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Friday, July 25, 2014

The Worst Swordsman

Last night I watched Ashterothi, a co-host on the High Drag and Hydrostatic Podcasts, stream his initial experiences in industry after Crius.  By the time I got home, he was doing mission 6 of the industry tutorial.  When he tweeted that he knew less about industry than the newest newb, he wasn't kidding.

I learned a couple of tricks with the new UI that I hadn't known about, mostly because I already have all of my blueprints in stations and he wanted to start playing with his new BPOs right away.  Also because I have so many minerals in my factory station and a new character doesn't have a lot.  He mentioned on the stream that he wanted to discuss the UI on High Drag to another co-host, Random McNally, and I'll be checking for when the podcast comes out.  I think that should fall sometime in the second week of August.

After the stream ended, I was reminded of a quote from Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court:
"The best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him."
I get the feeling that CCP has just put the sword of industry into the hands of a lot of people who have never heard of opportunity costs and believe that minerals you mine yourself are free.  I'm not saying that Ashterothi is that type, since one of the co-hosts on the Hydrostatic Podcast is Lockefox, who will educate him as necessary.  And if Lockefox doesn't do it, I expect Random will.  But a lot of the complexity of industry in EVE was fighting the old UI.  I just wonder how many people will try industry out now that the UI makes the task so much simpler.

11 comments:

  1. If these hypothetical people can't do math, it is actually a very good thing for CCP, a disaster for serious industrialists, and an awesome thing for traders who buy below cost and sell high.

    Of course, given the moronic cut to reprocessing, it is not utterly unprofitable to cut buy up T1 products that are produced below cost, and reprocess them, to keep the markets clean, thereby driving down T1 prices. Just another kick in the teeth to high sec builders everywhere.

    I have a feeling that unless CCP hands some serious manufacturing gifts to low sec, your commitment to low sec manufacturing will carry on for a couple months, then you will realize futility of it, unless you really just do it for the fun, and care little about profits / hour of effort.

    regards,

    Dinsdale

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    1. Riddle me this;

      How is it a disaster that somebody else values their time differently from yours, why exactly do you get to decide what somebody else's time should be worth to them?

      I'm quite good at doing math. But there are other components to my leisure times value then the highest possible ISK return per hour. Actually there are quite a lot of those and I value many of them far above potential ISK return hour.

      If somebody really enjoys hanging around on comms with friends while mining and derives joy from seeing what ever he builds with said minerals sell who are you exactly that you get to tell him what he should or should not charge?

      See EVE isn't a 'real' economy, since I have no need to meet somebodies criteria of what value my time should produce *at all*. I'm even at liberty to lose ISK every hour if I so desire! I already made the money I need to live in the real economy where indeed I do value my time a certain way and so does my boss (I need to make him more then I cost him or I'll be out of a job).

      But then when I come home I want to spend time in a different way and since I'm no longer working for a boss at that point, but for myself I get to decide what the return value of that time has to be (be it in ISK or something else) not somebody else, since that time is mine and not yours or anybody else.

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    2. The end user is who gets screwed ne way not the Indy guy. Tue price just goes up and is passed on to the consumer

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  2. "But a lot of the complexity of industry in EVE was fighting the old UI."

    Thus speaketh the true noob industrialist.

    How many BPOs and BPCs do you have anyways? A dozen or so? The average solo industrialist has hundreds; the serious solo industrialist has thousands, tens of thousands. Go read the feedback on Crius if you don't believe me.

    The old UI was merely irritating (and the new UI is worse, for the real industrialist) and had nothing to do with the complexity of industry.

    The complexity lies in knowing what to build, how and where to get what you need to build it, where to sell it, and how to maximize your profit margins. How much ISK do you make per month with your industry efforts? Go read a few of the blogs of serious industy players and compare your efforts/results to theirs.

    "I just wonder how many people will try industry out now that the UI makes the task so much simpler."

    Not many.

    What exactly do you, and CCP, expect a noob to build & sell, besides T1 ammo & rigs? There isn't anything else a noob can build that is worthwhile to sell. No one uses T1 modules, and the margins on T1 ships are too small, unless you have the capability of scale.

    I hope you don't actually believe that they can just jump right in on day 1 to build and sell T2 modules, T2/T3 ships, and/or super caps?

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  3. Oh, I won't do it if the profits are too low. For instance, I don't mine gas because it's way too painfully slow. But I think I look for a lower price for my time than many. Believe it or not, EVE's a game and fun/hour is just as important as ISK/hour, if not more so. I don't want EVE to be a job.

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  4. You are not allowed to say that you are here to have fun. :(

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  5. But Eve IS your second job!
    I do hope prices start to adjust to the new mineral requirements soon. I have a 9% ME blueprint and I can barely make a profit with it (assuming people buy at my reasonable price), and there were sell orders quite far below minimum profit in the region (ie: 325K per unit when break even was 400K)

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  6. If you do boring stuff at loss only to hang out with people you like, it would probably be more rational to find a way to hang out with people you like without doing boring stuff at loss.

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  7. " I don't want EVE to be a job."


    BURN THE HERETIC!!!!

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  8. In my opinion, spot on.

    Also, being a fan of Samuel Clemens, I remember this quote!


    Keep in mind that what Noizy is saying (if you don't mind my interpretation, good sir) isn't that it's WRONG, it's just the way it is or will be.

    IMHO, there are two types of industrialists. The dedicated and the casual.
    Dedicated industrialists track profits, isk/hour, taxes, standings, etc and follow the markets with a keen eye knowing what is profit and what is loss. Minerals are purchased through buy orders or mined knowing the value of the time involved. Some more hard core types will even reimburse the value sunk in to the price of the blueprints, including the time in research.


    Casual (or enthusiasts) will manufacture for :reasons: regardless of profit or loss. Mins come from reprocessing or whatever happens to be lying around. Maybe spending an evening mining while watching movies or reading. They know that at the end of the road, the price of that thing will be sitting in their wallet. (I don't care what profit I've made, I just know that I have 47 mil from that Drake I built.)


    Is either way wrong? Heck no. The dedicated will continue fuming because the Casuals undercut and devalue. The Casuals laugh at their trolling of the Dedicated because they can. The Dedicated laugh at the Casuals because they've maximized their profit while the Casuals go off chasing the next squirrel they see.


    What Crius has done, again in my opinion, has made the industrial process easier and more accessible to the Casuals. The dev announcements have all but said this. Guys like Asterothi, who have had little to no exposure/interest to the building side of industry, may now START to take an interest. It's very unlikely that the influx of new budding industrialists will all be Dedicated. More Casuals==More Dedicated's rage. Competition gets more fierce.


    If the competition for ISK profit gets too hard to compete against, what will be the aftereffects? Likely, the Dedicated will HATE this new "improvement" and begin unsubbing accounts. Have we heard this already? More and more of the market will turn over to the Casuals. At least until things settle down and stabilize.


    In the meantime...if you know how to station trade, hang on to your hat!

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  9. I used to be one of those dedicated who used to hate on "idiot noobs" that thought mined minerals were free. Then I realized that they most of them don't do it for profit. They do it because they enjoy the process regardless of profit.
    Looking at it like that, while they might be limiting my ability to make profits, I have no excuse to hate on them. They're playing the game the way they like and it's their prerogative.

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