EVE Online's First Quarterly Economics Report Published 80
The first quarterly report from EVE Online's very own economist has been released at the game's official site. GamesIndustry.biz has some comments from Dr. Guðmundsson on this first batch of numbers, exploring a bit of his methodology and the joys of working in EVE's closed environment: "Since life in Eve evolves at a faster pace than real life, we must use a so-called 'chained price index' rather than a representative basket. In real life, representative baskets are always used and in many cases the surveys for these baskets are done with very long time intervals. By looking at our results it is obvious how the fixed basket approach can overestimate the impact of price changes, just as predicted by theory. With consumer preferences changing faster now in real life than ever before (consumer electronics is a good example), this might be a lesson that could help us understand better changes in price levels and how we measure that outside virtual worlds."
quarterly? (Score:2)
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You also end up with a pseudo real-life model in which factors cannot be hidden from the person conducting the study. Since all the information is stored and can't be hidden from the system you have fewer limitations.
Re:quarterly? (Score:5, Insightful)
In this situation, they can actually apply their model, and watch things play out through the actions of real people, even if they're all dealing in imaginary goods. It's really exciting stuff, especially since the changes happen faster than "real world time" so you can get a since of price fluctuations much more quickly than you could out in the real world. It's also a closed system, so you have access to ALL the variables.
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I'd say the majority of corporations are 'socialist' mission running corps. In mission running corps richer (usually older game-time) players help poorer players by giving them Isk, hard to acquire items and most importantly their time and their status with the NPCs in the game. Letting a newbie tag along on a Lvl4 mission goes a long way towards the newbie being able to do L
Re:quarterly? (Score:4, Insightful)
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"By looking at our results it is obvious how the fixed basket approach can overestimate the impact of price changes, just as predicted by theory. With consumer preferences changing faster now in real life than ever before (consumer electronics is a good example), this might be a lesson that could help us understand better changes in price levels and how we measure that outside virtual worlds."
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However, though EVE's timeline is accelerated and thus requires special attention in that aspect, it is much less subject to the seasons and holidays than a real world economy. Of course, if you wanted to try to be really accurate you could try to consider how the habits of the players would affect the economy based on regional holidays.
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If you notice trends based on the preceding year, you can maybe identify a causal connection, and then increase your business by catering to it.
But they cannot fix the isk farming problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
You can pull up a list of contracts on a farmer character and see trillions of isk flowing into the hands of isk sellers on ebay, report this and nothing is done....
I would ask their economist how rich players can afford the very best and how that shapes the economy in the game, when people cheat.
Cheating is going on, and I know it cannot be stopped... but it is even obvious to the layman by the quantity of isk farmer posts on the official forums.
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Technically Interstellar Kredit, but whatever. It's a play on the Icelandic Kronar, for which the international designation is also "isk".
~Wx
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isk == interstellar kredits (Score:1, Redundant)
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You would think by now that CCP would go through at least a method of detecting such spams by analyzing eve mails for content to flag accounts for further investigation, but then again this is CCP we're talking about after all.
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Amarr though, seems a dead zone to me. Rens is much more active.
Re:But they cannot fix the isk farming problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
It involves blowing them up.
(Isk farmers drop great loot, by the way.)
Sounds like a plan (Score:2)
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Is it cheating, or is it just trade between two related economies? If the game developers don't have a problem with it, that strongly implies the latter to me.
Link to the report (Score:5, Informative)
my thoughts (Score:3, Insightful)
They need to work on making the game more fun... The interface and graphics are nice, but 1) combat is boring; and 2) there is nothing to do but repetitively mine asteroids and wait weeks for your skills to increase. During the weeks I played, I managed to buy a ship with a huge cargo hold and a nice mining laser. I would just park the ship on a big asteroid and suck it all in, which takes about three hours. For a while I would get up in the middle of the night or during shows to be continually mining 24 hours a day.
Finally, I realized that it was pointless because I wouldn't even be able to fly the awesome ships for weeks or months simply due to the skill system. I would never buy a Warcraft character online because leveling is 3/4ths of that game. The only way to get even a semblance of parity in Eve is to ebay a character that has been in training for 6+ months.
You can only train skills on one character at a time, so in order to be truly efficient you have to buy two accounts so you can train a mining guy and a combat guy simultaneously.
The auction system and the player crafting are the strong points of Eve. The foundation is there to be a fabulous game, but they need to totally revamp character development.
My dream would be to combine the pre-jump-to-light-speed Star Wars Galaxies ground game with Eve's space system. It boggles the mind why Sony didn't just buy out Eve years ago and do exactly this. Then, you could do missions and skill up on the ground, AND enjoyably fly around in space (JTLS was vomit-inducing).
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Ahh the Eve elitist mindset. (Score:5, Insightful)
Reread your own statement multiple times if you don't see the fault in it.
Working hard *at* a game is one thing, working hard *in* one is completely different.
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Some forms of entertainment are easy (TV); some require effort if you want to play well (golf). This isn't a "right vs wrong" scenario here, it's all a question of what you personally enjoy.
-Jeff
That's Not It (Score:2)
Plus there's the learning curve of knowing which skills to learn, the learning curve of space combat (For lowbie's it's really just point and shoot.) In WoW you have to optimize you
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If you have access to the AH... you'll have your first gold by level 8-10 by selling herbs / ore / skins. By late-teens, you should have a few gold banked (unless you spend it all on the auction house). I've done this recently (trying out a character on the opposite side from what I normally play).
(I played EVE for about 9 months, and while I still have characters in trai
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1) They need to learn the geography of the area and where to go to find resources (The auction house being one such resource)
2) They
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The SP system is fucking retarded, tbqh, and the game manages to be decent in spite of it. It'd be nice as backup/passive training, but not being able to d
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Skill? Skill in eve is fitting/poopsocking, theorycrafting to give you the best chance to
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As a World of Warcraft player, I have to disagree with these comments:
1. My wife and I play WoW to have fun. It's our "cheap date night", and allows us to laugh, have some coffee with Bailey's, and relax.
I shou
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Unfortunately, it takes more than a month to train up a character and/or learn how to do more than mine/run missions.
SOE boggles the mind (Score:4, Interesting)
SOE boggles the mind, there fixed it for you.
I have a theory for why MMORPG's are the way they are. The companies behind aren't run by gamers who enjoy gaming as a hobby.
I will tell you a couple of game elements. SWG's jedi XP grind where as a fully experienced character you had to trade regular XP from killing into jedi XP at a 10:1 or worse ratio. Endless amounts of killing for a slow level up of your jedi skill, so that you could kill things a tiny bit faster.
SWG collectible items, a dozen incomplete sets clogging up your inventory. Lotro's reputation system, that involves farming items for measly rewards. Lotro's deed rewards that involves killing hundreds of critters so you character can go from 10% fire resistance to 11% (which means you still are 89% vulnerable).
WoW's repuation grind for.... eh what was it for again? Special mounts or something?
Eve's online levelling system where you have to keep logging in to select new skills to level up while you are logged off.
Vendor trash, an area populated with half a dozen different critters all who drop 4 different kinds of vendor trash (looted items that have no value except to sold to NonPlayerCharacters, cash but cash you have to have inventory space for) so that you need 24 empty spots in your inventory just for one area, trash like teeth that stack only to ten, while you can carry life sized statues with no problem and go swimming to them.
They are ALL delay tactics. Stuffing your inventory with junk forces you to travel back and forth. Rep grinding is just a way to keep you busy.
The odd thing is WHY? Well, because they want us to pay the monthly fee right? Well, no. Think of it, see gaming as a hobby. Is 14.95 that much? I have a friend with a hobby of scuba diving, he pays he would LOVE to be able to do his hobby for my complete costs of PC, internet and monthyly fee.
Even in gaming, plenty of other games have long lasting appeal without forcing the player to grind. Imagine if MS Flight Simulator only allowed you to fly a 747 AFTER you grinded 1200 Cessna landings. Imagine if Half-Life only allowed to to play multiplayer AFTER grinding the tutorial 100 times.
Imagine if before you could connect to a multiplayer map, you first had to spend several minutes running around a single player map to set up the story.
Plenty of single AND multiplayer games have long lasting appeal without introducing a grind, so why do ALL MMMORPG designers have this desperate urge to inject it into their games?
Would you keep playing a MMO (and more importantly paying the fee) if the pure grind like the reputation grind was removed and the only lasting appeal was the gameplay itself.
Would you raid the same instance if you didnt need to in order to get all the items?
Other games can pull that off, are MMORPG's as games that bad that they got to hook us with something else then the fun of gaming?
No, I don't think so, but it seems MMORPG designers think so.
Oh well, no time, got head into misty mountains and collect rings, almost at exhalted status, so I can get a new skin for my horse.
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I think the grind you're talking about is due to the RPG genre. It comes from D&D. You have to build a character, and it takes time. The fun is in the imagination. When you play WoW, you're not relying on your own imagination - you're expecting th
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Personally, I just try to avoid it with as much variety as possible, taking advantage of the different aspects of the game and simply not participating in things like reputation grinding or re-running instances for r
Like, duh... (Score:2)
Because an MMORPG without grind is a FPS.
If everyone in EVE could fly a Titan (the most skill intensive ship to fly) the first day they logged in, you'd have a first-person shooter, not a role playing game.
Although I do agree that having to log in to change skills is stupid.
You mistake grind with levelling (Score:3, Interesting)
The grind happens when you already levelled, but still have to do the same thing an INSANE number of times to advance tiny amounts.
For WoW and LOTRO this is the reputation grind. For Eve it might be mining.
Let me explain how the rep grind works in lotro.
Say you want the gain reputation with the hobbits. You can't do this until you are 39. To gain rep, you need to get special loot items that drop from human enemies past level 35 BUT with a max level. They drop rarely. 10 mathoms (the item) is 300 points,
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The Eve Grind (Score:2)
Log in.
Check to see if skill is done training.
If not, go have fun.
If so, change it, then go have fun.
Eve doesn't wear out your mouse buttons, clicking on rabbits. It wears out patience, which too many people have far too little of.
Are there "other" ways to advance? Yeah -- but there is more than one way to earn an isk, as opposed to the "Go kill 1000 innocent woodland creatures of a semi-rare variety"
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Same with supercaps and other large ships. There are enormous isk investments and time requirements outside the SP system.
The SP system is fucking stupid.
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Eve combat is the only game where I *still* get so hyped on adrenaline that I shake so hard I can't control the mouse. Combat is far more fun when you really got something to lose (or win) rather than just respawning to zerg it again.
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In the early days, I made my isk ratting (killing the NPC pirates that infest the asteroid belts). That admittedly became a bit of a grind, but not anywhere near as bad as the mining experience you describe. That being said, I hate grinds, so when I discovered that
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Sorry man, but any MMORPG that allows exploits like the Guiding Hand Social Club [klaki.net]'s is incredible. I don't think there's another game out there that allows playing on that level.
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The game is more complicated than setting your guns to autofire and sitting back and waiting for the pop. You have to manage your capacitor and make sure your drones aren't getting blown up. In PvP, it's even more complex
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Here's a hint: You don't need to mine to make money. At all. Ever. Train your combat pilot and run combat missions. If you fancy PVP, then go do that. I guarantee you, the real thing holding you back from using whatever awesome ship you're talking about
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Based on your post, I reactivated my account and figured I would give it another shot. I am having more fun this time, but I still don't think I quite get it.
I have my hauler which generates $400k of money with two mouse clicks at 3 hour intervals (the boring mining thing). I also have a cruiser ship which can three-shot kill npc's in 0.8-0.5 space. This only generates about 100k isk per hour of active playing, most of which is spent trying to find npc's that someone else hasn't already killed.
Any advice
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If you havn't run the chain already, I recommend going through the mission sequence that your starter agent gives you. The reward at the end is a stat boosting implant, along with a sizable standing gain with your faction. Standings determine what quality agen
Yay Sony? (Score:2)
I'm glad they didn't. Just look at their current leper Vanguard... They acquired it and almost immediately started dumbing it down. If they got hold of Eve, they'd probably rip out the entire economics part just because it's complex. Now, just to appease the Vanguard players: I've got a copy and a dormant account lying around. I still think the game has massive potential, but judging from the patch notes, it still n
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Exactamundo. And, since the game is so complex, you still get better (although in Eve, you get better instead of your character) with practice, so somebody who does that but never plays is still going to be basically worthless. Even better though, if you're smart you don't have to spend quite as much time on it.
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I wish there was a way to improve skills outside the SP system, so if I have a large chunk of time, I can spend it on actively grinding say, my probing skills by doing exploration missions or scouting or something.
I really do think a hybrid of a UO/Galaxies style skill system, where skills level up as you use them, with passive attribute based offline skill increases ala Eve would be ideal.
The actual report. (Score:4, Informative)
The report that the story is actually about (but doesn't link to) is available here. [llnwd.net]
fava
Doctor What ? (Score:2)