Jester’s Trek: Corner

By Ripard Teg | Aug 16th 2012 3:56AM
43 Comments

We are proud to present selected stories from this magnificent internet spaceship blogger. If you would like to read more we invite you to visit his blog here.

Jester’s Trek: Corner

What a difference six months and a new CSM Chairman makes.

I’ve now read the May Summit Minutes cover-to-cover for a second time, and I was again so struck by some of what was in it that I was driven to the December 2011 Summit Minutes to read those from cover-to-cover again.  And it really makes me wonder what would have happened had the little Fanfest incident not happened, or had those infamous 10058 votes been given to another candidate.  The results are clear enough, though: even though much of CSM6 moved straight into CSM7, the entire frame under which this CSM views EVE Online seems to be completely different.

In December, there’s nearly two entire pages in the minutes devoted to how to re-balance (read: nerf) super-caps.

In May, there’s this:  (page 85)

[Greene Lee] raised the issue of remote reps on super carriers as one factor making super-cap combat “not fun. You have 50 super carriers, and you can do nothing.”
Elise Randolph: “You bring titans and you volley through them. It doesn’t matter how many reps you have if you have titans.”
Greene Lee: “You need how many titans?”
Seleene/Elise: “16, 16-17 to go through an Aeon. Not a lot.“

Emphasis mine.  Only once are super-caps mentioned as a problem by the CSM,
and that’s in the context of the fact that Faction Warfare alliances
don’t use them for fear of being hot-dropped by PL. (page 112)

In December, other than adjusting incursions, there’s a lot of discussion and concern about where individual player ISK is going to come from.  Mining will be getting buffed, it’s said.  New players will be given a lot of ISK as soon as possible.  Holding sov will directly benefit player income more and alliance income less.  Incursions will be adjusted to be harder but in general are meeting their goals in terms of player income.

In May, the CSM points out that… well, let’s use direct quotes: Seleene says “everyone is so filthy rich that losses really don’t matter.” (page 47)  Elise Randolph can take a 100 billion ISK fleet and “at the drop of a hat just throw it around.” (page 112)  Seleene adds: “Currently things are like a bunch of fat people fighting over who gets to eat first at the ‘all you can eat’ buffet, no one will starve, it is just the question of who is first in the line.” (page 48)

In December, both CCP and the CSM were apparently highly critical of the technetium situation and both sides regarded it as a very high-priority item to correct as soon as possible.  The focus was on making alliances have to live in their space to make ISK in their space.

In May, CCP says that a major technetium fix is off the table for 2012 and nobody so much as raises an eyebrow.  Instead, the CSM feels that alliance members are making too much ISK in their space, carrier ratting has become a scourge, and Two step “believes the many faucets this is coming from should be cut back across the board.” (page 85)  And indeed, this one’s clearly becoming an issue because CCP points out the top ISK earners are all carrier pilots running anomalies.  And yet, “The massive drop off of Vanguard sites was praised [by the CSM] since they were relatively risk-free ISK.” (page 87)  You know, the incursion-runners that aren’t the top ISK earners.

In December, it was the CSM defending the ability of the players to make
ISK and shouting that the game’s massive alliances needed their incomes
reduced.  That CSM was massively anti-capital ship and
anti-super-capital ship and was pounding on the table asking CCP what
they intended to do about it.(1)

In May, we have the CSM arguing that players are rich enough and incomes need to be reduced across the board, while “Soundwave pointed out that people do die in incursions at rates higher than some other kinds of PvE content” (page 87) and “Dr.EyjoG
expressed his awareness of concerns about inflation, and that it might
price T1 ships and components out of the reach of younger players”.
(page 160) 

Somewhere along the way, we’ve turned a corner.  Or maybe it’s just the CSM that has done so.  The implication seems to be that anyone that wants a super already has one, therefore CCP no longer need worry about them, therefore doing anything about them is superfluous because they can be volleyed by the 16 or 17 Titans that apparently anyone can field.  Remember, the two summits were less than six months apart.

tl;dr: In December, it felt like CCP was defending “how things are” while the CSM was attacking it on the basis of what they felt the players wanted.  In May, with a few exceptions, it feels like the opposite.

We live in a New Eden where our player representatives feel like player income is a bigger issue for the game than tech and super-caps.  Meanwhile, it’s CCP that has to remind them that not everyone has been playing this game for seven years, not everyone is in a massive null-sec super-alliance, and not every player is space-rich.

Or am I seeing something that isn’t there?  I hope I am, because this is really bugging me.  Discuss.

(1) The irony of this is certainly not lost on me.

Ripard Teg

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  • http://poeticstanziel.blogspot.com/ Poetic Stanziel

    tl;dr: Ripard wants Mittens back as CSM chair.

    • nop

      nope. -a- just lost 15 supers, so he demands "balance" and tries to start discussion about nerfing moms and titans.

      • Zwo Zateki

        Start with capping alliances. It is not fair that a troll alliance (read: goons) bring in the whole SA with GoonWaffe having >4k members ALONE.

  • Meh

    Not so sure what I think of potential carrier ratting nerfs, these have always been the easiest (and most fun, imho) ships for roaming gangs too tackle, due too the fact that any user error the pilot could make is amplified by long align times. On top of this, you are part of nullsec's warfare and ecosystem when ratting there, as opposed too incursions when death tends too come at the hands of incompatant logi pilots and ferocious npc's, and has far less relevance in the scope of things.

    Also my blaster-sentry vindi gets better ticks than any carrier out there, although i have it in highsec currently due too the fact that i'd rather make the 80m/hr off safe, stable level 4's then be afk camped in null for a few hours, and also due too the fact that I don't take half a minute too align (I do agree passive aligning fighter Thanatos need examining however, I have been unable too catch any of those at this point..)

    • Vanquisher

      It depends on pilot. Rating carriers are soo common those days that its easy to find a noob or inexperienced pilot flying one. Those that have a clue are very hard to catch and mostly fall a victim to tricks requiring a lot of effort like login traps, blue alts, days long afk cloaking or making a mistake cos anoms are soooo "entertaining".

  • Tarikan

    As a regular grunt in an alliance, you can make enough isk for yourself, but also since we've been able to make more everything is now increasing in price. I feel the the problem is you have ships that, not 1 year ago were 100 mill, now cost double or triple that amount.

    take in point a t2 cruiser or tier 3 battleship, the battleships seems to have doubled in price (abaddon was 120-150mill now goes around 300mill), t2 cruisers seem to also have doubled (huggin now around 200-250mill). These may be just null-sec prices, but everywhere the price is going up. similar to PLEX, it used to be 320-350 mill, now you can barely find any below 480 mill (from last i looked)

    while this may just be the inflation and that many are making more isk now, it also is forcing players to try and find ways to make more money and with that it's taking more time.

    • WTF

      Don't forget regular capitals.
      A carrier was available at 650M few years ago at a time And that was when there wasn't the risk of having it 1-shot by a Titan.
      And iMO the longer you play the less motivated you become to grind for your isk doing anomalies or PVE content at all.

    • Ashesofempires

      I don't remember plexes ever falling below 450 mil. BS prices have gone up, but not much. T2 ships are much more expensive now than before.

      Regarding supers, I think CCP accomplished their goal of making them dependent upon subcaps. I don't think their goal was ever to make them counter-able by dreads or carriers, unless used as suicide blap dreads (which doesn't work out super well, price-performance ratios being what they are now).

      In may CSM was concerned about Alliances being able to fund fleets such that the loss of a fleet didn't matter. That's what Seleene was referring to. He was referring to 'everyone' as every alliance, rather than every player. The ability for an alliance to fund an SRP has directly contributed to the rise of the meatgrinder fleet doctrine of Goonswarm and their allies. It leads to shrugging off losses with little fucks given, because a pyrrhic victory no longer matters.

      Prior to the SRP, if you took a system but lost your fleet, it was not a good thing. It also didn't happen very often. Now, you can see extremely lopsided battles where it appears that one entity won the ship vs ship battle, but lost the strategic objective simply because they had to log out before their opponent, who then took whatever they came to take.

      You can guarantee that if losing 1000+ ships a week strains an alliance's SRP, the meatgrinder tactics will stop, and alliances that rely upon them will have to alter their strategy to be more isk efficient.

      • LOL.

        back in the old days you could by two month of gametime for 280 – 320m.

        also back then ships, and even more though modules, especially t2 was alot more expensive.
        My first covert ops cloak? 60m.. Cap Rechargers? 20m each..

        But honestly? that was good for the game, because it made piracy more viable (you had loot worth something) and it made losses more bitter (so people cared alot more about losing their ships).

        Its a shame this got lost, and kids like you cant even remember those golden times.

        • neutral observer

          Back in the old days, there was no EVE ONLINE!

          • xzcvxzvxz

            Back in the old days, luckilly there was no You!

      • Random CFC Grunt

        "I don't remember plexes ever falling below 450 mil" – You started playing eve 2-3 months ago? As for the rest (after an introductory sentence like that) [youtube 0WF6mniodfU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WF6mniodfU youtube]

        • Ashesofempires

          I started in April of '05, actually. But thanks for the video.

          • Fagdul

            well i can tell you they where 385 in late of 2009 my friend

    • http://evedreams.wordpress.com/ dreamersofreality

      Carriers a year ago were 750m
      Plex a year and a half ago, hovered around 350.

      Also during that time, Super-carriers were what you wanted to train for because they were not death coffins and could fight quite well on there own. With over zealous nerfing that all changed and people stopped buying plexes to quickly buy a super and Plex started to rise to today's levels. Then theres the take over of all Tech moons by a single group, that didn't help any with the Tech 2 ship and mod production. However the Drone Goo removal was the biggest hit to the eve economy, which was the big regulator to ship and cap ship prices. With that gone and mining only being the way mins are made, prices would rise as demand stayed but supply dried up. Granted this made mining worth more, but in reality CCP needed to just buff mining barges to make it worth it, while keeping the drone goo where it was. Not only with that change did prices start to rise, but also it created the biggest ISK faucet the game has ever seen. By swapping a Material Faucet to an ISK faucet, inflation was to run rampant.

      • wootsnoot

        wait what? i fail to see the isk faucet here. care to explain?

        • Alvus Parasite

          Drones were given bounties, which generates isk out of nothing. Previously when they dropped alloys, the isk that was used to buy them was already in the game and wasn't created out of thin air

        • http://evedreams.wordpress.com/ dreamersofreality

          Isk faucets are bounties primarily, a few others do exist but there not nearly as game damaging as bounties are. Bounties are ISK that is made BY the game, its new isk that has entered the stream. Sinks are places where ISK leaves the game, its ISK that has not traded hands. Sinks are primarily Skill books and SoV costs. The drone-lands were the biggest isk Sink in the game, as it still was all SoV bills and costs but it never generated its own new isk. As such it was a great balancing factor in the eve economy, and once CCP removed that…..well the rest is history.

          Right now CCP needs to add in MORE isk Sinks. Faucets are fine, and in fact should be slightly buffed back (aka more then one fucking sanctum in a -.7 or higher system but keep the rest as is). More Sinks would be something like adding in more SoV benefits, like level 2 and 3 Jump bridge upgrades that would increase the SoV cost considerably. Allowing 2 or even 3 jump bridges back into a system, but the owning alliance would pay a lot in SoV for this new benefit. There are other upgrades that also could be added as well, such as one that pays Concord for 2 gate guns on all gates in that system, that fire at any enemy ship (based on alliance standings). This upgrade could cost an alliance a lot of isk for just one system to have, it would grant better security to the system, maybe even a loss in sec? (a -1.0 becomes a -0.9 ect to a minimum of -0.0) could be a possibility.

          That could be one way to buff ISK Sinks by adding more benefits to owning SoV.

  • http://www.facebook.com/randall.flagg.397 Randall Flagg

    tl;dr: "Eve has stagflation, just like real life."

  • The ObserveR

    SuperCarriers and Titans were already rebalanced(nerfed) and while alot of evetards are still screaming about a SUPER nerf, they have been nerfed so its time to move on in the hate-parade and find a new pinata to bash with your trollbats.
    Tech and all moon goo (I think) have alchemy alternatives now that should bring Tech down to more reasonable levels and mitigate the effects of OTEC or whatever the next douche canoe coalition forms ;)

    I believe the REAL nerf to Super/Titans happened on the production side. The removal of drone alloys has not only had a dramatic effect on lowend mineral prices , it also put a halt to a majority of the ridiculously easy cap/supercap building that was taking place in drone regions. Yes you can still import 425s or your favorite compression module but you are generally paying the high min prices and facing whatever delays/costs associated with the production/movement of the compression modules.
    I guess we will see shortly how much effort it takes to replace lost supers nowadays compared to back in the day (which was between 6 months ago and 9 years ago depending on the amount of bitter you got in your tank).

    • bitter

      I think Supers and Cap in general should be rebalanced once the T1 Battleship is in place
      that means they are working on Destroyers now and perhaps Cruisers if we are lucky for winter
      that means BattleCruisers and Battleship for next summer and Capital ships for next winter?
      and then we start over again with T2 version of the ships ……. so we have a ship rebalancing thats going to take 2years? well Winter 2014 will be a good expansion

      • Vanquisher

        Actualy some alliances have more supers than they have trusted super pilots to fly them making them sit on holding chars and gathering dust. Other issue is that weaker alliances in 0.0 are slowly bleeding mom pilots either due to peoples unsubing their super alts or moving to alliance that actualy uses them. Its all a result of string of bad decisions by CCP in the past that lead to this huge disproportion where one group fields 4 times more supers than other.

        Second main issue is that curent big sources of income are mostly alt based. To bo a point where a lot of 0.0 corps have their core members purely gain income from their alts. This is allowing their alliances to rent large swatches of space providing funds to reimburse lost ships. Biggest source o isk flood are carriers since those are only things that can be used without need for alts due to cyno beacons.

        This leads to third issue risk that entry barrier to serious pvp/pve will be to high for newbies, single account players. I did a test recently dusted off my old faction BS fited it to make its total cost below 1B and did some L4 and to be honest with current way the missions are distributed i would die out of boredom before i would earn enough to fit averange alliance standard battleship. BC is a several hours long grind and some alliances like -A- barely have any spots in their fleet doctrines to low income "low" sp players.

    • Alvus Parasite

      If you are referring to -A- super welp yesterday, then they are already replaced

  • Ziff

    So… we need a ship size limit on anomalies to block anything bigger than a battleship? Seems obvious to me.

    • M1k3y

      Add acceleration gates. Problem solved.

  • Zwo Zateki

    Speaking as an incursion FC something MUST be done about incursions. Relatively risk-free ISK isn't the problem. PURE ISK REWARDS ARE (read: inflation).

    • DarthNefarius

      Zwo go read a Russian translation of the CSM minutes. While they don't show the actual numbers Incursion ISK was nerfed to the point where monthly payouts are 70-80% less then pre-Escalation.
      CCP Soundwave admitted to breaking incursions & next year if Dr E dares to talk about it he's going to have to say Escalation was an example of how a popular expansion was completely turned to shit in 1 foul swoop. Nerfing Incursions now is like beating a dead horse. Null is going to have to find a new strawman in the foreums to protect thier out of control ISK faucets else carriers running anoms will be next.
      (PS: there's an editor's note in the CSM minutes that actually states we are in a period of deflation )

      • DarthNefarius

        Its going to be interesting when in the next few months I bet the PLEX price spikes will be blamed on the near pure LP rewards of Faction warfare… You think Incursions where profitable for a few last year? You should take notice that 8 day old solo FW speedtank alts are making double-triple now of what the 20M+ SP Incursion runners in legion blitz fleets at the peak were making.

        • nenny

          at the next cash out of FW…. ill be making over 8 bill isk in 1 month the problem been is i don't have the liquid isk 2 make that 8 bill…. so ill make my 3-4 bill and on the next cash out ill make 10+ bill 4 the month.. or month and a 1/2, if we wait that long be4 the next cash out… so much easier then running incursions all day
          PS. at most ill lose my 2-4 mill isk ship.. where is the risk VS reward in that?

        • Zwo Zateki

          LP store brings in goods sold on the market, NOT PURE ISK.

          LP => S↑ => P↓

          although agents pay out ISK as well, LP make up a bigger part of FW runner's profit. Therefore FW leads to DEFLATION.

          Incursions => D↑ => P↑

          in incursions we have near-zero goods supply increase (only cheap salvage) but a shitton of ISK. Incursion runners radically increase demand without bringing any supply. This leads to INFLATION.

          Feel the difference.

  • LOL.

    oh wow, last year some alliances where threatened by a super-heavy bloc, now pl has switched sides which evens the balance between everyone also supers got a nerf so its on no ones whine priority list anymore.
    in the end it just shows what i've been saying all along: it wasn't as bad as some where trying to paint it.

    • neutral observer

      Or maybe the csm chairman then, who was also on the receiving end of that super stick isnt on the csm now.
      Maybe the new csm chairman is on the dealing end of that super stick these days.
      Ans maybe, but thats just maybe, he doesnt want to nerf the only thing that makes his alliance a force to be reckoned with.

  • whatever

    "In May, we have the CSM arguing that players are rich enough and incomes need to be reduced across the board, while “Soundwave pointed out that people do die in incursions at rates higher than some other kinds of PvE content” (page 87) and “Dr.EyjoG
    expressed his awareness of concerns about inflation, and that it might
    price T1 ships and components out of the reach of younger players”."

    And you really don't see any connection between these two?

    Nobody is arguing that overall "income" has to be reduced, the point is to reduce isk faucets *to keep fun gameplay affordable for Joe Average who has a fixed (ISK) income from mission running.*

    The problem is not that incursion runners or people who rat in carriers have a high income but that they inject a lot of ISK into the economy.

    • DarthNefarius

      Actually Dr E did argue that "overall" income has to be reduced with increased sinks

      • Vanquisher

        Yes but various sources are contributing different amounts to the pool. Its also different amount of isk contributed per player and even different contribution within the player group using same income source. Not to mention the problem of low entry point for a lot of pve content. Guy in a drake can grind sanctums but he wont get as much as the guy in pimped tengu, carrier. If you cut the income to make the tengu/carrier level balanced the drake lowbie will get a shafted same with adjusting difficulty.

  • buggrit

    CSM has become the GOP of EVE. They speak for the alliance bosses.

    Of course they want to reduce player income in their alliances and in highsec. They want to control their people, and deny resorces to the rest. BUT LEAVE THEIRS ALONE is the message. This ensures the power stays right at the top, where the hand that controls the reinbursements can bitchslap anyone.

    • lugalbandak

      tey do , and gotted the most votes

  • Shogun

    All the CSM's are rich, or come from rich alliance, so they want to cut income across the board…. that makes sense really, rich people will never see disparity as a problem, weather it's in a game, or in the real world.

  • CaptainSwing

    We are not rich, I´m playing 2 years and this shit is not justice. It´s parciality GTFO CSM.

  • OldxPlayer

    Not everyone is interested in grinding isk. Some still want a playable "game" for "fun". It's just not EVE anymore

  • ex 0.0 toon

    CSM coming across as "we are happy, so who cares what the plebs think"

  • Fagdul

    Can't imagine why the CSM would think that everyone can field 16 titans on a whim or that all in the game are too rich. It isn't like said council isn't full of tech engourged mercinaries not to mention have played the game on average for 8 years. Yes they just "nerfed" Tech, please ntoe the sarcasm there….

  • haha

    is it me of does it feel like each one of Ripard Teg's articles are both terrible and increadibly biased to the point where it hurts to read..

    honestly how many times will you keep crying for a super nerf when they have been nerfed multiple times and are already useless against everything but caps.