EVE!

[v8envy]

It is against your user agreement to sell a character for anything other than in-game isk via the approved transfer method.

Michael

Not my problem, I wouldn't be a user after I ditch the accounts. EULA violations will be for the buyers to deal with.

When you notice the number of macro ratters and macro miners around you can see CCP doesn't give a rat's ass about the user agreements when it comes to taking money. I now have a similar attitude from the other side.

 

[zokudu]

I installed the free trial of this game yestarday and while its nice its not my thing. I think I would play it but I can't justify $15 a month for it. Unless anyone wants to give me some ISK to bu some PLEX jk

 

[ichy]

Not my problem, I wouldn't be a user after I ditch the accounts. EULA violations will be for the buyers to deal with.

When you notice the number of macro ratters and macro miners around you can see CCP doesn't give a rat's ass about the user agreements when it comes to taking money. I now have a similar attitude from the other side.

Out of curiosity, where do you find these macro-ratters? High-sec only? If they were out in 0.0 they sound very gankable...

 

[v8envy]

Highsec ratting is less income than highsec mining. They are quite thick on the ground in 0.0, but not as gankable as you think. They warp & log whenever a hostile enters local, but you can usually find them in the same system day after day, ratting 23 hours a day.

And even if you do manage to logonski bubble gank one all they lose is a few tens of M on a mostly T1 fit Raven (ratting doesn't require much in the way of skills or gear). Macros utterly don't care about killboard epeen.

In a decent system the macro is pulling in about 30M/hour (let's call it 600M a day or 18 billion a month). Shutting down one account for a few hours to a day won't matter if the alliance macro operator(s) have 20 accounts grinding away. Human players have limited time to set up and execute ganks in hostile space 10+ hops away from their base (and the outcome will be ultimately as unrewarding as shooting an NPC), macro accounts are not time limited.

Head east from minmatar space (toward N-RAEL) and then swing south past Curse and toward Esoteria, you'll see plenty of these guys in systems along the way and even more a hop or two off the highway.

 

[ichy]

v8envy:

Thanks, I appreciate that rather interesting response. I'm going to echo what a lot of people have been repeating and say that EVE's developers should work on fixing the current game rather than adding new features. Hell, I think it would be pretty cool if they'd give you an ISK reward for pointing out a character who's macro-ratting.

 

[KaOTiK]

Bot hunting in 0 isnt as easy as you would think like v8envy said. My corp goes bot hunting in a few systems we know are full of them everyonce in awhile. We've even had one of the guys running the bots mail us trying to pay us off to not attack them anymore, all in super broken english of course lol.

The systems we hunt them in have POS' for them so we bring lots of bubbles and set them up. Sometimes we simply leave an alt afk cloaked in the system so that they dont rat at all.

There are other systems where they warp soon as you enter the system and log off and those are hard to catch but doable. Takes a lot of logging on and off to catch them. but it is satisfying.

 

[v8envy]

v8envy:

Thanks, I appreciate that rather interesting response. I'm going to echo what a lot of people have been repeating and say that EVE's developers should work on fixing the current game rather than adding new features. Hell, I think it would be pretty cool if they'd give you an ISK reward for pointing out a character who's macro-ratting.

I'd rather they respond to the macro (or sweatshop account sharing, both behave about the same) quickly rather than spend months "following the money" to batch ban. Because the several months the batch ban procedure takes is more than enough time for new alts to roll off the assembly line and pick up where the previously banned left off.

Character online and generating ISK every hour 23h/day for more than a week? That's a red flag right there, most humans would keel over dead with that kind of "play" schedule. Watch that character for a bit, it should be obvious what's going on. Banninate. Repeat often and the macros will run out of spare accounts in less than a month.

Unfortunately this is counter-productive, since CCP is in the business of collecting $, not providing a good game experience to "players." A sweatshop/bot operator's $ is as good as yours or mine, and it would take $ to fund the anti-macro police.

As far as reward: the last thing eve needs is more ISK fountains. Could use a bunch more on-going ISK sinks.

 

[JSt0rm]

those sweat shops are probably playing for free via plex

 

[v8envy]

Doesn't matter, plex don't appear out of thin air. Someone paid for that plex, then sold it for ISK. As far as CCP is concerned a plex-funded account is no different from a $ funded account. In fact, it's better: ($19 a month via plex vs $15 or less for $).

If it wasn't for macros/sweatshoppers I'm not sure how many people would be willing to grind for 25c-$1/hour or so to sell ISK as cheap as they do. (figures based on 20m/hr L4 grinding income, 5m/hour high sec mining income, 300M isk for PLEX)

 

[Acanthus]

So did you find a place? All I've done since February is log in to switch skill training. Got about 70M SP per account x 3 accounts with anywhere between 20 and 50B in assets. Just slowly leaking 1B/month to keep training them; but if I can eject from this shit game and get something for it I'd be all over it.

There's playerauctions which is the only site that i know is legit for sure.

The rest of them seem to be poorly managed or sinister sites all run by the same company (do a whois).

 

[Martimus]

POS fuel is really expensive. (80M per week for my large POS) It keeps getting more expensive by the day too. Hopefully I can make enough Coolant myself to supply that portion of the fuel once the skill is finished training tonight. (Of the 244M ISK I spent on 2 weeks of POS fuel for my large and medium POS, 90M ISK was for Coolant.)

 

[v8envy]

POS fuel is really expensive. (80M per week for my large POS) It keeps getting more expensive by the day too. Hopefully I can make enough Coolant myself to supply that portion of the fuel once the skill is finished training tonight. (Of the 244M ISK I spent on 2 weeks of POS fuel for my large and medium POS, 90M ISK was for Coolant.)

Because stuff you make yourself is free, amirite?

Congratulations on your baby steps towards becoming a manu-bear. Having been down that road I'd recommend making a spreadsheet to help you evaluate selling intermediate goods and buying final product vs. doing end to end manufacturing yourself. You may be quite surprised, in a wallet-inflating sort of way.

 

[Martimus]

Because stuff you make yourself is free, amirite?

Congratulations on your baby steps towards becoming a manu-bear. Having been down that road I'd recommend making a spreadsheet to help you evaluate selling intermediate goods and buying final product vs. doing end to end manufacturing yourself. You may be quite surprised, in a wallet-inflating sort of way.

The POS fuel being made from Planetary Interaction is new, and I don't expect the prices to stay this high once everything settles. Just like how I made a lot of ISK the first months of making medium rigs, but profits shrank quickly once the market stabilized.

I expect Coolant prices to come down just like rig prices did (if for no other reason than it is easy to make, so more people will realize this and start making and selling it until the profits are back down to Earth.)

I actually don't build the final product, I am just doing a complex reaction and selling it to people who will build the final product. At the prices 1 week ago, this would have net me 120M ISK a week. POS fuel prices have gone up 50% in the week since, and now the profit is far less (about 80M now). I expect this spike to come back down, but in the mean time I will make the most expensive part of the fuel myself (which is one of the easier fuels to make, surprisingly.)

You are right that this hobby will probably be a big money pit (it is starting to seem that way). Even so, I don't regret it. It is a learning experience, and something new for me to do. I hope it really does work out well, but if it doesn't it is no big loss.

 

[ichy]

This POS discussion is pretty interesting. I've been trying to figure out better ways to make passive income in EVE, and so far haven't had much success. I've made some profits trading, but not the sort of isk that'll fund my PvP on its own.

Yesterday I also soloed a 5/10 plex on my own for the first time. Fairly profitable but very time consuming in a Drake, and I didn't even bother trying to kill the final boss. I may end up getting another Raven in order to run plexes. I'm not thrilled about taking such an expensive ship out into low-sec though...

 

[JSt0rm]

coolant prices are in bubble mode. Don't hoard at these prices. It will pop and when it does buy a TON becasue prices will crawl back up again.

 

[Martimus]

This POS discussion is pretty interesting. I've been trying to figure out better ways to make passive income in EVE, and so far haven't had much success. I've made some profits trading, but not the sort of isk that'll fund my PvP on its own.

Yesterday I also soloed a 5/10 plex on my own for the first time. Fairly profitable but very time consuming in a Drake, and I didn't even bother trying to kill the final boss. I may end up getting another Raven in order to run plexes. I'm not thrilled about taking such an expensive ship out into low-sec though...

The problem with 5/10 plexes is that no-one likes to do drone plexes. If you find a 4/10 or 6/10, you generally find lots of people who will run it with you. I run those plexes in a Dominix. It is probably about 100M ISK fully rigged and fitted, so it isn't too bad of a loss if it dies.

It also helps to be on vent, so that people get to know you more personally. Then you get to hear when they find a nice site to run, and share with the profits.

 

[nsafreak]

coolant prices are in bubble mode. Don't hoard at these prices. It will pop and when it does buy a TON becasue prices will crawl back up again.

Another fuel to potentially watch is robotics. Part of the reason that the prices are so high on them is because of similar factors that are causing the rise in prices of other POS fuels. However unlike other POS fuels they are a bit more of a pain in the ass to make. They require a bare minimum of 2 planets to make, one planet producing mechanical parts, another producing electronics and then on the planet that's producing electronics you react the two to get robotics. You could move the reaction to a third planet but that's more transit of materials & more cost involved.

However like other POS fuels its bubble will eventually burst. I would not expect the price decrease to be quite so dramatic or stay down for very long. So if/when you see a sharp decrease in that POS fuel buy as much as you can reasonably afford to.

 

[ichy]

The problem with 5/10 plexes is that no-one likes to do drone plexes. If you find a 4/10 or 6/10, you generally find lots of people who will run it with you. I run those plexes in a Dominix. It is probably about 100M ISK fully rigged and fitted, so it isn't too bad of a loss if it dies.

It also helps to be on vent, so that people get to know you more personally. Then you get to hear when they find a nice site to run, and share with the profits.

Good point about Vent. I understand why people would rather avoid drone plexes, but I'd been out scanning with my Buzzard for over an hour and was just happy to have found something.

Another member of our corp did end up getting a bunch of minerals out of my plex run though. Since I had nowhere close to enough cargo space to carry them all I told him to come on over and grab what he wanted since I'd only taken the really high-end stuff.

 

[JSt0rm]

Another fuel to potentially watch is robotics. Part of the reason that the prices are so high on them is because of similar factors that are causing the rise in prices of other POS fuels. However unlike other POS fuels they are a bit more of a pain in the ass to make. They require a bare minimum of 2 planets to make, one planet producing mechanical parts, another producing electronics and then on the planet that's producing electronics you react the two to get robotics. You could move the reaction to a third planet but that's more transit of materials & more cost involved.

However like other POS fuels its bubble will eventually burst. I would not expect the price decrease to be quite so dramatic or stay down for very long. So if/when you see a sharp decrease in that POS fuel buy as much as you can reasonably afford to.

oh yeah robotics I have about 20k of them sitting in jita waiting. You cant make them for less then 40k so I expect the prices to continue to rise barring some change from ccp.

 

[Michael]

BTW - I have been syaing for a while that there is an open invite for Anandtech people in my corp (Diplomatic Disruption).

My Alliance (Chain of Chaos) is in the top 3 for kills the last 30 days and my corp is in the top 20 as well, se we are an active and real Alliance, low sec or not:

http://killboard.evekb.co.uk/?a=top20

Michael

 

[Fallen Kell]

I might be looking to join you Michael, but I am still getting my feet wet so to speak in the game. I thought I found a decent corp, but there are usually only like 5-8 people on when I am, so it isn't as much fun as I would think it could be. But I am learning some things from these guys, and they are pretty friendly towards new players. Getting my drones skills up (I want to have tech 2 drones before moving into a BS so I don't get powned by someone in a rifter). After that, I am training Hull Upgrades 5, Mechanic 5, Repair Systems 5, and Electronics 5 (need to get these basic skills done).

I also want to get a jump clone or 2 as well so I don't risk my implants in war/pvp. But I need to get my standings up for that. I am slowly grinding Caldari Navy (up to just over 4.03 standing with them now).

 

[JSt0rm]

I might be looking to join you Michael, but I am still getting my feet wet so to speak in the game. I thought I found a decent corp, but there are usually only like 5-8 people on when I am, so it isn't as much fun as I would think it could be. But I am learning some things from these guys, and they are pretty friendly towards new players. Getting my drones skills up (I want to have tech 2 drones before moving into a BS so I don't get powned by someone in a rifter). After that, I am training Hull Upgrades 5, Mechanic 5, Repair Systems 5, and Electronics 5 (need to get these basic skills done).

I also want to get a jump clone or 2 as well so I don't risk my implants in war/pvp. But I need to get my standings up for that. I am slowly grinding Caldari Navy (up to just over 4.03 standing with them now).

we have access to jump clones. If you were in chain of chaos you would too.

 

[blipblop]

Looking for a bit of change. Was part of very large 0.0 corp for 2+ years and have recently been inactive. Just losing interest, 40m SP playerm what kind of things do you guys do on a daily basis?

Also, how do you feel about inactivity on the kb (IE If work comes up and I don't get a kill for 6 weeks)

 

[JSt0rm]

Looking for a bit of change. Was part of very large 0.0 corp for 2+ years and have recently been inactive. Just losing interest, 40m SP playerm what kind of things do you guys do on a daily basis?

Also, how do you feel about inactivity on the kb (IE If work comes up and I don't get a kill for 6 weeks)

its fine I'm inactive a lot. There are times when its good to be there for defence or something but being top on the kb isnt the focus.

 

[JSt0rm]

oh and we are basically bastards, on a daily basis.