EVE General Discussion

I am trying to get my head wrapped around what is going to happen to the Eve economy with the advent of the removal of RMT ISK from the game (long time coming) in combination with what CCP Soundwave's plans (Ten Ton Hammer interviews), plus the huge hit to the current supply of high end minerals (Soundwave states 40% of high end minerals come from the Drone Regions

Based on one of CCP Screeg's post in the anti-RMT dev blog, he expects to remove 100 billion ISK / day from the economy
Now, I have no idea how long that can go on for, and since he appears to be going after ISK generated in the past, I don't think anyone but CCP can say that means that botters create 100 billion / day in bounties.

But let me hazard a guess and say that bounty botters generate half of that 100 billion Screegs mentions or 50 billion / day
That is 1.5 trillion / month that will be removed from the game going foward

So let me detail some of the things that are on tap in the coming months

1. A guesstimate of 1.5 trillion / month removed from a 39 trillion / month (CCP's numbers of bounties and Incursions) ISK faucet, which is 1.28 % of all ISK injected into the economy. This is of course a wild estimate based on 50% of Screeg's numbers

2. High end minerals supply taking a huge hit initially. The speculators are already turning the market upside down as Morhpite is currently sitting at 8200 in Jita. Can human miners in 0.0 and wh's fill the gap created by the removal of drone poop
Only time will tell, and how long will it take

3. Soundwave has stated he is planning on ending the datacore farming mechanic as it stands today and replacing the mechanic with one tied to FW. (See Ten Ton Hammer interview, around the 8-12 minute mark)

4. Soundwave is instituting higher high sec transaction taxes (see interview above

5. Soundwave is seriously contemplating an "emergency button" of 10% nerf to all bounties across the game. Some of this would me mitigated by the 100% hit to bounties from bounty botters

6. Incursion payouts will be "altered". Clearly the vanguards are going to get hit hard. Whether the overall ISK payouts from Incursions (currently about 9 trillion/ month) gets reduced is up for grabs. My bet is the overall amount will go down slightly, but not significantly

Frankly, I am not smart enough to forecast where the economy will end in the near future, but it seems to me that we are talking about a substantial amount of deflationary pressures coming down the pipe. Is it possible that CCP is about to unleash too many deflationary mechanisms at once?

Yes, the market and the economy will adjust to the new paradigm. It always does. But what will be the near term impact on the subscriber base? I can envision a situation where people will be flying T1 cruisers because they can't afford T2 cruisers or T1 BS's, because minerals are climbing higher while overall income falls. Not saying this is a bad thing, just a near-term adjustment.

I'm not smart enough to answer your short term questions but long term I know enough about free markets and morality to realize that whatever happens short term is just that, a short term correction and long term we'll both survive and be better off.

Yes, this is absolutely the case.

See, we get changes like these when developers screw around with stuff they don't really understand. The problem isn't with ISK generation, or high-end mineral generation, or moon goo generation; the problem is with a general imbalance of risk/reward and time invested when all of these factors are combined into one economic system. What we need isn't the placement of a stopper on ISK faucets, but a reevaluation of the balance between ISK and material good generation.

Contrary to popular perception, what CCP plans to do will not balance the different faucets against one another. What CCP needs to do is to address the rewards awarded by different areas of space. CCP also needs to address the monotony of various PvE activities. As much as I hate to say it, EVE's current economy relies on "bot labor." Their current solutions will lead to more bot usage, not less.

Sleepers ARENT an "isk faucet" the only sik you get form them is form selling to other players.

all nerfing the income capability fo sleepers would do is foprce the few who remain in wormholes to up the average price they sell sleeper components for to compensate for their loss.

Actually, the removal of the drone poop is ISK - neutral. No ISK is injected nor removed from the game when someone creates drone poop out of thin air. What it DOES do is create massive inflation in only a specific part of the game, namely minerals. The laws of supply and demand dictate it. I am just not sure if this will create delationary trends in other parts of the game as you pointed out already.

Some people are going to get very rich in the coming months by guessing correctly, and I also envision much gnashing of teeth on the forums as all these changes work their way through the system.

The funny thing is we have actually been in a deflationary environment during the time money expanded 13x.

Removing ISK from circulation will affect inflation. It has to be the "right" amount. Leaving things as is, without a control over the money supply will create a need to do the same thing again eventually. If all the RMT/botters are gone by then, they'll be looking at a dilemma.

Sleepers do inject ISK, apparently you are unaware of items such as these, Ancient Coordinates Database, Neural Network Analyzer, Sleeper Data Library, Sleeper Drone AI.

minerals will go up in price, ships will go up in price other stuff will go down in price.
mining will be viable profession now, it might even become more profitable then mission running.

im not to worried about it. someone will always fill the market hole, we might see 0.0 alliances hiring highsec mining corps to mine 0.0 ore, maybe "pets" won't be treated like crap in 0.0 and instead be given a decent role in the alliance as a whole.

One thing I want to say: In this wave of BOT bannings you are not going to see Incursion runners banned. To my knowledge Incursions have not been botted especially not in HI SEC because of the competitive Incursion mechanics you just don't see AFK Incursion runners ( they tend to die quickly anyways ) Face it Incursions are too highly competed in hi sec to give botters any chance of getting a foot hold.
I bet the advent of Incursions pissed off RMTers something fiecrce & took a big bite of thier income
The only thing that botts add to Eve is a higher obstacle to entry for newbies and end up hurting all o Eve in the long run