Scrapyard Bob wrote:I'm not stocking up, but I'm not cashing out either. Buying on a JIT-basis as I need them.
I really think it's a case of CCP not understanding the datacore market. Is it passive income? Technically yes. But it's not an ISK faucet and the items are only worth what other players will pay for them, which has gotten less and less over the years. So now you have to spend 2-6 weeks grinding up standings, plus 50M ISK in skill books, only to end up with an income source that pays out somewhere around 1.8 datacores/day (if you do not run missions). That works out to a measly 8-15M ISK/mo per agent (30-60 days to earn back your 50M ISK).
Frankly, if CCP has common sense, they won't touch the passive RP/day or the RP cost of datacores at all. That gives the market a baseline supply to feed the growing subscriber base.
Instead they should simply boost supply:
1) Increase the RP reward that you get from doing the daily R&D mission. Boost that payout by 3x-5x and the people who are willing to do the daily missions will end up with the bulk of the reward. It keeps the Research Project Management skill as a viable skill, plus you need the datacore skills in order to talk to the agent.
2) Add the racial engineering datacores to the FW corps LP stores. Maybe you can only buy them if you train the datacore skill to some level. Or set a minimum standing requirement.
3) Add the other datacores to the R&D NPC corp LP stores. If you can currently talk to an R&D agent and get RP in a particular datacore area, then that NPC corp should also sell the datacores of that type. Maybe you can only buy them if you train the datacore skill to some level. Maybe set a minimum standing requirement, or introduce a discount of up to 20% as your standing with the corp gets closer to +10.
Boosting supply means that passive-only earners will end up with less ISK/month, without completely pulling the rug out from under them in an abrupt fashion. You tick off fewer people if you slowly nerf passive R&D farming as an income source then if you simply remove it right off the bat.