Latest Patch Notes

Click here to check out the latest patch notes for Eve Online.

Eve Online Guides

Basic guides to get you started making isk in New Eden.

Blueprint Research Guide

Basic guide to start researching blueprint orginals.

New to Eve Online?

Check out the Beginner's Guide

Planetary Interaction: Investment Guide

Investment Guide to designing your own PI production.

May 30, 2014

PLEX: Intervention 2

During fanfest this year Dr. Eyjo, CCP's in-house economist, confirmed another plex intervention during his Eve economic presentation . Several notable differences can be drown between the first plex intervention and the second. Dr. Eyjo was very forthcoming the first time as to the problem, the reason, the fix, the how and the result. He was far more vague this time around giving away almost nothing other than confirming there was a problem and we fixed it. What do we know?


The Problem:
We all saw the problem, plex prices took a huge spike much bigger than the last time around. Dr. Eyjo decide to take action because volume dropped not because of the price increase, very important to note this distinction.

The Reason:
Dr. Eyjo does mention plex has increased in usage over time.  He says sells have increased over the lifetime of plex. Other than that he doesn't really pin the reason on this intervention on any one aspect of the game, be it ship skins or an other feature, other than the volume of trade dropped below his liking so he decided to intervene. A little bit different explanation than last time.

The Fix:
EVE Central Bank may, or may not, take actions to intervene with the PLEX market if its stability is severely threatened.
- Important to note that it does not mean that there is a specific target for PLEX prices or money supply in the future
CCP by Dr. Eyjo's request decided to take action.
 
The How:
Dr. Eyjo said, he will not tell you how or why or how much. "We didn't affect the trade, we did do a little bit of ingame trickry that helped the price." What do we know? CCP had a little plex give away in the middle of April to the tune of 700 plex (Source:TMC Story, Evenews24 Story). I think he seeded the market with plex as well as the give away.


The Result:
The plex market stabilized and he didn't say much more about it.

Conclusion:
Dr. Eyjo repeats over and over that in-game markets are not inflated. Plex interventions have only taken place when the volume begins to drop and not when the price goes up any particular amount. Both ideas I agree with, if you look at his graphs about facets and sinks you begin to understand that the game has controls on the amount of in-game currency and can only scale up as more people play the game. Maybe that's why he started his presentation this year covering inflation.

May 23, 2014

Operation: POS Full Stop

About two weeks before the industry devblogs dropped I was poised to set up my own small pos operation. I had purchased or built all my equipment that I would need fuel, starbase modules, etc. I had moved all my equipment to the system I was planning on setting up in. The only thing I had left to do was buy a corp with standings before I set it all up in space.

I had been busy all month and had this one Saturday to set everything up. So I hesitated thinking I wouldn't find time for everything, I finally decided to wait until I had more time to set up my operations. Two weeks later the industry devblogs started coming out and I put all my plans on hold. Until I can get a handle on all the changes I thought it was best to wait out exactly what would change, you know how much the markets can drop when these things are announced. So I watched and waited to better position my new investments.

I am still planning on going ahead with a pos operation but it's function has changed from that of a research set up, I was originally going to run, to an all around set up with both research and manufacturing elements. Also my planned system location has changed and probably will change again as we see more specifics with the team elements being introduced.

Just when I had adjusted my plans and was again preparing for the launch of Kronos on June 3 when, as you all know, the industry changes were pushed back to the July 22 release date. Now I am eager and waiting for the industry changes, as I am sure most of you are as well, so hang in there hopefully soon we can get on the test server and start playing with some of these new changes.

May 19, 2014

Freighter Pilots Fret

As a game develops and gets older there is those little quality of life things that are added. Better menus, removal of needless clicking, and of course faster travel around the game.  We have seen it with the addition of more jump clones and less time to use those jump clones. The other thing that usually develops over time is the removal of barriers to entry into certain types of game play. For example the devs hope that the industry changes will simplify the process and make it easier for more people to build stuff, as one recent example.

So I don't understand why the devs slowed freighters down in Rubicon, they were painfully slow already. I didn't understand why people weren't more upset then. But they are upset now. And why not? A freighter is going to have less cargo space, less ehp, and still be slow. You can get one or the other back with different rigs but then comes the added barrier to entry card.

If you want more people to become players in your mmo making the game more time consuming instead of less doesn't make sense. Making people pay, half again what the ship cost, to bring that ship up to speed for how it use to fly for all those years doesn't make sense.

So the solution is, as I have heard commented before, just use a shipping service or courier contracts. Which is what we will have to do even when the eventual shipping prices goes up. I still feel for you new industrialists out there I thought I had a hard time working up the ladder. You guys will have a mountain to climb once the industry changes hit in July.

Updated Re-balance for Freighters May 21, 2014

May 13, 2014

Keeping Up With Kronos and now Crius

If your like me you are all really busy and don't have a lot of time to keep up on all the changes coming up with the Kronos release. I wanted to create a summary of changes and touch on the impact this would have on the market. Several other people have already put together some really good articles that cover pretty much everything I wanted to touch on so I am going to point you their way.

The first thing is a summary of the changes you can find a good list over at K162space. With so many changes it can be hard to keep up with everything, it is nice to see a complete list for referencing and review.

The second is an article over at evenews24.com called Predicted Winners and Losers from the Kronos Changes. Danny Centauri did a great job covering a lot of the market speculation surrounding Kronos. Go over give it a read, take some notes, and keep running those calculations. Also check out his blog posts Unofficial Kronos Patch Notes and now Unofficial Crius Patch Notes

I have been going over the devblogs again this week doing some calculations. I had somethings I was going to cover but with the industry changes being pushed back until July 22, likely things will change.

Update: Also a new devblog is out explaining exactly what is going to be in Kronos.

May 9, 2014

Economic Insight into 11th Year Celebration

A couple of quick thoughts on Eve's 11 Celebration achievement counters which if reached unlocks more gecko drones.The thing I find most telling about the numbers chosen for the counters is that they give us a snap shot of the economic impact of a given play style over a week's duration. So with that in mind lets look at the significance or impact these play styles have from week to week.

Volume of Ore Mined 25.7 billion m3, ore is refined before its hauled to far which would break this number down pretty fast. On top of that any manufacturing or compression that takes place will quickly negate the large m3 cargo space of all this ore.

NPC Bounties Claimed 7.44 trillion, this is a huge isk facet and to think sinks will be about equal to this amount. The engine that is the Eve economy is massive.

Science and Industry Jobs 802 thousand, considering the amount of slot ques in stations this is a fairly quantifiable number.

ISK Destroyed 5.34 trillion not a totally unknown or unexpected number considering the wide spread reporting of killboards. Its pretty amazing that this happens week in week out. A really cool look inside the Eve economy.

The second thing that hit me was the type of categories they choose. Which break down to 4 activities mining, missions or ratting, industry and pvp. Wouldn't it be interesting to have other achievements to work towards for, I don't know, exploration sites run or courier contract cargo amounts something like that.

Happy Mining, Hunting, Researching, and Pvping for Eve's Birthday!

May 2, 2014

What do I think of the Industry Changes?

Some of my dramatic notes about the changes will now follow:

We are on the eve of the greatest changes to industry ever. No pun intended.

CCP could have been quoted as saying: "All your spreadsheet are belong to us."

CCP has hit the rest button on all of our spreadsheets. This might as well be day one save for the amount of investment ready isk players have.

Its been a couple days since I wrote down my knee jerk reactions to the different industry changes. I am having a hard time swallowing the complete overhaul. I think if they would have spread out these devblogs over the past four months instead of the last two weeks the reaction of the industrial player base may have been sated some what. Instead we got a complete overhaul of the 3 levels of the industry system plus some extra all in a two week span.

Level 1 Refining: Reprocess all the things

Level 2 Blueprints: Researching, the Future

Level 3 Manufacturing: The Price of Change and Building Better Worlds and Industry UI

Extra Random Sauce: Team Up(Not actually teams just npc, isk sink, bonus things.)

I get it though, I get that refining needs some tweaks. I understand that blueprints needed some work. I realize the slot system and pricing fix were inevitable to better scale with the growth of the game. The teams thing just goes a little far into the realm of needless complication. Either way it just got a whole lot harder for a newbro looking to start into the manufacturing game. It will be tough to compete against well established manufacturing operations.

I do like the new UI though, the layout and design looks really nice.