Eve Online Crucible - Are You Ready To Profit?

The Crucible Expansion is going to bring new ships, modules, and bosses to Eve Online. This is going to be a great time for anyone looking to make a profit. These changes are going to shake things up in the Eve Economy, and those that are quick can make massive profits.  Best of all, there are going to be so many ways to turn a profit anyone can do it.

This includes people who have no prior experience trading.  This expansion is going to be a "dash for the cash" expansion.  The first few industrial pilots that turn out some of the 4 new battleships are going to make a huge profit before everyone catches up.  Explorers are going to get brand new anomalies and DED complexes.  Traders get to trade in all the new things, but there are a few things to watch out for.

Eve Online Crucible: Traders

This patch is going to be bring in a bunch of re-balancing changes to the game.  Specifically, they are re-balancing hybrids, Minmatar Ammo, and POS fuels.  This means that the price of these things may or may not change due to demand.

There are a few things traders need to watch out for with this patch.  T2 rig BPC's and their salvage components are having their drop rates INCREASED.  This will probably cause the price of T2 rigs to crash.  The four new battle ships will also be in free fall during the first few days of their inception, mainly because of the low barrier to entry for industrial pilots.  Robotics consumption on player owned stations is also getting reduced, so watch out for a price change in Robotics.

The POS fuel change is going to be interesting.  POS no longer need to consume a bunch of different things, instead player owned stations will require the use of a new Fuel Block.  Faction towers will no longer receive bonus in reduction of fuel costs, but instead receive larger cargo holds.  Traders should keep a close eye on the price of isotopes over the next few weeks!

Eve Online Crucible: Explorers

This patch is going to show some love to high sec exploration, and those lucky pilots who find the new loot might be able to make a killing.  They are adding new DED complexes rated at 3/10 and 4/10.  This means that they SHOULD be able to spawn in high sec, but who knows if they actually will.  These complexes are going to contain new modules, and like usual the first few are going to go for a fortune.

Since the complexes are only going to be 3/10 and 4/10 the loot may not be super amazing, but their might be a gem or two the new stuff.  Exploration complexes should be spawning a bit faster because they will now despawn once they are completed, and not when the complex is empty.  Explorers also get the added benefit of more T2 rig salvage and BPC's in improved Magnometric Sites.  Overall, this patch is definitely showing some love to exploration.

Eve Online Crucible: Industrial Pilots

Industrial Pilots are getting a tiny bit of love this patch by the implementation of the four brand new Tier three Battlecruisers.  This is likely to have a low barrier to entry, meaning that everyone will be able to jump right into producing these 4 babies:

Caldari Naga

Amarr Oracle

 

 

Minmatar Tornado

Gallente Talos

 

 

 

Eve Online Crucible - Everyone Else

Everyone else is pretty much intended to cover our friends who make Eve-Online the game that it is, the PVPers.  CCP is showing everyone a bit of love by fixing a few of the small annoying things that bug pretty much everyone.  They are reducing the size of metal scraps so they do not clog up your cargo hold, they are making to so anomalies should spawn a bit faster, and they are giving more options for pew pew!

The patch is including a lot of brand new items, and those players who make the dash to get them first are likely going to make a bit more isk.  Anomalies are going to be rebalanced yet again, but this time to increase NPC bounties, not sure how that is going to work out.  Jump bridges no longer require a password to use, so no more typing in the same password over and over again.  Overall, it should be a interesting patch for everyone involved.

4 New Battlecruisers = Patch Day Profits!

I'm sure just about everyone heard that there will be 4 new ships in Eve-Online.  The 4 new battlecruisers are all teir 3 ships, not to be confused with tech 3.  This means that the BPO for these ships should be seeded on the server at npc stations.  These ships appear to be battlecruiser sized ships that sacrifice their tank for battleship sized weapons, which would make sense.  There are already battlecruiser sized ships that can tank level 4 missions, so a class cannon like battlecruiser would make sense.  This is all off topic, though, whatever the ship does it will be new a shiny.  We can profit off new and shiny!

This is all speculation, but we can us the Noctis as a model to make a few educated guesses. We can use this model to predict how things will progress on patch day, other then the fact that CCP probably break the game for a few days.  Heres some of the things we can make educated guesses on:

1. All 4 BPO's will be seeded on the market through their respective factions.
2. They will have relatively short production time.
3. The BPO will be reasonably priced around 3-4 hundred million isk.
4. The skills to fly them are already in the game.
5. They will be made out of regular minerals.

All these factors likely mean that within a few days these ships wil be reasonably priced, because the barrier for entry for these ships is pretty low.  It will be a little more difficult to produce then a drake.  This means that only the hardcore professional industrialists will be able to make those redicious profit margins for making the first few ships.  It should be reasonably priced in just a day or two as the lemmings and small scale industrialists start producing.

The areas that are likely to be lagging behind is going to be null sec.  There might be a bit of profit for those willing to risk the dangers involved in producing these things for their alliance, assuming there is enough interested in trying out a new ship.  It might be possible make a bit of isk selling these ships at null sec trade routes for null sec pilots who want to buy the nearest available one.

Those who feel like gambling can try and buy up a bit of regular minerals like Tritanium, Pyerite, etc.  These new ships, again speculation, are likely to be made up of these, and every producer and their mom is going to try and get in on producing these things.  The hardcore industrialists are likely to have stockpiles of all the required minerals, but the lemmings might create a temporary increase in demand.  This increase in demand will likely be small and short, unless it is paired with any changes that effect mining.  Keep watching those dev blogs!

Isk Watch: The 51 Day Challenge

The 51 Day Challenge is the newest and greatest thing brought to you by the authors of Isk Watch.  The 51 Day Challenge chronicles my attempts at making well over a billion isk in just 51 days with a brand new character with no seed money.  Basically, it is a attempt to show newer players step by step how they can play the game for free.

51 days is the amount of time a new player can receive by having a 21 day free trail and upgrading it to a paid account.  The general rules are set up so I can do anything a new player can, but I cannot use my alts to give myself any advantage.  This includes hauling, seed money, etc.  Everything else is allowed, including mission running and scamming.  Everything I do and trade in will also be revealed on a day by day biases.   Come check it out!

Massive Exploit Ahoy?

CCP just announced that all new paid accounts are going to receive a Cerebral Accelerator implant through the redeeming system.  This implant can be traded on the contract market and is currently valued at around 100 mil isk. This price will most likely not be lasting very long, but it still might be profitable for those who want to hold on to the implant!

It is unclear if CCP realizes this, but currently the buddy program lets players get a free plex or 30 days game time added to their accounts when the invited account upgrades to a paid account. This trick is used by many to create a free 51 day head start on their alt account since they would have to pay for the main one anyways.  The interesting thing is that the announcement specifically says that it includes accounts that update from the buddy program.

Where is all this going?  Well, it is possible to sorta mass create items worth 350 mil isk.  All players need to do is send themselves a buddy invite and create an account. They then plex that account, and receive a free plex or 30 days to their main account.  They can use that new account to claim a Cerebral Accelerator Implant and a Apotheosis.

Players can just forget that account or use it as an alt account once the Cerebral Accelerator Implant and Apotheosis is transferred over.  Once this is all completed you can rinse and repeat, and make as many implants and shuttles as you can send out buddy invites.

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WARNING
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This is untested! I haven't had any sleep yet so this could all be wrong!

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Edit: Received reports that buddy invite accounts no longer receive the implant.
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War on Bots - Update

It is time to review the ongoing war against botting in Eve-Online.  It now has been months since CCP announced their ongoing war, and it would be interesting to see if it was just propaganda to silence the masses. Hopefully, CCP is keeping their word and making it extremely difficult to bot, but we shall see.

Bot 1 Status: Unknown

This bot claims to be working, and they just released a new update.  They claim that it works perfectly with Incarna 1.1, but the site itself looks like terrible.  It does have a forum, but they only have three posts in the public forums since September.  This site cannot be confirmed to be working, and it appears to be a scam.

Bot 2 Status: Working

This bot looks pretty professional, and it has active forums. The site itself looks slick with a lot of information, and there are a few tips on avoiding bans.  This makes it seem like it is possible to get banned for using the bot, but it is not a sure thing.  There are a few posts of people claiming to receive two week bans for using this bot, and others who claim they have no problems yet.  This bot also includes a trading bot...

Bot 3 Status: Working

This bot is a Russian mission running bot, and it appears to be fully functional.  There are a few discussions bugs and settings to make the bot run more efficiently and nothing about avoiding bans. Again, this looks fully functional with little risk of being banned.

Bot 4 Status: Unknown

There is no way to tell if this bot is legit or a scam.  It claims that it is 100% undetectable and working for the Incarna patch.  There is no forums to tell how active this bot is, but it claims to use optical reading and supports up to 3 clients at a time.There is no way to be sure how well it works and if it is actually getting detected.

In Conclusion

It appears that the war on bots is not going any more effective then any other game.  They released one or two small different patches to detect some of the free common bots, and it probably cut down a lot on the casual botting.  It did little to nothing to stop any of the professional botting, but that is sorta to be expected.

CCP managed to kill off the free public bots that were getting out of hand, but the ones that people pay for continued to work.  Maybe, this is because there is a market out for them, and it is just a very lucrative business.  Bot makers simply could have found out what anti-botting measures CCP put in place and circumvented them.  These circumvention measures do not seem to be 100% effect, though, and it is still possible to receive a 2 week ban. The ball is now in CCP's court.  It all depends on CCP releasing an update to their detection measures.

There is a disturbing thing about the war on bots, and that is bot number  3.  The Russian bot is still active.  It is the same Russian bot that was still working in the first War on Bots post, and it seems to be just as active.  This bot is really active with a lot of posts on the forums daily, and it would be nice if they did something to detect this bot.

Site Redesign In Progress

We're back, better, stronger, faster, more endowed, smarter, and better at math then ever before. We are going to be in the process of a major site redesign over the next few weeks.  The idea is to have some guides, permanent pages, and a few other surprises in stored! The redesign will happen in the following stages:

1.) General Layout - Complete
2.) Information - 80% Complete*
3.) Graphic Redesign - 90% Complete*
4.) Final layout Redesign - Not Started
5.) New Host - Canceled
6.) Relaunch - 75% Ready*
*Best Guess

This list may or may not be updated...
Stay tunned...

Dev Blog - WHAT?

Do you have your heads in the sand CCP?  I am not one to really complain about changes even if I don't like them.  I would rather focus on how I can profit and adapt, but this is ridiculous.  I will leave my opinions to myself but I just have to butcher this dev blog.

The dev blog is in green followed by my comments in black.

This week has seen quite a controversy unfold. In almost the same instant as we deployed Incarna...
I'm pretty sure it was related to the deployment of Incarna, and not almost the same istant.  "Almost the same instant" implies that people are not upset with Incarna, but last I checked on the forum people are quite livid.

...which by the way is one of our more smooth and successful expansions

 Really? Is causing a 216 page, 6,472 replies complaining post as of 8:30 EST on June 24 and a riot in Jita (and reports of similar riots in other trade hubs) is a successful expansion?  I mean you guys didn't delete any boot.ini files (again) so I guess it could be considered "successful" if those are the standards you want to be judged by.  It's all in the eye of the beholder.  

not to mention absolutely gorgeous
Yeah, gorgeous.  Tiny single player room makes my graphic card sound like a freaken helicopter taking off.  I also get the bonus feature of only running 2 gorgeous clients at a time instead of 6 functional ones...  I get to actually re-log when I want to get on other accounts... It's really convenient!  

an internal newsletter with rather controversial topics addressed leaked out. To further compound the confusion there was a clear and rather large gap in virtual goods pricing expectation and reality with a large segment of the community. I‘m going to address both these issues right here.
 I really liked the part about selling NON-VANITY items, going completely against what you said in the past. Now industrials get to compete with CCP instead of just themselves!  YAY, spawning things out of nothing!  I like how it wasn't considered a big deal that you wanted to spawn the painted scorpions without consuming a regular scorpion.  They stop becoming "paint jobs" when a entirely new ship is coming into existence.

Fearless

Fearless is one of our company values. It‘s also the name of an internal newsletter that has been designed and developed specifically to catalyze discussions on controversial topics. One of the biggest elephants in the room these days, not just for EVE but for the gaming industry as a whole, is virtual goods sales and microtransactions.

Therefore we dedicated an entire issue to exactly that topic. It‘s worth mentioning that the topic of the issue was "Greed is good?" as a way to ask a question that would then be debated back and forth and often exaggerated purposefully to draw contrasts and make points. The result of that is now widely available on the internet.

The opinions and views expressed in Fearless are just that; opinions and views. They are not CCP policy nor are they a reliable source of CCP views as a company. The employees who submitted articles to that newsletter did exactly what they were asked to do, write about theories and opinions from an exaggerated stand.

While it‘s perfectly fine to disagree and attack CCP over policies or actions we take, we think it‘s not cool how individuals that work here have been called out and dragged through the mud due to something they wrote in the internal company newsletter. Seriously, these people were doing their jobs and do not deserve the hate and shitstorm being pointed at them.

First of all, I agree that attacking people personally is stupid.  If someone is assigned a job they should do it, even if they disagree with it. 

BUT... 

This is a red herring. This completely ignored any of the legitimate concerns players are having, but instead just says that were all assholes for attacking the authors.  People rose legitimate concerns, but the main on is: Is the Noble Exchange going to have non-vanity items? Yes or No?  

People have been shocked by the price range in the NeX store, but you should remember that we are talking about clothes. Look at the clothes you are currently wearing in real life. Do you have any specific brands? Did you choose it because it was better quality than a no-name brand? Assume for a short while that you are wearing a pair of $1,000 jeans from some exclusive Japanese boutique shop. Why would you want to wear a pair of $1,000 jeans when you can get perfectly similar jeans for under $50? What do other people think about you when they see you wearing them? For some you will look like the sad culmination of vainness while others will admire you and think you are the coolest thing since sliced bread. Whichever it is, it is clear that by wearing clothes you are expressing yourself and that the price is one of the many dimensions that clothes possess to do that in addition to style and fit. You don't need to buy expensive clothes. In fact you don't need to buy any clothes. Whatever you choose to do reflects what you are and what you want others to think you are.

We will gradually introduce items at other price points, definitely lower and probably higher than what‘s in the store today. We hope you enjoy them and are as passionate about them as you are of the current items that are for sale.

Go ahead and charge whatever you want for designer clothes.  The issue I have is that you guys are just going to STOP developing free stuff.  I mean why add any more vanity items what so ever when you guys can charge 5, 10, 25, 60 dollars for a pair of virtual pants.  Keep the current selection at the bare minimum and have all the cool stuff in the Noble Exchange. 

I hope I‘ve addressed your concerns and cleared up a lot of the issues you‘re having. We‘ll continue monitoring the forums and other communications channels and pick up and reply if there are concerns not covered by this blog.
You only address the thing about price, but completely ignored the MAIN issues.  I understand if you don't know if there will be non-vanity items in the store.  I just hope you understand that I don't know if I want to keep playing a game where someone can buy things from CCP to be better then me.  Other players yes, CCP no.  This is purely from a Industrial point of view, the PVPers I know are more pissed then me.