This got a lot of attention and the usual suspects were quick to call out anybody who seemed to be complaining about it, to the point that there were literally more threads started complaining about people complaining than there were actual complaints in /r/eve.
But there was a lot of “WTF?” in the air all the same. This was in part because CCP has spent the last couple of years turning down ISK faucets in the game and generally nerfing income, which makes them suddenly handing out ISK a bit… strange.
I mean, I think we all can agree that it was an abrupt change of direction without having to dig into the “why” aspect of the whole thing.
In addition, at least for me, the whole thing was kind of strange because I cannot recall any MMORPG that I have ever played that had a daily login reward that just straight up handed you the basic in-game currency.
I have been given cash shop cash, vouchers, gear, cosmetics, pets, mounts, toys, vendor trash, companions, and all sorts of other game related items. But the main in-game currency? Never.
CCP, which has been doing login rewards for a couple of years now, both in ongoing daily and special event related forms, has been pretty stringent on not even giving you something that could be sold in game for cash. They have over the years made so that most items they give out are consumed on redemption. You can’t trade that SKIN from the event, so you better redeem it on the right character! And the items that are not are generally of little value. I mean, I am sure somebody has found a way to make some ISK off of those 5 run Tech I blueprints that we keep getting handed, but I haven’t. I generally stick them in my cargo to add to the flavor of my loss mails.
So with this I wondered, for example, if WoW has ever just given me some gold? Has EverQuest or EverQuest II ever handed me some platinum coins for just logging in? I don’t think so.
The closest I can come is LOTRO and their daily hobbit presents, which sometimes hands you a pile of coins that you can bring to the vendor for in-game currency. And they still aren’t just handing you some actual currency, just something you can sell to an NPC.
But my horizons are pretty narrow these days. Among the many legitimate complaints you can make about this blog is the fact that I am still playing mostly the same games… and sometimes even the same content… that I was writing about nearly fifteen years back.
So maybe this is a thing that just hasn’t landed in the few titles I spend time with yet.
And thus I ask the question: Is this a thing in your MMORPG? Do you get handed in-game currency in the titles you play?
Somebody has to have seen this. Anyone? Anyone? Bhagpuss?
Inquiring minds want to know.
As for the “why” of things, CCP is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, and stashed away on a volcanic rock in the middle of the Atlantic. We can guess, but I’ve heard from former devs is that CCP is so isolated from the rest of the industry that they end up arriving at various points more due to accidental circumstance than by design, even in an industry where this often seems to be the norm.
So some will say it is because of the sagging player count or the shrinking economy or to cover for the fact that the company will be mostly on vacation for the next month or that Pearl Abyss made them do it. But it could as well be their form of the rainbow covenant, the sign to all of us that the economic starvation era is really coming to an end.
Monday afternoon a ping went out asking people to be around for ops around 01:00 EVE Online time. Something big was going down, but what it was all about was well above my need to know.
Still, I like to show up when something is going to happen, so I was online when the first ping went out. However, I had just stepped away for a moment when the ping landed and a lot of people were online and ready to go, so I missed the Asher Sacrilege fleet that I was aiming to go on. Additional fleets were promised.
They were not, however, immediately forthcoming.
After about a half an hour, a ping went out for a bomber fleet on Dabigredboat, or DBRB, and the question was whether to go on that or wait for the next opportunity. When DBRB is on his game, his fleets are exciting and he has a knack for finding capitals to kill. It was on one of his ventures that I got on my first super carrier kills. (He was also there for my first big battle fleet op in null sec.) But he has a reputation. His fleets can be manic chaos at times and there is a long standing rule to wait a couple of beats before you do anything his says. He has been known to shout, “Warp to X!” only to countermand that seconds later and declare that those who warped might end up dead.
Still, the kills can be worth the effort, so I got in a Purifier and went along for the ride.
Chaos started right away as we traveled out to our destination. DBRB was a few different channels and his orders were not always clear and he himself found that part way into the trip he had grabbed a bomber without a covert ops cloak and somebody had to find him one on the route to our destination.
Still, we got there, one of those Drifter wormholes.
Landing in the vicinity
We motored over to it… the beacon you land on puts you 100km off the hole… and waited for DBRB to tell us to jump through.
Bombers around the wormhole
DBRB got his black ops battleship, the blops, to us, found his covert ops cloak, and soon we were all gathered there. Then the order was given to jump through, though he said to jump through to Jove Observatory, which confused many people, as there was a Jove Observatory in the system with us, but that was a few AU off of us. But, as I suspected, he meant the wormhole. Eventually that got clarified and we all jumped through.
Once in we were told to spread out and cloak up. Standard stealth bomber practice.
While we were sitting there I say that the Sisters of EVE Flotilla was in the hole with us.
The Flotilla Spotted
The flotilla is one of those EVE Online points of interest, like the EVE Gate and the Wreck of Steve, and one of the ones I had not seen. I had only read about it over at EVE Travel.
We were sitting and waiting for DBRB to get set up and I wasn’t sure I would have the time to zip off and take a look… but things were quiet for a bit, so I decided to chance it. I managed to warp in and get a screen shot of the flotilla moving along through space.
Nestor Formation
Of course, after some minutes of quiet, as soon as I warped off DBRB started talking to us again, though in his usual fashion. Somehow I managed to interpret him correctly and warped to him at the out hole, though I would wager half the fleet didn’t get that and there was a repeat later that got everybody there.
Once assembled, DBRB gave us the outline of what was going on. GSOL had spammed a bunch of Athanors around TEST space… no doubt we had some extras sitting down after the moon mining changes made some moons not worth the effort… all set to finish anchoring and go into their repair cycle around the same time. The number was later reported in the war update thread as “dozens.” The expectation was that, to cover as many of these as possible, TEST would send out individual dreadnoughts to kill them. A single dread can manage that when in siege mode. We were going to go after any solo dreads we could find.
And it wasn’t long before DBRB had a target for us. He had a covert cyno close to the target, so we all went through the wormhole into normal space, got on the blops, and were bridged on to the dreadnought. On landing there was a Revelation there waiting for us. We started shooting. Those of us who brought focused void bombs set up and launched them to drain his capacitor. I am no expert bomber, but even I can line up and launch a bomb on a target if I am just motoring around without anybody shooting me.
Help arrived to support him, in the form of a Jackdaw fleet, but we were already off and cloaked up. The only loss was the Athanor.
DBRB already had another target for us and we were quickly back on the blops and being bridged to another system where we found another Revelation waiting for us, in siege and shooting another Athanor.
Revelation and an Athanor
There we once again managed another dread kill… along with a cyno Falcon… before help could show up to save him. A Munnin fleet arrived and managed to catch a couple people who were slow to cloak up and get off grid… though, honestly, we lost more people to the guy who launched a scorch bomb at the Revelation and managed to catch a few blues in the blast. Still, a very much ISK positive strike, even with the Athanor getting popped.
After that the locals seemed to be alerted to our presence and we had to hide for a while as DBRB looked for targets. We were bridged to a trio of capitals and came very close to killing a Nidhoggur before a cyno let help arrive to save it.
The locals forming up large against us
We could have gotten it, but some of the fleet warped off as the capitals began to land. DBRB expressed his disappointment in this, as losing a bomber… which will get an SPR payment… was worth killing a hostile carrier. We warped off having only killed an Arazu cyno ship.
So we went back into hiding. A couple of more false starts came and went before he had a fresh target for us. There were three dreads on an Athanor and we were going to try and get one of them. By this point the blops was out of fuel and we had to gate to the target. We had a subcap fleet trying to catch us and those who were slow had to cloak and motor out of bubbles before warping off.
We met up on the final gate and jumped through. DBRB warped us on grid where we found Revelation, a Phoenix, and a Naglfar waiting for us. DBRB picked the Naglfar and we opened up on it. It was a near run thing. At least one of the dreads on grid was HAW configured, which means it was setup to shoot subcaps like us. We started losing some bombers. DBRB, who got popped, called for us to overheat our launchers, which speeds up the missile cycle time at the cost over damage accruing. The Nag went into structure, but got a rep up on its shields. A cyno went up and some additional caps started jumping in. We stayed on grid, shooting at the Nag as it was beat back into structure and slowly got to the end… then finally exploded. Another dreadnought kill.
The Naglfar blows up
After that it was time to safe up again.
DBRB had us on the move again, once somebody donated a ship to him, but easy targets were not so readily available. We managed to pop a Sabre that was trying to slow us down, but we were also down some ships. A ping went out for a reinforcement fleet, so it looked like we would be waiting a bit, so I decided to call it a night. It was getting late for me and I was happy enough to go home on a last win.
Getting home meant going through the TCAG-3 gate in G-M4GK (which people refer to as “Gee Magic” on coms). That is the border between TEST and the Imperium and the gate is often heavily camped and, with us in action in their region, that night was no exception. I arrived at a perch under the gate to find a half a dozen large warp disruption bubbles deployed and a small fleet hanging around waiting for some solo pilot to wander into their midst.
I sat on my perch and went to go do the dishes.
When I got back, I found that the fleet had pulled back to one of their structures and there was just a single hostile on the gate happily looting and salvaging any wrecks in the vicinity.
This helped me out a bit. The locals had also dropped an array of jet cans around the gate to as to decloak anybody like me trying to sneak to the gate unnoticed. But Mr. Salvage was clearing a nice little whole in the litter for me. So I warped to the gate, getting stopped at the nearest bubble, and began to thread my way through the debris.
Threading through the field
This was like any submarine movie with the sub trying to make its way past mines and nets to get to its destination. I had to corkscrew to the gate, and war worried for a moment when the happy salvager seemed to be coming my way. But then he moved off in the other direction and I carried on.
I made it to the gate and jumped through. Our side was not camped. Activity seemed to be focused on TEST space, so I was able to warp to our Fortizar and let it repair my overheat damage. I had enough nanite repair paste to keep my missile launchers and cloak in good shape, but the bomb launcher needed a lot more paste than I had on me, so that got fixed up.
From there it was a few jumps back to 1DQ1-A and home. I put my main alt on the gate into the system to make sure it was not camped, but it was all clear, so I arrived safe. Somebody on the fleet had been recording some of our handiwork, so there is a short video up showing our dread kills.
Later on the war update thread laid out the bigger picture. The Athanors in TEST space had been dropped and timed to coincide with the removal of a Keepstar we had in 3-FKCZ out in the eastern end of Querious. TEST and its allies had to decide whether or not to let a bunch of Athanors successfully anchor in their space… and many did… or try to grab/kill the Keepstar.
The cover fleet, which included a lot of titans, was probably more than enough to discourage them, though they did have a Charon freighter logged off to attempt to scoop the structure when it was unanchored. The Charon was quickly blown up after logging in, and we successfully retrieved the Keepstar.
CCP will, at times, let the lore drive changes in the game, or at least pretend to do so. The local chat blackout in null sec and its indefinite duration was pitched as a Secure Commerce Commission directive to preserve the supplies of “Quantum-Entangled 4-Helium” which are, within the game, said to power the “liquid router network” on which com channels rely.
Now CCP is going the same way with a tax increase.
Last week a CCP posted an in-game news repCCP ort in which CONCORD proposed the establishment of a “New Eden Defense Fund” in order to raise funds for in order to support the resistance to the Triglavian invasion.
This was followed today by a news report that the CONCORD Assembly had passed the resolution to raise taxes, specifically:
Substantially increased tax and broker fees are to be levied on interstellar market transactions by the Secure Commerce Commission, following today’s passage in the CONCORD Assembly of the “New Eden Defense Fund Act YC121” (NEDFA). SCC markets will see base transaction tax increase from 2.00% to 5.00%, while the base brokerage fee will rise from 3.00% to 5.00%.
Because of the Triglavians you will now be paying more in taxes on the items you sell in New Eden.
And you’ll be defending New Eden all the more so now
Over at INN Rhivre wrote a post calling the first post a sign that a tax hike was coming, though she suggested that her conclusion might just be tinfoil. But it turned out to be anything but.
In New Eden the broker’s fee and transaction tax come out of the seller’s take, so expect seller’s to boost prices to reflect the increased cut CONCORD plans to take.
The transaction tax will hit everybody. That is the fee collected on every market sale in NPC stations and player owned Upwell structures. Boosting from a base of 2% to 5% is a big markup. At least Accounting, the skill you can train to reduce the transaction tax… because of course there is a skill to do that… lowers the rate by percentage. With the tax change there will also be an update to the Accounting skill.
With each level of Accounting you have trained reduces the tax by 11%, so those of us with Accounting V trained up get a 55% reduction so will see the fee go from 1% to 2.25%. If you are a seller in New Eden and do not have Accounting V yet, this might be something to invest those free skill points into.
The broker’s fee side of this will hit those trading in NPC stations, so it will be more of a Jita tax. Player owned Upwell structures set their own broker’s fee. (So far at least.) The primary way that player hubs like the Tranquility Trading Tower Keepstar in Perimeter lures sellers… at least sellers of PLEX and skill injectors… away from Jita is with lower broker’s fees.
Now the Perimeter market will have an even larger advantage over Jita.
The Broker Relations skill, which can reduce the the broker’s fee in NPC stations (but not at player owned structures), is not as generous as the Accounting skill. Currently the Broker Relations reduces the broker’s fee by .1% per level trained, so that Broker Relations V knocks off .5%. With the proposed change CCP wants to make that a .3% change per level, boosting the reduction with Broker Relations V to 1.5%.
With the broker’s fee going from 3% to 5%, those of us with Broker Relations V will see a drop from 2.5% to 3.5%. That should pull some additional ISK out of the economy.
(The EVE University Wiki has more on market related skills as they stand before this proposed change)
And pulling ISK out of the economy seems to be the likely goal of CCP. In the monthly economic report, the transaction tax and broker’s fees are the two largest ISK sinks in New Eden. Together in June they pulled about 21.5 trillion ISK out of the New Eden economy.
June 2019 – Sinks and Faucets chart
That amount was approximately one third of the total amount removed from the economy in June.
This should make for a couple of interesting monthly economic reports in the coming months. When the July MER comes out we will see the effect of the local blackout in null sec, which ought to have an impact on NPC bounties, by far the largest ISK faucet. And, presuming this tax change is implemented soon (it will be live on the test server tomorrow), the August MER ought to see a boost in the amount of ISK removed via these two sinks.
Also of interest will be the breakdown of where broker’s fees end up. In the June MER, 78% of broker’s fees were collected in NPC stations, thus were taken out of the game, while 22% were collected in player owned Upwell structures and thus stayed in the economy and were simply put into the pockets of the structure owners.
If all else remains equal, that balance should tip more towards the NPC side of the equation. But if the tax drives people to sell in player owned structures, it could very well move the other way.
All things to keep an eye on in the upcoming reports.
In the mean time, you and I and everybody else will likely soon be paying more for our market transactions. Whether or not this is part of Hilmar’s “Chaos Era” updates has not been indicated.
Related items:
The campaign is closing in on its $12,000 goal, sitting at just past $9,300 as of this writing, putting within striking distance of success. But “almost there” isn’t there yet.
If you look over at Kicktraq you can see that, while there have been some pledges recently, the curve has flattened out and unless there is a last minute rush of people, the whole thing is going to come up short.
So if you were considering this project, but had put it off, now might be the time to revisit the campaign and see if this is the sort of video game history project that interests you.
There is no reward under the opportunity system for “achieved maximum jump fatigue” in EVE Online. I know, because if there was one, I would have gotten it last night.
Just four seconds late on the screen shot
Five days is the hard cap on jump fatigue, a change that came in with the Parallax expansion last November. (Did you know that Parallax was the last named expansion in Syndicate?) Before then, from the launch of the Phoebe expansion until Parallax a little over a year later, you could ruin a character for jumping for long stretches. Now you can max jump fatigue out on Sunday and be fresh and ready to go the following weekend.
Just don’t plan to do any jumps over the days in between. The wait between jumps gets a bit harsh. Here is where I stood after maximum fatigue hit.
That is almost as long as a DBRB fleet feels
So how did I end up with all that jump fatigue… or, more to the point, why?
Opportunity!
The night before, after making my jumps, I did managed to get my cyno alts inserted into the next two destinations. So when I got home from work, I jump cloned back to my carrier from Sakht and did those jumps almost immediately, thinking that I might have to spend the rest of the evening getting the next jumps into position.
Another jump in the Archon
As it turned out, these two locations represented the most difficult spots into which to get a cyno alt, since they involved flying through NPC null sec in the form of the Syndicate region. All the cyno spots after that involved runs through relatively safe, and mostly deserted low sec space, with a quick jaunt through one of those high sec enclave in the middle of low sec that makes you wonder what sort of job CONCORD is doing.
And… well.. with cynos alts in position, why not take the jump?
If I had known that back end of the route would be that easy to get into position, I would have structured my jumps differently. I would have let the ~50 minute fatigue from the first jump wear down to below the 10 minute mark before making the next jump, keeping my fatigue from building to over an hour. Maybe, I might have not bothered with the timer on the last couple, but by that point quick jumps would have left me with jump fatigue that would have been gone over night.
Instead, not knowing which jump might be the last one for the night, I took them about as soon as I could, and the jump fatigue started to build; an hour, four hours, ten hours, twenty three hours, three days and change.
Exotic stations under strange stars
After five jumps I was sitting on a lot of jump fatigue already, and had a 90 minute count down until I could make the next jump, but by that point I figured “What the hell!” I had an alt ready and waiting, so I lit the cyno.
Burning the beacon at the last station for the night
And then it was time to jump.
Somewhere in Aridia
That was it for the night. Jump fatigue was at maximum and the next possible jump window was over eight hours away.
And I still wasn’t in Sakht yet. Sakht was seven jumps from where I started and I blew my load in six. As I said above, if I had known I was going to get this far, I would have done it differently. But now my carrier, with a pile of ships in the hangar, is just one jump from our staging station in Sakht.
I sent my in-alliance alt ahead, and he made it all the way there.
Destination gate in sight
The smart bombing battleships were taking a night off from gate camping, so it was an easy set of jumps. And now I have my main alt, my combat alt, in our staging system. He even made the trip there entirely via gates in an frigate with only a cyno module fit and 250 units of liquid ozone in the cargo bay.
My carrier road trip is almost at an end. I just have to not screw up on that last jump. Given my ignorance or capital ship operations, I am surprised I got this far without any real incident. I managed to place my cynos on stations in a fashion that wasn’t horrible. I think worst landing I had put me 3km off the undock, distance quickly covered. The rest were under 200m, with most showing 0m. The tactical overlay option that shows the landing zone for your cyno when you mouse over the module gets the credit on that front.
So easy, even I understood it!
I also only lost one of my cyno ships. I bought four Kestrels, named them Bait 1 through Bait 4, and only Bait 2 died, getting blown up on a gate in Syndicate. I expected cyno ships to get popped sitting on the undock much more frequently.
Hell, I expected my NPC corp cyno alt to get popped by my own side at some point, being in a “Not Blue, Shoot It” coalition and all. But he never got shot. In fact, he got convo’d by a GSF pilot at one point asking about his name (a misspelled Jack London reference) during which I said I was just a lowly Imperium cyno alt, and which point I was told that I was holding up somebody’s jump as they were paranoid because a neutral was sitting there on the undock. (I forgot to dock up after the cyno went out… and still nobody shot me.)
Anyway, it was an adventure, getting my carrier from Saranen to Sakht, a 13 jump multiple day event. EVE Online is one of those games where you have to focus on the journey most of the time, because the destination is usually just the starting point for the next trip. But if you’re sick of my traveler’s tales in New Eden… and I admit that I never get to see anything as cool as this jump… there are probably only two, maybe three posts left in the “Getting to Delve” series, I swear.
Now to let that jump fatigue wear off… wait, I still have one more jump to go.
