Thank you for reply, Ciarente. I appreciate a good debate and apologise if my prose has used vehicles that may have unfairly portrayed your views or your posting standpoint - it was not intended.
Every player of Eve has a stake in every game design decision that is made, greater or lesser depending on the proximity to their playstyle of the decisions being made.
Which, at this current time, is trumped in my case. Reason bolded.
Having such a stake does not invalidate my opinion or require that I refrain from expressing it.
I think invalidate isn't the word that is appropriate either. However, when one is considering the opinions of someone who has a clear 'stake' in a discussion, it can reduce the weight of their points when the objective is to cater to a plurality of playstyles - assuming, for a moment, that I am correct in my view that production is not adversely affected by the introduction of NeX and that another uncatered-to playstyle benefits from it.
I disagree that the absence of production limits is irrelevant. You have chosen to use tritanium, a widely-available high-sec mineral, as an example, however, as those involved in the production chain know, the bottlenecks to production are sourcing and acquiring less easily obtainable low-sec minerals. The spike in zydrine prices last year, for example, did not lead to a change in the amounts traded, because everybody was already selling and buying all the zydrine they could get their hands on and continued to do so. The production capacity of minerals in Eve is limited not only by the total availability of sources but also by the total availability of players undertaking the activity to provide them and their ability to get their product to market - both activities that can be disrupted and even prevented by other players.
Fair enough, let's discard the tritanium example. Let's look at your zydrine example, the 'zydrine spike'
You say it a spike, I ask you what forces caused the prices to recover if production was 'maxed out'?
I then ask you how you can tell that production did not increase in response ? The only information you can get is the volume of zydrine traded, the average price and the prevailing price range. There is no way to access what the volume of market supply was at the time. If the supply increased, competition would have led to a drop in prices. Demand for market items can also decrease if people start sourcing their zydrine from areas other than the item itself (e.g. bulk-buying certain modules for meltdown and reselling the unwanted minerals, thereby acquiring zydrine at a cheaper price, contracts, self-supply e.g. internal alliance/corporate sales). These are all conceivable explanations for what you suggest happened.
If you were correct that production was maxed out, one surely would have expected the price to continue rising, right? Or, at least, settle at a higher price. if you then go on to say, well it may have been a temporary jolt in demand caused by a buyer making huge purchases for mass production, then it isn't a fair test of the hypothesis that production increases in response to increased prices, because the there was too little time for higher prices to take effect.
The other explanation for the spike could have been a product of market speculation and the toying of the high-end traders. It also could have been a distribution issue or a slump in supply. Again, the briefness of a 'spike' is not a good test of the theory that production increases in response to higher prices.
Your reliance on your assumptions about pricing of (wholly theoretical) Aurum items is, of course, a valid hypothesis, but as a result, I cannot accept as persuasive your unsupported assertions that IRL costs will act as a significant limiter to Aurum products. "If CCP prices a battleship at US$1,000, not many people will buy it" is a reasonable expectation (although it is always possible such an expectation would be confounded). "If CCP prices a battleship at US$1,000, not many people will buy it, so therefore any Aurum products will have no effect on the market" is a non sequitur. Your entire argument about 'market logic' is based on this assumption, and is therefore unsupported.
Items priced in that range are not vying for the same market as paltry T1/T2/T3. They are for people who are willing to spend stupid amounts of isk. The price of faction items limits their consumption (not their rarity, as there is always on their market if you check), likewise, the price of a new item can also limit its consumption. If price did not limit the consumption of faction items, it would be hard to find them on the market all-together. Therefore the logic I use is following on from buyer behaviour towards current market items.
It is also a non sequitur - and frankly, I would have expected it to be beneath you - to assert that because I believe that NeX stores selling comparable or better modules and ships to those players can produce would have a negative effect on industry, production and market-oriented game-play, I'm being mean to people who want to buy 1l.2B ISK monocles.
If that's what impression my post gave you, I'm sorry. I do not think you're being mean, I think you are incorrect and through your incorrect beliefs are unintentionally recommending game design decisions that are not in the interests of a subset of the EvE community. You are making these recommendations on grounds that I believe are not true - that the introduction of NeX would be of any harm to the player career paths you referenced. I think it is also important to hold up the interests of people other than those you care about when talking about game design. There are many players I know who I dislike, as well as their playstyle - but I would wish that they enjoy playing EvE despite also wishing the minimum of interaction between us - and I would stand up for their right to enjoy the game if there was an unbalanced proposal tabled against them. If they decry a balanced proposal for reasons that are unfounded, conversely, I would challenge them to see the truth. I think we see eye to eye here.
I also disagree with your implication that if a game design change positively affects a (in this case, purely hypothetical) player, the opinions of players who are negatively affected are devalued.
I don't make such an assertion, or mean to if that was what impression was given. The people who think they are being negatively affected are wrong. They aren't losing anything or being disadvantaged in any way - if all aurum items were introduced as player produced products it would be no different for anyone other than producers (with respect to existing playstyles). Producers cannot lose what they do not have, and are not negatively affected in their current pursuits for reasons I have explained.
It seems that you are arguing essentially the opposite: if a change makes some (hypothetical) players' lives easier, it ought to be introduced regardless of how it narrows the sandbox by reducing the variety of activities available to players.
You also, by your repeated references to my desire to produce Aurum, seem to have confused me with someone else. I have no desire to go into the Aurum production business, in fact, I'm not entirely sure how one would go about producing Aurum.
The change would narrow the sandbox if it took away from it. It does not. However, it benefits a subset of players and does not in doing so harm others, so it is good. In fact, all other subsets can access the benefits by buying NeX items with isk from people who are reselling them. Therefore anyone could theoretically benefit.
Re: Aurum.. I used aurum interchangeably with the NeX theory. When I said producing aurum I meant producing aurum-bought products. I hope that clears that misspeaking up.
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Topic: Revolt against ccp - isn't this blowing out of proportions people?! (Read 25069 times)