So it's been about two weeks since the Incursion interdiction led by Krissada began. Since then the high-sec incursions have been completed not long after the final site has spawned. This has caused a large amount of angst from those that regularly farm incursion sites. With the release by CCP Diagoras of some figures from the last week I thought that I would take a gander at the situation.
The rhetoric from both sides can be a little predictable if more than a little banal. Those closing the incursions are being labelled as "griefers" and those who farm them labelled in turn as "exploiters". But what of the issues at hand?
The primary issue that those who are completing incursions as soon as possible have is the amount of Isk that is being farmed and the impact that this has on the overall economy. It follows the usual pattern of the risk vs reward being skewed too far in the favour of reward. I'll state here and now that I believe that even L4s offer too much reward so I'm firmly in the "nerf incursions" camp on this issue.
In the last week a total of 1,442.6B Isk has been generated from NPC bounties and Incursion payouts. As can be seen from the chart to the right NPC bounties account for 72% of that Isk, a big majority. So with NPC bounties running at a little over 3.6 times Incursion payouts you may well be wondering what the issue is.Remember that this information is from the last week, that means that the Isk generated from Incursions is down, probably a lot, from its usual level because of the early endings that have been happening. No figures are currently available for pre-interdiction payouts but I don't think that it is too unreasonable to assume that it would have been at least double. This assumption is based on the fact that a new Incursion takes approximately 8 hours to spawn after the previous one has ended and that currently Incursions survive for 8 hours before being ended. There would also need to be an allowance made for relocation for those that are still running Incursions.
An argument can also be easily made that the figure for Bounties is artificially high compared with the pre-interdiction period since it is not unreasonable to assume that when no Incursions are available those who would normally farm them switch instead to L4 missions. The practical upshot of this would be that the payouts for Incursions and Bounties were approximately equal. I would guess made 55% Bounties and 45% Incursions.
The above is pure conjecture, again I don't think that it's too wide of the mark, but let us ignore that for the moment and just work with the figures that we do have. If we take a look at Isk per hour then NPC bounties provide a total of 6.87B Isk per hour when you allow for downtime. Incursion Isk per hour ran at 2.79B during the time that an Incursion was available. This is a ratio of approximately 5:2 in favour of NPC bounties.
The next thing to look at is how the NPC bounties are calculated. This is a total figure and it encompasses every bounty payment made regardless of how or why the NPC was generated. NPCs with bounties are generated in the following ways, although this is not an exhaustive list:
- Mission rats: L1-L5
- Belt rats: High-sec, low-sec and null-sec
- Tutorial missions
- Exploration sites of all types.
- Null-sec anomolies.
That's an awful lot of different ways that they can be generated although some can be pretty much ignored. The tutorial missions, for example, do not generate much in the way of NPC bounties compared with your average L4 mission so it would take a great many people running those to produce the same effect as a single L4 mission.
But then again a single Vanguard produces 10M per character which is at the higher end of a single L4 mission and whilst I like the fact that Incursions introduce a forced element of co-operation that is sorely lacking from L4s and believe that co-operative play should be rewarded this surely is too high.
You can argue that L4s are limitless and available upon demand but pre-interdiction the same was effectively true of Incursion sites since the downtime between Incursions was managed. If it was truly a competitive environment as it is now becoming then maybe the rewards would be more be more appropriate since players would then be actively competing for a limited resource.
Now ask yourself how many people are participating in Incursions compared to those engaging in the top three NPC bounty generating activities of L4 missions, Null-sec Belt ratting and Null-sec anomalies. Do you really think that for every two Incursion farmers there are five players doing those bounty activities? Honestly? It is probably closer to twenty than two.
However the whole point is that it is demonstrably true that unless Incursions are changed they provide far too much reward for far too little risk.
Now ask yourself how many people are participating in Incursions compared to those engaging in the top three NPC bounty generating activities of L4 missions, Null-sec Belt ratting and Null-sec anomalies. Do you really think that for every two Incursion farmers there are five players doing those bounty activities? Honestly? It is probably closer to twenty than two.
However the whole point is that it is demonstrably true that unless Incursions are changed they provide far too much reward for far too little risk.
