One of the key fascinations with EVE Online, for me, is the Market - the vast and complex sprawl that makes up the (mostly) player-driven economy. Much in that game revolves around making money. Due to the unique way their experience points system works, the concept of 'Level' as understood in other MMOs is by and large, totally irrelevant as a measure of progress or success. Instead, bank balance tends to function in that role.
I've mentioned various ways to go about becoming wealthy in previous posts, but last night I decided to look into manufacturing again, an activity I hadn't taken seriously in any real capacity since my newbie days, over two years ago. At that point the markets were fresh and inflation was far lower than today. Manufactuiring is the nearest EVE has to 'Trade Skills', although again, has only superficial resemblance to crafting in other games. In EVE you buy a Blueprint, either an unlimited-run original, or a limited run copy for less, depending on need. The blueprint lists a bill of materials, which you then have to mine or buy, and assemble, with blueprint at a starbase with factory facilities. Then you push 'Go', and go off to do something else, and after a while, the finished item falls out into your hangar.
It's simple enough, and my prefered implementation of trade skills, where the skill is in the logistics and infrastructure - actually finding the materials, rather than the repetition-clicking of 'making' something.
I started small, back in the day, making weapon ammunition - figuring that a consumable item will always be in demand. I made a small profit on the stuff, and moved up to Frigates - cheap, effectively disposable, ships with a fairly high demand. After knocking out several types of these, I began to notice, for the first time, several truths about the market, which have stood me in good stead ever since:
- Crafters MUST sell their products.
The decision to become a crafter is a specialisation, of sorts, and often requires some sacrifice in time, skill points, and combat viability. This sacrifice is usualy made on the assumption that eventually, it will be worth it, financially - if this turns out not to be the case, then the crafter has basically wasted a lot of time, and possibly a character. This necessity for self-justification means that a lot of crafters are incapable of simply stockpiling products until the price is right for them, and leads to massively self-destructive price wars, as the finished item MUST be sold, regardless of loss. Only on very rare occassions do organised cartels form, as in a MMO economy, the crafting population is generally to much in flux for established names to become known and colaborated with.
- Crafters work for free.
Most people involved with trade skills do not seem to understand the value of their own time. Crafting is usually quite fiddley, involving either time spent finding materials, or time spent clicking 'Combine' over and over. Many crafters do not realise how much money they could be making by just going out and beating on monsters for the same duration instead, and those crafters that do try to add this cost on, get undercut but the ones that are working for free, so generally are unable to charge for their time if they want to compete. Only a minor concern if they simply enjoy crafting, but certainly no way to run a business, as many crafters attempt to do.
- Too many Crafters.
Personally, I blame The Grind for this, but usually, in any game where crafting is at all interesting and different from monster-whacking, far more people will be interested in taking part, than there are customers for the total finished output. I don't blame players for wanting to try a bit of everything, but this tends to manifest in raw materials costing more than the finished items, as massive oversupply creates a very customer-friendly market and the economic power moves to the Harvesters and Miners who are the real people selling the things that everyone wants.
- Most Players like to be self-sufficient.
If faced with an item, or service, a player cannot do without it makes absolute sense that the player should try to gain the ability or skills required to provide it to himself. Having a play-style dependent on others is rarely satisfactory, and in some cases can make the game unplayable, and rather than trust to the whims of a fickle population of others, many players will either learn crafting themselves to a point where the basics are covered in-house, or level up an alt for this purpose. Despite often hating crafting, many players find this (to them) unpleasant task preferable to standing in a busy place and spamming for help every time they want to play, nad then paying for it when it is available. This in turn reduces designed-in consumer demand, further exacerbating the above effects.
I'm reasonably quick when it comes to MMO mechanics, and the above list soon became apparent in EVE. EVE in particular, with it's heavy emphasis on production, industry and money. While in games like Everquest etc, the crafting is distinctly secondary to the main game, it can be argued that production in EVE is the main game, or a significant part of it, so naturally far more people try it, and take it more seriously when they do.
In the end, I reached the conclusion that in almost all aspects of manufacturing, it was generally quicker, easier and cheaper to simply make the money on NPC Missions or Trading, than to mine, build and then try to sell into an already massively crowded and oversaturated market. EVE is all about income/time, and those two methods seemed a far better prospect. It pays to be a consumer in EVE these days.
However, this whole situation is complicated by recycling. Most finished items in game, including whole ships, can be recycled down to their component minerals. It's not perfect, but with various skills, it can be made to return over 95% of the original components. Coupled with the above Crafter habits, this leads to a bizzarre situation.
Doing the usual market browsing, I came across a Moa, a powerful mid-game Crusier, on sale for 7.75 million ISK. "That seems a bit low," I thought, and got my calculator out. Various data sources, ingredient lists and calculations showed that if I bought that ship, and just threw it in the trash compactor, I'd get back minerals that I could then sell for 8.6 million ISK. And it wasn't just a one-off; across the board items and equipment are going on sale at low prices, but the player demand for minerals is so high now, that it becomes marginally profitable to just buy and destroy ships and equipment, and resell the minerals! Of course it becomes easy to fall into the same trap as them and not take into account the cost of the time involved in moving those minerals about, but still, the scrap metal business has never looked so good...