Alphas And Level 4 Missions: A Match Not Made For New Eden

In a somewhat surprising development yesterday, the latest security developers' blog announced CCP's plans to gate level 4 missions behind the paywall.

"As part of the fight against abuse of Alpha accounts by those involved in botting and real money trading, the EVE Dev Team have been looking at what Alpha characters currently have access to in New Eden.

"As we discussed initially in the New Year security update, the team were considering placing level 4 and 5 courier missions behind the requirement to have Omega clone status.

"After investigating further, the decision has been made to place all level 4 and 5 missions behind the requirement to have Omega status, to assist the fight against RMT and botting.

"Of course, we are aware that mission running is only a part of the issue, we’re also investigating more ways to reduce the abuse of alpha accounts.

"The changes to level 4 and 5 missions will be arriving on Singularity in the coming days, and are scheduled to go live with the March release."

All I can say is, "Wow!" I didn't really expect this move. I didn't even expect CCP to remove the ability of Alpha characters to do level 4 distribution missions. Perhaps I should take heed of words I published four years ago on why RMT is bad for MMORPGs:

"The final impact that RMT has on online games is an increased cost in operating the game. Or, as Dr. Castronova put it, 'an increase in service provision costs, relative to the costs of a hypothetical counterfactual game in which RMT did not happen.' These increased costs represent not only the additional customer service staff required to handle complaints from regular players about the activities of those involved in real money trading operations, but for the additional staff required to handle criminal activities committed against the game, such as hacking accounts and credit card fraud."

CCP has limited manpower to throw at the botting and illicit RMT problems. As CCP Falcon, the community manager for CCP, explained on the EVE Online sub-Reddit about how CCP currently bans bots:

"It's a pretty manual process right now, but solid automation is in progress.

"It's all about trying to keep the number of false positives to a minimum so we don't screw with genuine players.

"It happens from time to time, but we're trying to get better at resolving it as fast as possible."

By restricting the access of Alpha accounts to level 4 missions, CCP is telling the world that the detrimental impact of bots is not worth the number of legitimate players attracted by the missions. The big question is, "Why?" I would love to see either a dev blog or a presentation at one of the player gatherings on the CCP 2019 World Tour breaking down the behavior of Alpha players.

Some might think taking level 4 missions away from Alpha characters is a group punishment that is unfair to players who play by the rules. Perhaps that is true. But the developers could have made much more draconian changes. CCP Falcon laid out a different course of action that would have delighted a large number of players:

"Taking my CCP hat off would mean also taking a break for the reality that resources to tackle botting are of course finite, and no other online game in existence faces the challenges we do when dealing with it because of the nature of how the game is built with a completely player centric economy.

"CCP Grimmi and CCP Peligro take a horiffic [sic] amount of shit from people for no reason, when truth be told they're working their ASSES off constantly to try to sift through reports. A big part of what I'd do would be assiting [sic] them by making life harder for people who're trying to screw with our game and giving them more resources.

"Bear in mind that I'm also not a game designer. If I was, you guys would hate me even more than you do now, because EVE would be one of the most savage games in existence.

"With that in mind, taking my CCP hat off completely, some of the biggest steps I'd take for both botting and account security (if they were simple and workload wasn't an issue):

• Place every hull larger than a cruiser back behind the requirement for omega status.

• Place every weapon larger than medium back behind the requirement for omega status.

• Place T2, augmented and faction drones behind the requirement for omega status.

• Keep cross racial training for alphas, but place hulls that require a blend of racial spaceship command skills behind the requirement for omega status.

• Make NPC AI far more aggressive toward drones and fighters, and more unpredictable in general.

• Build an intelligence system that was separated entirely from the chat system from the ground up that required active user input to remain up to date.

• Local would become more akin to old "Region" or "Constellation" chat - here's a list of people roughly in your area, if they choose to show themselves.

• Look at creating incentives and gameplay to keep people active during activities that are often done AFK (mining for example).

• Quadruple the headcount on the Security Team with a couple of programmers and four more security analysts.

• Make 2FA mandatory for all accounts that have any roles that give access to pooled assets or ISK.

• User option to permanently disable extraction on a character or account basis.

• Account based rewards for first time enabling 2FA and cumulative rewards every quarter for keeping it active.

"I'd also go full scorched earth. You bot? You're screwed? You harbor botters and receive dirty ISK for them, we empty your wallet. Don't have enough ISK to pay back what you got illegally? Your keepstars and corp assets start vanishing. Zero tolerance. You collude in harming our game and community, we level you. Cut and dry.

"That said, this whole post is based on the caveat that there were no limitations on what we could do. Some of this is really not realistic, even if I'd like to see it personally."

Regular readers of The Nosy Gamer probably realize that if CCP implemented most, if not all, of the ideas on CCP Falcon's list, I would probably do a happy dance while reading the patch notes. I don't see a pullback on Alpha ships and equipment on the horizon, but I could see the improvements involving two-factor authentication making an appearance in the future. Also, I would definitely disable extraction on my characters on all my accounts.

I spent so much time discussing CCP's announced plans that I neglected to analyze what the changes could mean for other areas of the game. But that's okay. I have plenty of time to come up with ideas in the next two to three weeks.

The Rising Price Of PLEX - An Alternative View

In the age of Electronic Arts, I understand why some people worry about a big company coming along and buying your favorite game. EA doesn't have the greatest record about trying to milk every last penny from customers, and they are not alone. So when Pearl Abyss announced it had purchased CCP Games in September 2018, many players feared the worst.

The genesis of this post came from watching Talking in Stations on Sunday and a discussion of a video claiming that Pearl Abyss was somehow manipulating the in-game RMT token markets to try to maximize profits. Matterall's co-host Carneros, a long-time game industry veteran who has worked on both EVE Online and the Everquest franchise, rebutted the claims, saying that the purchase was too recent for decisions by Pearl Abyss to appear in the game. My thoughts were a bit different, as higher in-game ISK prices, all other factors remaining equal, results in lower real-world currency sales of PLEX. I first encountered the idea at Fanfest 2014 and have espoused it ever since. The more ISK a buyer can get per PLEX, the less PLEX the buyer needs to purchase. Buyers, for the most part, purchase in-game currency to obtain a specific goal, not just to have a big pile of ISK.

After the show and aftershow, I tracked down the link on the forums to the video. When I saw the video was created by Shipwreck Jones, my interest picked up. Shipwreck Jones is a serious YouTuber who has put out quality content for over a year. This wouldn't be his first video expressing concern about the Pearl Abyss sale, so I wanted to watch. I managed to do so before he took the video down.

Price of Omega time, in-game currency

Just looking at the market data, one could make a reasonable assumption that something happened when the sale of CCP to Pearl Abyss occurred. The sale was announced on 6 September, and from August 2018 to January 2019, the average price of 30 days of game time (500 PLEX) purchased with in-game currency rose from 1.379 billion ISK to 1.687 billion ISK, an increase of 22.3%. But hold on a second. Doesn't the price of PLEX always increase? Yet, the average price of 500 PLEX decreased 17.2% from December 2017 to August 2018. So, something happened in September 2018 when the sale of CCP was announced, but what? As Sherlock Holmes might say, "The game is afoot!"

A daily instead of monthly look at PLEX

I decided to look at the daily average price of PLEX to spot any trends. The low price occurred on 3 August with an average price of 2,675,506 ISK, a drop of 16.5% from the beginning of the year. The price then rose to 2,870,000 ISK on the day of the announcement of the sale and 3,103,080 ISK on the day the sale was finalized, 12 October. The day before the Valentine's Day sale last week, the price of a PLEX had risen to 3,680,181 ISK, or a rise of 18.6% since PA assumed control of CCP.

While the period before the sale to Pearl Abyss saw a lot more sales volume spikes than the period after the sale, I couldn't tell for sure. That lead me to an RMT token directly tied to PLEX, the Multiple Pilot Character Training Certificate (MPCT). The MPCT allows for training a second or third character on an account for 30 days, a very useful ability, especially for skill farmers. In addition to buying an MPCT directly off the market, players can purchase this form of game time by acquiring 485 PLEX and buying the item from the New Eden Store using the PLEX.

MPCT Certificates sold at a discounted rate in 2018

I was a little surprised by what I found when adding the price of 485 PLEX to the graph along with the average price of MPCT Certificates. The numerous sales CCP held throughout the first nine months of the year before the sale to Pearl Abyss was finalized kept the price of the MPCT very low compared to the baseline price found in the cash shop. But after Pearl Abyss took control, the sales, except for the one on Black Friday, ceased. On 10 February, the sale price of the MPCT matched that of 485 PLEX.

I could go on with a graph about skill extractors, but the price of the item required to create skill injectors is so closely linked to the price of PLEX (the normal price is 700 PLEX for a pack of 5) that including another graph is overkill.

So, is Pearl Abyss the second coming of EA and guilty of ruining the New Eden economy in pursuit of all the filthy lucre the company can haul back to Anyang, South Korea? My verdict is no. In fact, with the lack of sales since acquiring CCP, the developers are leaving very light footprints in the sandbox, at least where the business model is concerned. I did not attempt to judge the changes in the game over the past four months, but my feeling is that those also are not having a big impact on the economy. Given that the prices are rising due to the developers recent laissez faire approach, one could fairly make the argument Pearl Abyss is responsible for the change.

However, my theory on why prices are rising is a bit different. I would concentrate on the fall in price of the RMT tokens between December 2017 and August 2018. During that time, CCP was courting Pearl Abyss as a potential buyer, even inviting Robin Jung, the Korean game maker's CEO, to Fanfest last year. As part of the effort, CCP would have tried to boost sales as much as possible. One of the tactics would have been holding a lot more sales than normal, similar to what the graphs in this post show. Of course, increasing the amount of RMT tokens like PLEX and MPCTs in the game world would have a deflationary effect on the EVE economy, or at least the RMT tokens themselves. Once the practises ended, the economy took a few months to return to normal.

I should add one last point before signing off. Most publications listed the sale price of CCP at $450 million USD. In reality, only $225 million was guaranteed, with up to an additional $200 million in deferred, performance-based payouts still awaiting distribution. While we don't know the terms of the deal, I can't imagine that revenue targets for EVE were not included in the deal. So, the next time some sort of money grab is suspected in EVE, consider if the culprit is our new Korean overlords or perhaps someone trying to get a piece of that $200 million still dangling out there like a carrot on a stick.

After Its Best Quarter And Year Ever, Activision Lays Off 8% Of Workforce

In an ideal world, the talk after Tuesday's Activision Blizzard investors call would center around video games. The fact that the company announced it would refocus on key games would highlight the news. Fans of Call of Duty, Overwatch, Hearthstone, World of Warcraft, Candy Crush, and Diablo would rejoice and Activision announced it would increase the headcounts working on those titles by a combined 20%. Others would cry as beloved games like Heroes of the Storm seem destined for maintenance mode, if not worse. The fact that, except for the next Call of Duty coming out in the final quarter of 2019, the company has no major releases scheduled just means gamers have to go someplace else for new games until the next WoW expansion comes out in 2020.

But we don't live in an ideal world. The headlines instead proclaim the greed of Activision Blizzard. Of course, whoever came up with the script for the call needs to be slapped upside the head. So does Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotic for not calling for revisions. When he leads off with the fact that the company set records for revenue in both Q4 2018 and for 2018 as a whole, then points out those figures didn't meet expectations, that was a bad sign.

What gets investors excited doesn't necessarily translate to glee in gamers. Refocusing efforts on existing money-making games leaves those wishing for new games or a revival of old franchises disappointed. But in the coverage of the call I watched on YouTube, I didn't see many, if any, point out the expected drop in revenue for 2019 of 13%. That's right, with Bungie taking the Destiny franchise in the recent divorce and no WoW expansion expected until 2020, revenue is going down. Something fairly expected by gamers is a "WTF?! OMG!!! Activision is DYING!!!!!" moment for investors.

So what did Activision Blizzard do? First, it announced a 9% increase in the dividend payout this year for those who own stock at a certain date in May. Next, the company announced it was going to conduct a buyback of ATVI stock; $1.5 billion worth over the next 2 years. And finally, as expected, the company is conducting an 8% reduction in its workforce, starting in the U.S.

A point I have not heard mentioned is the stock buyback. If Activision Blizzard can spend $750 million a year on buying back stock, why can't it afford to keep the 750-800 people it is tossing out into the streets? According to a statistic frequently thrown out when guessing development spending on games like Star Citizen, one employee costs approximately $100,000. So while the company is saving $75-$80 million in employee costs, it is spending 10 times that amount on a stock buyback?

I'm rather old and can remember the series of events with investor lawsuits and the passage of laws that incentivize corporations to maximinze short-term profits, even if the results lower profits in the long run. The days a publicly-held company could try to ride out a bad year, knowing sales would improve the following year are pretty much over.  If a company's leadership doesn't do everything in its power to maintain stockholder value, expect an incoming lawsuit. Raising dividends? Check. Billion dollar stock buyback? Check. Employee layoffs? Check. And then people wonder why gamers hate investor types.

At this point, I'd tell everyone to hate the game, not the players. Except, I need to address one more issue. The hiring of Dennis Durkin as the new chief financial officer at the beginning of January. To gamers, the optics of a suit making $15 million while Activision Blizzard lays of 750-800 people is bad.  To me, the fact that Durkin's bonuses are related to meeting operating income and earnings per share targets is worse. What's an easy way to move toward those targets? Why, lay off 750-800 people. Of course, that's good news to investors.

Admittedly, I am not Activision Blizzard's target audience. The only game in their portfolio that even interests me is World of Warcraft, and in the state that game is in, I have better things to install and use up space on my hard drive. Also, a multi-billion dollar, publicly owned corporation is going to play to the investors. Cutting headcount before a known 13% drop in revenues is just a smart business play. But seriously Mr. Kotic, what happened to making good games? Don't you have confidence in your staff anymore?

One EVE Online Resolution Accomplished

I wrote about how I play Elder Scrolls Online and thinking of switching for that game to Final Fantasy XIV last week. But my main game still is EVE Online. The difference between EVE and all the rest is that EVE is a hobby while the others are games. While I leveled my templar to within 50,000 XP of level 47, I did some interesting activities related to EVE over the weekend.

On Saturday, I took a break from housework and ESO to talk with someone about a project he is working on. Given my expertise, I think I can say the subject touches on real money trading and the black market. I'm kind of anxious to see the finished product. But I won't ruin the surprise.

Sunday I appeared on Talking in Stations. Be on the lookout for the episode because the episode featured CCP Fozzie talking about moon mining. Well, that was the main feature, and Matterall brought a lot of smart people with experience on the subject, like Goonswarm's Tuzy, Brave's Dunk Dinkle, Pandemic Legion's Elise Randolph, and Skill U's Elite Anon. With talk of the news of the day, we wound up discussing all the things. Afterwards, CCP Fozzie answered questions on the TiS Discorse server for 45 minutes or so and Matterall may publish the Q&A as well.

Tuzy is a director in GSOL, Goonswarm's logistics arm and responsible for maintaining The Imperium's vast infrastructure in space. I got the chance to ask Tuzy about the price of moon minerals before the show. He thinks the market for T2 components will become very volatile within the next 2-3 months. Volatile meaning big price increases. During the stream, Tuzy and Dunk had a disagreement, with Dunk maintaining that the existence of large stockpiles of moon goo were a myth and that the prices on the market should remain fairly stable.

I get the feeling Dunk is a lot more concerned with his local prices than with the price of products in far away Jita, although I think he still needs to source some of his construction material from New Eden's premier trade hub. Still, with experts telling me that the price of T2 materials will either stay the same or increase, I figured the time had come to fulfill one of my New Year's resolutions.

The materials finally gathered

After the stream and the Q&A session, I decided to make a trip to Jita to buy what I needed, with side trips to Dodixie and Rens to pick up a couple of items listed for cheaper in those places. I took my Mastodon, the Minmatar Deep Space Transport with a 62,500 m3 fleet hangar, a 5000+ m3 cargohold, built-in warp core stabilizers and a formidable tank.Did I mention I souped it up to have a warp speed of ??? AU/second with my character's implants and a sub-11 second align time? And of course, I fit a cloak for those times the MWD/cloak trick is absolutely needed while traversing space. People make fun of me for using the ship to haul tritanium around. I guess a billion ISK worth of T2 components is a more worthy cargo.

With as many jumps as I took, I'm a bit surprised I didn't see any Macharials out and about sitting on a gate. The only issue I really had was with space. I filled the fleet hangar with giant secure containers and it turns out the capital jump drives take up 10,000 m3 of space each. Fortunately, packaging up 10 of the containers only takes up 3000 m3, so I placed them in the cargohold and was able to fit everything in with a few thousand m3 of space to spare.

Finally have all the components

Of course, I did something stupid. After reaching the low sec station I wanted to build in, I dumped the T2 components into the station container I used to store all my Marshal items, opened up the industry interface, and discovered I was short 250 units of Tungsten Carbide Armor Plate. I checked my list and sure enough, I had only purchased 18,500 units even though I had entered 18,750 in my spreadsheet. I then went to Fuzzy Steve's website and found someone selling the parts for only 500 ISK over Jita price. At that point, I was more than willing to pay an extra 125,000 ISK in order to avoid over 30 extra jumps, so I switched to my Prowler and zipped off to Nein to grab the missing materials.

Normally, I would end the post with a screenshot of the ship in space. I have to make an exception in this case, as I only have one pilot capable of even sitting in the ship, and he was doing something somewhere else. Plus, I still need to fit the ship, and undocking a defenseless Marshal doesn't seem a wise move. So instead, I'll post the bonuses:

Black Ops bonuses (per skill level):

• 125% bonus to ship max velocity when using Cloaking Devices
• 10% bonus to Warp Scrambler and Warp Disruptor optimal range
• 20% to Stasis Webifier optimal range
• 10% bonus to warp speed and acceleration

Gallente Battleship bonuses (per skill level):

• 5% bonus to Large Hybrid Turret damage
• 7.5% bonus to Large Hybrid Turret tracking speed

Minmatar Battleship bonuses (per skill level):

• 5% bonus to Large Projectile Turret rate of fire
• 10% bonus to Large Projectile Turret falloff

Caldari Battleship bonuses (per skill level):

• 5% bonus to Heavy Missile, Cruise Missile and Torpedo Launcher rate of fire
• 10% bonus to Cruise Missile and Torpedo flight time

Amarr Battleship bonuses (per skill level):

• 5% bonus to Large Energy Turret damage
• 10% bonus to Large Energy Turret optimal range

Role Bonus:

• Can fit Covert Cynosural Field Generator and Covert Jump Portal Generator
• No targeting delay after Cloaking Device deactivation
• Cloak reactivation delay reduced to 5 seconds
• 75% reduction to effective distance traveled for jump fatigue
• 10% bonus to security status gains from destruction of non-capsuleer pirates while flying this ship
• Armor Repairer and Shield Booster effectiveness increased by a percentage equal to 10x pilot security status, with a floor of 0% and ceiling of 50%

The one pilot I have capable of flying the Marshal, however, has all racial battleships trained to 5 and
Black Ops trained to 4. Plus, security standings of 5.0, so I also get the max benefits from active tanking.

The Marshal hull alone sells for slightly over 4 billion ISK, making the ship the most expensive thing I own in EVE. Given that I prefer flying frigate and cruiser hulls, I may never take the ship out of a station after I fit and move the ship from its current location. But I will have completed at least one of my New Year's resolutions for 2019 and a goal I set for myself in late 2017.

Starting To Climb Off The ESO Wagon

One of my New Year's resolutions wss to reach max level in Elder Scrolls Online. I reached level 45 over the weekend and know there is a long slog through a different leveling system once I reach level 50. But do I really want to grind that high? The story really isn't that great and the combat is a bit off. Either that, or I put too many skill points into crafting and need to use the free respec scroll I received a couple of levels back to refocus my character. I'm mainly slogging through the game because ESO is one of the big MMORPGs that I probably should play through.

Another reason my attention is drifting is due to the coverage that Square Enix' Final Fantasy XIV Paris Fan Fest garnered over the weekend. I recall playing FFXIV for 30 days just to see what the game was like  With the next expansion, Shadowbringers, scheduled for a 2 July release, I think I will put ESO aside at that time to give FFXIV a real try.

Why Final Fantasy XIV? First, like Elder Scrolls Online, FFXIV is part of a beloved series of video games that I never got into. I tried Final Fantasy 15, but I don't really like console games. The controllers are just too awkward to use. Plus, I know that Square Enix knows how to make MMORPGs, with Final Fantasy XI doing well, even in "maintenance" mode.

Another reason is the graphics. ESO has some pretty bad textures on characters and I understand that was intentional. In fact, I hear that players grumbled about the characters looking too good. I guess really bad graphics and the Elder Scrolls series just goes together. If I recall FFXIV, the graphics were really pretty, and that was before I bought a computer able to run an Oculus Rift. I wonder what they look like now.

One other thing that I'd like to experience is the story in FFXIV. Playing through ESO, I know a main story exists. Somehow, I seem to have lost the main questline. My time is spent wandering the map looking for quests. The questlines I find are nicely put together, but I don't really see an overall pattern. I wonder if the same is true in FFXIV.

I don't plan on dropping ESO right away. My subscription is due for renewal next week and I plan to purchase another 90 days of ESO Plus. But my time in Tamriel is coming to a close. I started my current playthrough in May 2018. I reached level 46 last night and still find the game engaging, although I don't have the urge to play every day. Honestly, I never did. But getting a year out of the game I think is pretty good. Not as good as EVE (9 1/2 years) or EverQuest 2 (3 1/2 years), but still pretty good.

In Search Of Metropolis Distribution Bots

After a few days of a polar vortex (what Canadians quaintly call "spring") rolling through town and playing with plumbers, I was ready for some EVE. I woke up Sunday morning to a tweet indicating some fun in my old stomping grounds in Metropolis.

Bots Haulers...because you need a Badger to haul Dols #Tweetfleet @CCPGames I wonder how long it takes to get my reports through the system pic.twitter.com/6OyBrJLsKT

— Adenthegamer (@AdenOrdinii) February 3, 2019

And I mean old. When I left Eve University, I took my things and set up shop in Arlek, a system 9 jumps away from both Rens and Hek. More relevant to today's topic is that I spent a lot of time doing missions with Eyfr and Co. and Republic Parliament in that area back back then in order to get the standings for jump clones. Also, when I was streaming my experience with the fancy, cinematic NPE a couple of years ago, I explored how a week old Alpha pilot could start doing level 3 distribution missions in the area. So I pretty much knew what the suspected bot operator was doing.

This bot operator wasn't as blatant about his operation as the Illinfrik botter. I was able to identify 9 bots flying Badgers with a typical distribution mission fit. Five of the bots were flying out of the Republic Parliament station in Ridoner. The other four were split between a pair flying from the Pator School station in Orduin and the remaining two flying from the Eyfr and Co. station in Elgoi.

A pretty good plan to at least spread out the activity so the traffic doesn't stick out on Dotlan. Except for Ridoner, no real chance for a traffic jam on the undock to occur, and certainly nothing on the scale of Illinfrik.

Still, the signs were all there. First, the characters were all Caldari flying Badgers in Metropolis. The race of the characters matters, because all 9 characters were created on 19 January between 13:16 and 13:56 EVE time. The two Elgoi bots were created at 13:16 and 13:20, the Orduin bots at 13:36 and 13:38, and the Ridoner bots between 13:50 and 13:56. Why would nine 2-week old characters come all the way from The Forge or Lonetrek to run distribution missions for Pator School and Eyfr and Co.? I'm picking on Pator School specifically because of its loyalty point store. I might go back and raise my Pator School standings in order to use the services of a station in low sec cheaper, but that's about it.

What linked the characters together was the dates they all joined their own personal corporations. That's right, the new big thing, now that the war dec system has changed, is for bots to form corporation named after themselves. The format of the name is [Character Name] Corporation. All nine characters joined their personal corporations on 20 January at 12:54. All nine characters. Almost like the controlling person used a script.

Of course, I did scan the Badgers, not only for the fittings but to ensure that I knew which station's agents the bots were doing missions for. I mean, I could have just sat on a gate and tag bots that way, but I figured reporting a bot at the undock of the station it is using makes the job of whoever investigates the bot report at CCP's job easier. Sure, Aden and I reported the bots hours apart, but since the bot report doesn't allow for comments, that's the best I can do with the tool.

Due to the plumbing issues and a few other things, I pretty much spent all my time in a Slasher following bots around reporting them. So I have an idea inspired by the last Security dev blog. Instead of selling police SKINs for the ships most used in botting, how about some police SKINs for the T1 frigate hulls the interceptors are based on? Like the Slasher.


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Why I Don't Like A Common Solution To AFK Cloaking

I always get nervous when I hear ideas designed to help carebears. One that I hated was the increase in speed of the Procurer in 2014. The change was made to help high sec miners avoid players who liked to bump miners off their asteroids and ice rocks. The tactic to combat miner bumping was to orbit rocks as fast as possible. Of course, anyone trying to mine while aligned, like I do in low sec, had their gameplay nerfed. The introduction of the Higgs Anchor did a lot to mitigate the problem, as well as have unintended consequences for wormholes. But still, when I hear other ideas like eliminating the need for miners to probe down anomalies, well, I start getting jumpy.

One issue that always grabs my attention are the complaints about AFK cloakers. An AFK cloaker is just what the name sounds like: a player who engages a cloaking device to make his ship invisible, then leaves the keyboard to go to work, eat dinner, etc. Sooner or later, someone comes up with the idea of requiring cloaks to use fuel. I'll pick on MassivelyOP's Brendan Drain for a recent example:

"It’s also led to a problem that has plagued nullsec alliances since as far back as I can remember: AFK cloakers. A cloaked ship can park itself in a star system and show up in the local channel, usually prompting all the locals to pack up their PvE activities. The locals can’t ignore the cloaked ship as it could attack at any time, so one or two ships can effectively disrupt PvE in a star system even when the pilot is AFK. The cloaking problem could be solved by adding a fuel requirement to cloaking devices, and both of the issues above could benefit from another precision change: Nerf the local channel in nullsec." (emphasis mine)

Removing local is a subject for another day. And speaking of no local, adding fuel requirements to cloaking would do horrible things to the playstyle in wormholes. Instead of addressing the larger issues, I want to address my own selfish concerns and how the use of cloaks requiring fuel would hurt my own play in low security space.

I spend a lot of time flying around low sec in ships without weapons. I do occasionally use the microwarpdrive/cloak trick when flying my Mastodon around, but I spend a lot of time doing level 4 distribution missions in a Prowler. A lot of people disparage distribution missions, but I enjoy them. While PvPers in low sec would love to see uncloaked ships jumping around, low sec distribution missions are another use for blockade runners.

When jumping through each gate, I always activate my cloak as soon as I start aligning and keep cloaked until the next gate. Adding a fuel requirement for cloaks doesn't just reduce my profits. Where do I put the fuel? I require at least 8000 m3 free in my cargo in order to handle all the missions. If fuel is consumed every cycle, that could really add up quickly.

My next concern involves exploring in general and running data and relic sites in particular. I haven't done so recently, but I usually use either a covert ops frigate or a Stratios when I do. The cloak is very useful for hiding from potential hunters when probing down sites. A fuel requirement could really impact the use of ships like the Cheetah, which only has a cargohold of 200 m3. The whole idea of adding a fuel requirement is to keep a frigate like the Cheetah from staying cloaked for hours. What type of impact would that have on the length of how long I could stay out running sites?

The final concern is the effect on my low sec belt mining. I dual-box when mining, one pilot in a Procurer and a second in a cloaky DPS ship. The cloaky ship is valuable in case NPC battleships show up, although now that my mining character has finished with her drone skills, the extra help isn't needed that much. What is more important is the invisible eyes watching the belt while the mining ship returns to the station to drop off ore. Occasionally, I would see ships warp into the belt I had just departed and cloak up. The funniest one was a Blackbird who was teaming with another cruiser. One time, I even killed a Thrasher. While requiring fuel to power my cloak wouldn't keep me from flying the second ship, that's just another cost I have to worry about.

One of the reasons I keep track of changes in EVE isn't just to have subjects to write about. My style of play is a little unusual and little changes to help other parts of the game tend to act as nerfs to mine. Still, since talk about adding fuel to cloak usage to combat AFK cloaking has floated around the game for years, I won't get too excited. Yet.

ESO - Daily Free Stuff

I think every developer of an MMORPG wants to figure out a way to entice players to log into their games on a daily basis. Especially new players. For the first five years I played EVE, we had the 24 hour skill queue. For veterans routinely training skills taking 7 or more days to complete, the skill queue wasn't really that big a deal. But when I was a new player, keeping the skill queue full kept me logging in every day.

The second MMORPG I currently play, Elder Scrolls Online, takes the concept to another level. ESO is a buy-to-play game with an optional subscription model and a robust cash shop. I probably should have put "optional" in scare quotes as I tried playing ESO without the sub and, quite frankly, I didn't enjoy the experience. Like many developers, Zenimax put in some pretty harsh inventory limitations for players without subscriptions. I found a subscription helps a lot.

ESO also presents players a few reasons to log in every day. I'm not referring to the daily crafting quests, although if I don't have a lot of time to play and I don't feel like doing some logistical tasks in EVE I might do some during the week. Instead, I'm referring to three benefits that, if a player logs out of the game at the right spot, are completed within 2 minutes of logging into a character.

The first two are game play features that involve, interestingly enough, playing the game. The first involves leveling my mount. Technically, the feature involves improving your character's riding skills, which ultimately involves making your character's mount better. One of the big benefits of improving your mount is increasing bag space. In a game that relies on selling inventory slots, getting up to 60 free slots is a big deal.

The second involves receiving free crafting materials in the mail. Players can spend skill points on hirelings. A feature I first encountered in Everquest 2, hirelings will send players crafting materials once every 24 hours (or 12 hours at the level 3 skill). Each crafting profession has its own hirelings. For example, I have 3 hirelings, one each for Clothier, Enchanting, and Woodworking professions. The only catch is, you have to be logged in. So if I don't log in for 3 days, I only receive one email from each, not three. Not the biggest incentive to log in, but not bad either.

The final incentive is for each time during a month, a player gets a gift. Sometimes the gift is an experience boost scroll. Other times, players receive powerful food, potions, poisons, even non-combat pets. Or gold. Potentially, lots and lots of gold. The end prize I can get for this month is 100,000 gold. To put that in perspective, I only have 52,000 gold now. At the end of the month, the list of gifts resets.

I'm not really sure how I feel about the system Zenimax settled on. I don't think the same type of system would work in EVE. The big difference is that some of the items are bind on acquire and bind to character. Also, economic gameplay is extremely limited in ESO compared to most other games I've played, let alone a free-wheeling game like EVE. But I can say from personal experience that what Zenimax implemented in Elder Scrolls Online works. I may not play every day, but I make sure to log in.

Looking At Distribution Mission Payouts

When I was shadowing the Illinfrik botter and after the inevitable housecleaning performed by CCP, the most frequently asked question was, "Why would anyone bot distribution missions?" In preparation for my appearance on Talking in Stations Sunday, I did a little calculating. I figured that running approximately 22 hours a day, the botter's 20-character farm would generated between 6-7 billion ISK per day, if everything goes right for the botter. The reason for that level of profits (and why CCP had to ban 5 of his farms before he finally gave up) is Thukker loyalty points.

To give an example of how much a non-bot distribution pilot can make, I ran distribution missions in low sec for an hour. I ran them for an agent for Trust Partners, the same corp in the Thukker Tribe the Illinfrik botter used. I did have a few advantages over the typical Wreathe bot, however.

First, location matters. The base formula for loyalty point payouts for missions is:

LP reward = (1.6288 - System security) × Base LP

This means I received 70% more loyalty points for using an agent in a 0.2 security system than a player (or bot) in Illinfrik with a security rating of 0.8. As an added bonus, I have distribution missions trained to level 5, meaning I gain an additional 50% more loyalty points per mission. Alpha accounts are limited to training Distribution Connections to 2. Also, I use a Prowler, the Minmatar blockade runner, which, with my fitting an implants, exceeds a warp speed of 12 AU/sec. The best speed I calculated for any of the bots I saw was 6.2 AU/sec. So I have a warp speed advantage meaning I can do the missions faster than an alpha player as well as higher payouts.

So, since I can probably beat Han Solo's time on the Kessel run if we ever figure out how to get back through the EVE Gate, how did I do? I don't think that badly. I completed 14 missions, taking an average of 4:17 minutes per mission. I earned 22,486 Thukker loyalty points, which I calculate are currently worth around 3000 ISK/point. The average of 1606 LP per mission I think is a good payout. Mission rewards and mission time bonuses are really only used to help pay for the items in the loyalty store. The 9,084,000 ISK earned almost paid for the item I wanted to get out of the store, the Thukker Large Cap Battery.

Thukker cap batteries are valued by Abyssal site runners for their inherent resistance to the neutralizer pressure they face from the Triglavians. With a cost of 20,000 loyalty points,10 million ISK, and a Large Cap Battery I, I can get one Thukker Large Cap Battery per hour, which is my goal when running distribution missions.  When I sell them on the market instead of fitting them on my own ships I aim for 60 million ISK in profit, which is where I get my valuation for Thukker loyalty points of 3000 ISK/point.

At the beginning of the post, I estimated that the Illinfrik botter could make 6-7 billion ISK per day if everything went right. Did I mention faction cap batteries, even if they are as awesome as the Thukker Large Cap Battery, are not high volume trade items? When the possibility exists of CCP coming in and banning accounts at any time, botters tend to dump items on the market, looking for ISK in the hand now. I don't face that pressure, so I can go ahead and leave my items on the market for weeks. And if the items don't sell? I can always use them on my own ships.

I guess I should include one more important item about distribution agents that didn't come up during my one hour run. Players are granted a storyline mission for completing 16 missions of the same level for a corporation. As I was two missions away from a storyline mission, I spent a few more minutes to run two more missions. The one I received was Materials for War. The requirements to complete the level 4 version of the mission is 8000 units of kernite. I keep a stock of kernite in the distribution agent's station, so anytime I receive the missio, I fly over to the agent, accept the mission and then immediately complete it. The reward is a +4 learning implant, which usually lists on the market for around 20 million ISK. Not bad for less than 12 minutes of mining and making a couple of jumps.

I know some will find the fact that distribution missions can make decent ISK, if over 20 million ISK per tick is considered decent. A lot of players just look at the low ISK payouts and snub the missions. But that's okay. Just means less competition for me.

The Minor NPC Powers Of High Sec

I'm developing some standards for looking at empire (high sec and lowsec space) when looking at economic statistics like the Monthly Economic Report. I thought looking at the four main empires (Amarr, Caldari, Gallente, Minmatar) was an interesting idea, but then I came to looking at the Amarr and the realization that seven entities, not four, hold sovereignty over empire space. Here's a brief description of each.

The Ammatar Mandate

The Ammatar Mandate is a semi-autonomous region of the Amarr Empire. The Ammatar domain, San Matar, means "true home" in the tongue of the ruling tribe, the Nefantars. The Nefantar claim to being the true rulets of the Matari people is mainly based around the fact that a fair proportion of the old Minmatar aristocracy, or tribal leaders, were among them. In the wake of the destruction of a major Amarr fleet in the Battle of Vak'Atioth in 23216 AD, the Matari slave population conducted a successful revolt in several regions of the Empire. The EVE University wiki records the creation of the Ammatar Mandate in the resulting turmoil.

"As the Amarr fled their poorly defended border territories, the many Minmatar collaborators they had left with them. This left the Amarr with a significant problem. The many conservative Holders in the Empire's core worlds were reluctant to share territory with free Minmatar. Additionally, Amarr of all strata of society held a deep resentment against all Minmatar, not just those who were rebelling. Many of the early collaborator arrivals wound up being killed by angry mobs who had lost property, family, and friends in the rebellion.

"While some among the Empire's leadership would have been content to allow the collaborators to fend for themselves, more ingenious thinkers devised a way to utilize them. Several systems near the border of the Minmatar-held territories had been abandoned by the Amarr, though the Rebellion had not quite reached them. The Amarr decided to settle their collaborators in these border systems and task them with defending the space.

"The collaborators called the space San Matar, which means (among other things) “true home” in the Minmatar language. They settled the space, taking over the abandoned holdings and slaves on behalf of Amarr Holders, and began to build up a defense fleet. By the time the Rebellion finally reached them, the momentum of the Minmatar had slowed, allowing the entrenched collaborators to successfully resist.

"Over time, the collaborators expanded their territory beyond the core constellation of San Matar. The Gallente came to call the collaborators the Ammatar, a portmanteau of Amarr and Matar, which the collaborators eventually adopted as their official name. Since then, San Matar has officially been named the Ammatar Mandate."

Today, the Ammatar Mandate is in full control of its domestic affairs but foreign affairs are governed by the Amarr Empire. Within the ruling structure of the Empire, House Ardishapur is responsible for overseeing the Ammatar. In November YC110 (2008), Empress Jamyl I placed the Ammatar under Ardishapur vassalage."

"The empress's decree states that Lord Ardishapur, 'pursuant to Imperial directive, shall henceforth carry ultimate responsibility for the fates and fortunes of the Ammatar Mandate, its bordered districts and outlying holdings, its economic and military resources and the souls of its faithful servants.'"

The Khanid Kingdom

The Khanid Kingdom was founded over 300 years ago in the wake of the succession trials which installed Keideran Kador on the Amarrian throne as Emperor Heideran VII. The leaders of the other four royal houses were supposed to commit ritual suicide. One, Garkeh Khanid, decided to flee to his estates and seceded from the Empire. As the military commander of the Amarr Navy, he had access to both the Emperor's personal titans and appropriated one to make his escape with a sizable escort.

A passage from the Chronicles describes the kingdom that Khanid built.

"The Khanid Kingdom in many ways resembles the Amarr Empire. The caste system is intact - the Holders still reign as the social elite. The governmental structure and administration are all but identical, the only difference being the lack of checks-and-balances that many entrenched institutions and local barons exercise within the empire. Just as for the Amarr Emperor Khanid II is in name undisputed ruler of his realm, but in practice a number of powerful magnates share or dilute the power. In the empire’s case it’s the Heirs that compete with the Emperor for power, in the kingdom’s case it’s the members of the minor families that supported Khanid during his rift with the empire. Other features, such as the importance of religion and slavery, are also very much alike in the two states. In fact, the kingdom takes slavery even further than the empire. The Amarr Empire uses almost exclusively Minmatar and Ealur slaves, but the kingdom, denied many of their traditional slave sources, take slaves wherever they can find them. Khanid himself has a Gallentean - a former pop-star - as his personal slave, something he finds highly amusing but makes the Gallenteans frothing at their mouths.

"But even if Khanid has tried to build his kingdom to mirror the empire he once belonged to, there are many discreet differences. The biggest of these are the way the Dark Amarrians - so called for the color schemes on their ships - conduct their trade and business. The Khanid Kingdom is not nearly as rigid and stale in their governing of inter-stellar trade, for the very simple reason that the kingdom absolutely needs outside trade to survive, which is not the case for the empire. Since the Amarr Empire seized their attempts to reconcile with the separatists decades ago trade has started to flourish between the two. The result is that today the kingdom acts in many ways like a window to the outside world for the reclusive empire. Trade goods that can’t be directly transported into or out of the empire are carried through kingdom because of the much more lenient trade policies the empire has for them. Many Dark Amarrians have grown fat acting as intermediaries for Amarr traders and outsiders.

"Many other notable differences can be seen between the kingdom and the empire - the Dark Amarrians embrace technology, including cloning, much more willingly than the Amarr brethrens and even if most Amarrian traditions and customs still exist within the kingdom, they’ve been modified so that Dark Amarrian society is much more dynamic and robust than that of the Amarr Empire."

The Kingdom and the Empire have grown closer in recent years, partly due to the Khanid Navy's capture of Dochuta Karsoth, the former Chamberlain of the Amarr Empire who usurped power to rule the Empire after the death of Doriam II. In June YC111 (2009), Khanid II was granted a seat on the Privy Council. But that did not integrate the Kingdom back into the Empire.

"While acknowledging the rightful reign of Jamyl I as Empress of Amarr, the Khanid Kingdom will remain an independent nation. It will continue to field its own navy, but will enjoy a pact of mutual protection with the Amarr Empire. Khanid II will officially hold the Privy Council seat but will be allowed to name a proxy when he is unable to attend."

After the Amarrian Succession Trials following the death of Jamyl I, Khanid II did commit ritual suicide and was succeeded by his cousin, Farokh Khanid. Or did he? Given Khanid II's love of life and the Khanid embrace of cloning technology, I'm not so sure.

"Despite his advanced age, Farokh appears to share with his sovereign cousin the Khanid family trait of responding well to gerontological implants and has aged very handsomely indeed. The family resemblance to Garkeh has been remarked upon by many, although this has often been in the context of ironic comments as to how the even older Garkeh appears to almost be the same age as Farokh."

CONCORD

In the region of Genesis, the Amarr Empire holds sovereignty over all constellations except one: Ourapheh. Strategically located, an Amarr fleet could threaten 4 of the Gellente Federations 6 regions from the constellation. I strongly suspect that is one of the major reasons CONCORD set up its headquarters in Yulai.

CONCORD (Consolidated Cooperation and Relations Command) is a relatively new entity (over 100 years old) set up to handle the tensions between the 4 empires. At one time, the Jovian Empire was also a member, but they withdrew from New Eden and installed the Society of Conscious Thought as its successor in the Inner Circle and CONCORD Assembly. CONCORD is described in the Chronicles:

"The inner workings of CONCORD are democratic in nature, with each of the five empires technically possessing equal say in all matters (though a nation’s actual pull more often than not will come down to the persuasiveness of its representatives on the debating floor). Early on, the Amarrians were adamant that the Minmatar Republic would not gain admission to the assembly, but they later reluctantly agreed.

"For the first few years of its existence, CONCORD wielded limited power. The fledgling organization had little diplomatic sway, and regulation enforcement would time and time again prove difficult for its agents. It was not until 18 years after its founding that CONCORD gained the respect of the international community. After the battle of Iyen-Oursta – the bloodiest and most costly engagement the Gallente-Caldari War had seen in decades – both sides were tired of fighting, though long-entrenched hatred and pride prevented either side from asking for a ceasefire. CONCORD took the initiative, and in just under six months managed to negotiate a peace accord between these two bitter enemies, one that would endure for almost a century.

"In the last two decades the organization’s authority increased further, particularly as interstellar trade grew into the cornerstone of New Eden’s economy that it is today. The growing power of CONCORD often raised concern within the empires that the organization could begin to exercise leverage in areas up until then regarded as the nations’ internal affairs. No longer simply a neutral ground for the empires to hammer out diplomatic agreements, CONCORD had become an independent institution that set its own rules and regulations, ones which it was both willing and able to uphold. The organization’s ever-expanding bureaucracy had subtly severed its cords over time, so that it swore fealty to no nation. The only hold the empires had historically possessed over the organization – that of financial support – had in addition been almost completely erased, as revenues garnered through customs, confiscation of illegal goods, license sales and the like were (and still are) more than enough to keep the organization in the black."

Calling CONCORD a minor power is a bit of an understatement on the impact of the organization on the game. CONCORD's Directive Enforcement Department is well-known for keeping the peace between capsuleers in high security space, although allegations of corruption persist as some organizations seem able to inflict chaos with impunity. CONCORD also runs the Secure Commerce Commission, which is responsible for regulating and monitoring all trade transactions that take place on stations and citadels. Combined with an unmatched fleet designed and built by CONCORD Aerospace, the organization punches far above its weight. Still, the organization is not all-powerful. During the Elder War of YC110, a surgical strike took down the CONCORD network in a matter of 15 minutes, allowing for an invasion of Amarr and Ammatar space by the Elder Fleet and the Thukker tribe.

Conclusion

I realize that diving down a rabbit hole full of lore is a bit of detour when setting up economic reporting. The data produced by CCP involves player activity, not that of NPCs. I'd wager most players don't care about the universe they fly through beyond the thought of what they can shoot next. But I'm curious about how close the game world and player behavior winds up conforming to the lore.