EVE devblog: The Jita Conundrum

[h4te]

A Tale of Two Cities

Iceland's capital of Reykjavík is an interesting experience for me. It's big, it's busy and, as a result of being a convenient place to get most anything one needs, it can be a bit expensive; much like any other major metropolis that has over a hundred thousand inhabitants. It's a place with a little too much hustle and bustle for me.

Often times though, I do have to travel there. For example, if I find myself needing a new bicycle, I know that the stores in Hafnarfjörður simply don't have the same stock as the ones in Reykjavík. Therefore I hop on the bus and go through the pain of entangling myself in the fast-paced lifestyle and traffic congestion of the capital (we do have some bus priority lanes, which is cool).

I can't really complain since it's my own decision and I'm going back to Hafnarfjörður with a spanking new, albeit overpriced due to run amok inflation, bike. *ring ring*

What really grinds my gears to a halt is that I can't go visit my sister in Mosfellsbær without first going through the traffic-congested Reykjavík. If only there was a way to go around Reykjavík...

Where was I? Oh yes.

We have a similar problem in a little space game called EVE Online. The Jita system is a lot like Reykjavík. The biggest playability issue with Jita (if you don't count the lag and spam) is that people sometimes have no choice but to go there for various reasons:

• When navigating through this region of space the autopilot sometimes wants to send you through Jita.
• There is a constellation you cannot reach without going through Jita.
• There are some agents in Jita that new players sometimes have the misfortune of working for.
• Agents sometimes send you on missions into Jita.

We are (finally, I hear you scream) fixing all of these issues.

Autopilot Avoidance

We have a new feature in place that allows players to set a list of systems, constellations and regions that the autopilot should never send them to. This list is preconfigured to avoid the Jita system.

This works the same as the current "avoid pod kill" feature; the autopilot will act as if the system isn't even there and will rather return no path at all than a path that takes you through the undesirable systems.

What this means is that you can happily navigate all around the Forge region on autopilot without having to worry about getting stuck in the Jita blackhole for the better part of a Sunday evening.


Figure 1: Autopilot avoidance turned off


Figure 2: Autopilot avoidance turned on, with Jita on the avoidance list


Figure 3: A new map mode showing your avoidance systems

This is a completely general system to avoid any number of star systems, constellations or regions. You will therefore be able to use this to avoid that annoying faction that keeps shooting you or that constellation that has those pirates in it.

World Shaping

There is a constellation called Ruomo which is famous for being a place where you cannot go unless you go through Jita. Citizens of the constellation have finally rebelled and gotten themselves a spanking new hyperspace bypass, courtesy of the Interstellar Bottleneck Bypass Initiative (IBBI for short).

Soon you will never have to go through Jita to reach any other system.

Agents & Missions

Agents in Jita have finally had enough and are hauling butt out of there. Jita will be completely agent-less soon.

Also, agents outside Jita will never send you into Jita to complete a mission for them.

When will we get it?

This system will be implemented incrementally but you should see this start to trickle in soon. Not the CCP soon(tm) mind you, but very very soon.

Conclusion

This is being implemented at the same time as we're aggressively optimizing our software backbone to provide a smoother playing experience in Jita. That is, however, outside the scope of this devblog.

Our goal is to create an environment where players don't have to go to Jita unless they want to. This is very important to the overall player experience.

Together, these two avenues of attacking the problem should provide the EVE denizens with a much smoother and more consistent playing experience. It's not a silver bullet, but every little bit helps.

Now, if only the Reykjavík Transit Authority would do the same...

By the way, "A Tale of Two Cities" refers to Reykjavík and Jita. Clever, ain't it? Jita isn't even a city... Hilarious!

- Nonni



More...

[BoB Spy]

This will fix absolutely nothing, if Jita becomes an inconvienient for use as a hub, people will simply form another hub that has good access. Perimeter? New Caldari? Watch it happen.

The only upside is the avoid-system feature, now that idiot corpmate of mine that insists on flying through the 0.0 gatecamp next to Pertineere in Solitude, because "it's the next yellow system!", will be able to avoid losing anymore boats to stupidity.

[NotARealName]

In this case I don't see Jita being made inconvenient as a hub, so nothing should change. It's still in the middle of everything, still easy to get to, and the loss of mission runners won't mean a thing. This will be a pure improvement, by allowing traffic to bypass the system.

[Yorda]

tl;dr version: Jita will still be laggy as fuck but you wont have to go through there for anything.

[omghaxsploits]

Yeah I still see it being a trade hub, just that now you don't have to go there for any other reason now besides buying or selling stuffs.

[Glomp]

All those NPC haulers about? They must do something? How about we have them haul crap for us! You buy something somewhere and for an extra fee it can be delivered to a system of your choice.

Just limit it to Empire only else making 0.0 hauling more or less pointless and give the nasty pvpers less targets.

[SuspiciousSlot8]

Christ, these guys are backwards ass fucks, it's no wonder the game's so fucked up. 100,000 being a "major metropolis"? I guess if your country only has 250k people, yeah. You could put the entire population of that fucking rock into the Indianapolis Stadium. Their "fixes" anymore feel a whole hell of a lot like desperation moves. The "too many people in a system? Can't log in, loolz" maneuver was especially pungent. Now putting up the equivalent of "go away" signs around Jita? good luck with that.

[k]

Best solution is to make Jita 0.4. Once a system get to crowded, crime increase and concord becomes ineffective.

[theTwilitehour]

Best solution is to make Jita 0.4. Once a system get to crowded, crime increase and concord becomes ineffective.

I'm sorry but thats completely wrong, unless you're proposing a system whereby the number of transactions in a system will cause its security status to drop. Most proposed "fixes" of Jita are ignorant of what the real problem of Jita is.

Claim: The problem in Jita is lag, due to lots of pilots wanting to go there to buy and sell.

Assumption: This problem has anything at all to do with Jita.

What's really going on though? Players want an easy way to shop, get their goods in one go, fit ships etc.. They like being able to completely fit a pvp or pve ship and leave, because logistics is one of the hassles of Eve. Any problem that specifically addresses Jita will simply move the problem. If you know Eve history you know the main trade hub wasn't always Jita.

The problem CCP needs to address is the need to go to Jita at all. Interbus is probably the best solution, allow players to shop remotely and have goods delivered to them via NPC's so as to lower the lag. It may break the immersion, but it will make the game less frustrating.

They could also put in place a system to penalize players for using systems such as jita, like having all station managers slap a tax that constantly goes up and down depending on how many transactions there have been recently. However this "solution" could lag the fuck out of the system, so it might not work, I'm not a coder. It might be possible to assign the value at DT, based on the last 24 hours activity in each station/system, but again I don't know if that would cause a lot of lag.

The steps CCP have taken are good interim steps, removing all possible incidental traffic, and making it so that anyone in Jita is in there specifically to be there, not passing through or running missions. These are good steps, although they will probably not have a significant effect, they have no real cost and do have some benefit.

[wildcat84]

How about they instead make it so that in a handful of other systems in the Forge, you can buy stuff from Jita and have it delivered via the "interbus" for a fee (say 5%)?

Further, that fee should be split between the seller and, well, being an ISK sink.

That way Jita would still be a market hub, but only the SELLERS would need to actually go there physically, their customers could scatter around several other systems. And buyers would have every incentive to avoid Jita itself and go to the system with the LEAST lag.

Say, tie in every highsec system within 2 jumps from Jita into this network.

Then, in fairness, do the same for the market hubs in the other empires.