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EVE Online's First Quarterly Economics Report Published
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."
Isk farmers in eve are really out of control.
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.
The summary should include a link to the report itself.
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).
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
Economics is all about models. They LOVE models, big sexy mathematical models, tying together figures on wildly different things to try to get a sense of the direction of the economy...Economists can pick some really silly stuff to plug into their models, so imaginary widgets isn't out of the realm of possibility.
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.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
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.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You have to actually work hard in this game.
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.
--- I do not moderate.
So we have a story that talks about the economic report, that links to a story talking about the report, but doesn't actually link to the report.
The report that the story is actually about (but doesn't link to) is available here.
fava
It's a complex spectrum. There are mining guilds who are communistic, pirate guilds who are anarchistic, some who are fascist dictators of their guild, others who have highly stratified bureaucracies and still others who have little need for ranks or hierarchy. Most guilds are multicultural, yet some are nationalistic only having players of one real world country, and there are some who roleplay the ingame factions and only have players from their faction. There may be no ingame mechanic to set yourself 'socialist' or 'anarchist' but such a device would artificially limit the politics. As it stands, the EvE sandbox has the best political and diplomatic atmosphere of any MMO I've come across.
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, once you gained enough reputatin 10.000 points you can also turn in well preserved mathoms 500 points (for one item), but these drop even more rarely.
Each level of repuation is a shitload of points that if you calculate the drop rate for you need to kill a fucking large amount of things.
Now here is the most obvious grind element. There is NO WAY IN HELL, to collect these items WITHOUT levelling up to the point that the enemies that drop the items become to low for you.
So you are just slaughtering mobs that provide not the slightest bit of challenge in the hope of getting enough items to get a tiny bit more reputation.
THAT IS GRINDING.
It is NOT about levelling up, or questing or doing quests that ask you to kill ten X, go back, kill ten more X, etc etc.
It is when all pretense of questing and story telling is gone and the game just tells you, go and kill a million of this critter that is challenge and I give you a shiny.
In counterstrike you got to earn money to buy better weapons. That is fine. Now imagine counterstrike and to get money you had to shoot a whale in a ditch with a shotgun for money. 100.000 times. For a slightly better pistol. A machine gun? 10.000.000 times. Oh and you can try hitting the broad side of that barn over there, with a nuke. Come back when you pressed the attack button a gazillion times.
This OBVIOUSLY does not happen in most games.
Again, I am NOT talking about people who call levelling up grinding. I am talking about past that. For instance in Eve where you might realise that to buy anything you first need to mine asteroids for an unholy amount of time.
Perhaps you are right and it is part of the nature of MMORPG's but I think there are better ways.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.