to be any risk of everyone doing so anytime soon, so there's no need to worry about EvE becoming boring. I believe CCP have come out and said this re: carriers and level5 missions. There are some making mountains of isk doing so, but CCP see no reason to gate the all missions and disallow capitals because it's barely a handful of players who do it, therefore hardly any affect on the economy. This whole crusade sounds like clutching-at-straws rationalization, for what reason I have no idea.
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