Posted - 2008.04.21 15:39:00 - [62]

 

*sigh* This is an example of where a CCP response would be a really good thing. Players found a massive hole in either the reasons or implementation of a change.... silence on CCP's part communicates one of a small set of things:

(1) There was actually a different reason that they do not wish to mention, thus the logic is sound but the goal is something else.
(2) They realize the mistake but do not wish to appear 'wrong' and thus show weakness.
(3) They don't care and have moved on to other things.


Notice none of those are positive? Silence allows people to read the worst in.

Unfortunately immediately jumping to OTHER topics in the dev blog doesn't help much. It's the same tactic a politician uses mid-scandal.

It's true removing shuttles isn't a 'huge' deal, it's not a make or break change.. but it's such a stinging example of where the feedback loop seems very broken,..... CCP made a change that, after some basic player research, doesn't make sense... doesn't match the explanation, and CCP ends up simply not responding to something they don't feel like responding too.

Posted - 2008.04.21 19:17:00 - [64]

 

Originally by: floater666

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I am a relative new subscriber to EVE (3 months). Was the above mentioned always the case with CCP? Since I am a costumer they never admit making wrong decisions, and every patch makes as much bad as good. The problem of not admiting is that the ****ups stay in the game.

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It varies. Big things they tend to own up to pretty quickly (the boot.ini problem, looking into the FPS slam, etc), but balance and mechanic changes tend to not be handled as well.

The shuttle one they did partially well at least. By keeping it quiet till the last minute they avoided some of the speculation craziness that has been an irritant in the past.... so they are learning some lessons at least ^_^. And in theory this new representative council will help with the feedback loop (or provide a rubber-stamping scape goat. hard to say at this stage).

The horrible 'breaks the game' issues however have been much worse since Trinity then they were in the past, so the last 3 months have not been a very good representative slice of stability. It will probably get better as Trinity ages.. or could get worse as the problems get more esoteric due to an aging code base. We will see.

Quote:

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If it was always the case I had better not to waste my time in the forums, and the game?

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I would recommend answering those as two separate questions. If the forums and feedback loop are frustrating then by all means don't bother with them ^_~ However that is separate from the game,... so judge if you are going to stay in the game based off the game alone.

Posted - 2008.04.21 20:36:00 - [66]

 

Edited by: Nyphur on 21/04/2008 20:41:15
Edited by: Nyphur on 21/04/2008 20:38:42

Originally by: Nekopyat

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The shuttle one they did partially well at least. By keeping it quiet till the last minute they avoided some of the speculation craziness that has been an irritant in the past.... so they are learning some lessons at least ^_^.

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Except that since the cap hasn't been lifted, the players now have ample opportunity to buy up and refine civ afterburners before they get fixed and since they released a devblog, their intent is clear and it's obvious that the civ abs were an oversight that will be fixed. They're caught between a rock and a hard place. Either they fix civ abs and assume that the supply of trit from speculators buying them is not significant compared to the amount of trit currently hoarded or they leave the cap in place. The latter represents design hipocrisy in light of the recent devblog but that's not something CCP are going to lose any sleep over.

The annoying part is that the economist inadvertantly misreported market conditions to the playerbase and this has increased the fallout from the problem by encouraging people to play the trit market when nothing significant at all has really changed.

Originally by: CCP Dr.EyjoG

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As noted in this blog we did realize that there were other price caps in the game and that the removal of the shuttle would only lift the price cap rather than remove it.

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No, you're missing the point. It hasn't moved at all. Shuttles gave trit for 3.6 with perfect refine rates and civillian afterburners give it for 3.6 per unit with perfect refine rate. All that's changed is that people now have to haul the afterburners to where they're used to refining. And don't kid yourself that dynamic pricing will affect this module at all. Millions of units can be purchased daily for the base price of 216, refining into billions of tritanium.

Additionally, you personally misinformed the eve community that the cap had been raised and you had no idea where it would settle. You even suggested it would settle at a price based on supply and demand and that the market post-change reacted to increased prices with increased supply from people hoarding trit. None of that is true. The market reacted to raise the price due to speculation and then dropped it again once the afterburner problem became widely known.

Posted - 2008.04.21 22:07:00 - [68]

 

Originally by: Nekopyat

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Originally by: CCP Dr.EyjoG

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As noted in this blog we did realize that there were other price caps in the game and that the removal of the shuttle would only lift the price cap rather than remove it.

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While I am in the camp that thinks the dev post was misleading and the change kinda sketchy, I really have to give Dr. EyjoG serious props for commenting on the criticisms. CCP really needs more posts like this. 2 way discussions, even if they don't resolve, are superior to the frustration of feeling like you are arguing into the void.

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Agreed, but I'd prefer if he logged into the game and actually took a look at the market rather than taking people on their word. He's taken people in this thread on their word that the trit supply from civ abs is much lower than that from shuttles and much more difficult to get but if you take a look at the market, it's clear that this isn't the case.

Look at the market data in The Forge for civ afterburners. On the 16th, people bought over 8 million of them and on the 18th, people bought 12.6 million units. Sales for both days had a high, low and average value of 216, meaning it's perfectly feasible to millions of units without raising the price. Only one sell order out of 14 in the entire region shows a price greater than 216, which is 225.09 and which will reduce every day until it hits 216 again. We'll see how long it takes for that sell order to hit 216 again but with over a dozen sell orders per region, it honestly doesn't matter.

Right now, if I wanted to buy out all the sell orders at 216, I could get over 108 million afterburners just in The Forge, producing 6.5 billion tritanium at 3.6 isk per unit. There's enough supply within empire to supply the entirety of eve's demand for tritanium at 3.6 isk per unit and there are enough people in a position to offer that recycling service for tiny profit margins (3.61-3.7) that the market will remain supplied with npc-generated trit. Mark my words, the standard price of trit in highsec trade hubs will not rise significantly until the remaining caps are removed.

In my opinion, it's better to remove that cap now to minimise the fallout to the trit market than to wait a few months hoping people won't expect it when the afterburner-recycling is eventually fixed.

Posted - 2008.04.22 06:39:00 - [70]

 

Edited by: BlondieBC on 22/04/2008 06:43:53
Edited by: BlondieBC on 22/04/2008 06:41:48

Originally by: CCP Dr.EyjoG

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Hence, with lower quantity available in fewer places the price cap has effectively been lifted.

Other price caps will be removed in due time, but for the same reasons that we kept the shuttle change very quiet we cannot announce when these caps will go away, but they will.

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The price cap has not been lifted, it has only been adjusted. This is the same thing as OPEC changing its production quota. Quota change not equal to quota lifting.

All one has to do is look at the increased sales of civilian afterburners to see that the price cap has not been lifted.

I believe the totality of the communication has been misleading.

The handling of the change seems to have needless added volatility to a market with no major benefits. The effective 0.2 isk rise in trit prices has no major impact on mining practices, imo.

All these issue could have been fixed by make civilian afterburners more expensive or non reprocessable.

Posted - 2008.04.22 12:56:00 - [72]

 

Edited by: Nyphur on 22/04/2008 13:06:13

Originally by: Kerfira

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(just for the record, I DON'T mine!)

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I don't mine as a profession either because as you say the risk versus reward is out of whack. I did go on a huge mining spate and come up with a complex alternative mining system that the devs seemed to enjoy before completely dismissing:
http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=579110

What's a big shame is that CCP seem content to do everything in baby steps. Remove shuttles today, remove civ afterburners in a month or two, remove other caps as the months progress... all in a misguided attempt to keep markets stable during the changeover. A mere mention that the cap was rising by CCP caused havoc on the markets even though it wasn't true, each tiny change will cause similar market speculation. In addition, none of these little baby steps are addressing the wider issue. Hell, they aren't even addressing one issue in its entirety. Why weren't ALL caps removed instead of just just shuttles?


The wider issue at hand here is that several game mechanics (such as NPC sale of goods) rely on certain mineral values which are held as constants. Trit, according to these constants, is worth 1 isk per unit and since NPC sold goods cost over three times their base value (a measure implemented at eve's inception to avoid reprocessing for profit), trit can't rise above about three times the base value (when I say three times, it is of course 3.6 times). Some modules refine into ONLY trit, meaning regardless of other mineral prices, they can provide tritanium at 3.6 isk per unit. Other modules use an array of minerals and will only be profitable to refine if the combined refined minerals are worth more than three times (3.6 times I think) their total npc base value.

CCP have this habit of only patching up the most visible cracks in the game and taking months or even years to do so. Here's a list of things that rely on NPC values which are no longer valid:
- Insurance cost
- Insurance payout
- Value of minerals given an oversupply (via insurance and ship-build batch prices)
- Value of minerals given an undersupply (via refining of npc-sold items)
- The risk-reward scheme in place for mining. Highsec ore was intended to be worth more than the best ore found in lowsec but this isn't the case any more because of the price of minerals being completely out of whack. Distribution of ore depends on the npc base values.
- Probably some other ideas I'm forgetting.

And the worst part is that despite some players like myself continually bringing problems to their attention, CCP often dismiss them because they think they know better. They can do database queries and have access to private test clusters but those are a poor substitute for experience. The CSM idea, if pulled off correctly, should mitigate this somewhat but we'll see how they handle that.


EDIT: And before someone suggests it, gaining the npc values from the market average is an inherently abusable system. And yes, there are people with hundreds of billions of isk who would manipulate entire markets to abuse it for profit (or even just for fun). All systems relying on NPC base values need to be completely replaced by alternative systems which don't rely on mineral value.

Posted - 2008.04.22 16:56:00 - [74]

 

Originally by: Letouk Mernel

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Nobody's buying the afterburners

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The market data disagrees but for the most part, you're correct. People are only buying them whenever price rise above 3.6 in jita, pushing it back down again. That's the way the cap works, the same way the shuttle cap worked and the removal of shuttles hasn't affected anything at all. Nobody's suggesting that all of Eve's trit comes from recycling shuttles/afterburners but I think I've already demonstrated that there is atually enough to supply the whole of eve's demand at 3.6, meaning the cap still exists for any amount of trit sold per day in eve. This makes it feasibly impossible for the price to go above the cap, regardless of the demand.

Posted - 2008.04.23 03:02:00 - [76]

 

A total revamp to mining is even less likely to be implemented than other fixes suggested here and elsewhere. Just the words "total revamp" give them shivers, I bet.

Posted - 2008.04.23 13:56:00 - [78]

 

How long does it take CCP to push and approve a change through the regular QA process? It looks like that's what they're doing.

Edit: Obligatory comments about how the QA process is slow AND ineffective (must be really cheap then), blah blah blah etc. Also, fix the Overview! I'm done.

Posted - 2008.04.23 14:25:00 - [80]

 

Originally by: Nyphur

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I was going to mention this, CCP's turnaround on changes is very slow. Especially considering how ineffective their QA department has proven itself to be. The shuttle change was suggested by Dr eijogogogog back in his last quarterly newsletter, wasn't it?

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One wonders if they have simply become too heavy-weight in terms of model and process. One of the big advantages of an on-line format like this, normally, is the ability to push out rapid content updates and changes. Yet they are slowing down.

If they don't deal with their process issues then all it will take is one small nimble company to enter their niche to cause them serious hurt.

Posted - 2008.04.24 07:16:00 - [82]

 

One general question I would like to ask:

To what extent is tritanium produced through the refining of veldspar and other ores versus reprocessing of manufactured items? Of the 20bn or so units traded each day, what are the sources?

Alcair

Posted - 2008.04.24 16:43:00 - [84]

 

Edited by: Goumindong on 24/04/2008 16:45:03

Originally by: Kerfira

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I think they're trying to remove as many game-imposed restrictions on the player-driven market as they can, leaving the only restrictions the availability of the basic building materials (minerals, moon materials...).

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I am going to be short here and not really give an in-depth explanation

Whether they like it or not by having control over the money supply and material supply they are directly influencing the prices of the materials. In combination with insurance which creates a price floor on baskets of goods that make up ships this has direct effects on the prices of minerals. But even if insurance wes not around, they would still have direct control over the mineral prices at all times.

So the argument that they want to get rid of price controls is fairly thin. Price controls easily allow them to drive players in the directions they want to be[be that geographically or socially], and they are controlling prices anyway.

So on one hand we have Dr. E saying that the lack of people in low-sec and 0.0 is a problem that needs to be fixed, and on the other hand we have Dr. E implementing a change to the game that makes low-sec and 0.0 space less profitable, a change that creates a disincentive for players to live in those areas.

Posted - 2008.04.25 14:06:00 - [86]

 

Edited by: Nyphur on 25/04/2008 14:06:43

Originally by: Goumindong

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This is just another example and description of why this change has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with balance. Its the goals of the balance that seem so perplexing to me.

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Since when have CCP ever used goals? Something I have actually noticed is that often the dev in charge of something is put into a position of having to justify a change within his domain of expertise because the higher-ups had an idea that they won't let go. Take bombs for example. Tuxford was put in the unenviable position of having to release a devblog all about bombs and what they're good for. They weren't required, there was no role that they could really fill in combat and since release I haven't heard of them ever being used to good effect where another ship or tactic wouldn't have been better but someone high up obviously wanted them to go live and so they did.

The devblog touted the role of the bomb in anti-blob warfare, as if a justification of their existance. However, when I started to actually think about it, I realised that bombs wouldn't do anything for blob warfare and that Tuxford didn't even appear to know what a blob was, let alone how to counter it. I don't mean to call his ability into question, only to point out the fact that he was left holding the bag and having to justify the existance of bombs when I'm almost certain they weren't his idea. At first glance, many of us assumed they were anti-blob weaponry and we went along with it so it's no surprise that he did too.



From what I can tell, they don't set goals and work toward those goals. Instead, someone high up decides he wants a massive ship that can blow up a whole fleet in one shot and it gets done. Someone high-up wants bombs and they get made. Someone high-up wants a tier 3 battleship despite roles not existing for them and they get made (and shoehorned into the game by fiddling with the other battleships roles). Someone high-up's favourite system is being jumped into because the patch broke cyno jammers? Let's bypass the normal bugfixing procedure and get GMs to declare that POS warfare is offlimits until that one bug is fixed, ignoring other more critical issues. Remember that?

To be fair to CCP, their current approach has worked pretty well and this new CSM thing should get info from the playerbase as a whole that should improve eve for everyone. But right now I can't shake the feeling that we're all playing in the devs playground and they design all the toys for themselves.

Posted - 2008.04.25 19:53:00 - [88]

 

Originally by: Nyphur

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To be fair to CCP, their current approach has worked pretty well and this new CSM thing should get info from the playerbase as a whole that should improve eve for everyone. But right now I can't shake the feeling that we're all playing in the devs playground and they design all the toys for themselves.

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This is, unfortunately, a natural consequence of having devs play their own game.
In general you actually do not want the final balancers being people who also play the game. You need designers and QA people who are disconnected and thus able to look at 60,000ft issues. When your team plays the game you get a lot of 50 ft perspectives and those get filled quite well but the whole suffers.

Posted - 2008.04.26 13:46:00 - [90]

 

Originally by: Goumindong

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Originally by: CCP Dr.EyjoG

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As noted in this blog we did realize that there were other price caps in the game and that the removal of the shuttle would only lift the price cap rather than remove it.

It is also true that with perfect refining skills and good corp standing, civilian afterburners can be refined for 3.6 ISK per unit of tritanium, which is the same level as shuttles before; but there is a catch. As has been noted in this thread by pilots, the civilian modules are not as widely available as shuttles and we can also confirm that the dynamic pricing kicks in much sooner than it did for the shuttles (yes, the shuttles were also dynamically priced). When does the dynamic pricing kick in? We cannot tell you since that could cause a havoc on the market.

Hence, with lower quantity available in fewer places the price cap has effectively been lifted.

Other price caps will be removed in due time, but for the same reasons that we kept the shuttle change very quiet we cannot announce when these caps will go away, but they will.

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Do you have any comment on why you are doing this and possibly messing up risk/reward balance between various activities which is a legitimate game balance point or is this just for jollies?

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I agree that the free market is messing up the balance between security status, and I would like to see a post on what ccp is doing to fix this.

Also, there are many easy fixes. For example in low sec, increase the mins per m3 of high sec ore by 50%. In 0.0, add another 50% to high sec ores and add 100% to low sec. This type of fix has been done with ice and would be easy to implement.