More apparel for EVE Online avatars

Many players have noticed, that CCP has recently released a second batch of items, that can be bought from the Noble Exchange (one of the items included in the second release is GDN-9 “Nightstalker” Combat Goggles). Those curious about what will be coming in future batches can check themselves. In order to do so, open the Market, go to Apparel group and uncheck “Show only available”. There is several kinds of monocles coming to the NeX near you!

EDIT: as to confirm my post, two days later CCP has released a third batch of items, more affordable this time.

Free Aurum as ‘thanks’ to the EVE community

All EVE Online players who shared their media in the EveIsReal.net player museum have contributed towards the whole community. CCP will deliver 1000 AUR to every active account on Friday, 29th of July. Another batch of 1000 AUR awaits to be claimed, if players upload enough media. Want a free monocle? SHARE!

EDIT: because some people asked: Engine trails were removed from EVE Online in the Apocrypha expansion. Previously this feature was toggleable in “ESC” menu and produced trails which can be seen on the screenshot above. Engine trails looked great when ships were warping away, or when ceptors were orbiting larger ships.

Supply vs. demand vs. game design

I don’t usually mine, because mining in EVE Online does not offer much in terms of rewards. I do however build things from time to time and sometimes I need just a bit more tritanium or other easily accessible mineral. Instead of buying it from market I jump into a barge and get the job done myself. I thought about training an alt to fly an Orca, to make my occassional mining actually useful, even if I do it twice a year.

Usually such a character would train Mining Barges, Mining Foreman and Mining Director skills to 5. To improve the bonuses given by the Orca by another 50 percent, a Mining Foreman Mindlink can be used. And here comes a little, nasty surprise. I remember that these implants used to cost about 40-50 million ISK. Did you know, that they are now worth 10 (ten!) times as much?

To answer the question WHY

Mining Formean Mindlink price skyrocketed like this, we need to inspect the graph below:

The source of Mindlinks is neither NPC nor Blueprint: they can only be obtained by doing storyline missions (for example Shipyard Theft). In the Incursion expansion CCP has introduced an extensive batch of storyline missions, which results in much lower probability of getting “the right mission” with the Mining Foreman Mindlink implant. This is why I have marked the three stages of Incursion deployment on the price graph.

“What about the Hulkageddon” you might ask?

The amount of destroyed Orca’s and their pilots podded is marginal compared to the amount of Hulks destroyed in Hulkageddon, so I don’t think Helicity Boson could be held responsible. Hulkageddon is a great opportunity for people who build mining ships and is beneficial for the New Eden economy, even though miners disagree.

I’m nowhere near being a full time miner, so I will probably skip the “dedicated Orca alt” plan, because at this point the investment will not make a return.

Dear CCP:

Please look at the distribution of Mindlink implants, unless it was your plan to increase their price. If not, this issue should be adressed pronto.

About Noble Exchange and market PVP

Doen’t matter if one is completely new to EVE or if one is a vet, almost every player knows that EVE Online is a PVP focused game. Large majority of people will however limit this PVP to pure combat, which is not exactly true.

The Noble Exchange have gained lots of attention when it was first introduced, but now that things calmed down, people started using it. And just like in PVP combat, some players just aren’t good at market PVP.

First off, let’s do some maths, because EVE’s second nickname is ‘Excel in space’.

Typical sell price of a PLEX is today 368 million ISK (Essence region). One PLEX can be converted to 3500 AUR, so the exchange ratio would be:

1 AUR = 105 143 ISK

That means, that if for example Men’s ‘Precision’ Boots cost 1000 Aurum, they should not be sold below 105 million ISK. If the same applies to Women’s ‘Executor’ Coat, I should pay at least 368 million for it.

Luckily for me, some people decided that math sucks, and it’s better to sell some clothing below these thresholds ‘because why the hell not’. So I bought said boots for my main for 59 million and the Coat for my female alt for 30 million ISK.

Wanna proof? Look below 😉

PS. I also bought a Fenrir freighter for 680 thousand ISK in the past, so this kind of things really happen.

How much would you pay for ship skins?

How much would you pay for ship skins?

Roden Shipyards Megathron
CSM said in their statment, that vanity items means clothing and ship skins. So, how much would you pay for a Roden Megathron skin, or lets say an EOM Apocalypse? If these paintjobs were to be one run items, I would personally pay for such a skin a maximum of 1000 AUR, which is halfway to the price of a Navy Mega (skinned Megathron is still just a regular Megathron). For cruisers, the acceptable price for me would be max 500 AUR. What do YOU think? How much would YOU pay?

EoM Apocalypse (Death Lord)The more expensive skins get, people are less likely to fly them (and loose them), so CCP should make the price low enough so that people buy the skin again, if they lost their skinned ship.

@LennekShadow:
@rox_lukas well simply put they better be MICRO. I have no problem buying things but they beter be 1 or 2 dollors max.

[poll id=”2″]

Emergency CSM over.

Emergency CSM over.

CCP has published an official statement after the emergency CSM summit held in Reykjavik last week, you can read both CCPs and CSMs statements in this dev-blog.

Information most important to the EVE players, both these who left the game, and those who stayed is:

“It is CCP‘s plan that the Noble Exchange (NeX store) will be used for the sale of vanity items only.”

For some players such an information is still not enough to regain trust in CCP. One can claim, that even though Zulu said that the Noble Exchange will be for vanity items only, MT ships and ammo can still be introduced at a later date under a different name, lets say a “Noble Armory”. I will say: put such conspiracy theories aside and give Devs a chance. They surely did a mistake of not communicaiting things properly, but the fact that CCP is developing two other games does not mean that they have abandoned EVE Online, and only want to “milk the cow” now. If this was the case, there would be no Incarna at all.

For me personally these two statements are enough to trust CCP again, but I will watch the progress closely. I have been playing long enough to know, that the recent backlash neither is the first time, nor will be the last, when there was a miscomunication between the Devs and the playerbase. I just hope there will be no more such intense situations like this recent one. EVE can be broken by many things. If enough players leave the game, economy can break down and the game will be broken even more, than by the Devs themselves. We, the EVE players, are also responsible for making EVE such a great game it is: CCP might provide the spaceships, but we are the pilots who fly them and who make New Eden so beautifully alive. I have played many games, and there is no other game world so dynamic as this one.

In closing I would like to thank the CSM board very much for their commitment, and if Mittens is going to run for another term, I already know who to vote for in the CSM#7. You, sir, are simply the best.

Serpentis Phi Outpost

Serpentis Phi Outpost

So I have run this casual scan in my high sec “home” system (which is convenient, because its only 2 jumps from my usual low secs and has factories, so I can build stuff). Two unknowns… and one of them 4/10. “Nice” I thought to myself, with the image of Corelum C-Type gear before my eyes. I’ve docked and swapped ships into a PVP fitted Cynabal, which has enough speed and shield buffer to easily tank such a site. I have quickly cleared the first room, zooming around the surprised rats and popping them into the coldness of space.  Just a minute or two later I was aligning the gate to the second deadspace. Instead of killing the boss and grabbig the valuable loot I felt like killing the rats first – for bounties and security status.

I was almost done with the first group, when a Proteus warped in. It’s a high sec system, so I was not immediately in any danger, because he wouldn’t be able to gank me before CONCORD arrives. So I watch him, just in case I need to take any action. I immediately noticed, that he does not have  Friction Extension Processor, so if I stay outside 12 km (faction scram), I should be safe. He immediately went for the Phi-Operation Protector, deploying a group of t2 hammers and firing his guns. I pushed my MWD and bumped him, locking both the Proteus and the boss rat. Out of a sudden, the NPC Megathron popped, and I burned for the wreck, with the MWD still on. I’ve quickly looted the wreck and waited if the Proteus agresses me. He did not, so I warped off with two precious Corelum mods (and one shadow hardener) in my cargo.

It was my shit, I was there first, I killed all the rats in the first room, and I had full right to that loot, and I would prove it with my 425mm Autocannons  if the Proteus pilot objected. Too bad he didn’t react, a Proteus kill would actually be nice.

Next time I will go straight for the boss, as I should in the first place, taking Stolen Passkey from the can in the first room.

Non vanity MT will break the EVE economy

Non vanity MT will break the EVE economy

I disagree with the above statement. But I don’t support non-vanity microtransactions. If possible, I would love to see EVE free from MT at all.

However, I do know that non-vanity stuff could be introduced in a way that would have minimal impact on industry and economy. NeX can be compared to just another LP store where you pay with $ instead of LPs. Why no one is ragequitting over LP store? Because besides LP you need to trade in Tags (which encourages PVE interaction) or a Tech I item (ships, mods, which encourages manufacturing).

I do support playerbase’s concern about PLEX prices. Increasing the demand will increase the price, and that can’t be avoided. Fixing the exchange ratio between ISK and PLEX is possible by capping the maximum price with NPC buy orders, but this would create a huge ISK sink and in turn result in some serious deflation. So the forseeable effect of introducing non-vanity MT will force switching people who pay for gametime with ISK to a paid sub instead (or make them quit). But then again EVE was never meant to be free to play

Now let’s look at it from RL economy point of view.

CCP would like to increase ARPU (to combat crisis, to increase salaries, to make new games, etc). Lets assume, that ARPU is 14,95 EUR (1.0x) per 1 account. Before Incarna, there was no PLEX sink in the game (except for PLEXes being accidently destroyed).

But why is ARPU around 1.0x? All additional payments made by people buying GTC and converting them to PLEX are eventually consumed by people who pay for playing with ISK. This is a 1 to 1 relation, so effectively everyone is paying the same amount and ARPU equals 1.0x.

Allowing players to undock with PLEXes was not only simpifying the code. It was the first time where a small PLEX sink was introduced. With another sink introduced (NeX), ARPU will increase above said 1.0x per account, and it doesn’t matter if this is vanity or non-vanity items.

If you disagree and see any flaws in my logic, please convince me otherwise in this thread.

EVE Community backlash in pictures

EVE Community backlash in pictures

I’ve planned to write a short post about the status of the backlash, but instead, I have “stolen”* some pictures, so instead of me telling you how people react, you can see yourself. I just hope this “emergency” CSM summit brings some really good news.

Mytzso (Private Nuisance)
Mytzso (Private Nuisance)
Portmanteau (CTRL-Q)
Portmanteau (CTRL-Q)

*) all images are property of their respective owners and have been used for information purposes only