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Original post by ddboarm Player controlled economy - not really, only gives the player the 'feeling' he/she has some economic control and they tell you that you have control.

You say that, but then you go on to say...

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But that is my opinion - I didn't even like it enough to finish the free 14-day trial or make it through the tutorial.

I'm going to call you out on this really quick. If you haven't even finished the tutorial, let alone the trial, then you're not qualified to comment on the behavior of the economy (let alone most of the game mechanics).
All the ships you purchase were made by players. All the minerals purchased to make those ships were provided by players. There are SOME sinks in the game, skill books for instance and BPOs, but for the most part those are one time costs. Unless you're running your own POSes you can pretty much ignore almost all of the money sinks CCP put in (insurrance works only for T1 ships, for T2 and T3 ships it doesn't pay back anywhere near the cost of the ship). Even if you are running a POS, a well setup one can easily make a lot more money than you put into buying the various NPC fuels that can't be mined (and actually, all those fuels can be aquired other ways that don't require you to buy them either).

Right now, as far as the market goes, the biggest controlling point is insurrance. It puts a minimum value on the minerals that goes into a ship as its based on some rather outdated numbers back when there WAS an NPC market for minerals (prior to the community being large enough to run its self). There's some player driven effort to fix that, and have insurrance more a factor of the cost of the ship on the market (supply/demand based), and less based on arbitrary numbers that were pulled out of thinair (as far as the current market is concerned).

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Original post by Washu Quote: Original post by ddboarm Player controlled economy - not really, only gives the player the 'feeling' he/she has some economic control and they tell you that you have control. You say that, but then you go on to say... Quote: But that is my opinion - I didn't even like it enough to finish the free 14-day trial or make it through the tutorial. I'm going to call you out on this really quick. If you haven't even finished the tutorial, let alone the trial, then you're not qualified to comment on the behavior of the economy (let alone most of the game mechanics). All the ships you purchase were made by players. All the minerals purchased to make those ships were provided by players. There are SOME sinks in the game, skill books for instance and BPOs, but for the most part those are one time costs. Unless you're running your own POSes you can pretty much ignore almost all of the money sinks CCP put in (insurrance works only for T1 ships, for T2 and T3 ships it doesn't pay back anywhere near the cost of the ship). Even if you are running a POS, a well setup one can easily make a lot more money than you put into buying the various NPC fuels that can't be mined (and actually, all those fuels can be aquired other ways that don't require you to buy them either).

Fair enough calling me out on it. So, here's the rest of the story. When I was finding it difficult to want to complete the turorial and try to have fun, I communicated my grief to others who had played or are playing. Those who had played in the past experienced the grief I was having. I was quite surprised to find out that current players have been put off by the dog-eat-dog environment you are forced into a - and that added to the reasons I would not continue playing EVE. Basically, if you enjoy the space action/opera genre but want to be left alone, EVE is not for you. Some like the space action/opera enough to endure the grief. I will admit I made assumptions based on little personal experience.

I guess my biggest issue was learning to fly the ship. An easy mode would be nice - it required more skill learning to navigate the ship than I thought it should. As far as economics, the economy is not fully controlled by the player population when currency is artificially created. Look at 2nd Life and how the economy is truly player controlled. When an economy uses drop rates to control supply, it is out of the player's control.

Eve, well.. where do i even begin.
I've played this game for about four years (quit two years ago due to time constraints).
Been part of a range of very well known corporations, so here's what i have to say:

Eve is about blowing things up, plain and simple.
And the fact that there is a person behind the monitor behind the ship you're
blowing up makes it ten times more fun. Add to that the fact that they have probably
spent a few weeks mining their ass off to get that battleship that's about to go out in flames.

What's more - you never know if that very ship has a gang just beyond the gate waiting
for you to bite hard into the bait, because if that is true - you're screwed.

Eve is a game with no hand holding, no guranteed safety even though NPC controlled police
does exist in core sectors it is not a godlike power, it was not meant to be either.

In eve if a corporation is strong enough - it lays claim to whatever it likes and until
someone stronger comes along that claim is valid for all intents and purposes and this
does come into play all the time because 'space' contains resources, be that valuable
npcs or ore or complexes it all generates income, it's all sought after and hence
others want it too.

The economy is gigantic, enormous and almost entirely player driven (apart from insurance)
which only elevates the previous point - resources(space) are the core of this game.

Like someone previously said in this thread Eve is not a game where you'll be left alone,
hell it wouldn't be much of a space opera if you could turn it into a single player grindfest.

It is hardcore to it's very core.
It's only problem is that it requires a substantial investment in time.

One last point is that it is probably the only fully pvp mmorpg in existence
that gives the new players(1 - 2 months old) the same importance in terms of roles
as this of the veterans. An older player is not in any way superior to a new one
in terms of ability. A smaller ship - a frigate, can easily become the worst nightmare
for a slow and fearsome battleship.

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Original post by ddboarm I guess my biggest issue was learning to fly the ship. An easy mode would be nice - it required more skill learning to navigate the ship than I thought it should. As far as economics, the economy is not fully controlled by the player population when currency is artificially created. Look at 2nd Life and how the economy is truly player controlled. When an economy uses drop rates to control supply, it is out of the player's control.

The only drop rates that are out of the players control are those for named T1 items. Those have only a minor effect on the market overall, T1 and T2 items are all able to be made by the players using minerals and other materials that they can harvest either through mining of roids (of which there are countless numbers) or setting up a POS and doing reactions to create the appropriate materials.

Tech 3 does have some minor artificial control with the sleepers, but like the roids you mine, its more a matter of just going out and "harvesting" (aka killing) them, than it is anything else. There have been a few hickups with T3 invention, but that was sorted out pretty fast and now there's a steady supply of T3 ships available for purchase.

Yes, EvE is not n00b friendly. The interface is attrocious to learn at first, and figuring out how to warp and other issues is pretty hard on your own. Hell, when I started (back in the closed beta), you didn't even have the tutorial that exists now. The one that was around back then (2003) was broken. However, there is reason behind the madness that is their interface. Specifically; It has to convey a LOT of information to the player. Perhaps too much. The market view alone has gobs of information that is useful in its own right.

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In eve if a corporation is strong enough - it lays claim to whatever it likes and until someone stronger comes along that claim is valid for all intents and purposes and this does come into play all the time because 'space' contains resources, be that valuable npcs or ore or complexes it all generates income, it's all sought after and hence others want it too.

Sounds almost exactly like Lineage 2. Exchange the word "resources" with "grind spots" and "corporation" with "guild". L2 was bad unless you liked the massive time investment and politics.

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Original post by Washu Quote: Original post by ddboarm Player controlled economy - not really, only gives the player the 'feeling' he/she has some economic control and they tell you that you have control. You say that, but then you go on to say... Quote: But that is my opinion - I didn't even like it enough to finish the free 14-day trial or make it through the tutorial. I'm going to call you out on this really quick. If you haven't even finished the tutorial, let alone the trial, then you're not qualified to comment on the behavior of the economy (let alone most of the game mechanics). All the ships you purchase were made by players. All the minerals purchased to make those ships were provided by players. There are SOME sinks in the game, skill books for instance and BPOs, but for the most part those are one time costs. Unless you're running your own POSes you can pretty much ignore almost all of the money sinks CCP put in (insurrance works only for T1 ships, for T2 and T3 ships it doesn't pay back anywhere near the cost of the ship). Even if you are running a POS, a well setup one can easily make a lot more money than you put into buying the various NPC fuels that can't be mined (and actually, all those fuels can be aquired other ways that don't require you to buy them either).

Fair enough calling me out on it. So, here's the rest of the story. When I was finding it difficult to want to complete the turorial and try to have fun, I communicated my grief to others who had played or are playing. Those who had played in the past experienced the grief I was having. I was quite surprised to find out that current players have been put off by the dog-eat-dog environment you are forced into a - and that added to the reasons I would not continue playing EVE. Basically, if you enjoy the space action/opera genre but want to be left alone, EVE is not for you. Some like the space action/opera enough to endure the grief. I will admit I made assumptions based on little personal experience.

I guess my biggest issue was learning to fly the ship. An easy mode would be nice - it required more skill learning to navigate the ship than I thought it should. As far as economics, the economy is not fully controlled by the player population when currency is artificially created. Look at 2nd Life and how the economy is truly player controlled. When an economy uses drop rates to control supply, it is out of the player's control.

After I talked to enough people about the game, I realized that there is a specific niche that the game fits into. From both sides though (those that liked the game and those that did not) all seemed to agree that the game is not all that it says it is.

Again...I'll admit that my assumptions were not qualified based on my own personal experience and I should have stated so.

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Original post by ddboarmWhen an economy uses drop rates to control supply, it is out of the player's control.

When the universe uses varying mineral concentrations in the Earth's crust to determine supply, the economy is no longer in the humans' control.

Wait, what?

Economics & Market Trading

The driving force of EVE is the desire for resources. The players are looking to trade time for resources and the better they can do that the better they are doing at the game. Everything else is just a way to collect those resources, whether it is mining, trading, fighting, stealing, forming groups, whatever.

Everything else is built up around the same basic principle of gaining resources.