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After Ripples

Changes to the game are expected. They are anticipated. I've talked about adaptation. But, I was restocking my market today and realized that it has been a while since I stocked Cynos. In fact, I've only stocked cynos once since November. I took a moment to make sure Eve Mentat had not missed the cynos delisting or selling out. They were still sitting there and I sighed and put a check mark beside another item hit by the other side of the nerf bat.

It is becoming a bit of a list.

I started playing Eve for Crucible which was the November 2011 release. I started as a salvager and I made my first billions off of salvage. I had a Noctis and I used it to salvage level five missions. A lot of my early blog posts are about the time I spent in space gathering loot and learning how to pay attention. One reason the Noctis was preferable to a destroyer was because of its cargohold. Fully expanded, my Noctis could empty an entire level V mission without having to warp to the station. However, in Inferno they removed meta 0 modules from the loot tables. Drone goo was also removed at the same time.

The goals behind this nerf were to buff industry and mining. Meta 0 modules dropping from NPCs depressed the market for player built items. CCP has pushed Eve towards building things themselves. The drone goo removal was a strong hit to gun mining. It made a lot of sense from a world view point but it was a hit towards the life of a salvager that was only enhanced with later changes.

There was once a time when you could advertise as a salvager and people would let you tag along and maybe take a cut of the loot. It was to much effort for them to do it by themselves. Back when I started (all that not long ago) the old crimewatch system would still cause you to randomly steal cans from fleetmates and flag you as attackable. It made the salvager cautious because fleetmates could decide to kill the helpless Noctis pilot for their own amusement. That to changed with things like the mobile tractor unit and other changes. Salvaging as a career of collecting not just salvage but loot drops drifted to a slow, sad death with the changes to reprocessing.

It is not that this did not need to change. It is that it killed a playstyle with it. Such is what happens with change but it still sucks and I'd very much like there to be a reason for career salvagers again. Sugar can fly Ore Industrials just for that reason.

Odyssey had side effects to my market when it came to probes. With people no longer losing their probes I went from selling thousands of probes a week to a hundred or so a month. It wasn't just my bottom line that was hit. It was everyone who converted LP into sisters probes for sales.  Datacores were also hit. They were moved into FW and Odyssey made them easier to find. It is another situation where I do not think the changes were bad but they differently had a tangible effect.

And now I looked over at my stack of somewhat dusty cynos. Sure, they sell but not with the speed they did before. Nor does fuel. The deceleration is a ripple of the movement changes. Yes, they needed to happen, but that leaves side effects that need to be cleaned up or closed off. Such as the heavy missile changes. Oof. Talk about dusty piles of unused ammunition and modules.

Change is not always terrible. But standing here a year or two after some of these I think that there are many areas that can be neatened, trimmed, and cleaned up. The website still lists salvaging as a career and it, like piracy/anti-piracy or being a mercenary are careers that could perhaps receive a bit of a polish and relaunch.

Maybe I just miss those innocent days when I hung out in a Noctis, tucked up against Lue's Chimeria, grinding missions and enjoying the simple pleasure of being in space, making ISK.

Comments

  1. I dunno. I'm sorta glad salvaging is gone. Way way back in the distant past I remember doing level 4s, coming into station to turn in, shipping into a catalyst, then going back out for salvage. Back then before inevitable power creep made blitzing missions possible to the state it is now not salvaging was stupid. And it was tedious, time consuming, and boring. Crucible was probably the golden age of salvaging because a few key buffs meant it was more profitable for missioners to just run them as fast as they could for time/isk, leaving lots of salvage. Introduction of the Noctis just made it that much better.

    My problem is, any introduction at this point to buff salvaging will probably be towards the first playstyle. Kill, reship, salvage, reship, kill.. repeat. It'll be something where the salvage is the point of killing. And I, as well as most everyone who did it, absolutely hated that.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. But its about otters like me who liked it. :(

      Delete
    2. You liked Post-Crucible salvaging. After salvaging became an optional extra instead of an absolute have to do thing. In your blog you're talking about asking people to salvage their left overs and stuff. A few expansions before you joined Eve that never would have happened because running mission content was so slow it didn't make sense from an isk/time benefit ratio not to salvage yourself.

      In that era of eve you'd have had a very different experience than what you described in your blog. I'm fine with CCP adding salvage back into the game where it's an optional extra.I am not fine with CCP adding salvage back into the game where it's something you HAVE to do. Where salvage is the point of the entire exercise.

      Unfortunately I just don't see them doing it. They may, it's just unlikely.

      Delete
  2. I, too, miss salvaging. It was a simple job that I enjoyed and was good at and I can see how people might not make a career of it alone, but certainly when their friends go out for some social anom running, prefered gameplay to be juggling tractors and salvagers behind them.

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  3. I continue to salvage in missions, that's what salvage drones are for as I slow-boat to the next gate/pocket. Eventually metacide will have all meta4 killed off - at which time the mobile tractor unit becomes redundant. The re-processing nerf has placed a massive down-count on my access to rare minerals. Rigs provide an interesting alternative to drones and module manufacture.

    I miss scanning grav sites. It was the whole purpose I entered into scanning in the first place. (I originally found the tutorial impossible to complete and gave up). It was knowledge that I could trade/sell other mining crews or utilise myself. A micro-career now in the dust-bin of history.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Let me take an off shot -novelty stress. A concept I wish CCP was aware of, but can't hope they know it because it's CCP. They just must stick their fingers into every plug in the house to make sure that they all bite back with the same nasty electric shock.

    So here's CCP, adding novelty stress into EVE. Things change, and they change fast. It becomes difficult to track when was changed what, or what is going to change, or how will it impact the player. Here and there, players see things become obsolete, even disappear. As CCP stirrs the game, people is banging on the walls of the glass. Sometimes are little bumps. Sometimes they crash head on the wall.

    And they grow tired.

    EVe is a specially terrible place to suffer continuous change. Missing a upcoming change may have awful consequences, and the chances to miss the relevant info grow as people becomes tired of learning what is new with the next expansion (bored with the 90% not relevant to them, they miss the relevant 1% which will lead them into horrible death, unwarned).

    Also, novelty stress affects the developers. Without a way to serialize change, every change becomes a little challenge of its own, with its own downsides and interactions to existing content (content which, in a very CCP way, a team may not be aware of until it clashes with their own plans).

    Novelty stress limits the lifespan of faster update cycles. I'd give CCP a couple years before it bites their ass -assuming they won't make any horrible mistake along the way.

    And finally, EVE is changing. But what it does not do is to grow.

    ReplyDelete
  5. When they introduced the MTU's I couldn't help but feel sad because of it.
    I didn't really do salvaging as a carreer but I enjoyed taking out my Noctis and the light show I got from it. Now I don't have much reason to actually use my tractor beams seeing that the MTU does it all for me.

    Although once in a blue moon I go out and watch the lights again.

    ReplyDelete
  6. back when I was selling ammo (man T1 ammo moves fast considering everyone tells me it isn't worth it to use) I was also selling probes, sold around 1k/week in Teon...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Don't believe everything you read/hear :)

      Sure, on the face of it, T1 ammo is less better than T2/faction, but it sure as hell isn't 'worthless' :) Not everyone can use T2 ammo and for many, faction ammo is too expensive. Just like not everyone can use T2 mods/drones/whatever.

      Delete
    2. T1 ammo does still well depending.

      Delete
  7. Yeah, I miss the old days when running a noctis was fun! Juggling the right time to cut out the tractor beams, loot the wreck and hit the salvagers all with the goal of getting as quick as possible...

    On the one hand, I do love how MTUs allow for much faster site running, but after using them since they came out, I would like to see them removed as being way too OP.

    They were a good experiment, but as much as I like them, I think the game might be better off without them.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They are an ultimate replacement. I should have written about how it's decreased module prices but I got distracted yesterday and the thoughts are not as smooth add they might have been.

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    2. Oh, I know they won't go away, but, just like wishing the discovery scanner would go away, a capsuleer can hope :)

      Delete
  8. Salvaging is still alive and well in W-Space. Sugar, come visit.

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    Replies
    1. Even in Anoikis, though, I miss the pre-MTU days, back when salvaging was so much more intense than it is now. The consensus among the salvagers in my group is that we grudingly like MTUs, but if CCP were to do away with them tomorrow, we'd be ecstatic :)

      Delete

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