DUST Search - How bad was the old PC ISK faucet?

Joseph Ridgeson wrote:

Locking districts were not all evil. Corporations also used it for some fun stuff. Directors versus Members battles, PC training, learning how to fly ADS, general jackassery. But, yes, the money that was created was absolutely insane especially for the corporations that had more than 10 districts.

I am going to go with Deezy and agree that the damage of some people having millions, billions of ISK is not really that big of a deal. It did ruin the opportunity to be connected to EVE because I believe there was a CCP statement that DUST was generating as much ISK as EVE was, however that was by less than 1,000 people and it was not being spread about. However, whether we would ever have had EVE-DUST ISK interaction is probably debatable given the scale. A newbie high sec miner can make 10 million an hour; that isn't going to happen in DUST.

If you accept that the interaction was not halted because of PC, it only meant that the people that were already capable of running full on prototype because of a combination of factors* were even more capable of running full prototype. And because there was no economy, it didn't really matter.

* Factors:
Natural skill in the game and not losing it.
Having played so much as to have already amassed a large quantity of money.
Playing in specific ways as to greatly reduce loses (Squads, not taking risks, etc.)


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deezy dabest IMPERIAL SPECIAL FORCES GROUP Evil Syndicate Alliance. 3	Posted - 2015.10.20 00:46:00 - [1] - Quote As far as I know Nyan went into the trillions on the corp account while also dulling out billions to personal player accounts. Honestly I never saw it as bad for the state of the game at the time other than making PC a very exclusive club. What it did seriously damage is our future chances of any type of player market or connection to Eve as many people did reach game breaking levels of ISK were any of those to come true.
deezy dabest IMPERIAL SPECIAL FORCES GROUP Evil Syndicate Alliance. 3	Posted - 2015.10.20 00:57:00 - [2] - Quote Shaun Iwairo wrote: How did the payout mechanic work? I've heard it was both active and passive, can you give some examples eg. you held a district for one month you'd get x ISK? It was very simple. Districts generated clones like now. Clones destroyed in battle went to match payouts Clones not burnt in battle were instead sold to genolution for ISK per clone. This meant that passive generation of clones was massive generation of passive isk. EDIT: Lightning is correct and I had forgotten about that little bit of info. Corp leaders did not even have to login to sell their clones as anything over the districts capacity was automatically sent to genolution for ISK. Basically these scenarios became a huge problem: Corp A and Corp B would work together to lock their districts with minimal clone loss. Corp A creates alt corp and always attacks itself ensuring minimal clone loss. Remember that clones destroyed in battle were also paid to the winning team so there was no loss in those locks. There was also the issue of these empty battles being used to farm 100% of the weekly SP cap in one battle by not hacking any thing and spending a couple of hours just generating logi points back and forth. This made it so those guys only needed to buy 1 day boosters and then would be gone for the other 6 and a half days.
deezy dabest IMPERIAL SPECIAL FORCES GROUP Evil Syndicate Alliance. 3	Posted - 2015.10.20 01:07:00 - [3] - Quote Shaun Iwairo wrote: Wow. Did anyone predict these specific situations before the mechanic came out? You would have to ask someone that was more involved at that time. I just stayed out of it all and sold BPO codes to those guys to get my cut. I have always been against PC because I see no fun in having a Dust job that requires me to be on at certain times.
deezy dabest IMPERIAL SPECIAL FORCES GROUP Evil Syndicate Alliance. 3	Posted - 2015.10.20 02:18:00 - [4] - Quote Joseph Ridgeson wrote: Locking districts were not all evil. Corporations also used it for some fun stuff. Directors versus Members battles, PC training, learning how to fly ADS, general jackassery. But, yes, the money that was created was absolutely insane especially for the corporations that had more than 10 districts. I am going to go with Deezy and agree that the damage of some people having millions, billions of ISK is not really that big of a deal. It did ruin the opportunity to be connected to EVE because I believe there was a CCP statement that DUST was generating as much ISK as EVE was, however that was by less than 1,000 people and it was not being spread about. However, whether we would ever have had EVE-DUST ISK interaction is probably debatable given the scale. A newbie high sec miner can make 10 million an hour; that isn't going to happen in DUST. If you accept that the interaction was not halted because of PC, it only meant that the people that were already capable of running full on prototype because of a combination of factors* were even more capable of running full prototype. And because there was no economy, it didn't really matter. * Factors: Natural skill in the game and not losing it. Having played so much as to have already amassed a large quantity of money. Playing in specific ways as to greatly reduce loses (Squads, not taking risks, etc.) As for the "non evil" aspects there was some okay things like that going on but really very few that needed it were able to partake because it was all about ISK generation. These were the kind of things that should have been able to take place in some sort of NPE or at least in a corp battle type arena that does not have such messed up rewards. Comparing the ISK generation between Eve and Dust is a very tough thing to do. In Dust ISK is only generated through fighting where as in Eve fighting is the least profitable venture of all and is only necessary to defend your most profitable areas. I feel like that was what CCP was going for with PC but horribly flopped on that because of the lack of any open market as well as the absolute lack of any type of ISK sink which would force players to be more interested in fighting to replenish their wallets as oppose to just all being happy with watching their wallets stack at varying rates. I want to go into a rant here about open markets and why no matter what they should be the most important thing on the table right now but I will reserve that for another time so that the thread does not end up totally derailed.
deezy dabest IMPERIAL SPECIAL FORCES GROUP Evil Syndicate Alliance. 3	Posted - 2015.10.20 02:47:00 - [5] - Quote Shaun Iwairo wrote: Joseph Ridgeson wrote: Locking districts were not all evil. Corporations also used it for some fun stuff. Directors versus Members battles, PC training, learning how to fly ADS, general jackassery. But, yes, the money that was created was absolutely insane especially for the corporations that had more than 10 districts. Yeah when I saw that corps had some control over the when and who I thought it'd be a good way of organizing 'custom game-modes'. I am going to go with Deezy and agree that the damage of some people having millions, billions of ISK is not really that big of a deal. Do you mean not that big of a deal as 'the fact that old PC players have tons of ISK isn't a big deal' or 'the people that got the obscene amounts of PC ISK would have gotten the same obscene amounts from playing normal game-modes anyway'? I will expand on why I said that ISK did not matter. Even in days past the effect that your wallet has was very minimal. I say this because no matter what you can only run one suit at a time. The same applies in Eve where you can only fly one ship at a time. If payouts worked properly and we had open markets the guys using that ISK would end up spreading that ISK around to players of higher skill level and organization. On the open markets issue. The idea of an open market was absolutely doomed from day 1 thanks to CCP introducing AUR gear. This makes it impossible for free market pricing to take hold due to supply and demand never being dependent on each other. The issue with having no open markets is the fact that risk versus reward is always a static number which is set by the NPC markets. If we already had an open market already things would be MUCH different in relation to proto and officer stomps. Before we can solve that issue we must find a way to create player item generation which I believe should be the exact role of planetary conquest. If ISK generation from PC was dependent on open markets then any farming would result in prices going down negating the profits of actually farming it. Making this work in the real world of New Eden is far more complicated than it sounds but I feel like it is very much achievable and would put us back on the track that we need as well as actually giving all game modes a unique reason to play them. I think we should start simple there with something like this. PC generates materials which are used to manufacture items. Basic blueprint originals for manufacturing would be available very cheap from the NPC market. These can also generate copies for other uses. Advanced blueprint copies are created through researching basic blueprintcopies at a cost of time and ISK. Faction blueprint copies are created through trading LP and basic blueprints into the faction stores. Proto blueprint copies are generated by research through a time and isk cost as well as having a % failure rate which can be negated through skills. Manufacturing from these BPOs and BPCs use a varying balance of materials to create items. Everything below proto would use little to no of the rarest materials. Those less rare materials are generated through recycling salvage. The rarest of materials would only come from PC but since proto requires proto BPCs which only come from other players the corps would have to sell those materials to be able to obtain the necessary BPCs thus preventing them from "fixing" the market on proto items. To further balance this any proto weapons salvaged from battle in any game mode can be recycled to obtain a small amount of those rare materials. We are nearing a point where this is viable but the issue is that it becomes contradictory to some of the basic monetizing principles in Dust. I believe that we will see this type of thing on day 1 in whatever comes after Dust be it Legion or Dust on PS4 but I hope they will move us in that direction to test the concept.
deezy dabest IMPERIAL SPECIAL FORCES GROUP Evil Syndicate Alliance. 3	Posted - 2015.10.20 03:01:00 - [6] - Quote Shaun Iwairo wrote: I do like that, very much like the Eve method of manufacturing. But I think you've kinda underestimated New Eden citizens' ability to fix a market when it comes to single-source rare manufacturing resources. A prime example of this would be theOTEC agreement. That's the thing is that there is no single source. BPCs could not be produced in mass meaning any source of stock piling would require purchase from other players. The only way this ISK could be obtained is through sales of the material which is required to produce proto. Supplementing that material through recycling salvage means that any win against proto users results in having proto yourself which can then be used or recycled to create the proto of your choice at a slightly increased cost. This brings some insane aspects to raiding as well as to equipment choices in FW. Even with that being said no system is perfect and will obviously be exploited in some way.
deezy dabest IMPERIAL SPECIAL FORCES GROUP Evil Syndicate Alliance. 3	Posted - 2015.10.20 03:45:00 - [7] - Quote Shaun Iwairo wrote: I'm thinking you've got your head around this kind of stuff better than I do, so thanks for being patient. The rare materials come from the Districts, but can be also be obtained by recycling proto gear to get some of its materials back, so: The players that control Districts will have competition on the price of the rare materials from those that play the game and kill proto. Producing BPCs will be just as important as obtaining the materials because: Proto BPC invention speed & failure rate will be set to a level that would require participation from most of the playerbase just to keep up with demand. ISK costs limit people setting up invention farms. (I don't really believe ISK can be an effective limiting factor for anything in Dust anymore, especially in this case where it'll never exceed the price of the item itself. The more expensive you make the invention fee the more the item will cost because the invention fee is just a cost of producing the item. What about something that is only obtainable through gameplay and is non-tradeable like a pass/passes that you earn for completing a contract that allows you to use a research slot? I dunno, I think it's gotta be something active if you want to dissuade passive ISK generation through invention farms.) Sound right? Correct. Some extra points: The ability to recycle proto weapons would drive district raids through the roof in my opinion. Making raids actually different from attacks in having a shorter warning time would be amazing but is not required for the system to work. Invention would not only be limited by ISK but also by SP just like in Eve. Lower level invention farms would have a high failure rate and less available slots. This would make turning alts into farms unreliable and generally a waste of time. I dont see the need for tying invention to participation. SP investments are already required to get a better success rate and manufacturing is easier from participation through getting free materials from unwanted battle salvage.
deezy dabest IMPERIAL SPECIAL FORCES GROUP Evil Syndicate Alliance. 3	Posted - 2015.10.20 05:51:00 - [8] - Quote Shaun Iwairo wrote: Invention would not only be limited by ISK but also by SP just like in Eve. Lower level invention farms would have a high failure rate and less available slots. This would make turning alts into farms unreliable and generally a waste of time. Yeah cool cool that sorts it out pretty cleanly. e. What do you mean by a District Raid? An attack that results in taking resources but leaving the ownership intact? Correct. A raid would cause a loss of some resources as well as of course the salvage and ISK as a return. These would also weaken districts but at no point could a raid change ownership. Something like 20% of the daily production given to a successful raid would probably be nice.