Cailais wrote:I'm still not convinced that 'price rises' are a reason not to implement a change. Equally you could argue that those that use them more, become more successful in PVP contests so others start using them to remain competitive and so on and so forth.
And here you imply that all will be well, as they will cheapen eventually. Read on - they wont.
Cailais wrote:The manufacturers can't complain if demand is high or profits are good - so that rules out that group of objections.
Limited access to the raw materials might be argued to be a 'bad thing' but then again the areas where these resources can be found will encourage conflict for those resources - another objection discounted as it would encourage PVP.
Lack of supply simply means these boosters will have a high demand - and therefore might be worth smuggling.
Even if the argument that they will become 'mandatory' for effective PVP is a false argument as that just reflects back upon the value of the resources and production chain. The only group in this case who can argue are those that can't get them, or cant afford them: which just means they need to try harder.
I think you miss our point. I think what CCP wants to fix is how boosters are not used by many people atm. They do not (I hope) want 10 people to use 2500 more boosters, they want 2500 people use 10 more boosters
The issue is not that producers like me can not make a tidy enough profit. We can, oh boy we can.
In fact Im shooting myself in the revenue by even arguing this "buff" - but I care for some reason about stuff other than my wallet, and this does not make my reasoning any less valid.
The issue is that we can not satisfy the existing demand due to scarcity and expensiveness of materials, hence the client base is small, as people are discouraged by the lack of (reliable and affordable) supply, and the obscurity of moving their purchase.
More people would use boosters, if they could get them more easily, i.e. for less, and in reliable quantities - from a balanced and supplied market, where they are not at the mercy of the seller (which in turn is caused by the produceers being at the mercy of the raw material holders)
If you simply up demand by making boosters a no-contemplation-required kind of disposable hardwire, our product will become indispensable. We will sell at very high prices, thus further excluding the masses from booster use - they will not be able to afford them.
You could say that material supply will increase in time, as the inherent rise in product price would result in materials rising in price also (as producers will demand more of it)
And this is where your line of reasoning falters. In any other market, this would lead to eventual cheapening of the materials as people over-supply them, thus producers buying it for less.
This, in our opinion, will not happen with booster related raw materials. What we think will happen is that raw material supply will remain a bottleneck, where each cloud will have exactly one large volume supplier - the alliance holding the respective constellation. There will be no competition forcing them to lower prices.
An example: the only source of malachite cyto and impro/strong bpcs for mindflood is Delve. S2N hold sov there. They will find their resources grow in price, they might even export to Jita. But why would they lower prices? Users will hoover up all the mindflood regardless of price, hence producers will hoover up all clouds regardless of price.
There will be no oversupply of clouds, no competition, just eight separate monopolies on eight separate kinds of gas.Aside: if the demand is higher, ninja harvesting gas will not be a real factor. There will be large amounts of gas needed, and the only entities capable of supplying in those amounts are the ppl who hold sov in a booster constellation. To harvest a lot of gas, you need to sit several vulnerable ships in an exposed location for extended times, in only a handful of systems per gas - ie you cannot hide.
Add to this the fact that whomever not using boosters will be at a certain and severe disadvantage compared to those who do. And those ppl will be rich, established players. Is this what you wish to happen, the introduction of deadspace hardwires? Because thats what these will be, deadspace hardwires which come from a handful of plexes, all monopolisable by one entity for each flavor. Come on.