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ISK Sinks. What are they?
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Callic Veratar
#61 - 2013-01-03 17:59:56 UTC
It's very important to consider that the ISK faucets cannot be less than the ISK sinks. If more ISK is leaving than entering, gradually everything will come to a grinding halt as the economy collapses under it's own stress and there's no ISK left.

Being resourceful, those who stick around might switch to some form of barter system where a plentiful-but-difficult-to-obtain item becomes the prime currency, but it would be a mess.

At best, a portion of all ISK bounties could be converted to LP bounties, but removing them entirely could likely be cataclysmic.


The other option would be to introduce a finite money supply. Set all accounts equal to some massive number (1 Quadrillion?) and have NPC fees fluctuate based on how much money is left. Faucets and Sinks would need to dynamically rebalance over time to establish some form of equilibrium. Interesting idea, but likely far beyond the scope of the EVE economy.
Akita T
Caldari Navy Volunteer Task Force
#62 - 2013-01-03 18:18:55 UTC  |  Edited by: Akita T
Taken from http://blog.beyondreality.se/ISK-faucets-sinks, which collected tweets and older dev posts

...

average stats for a single EVE day in mid-2012, in order of relevance and categorized by type

Market transactions: 9.33 trillion ISK (up from 5.85 trillion in 2010).

Pure faucets:
Bounty prizes: 896.34 billion ISK (up from 876.04 billion in 2010).
Incursion rewards: 301.8 billion ISK (and 4.7 million LP, n/a in 2010).
Agent mission rewards: 74.68 billion ISK (up from 68.93 billion in 2010).
Agent mission bonuses: 71.21 billion ISK (up from 63.45 billion in 2010)

Insurance sink/faucet pair (net faucet)
F -> Insurance payouts: 125.8 billion ISK (up from 111.9 billion ISK in 2010).
S -> Insurance costs: 67.8 billion ISK (up from 43.02 billion in 2010)
= 58 bil ISK net faucet (down from ~68.9 bil in 2010)

NPC trade sink/faucet pairing (net sink)
F -> NPC buy orders: 337.4 billion ISK (n/a for 2010) -> out of which ~224bn ISK sleeper loot
S -> NPC sell orders: 429.7 billion ISK (n/a for 2010), of which 244.8 billion went into skill books and 141.6 billion went into blueprints.
= 92.3 bil ISK net sink

Pure sinks:
LP store: 183.9 billion ISK (up from 135.3 billion in 2010).
Broker fees: 63.8 billion ISK (up from 46.78 billion in 2010¹).
Sales tax: 56.5 billion ISK plus 7.53 billion in contract taxes (up from 42.2 billion in 2010¹).
Sovereignty bills: n/a (59.3 billion in 2010).
Clone costs: 27.11 billion ISK (up from 20.2 billion in 2010).
PI constrution: 15.64 billion ISK (up from 7.58 billion in 2010).
Repair bills: 6.86 billion ISK (n/a for 2010).
PI export tax: n/a (3.36 billion in 2010).
PI import tax: n/a (290 million in 2010).

Akita T evewiki profile | | | Build your own EVE-ready PC
Katran Luftschreck
Royal Ammatar Engineering Corps
#63 - 2013-01-03 18:29:43 UTC
Abu Tarynnia wrote:
- stop of using PLEX .. just remove


This would be hilarious to see, just because the flood of tears would be so epic that I'd have to start building an Ark.

PLEX is +25% profit over their regular subscriptions. Sadly, CCP too greedy for that to ever happen. In fact I'm surprised they haven't just gotten rid of subscriptions altogether and started forcing people to buy PLEX just so they can put another foot on the end of their yacht.

http://youtu.be/t0q2F8NsYQ0
Akita T
Caldari Navy Volunteer Task Force
#64 - 2013-01-03 18:35:17 UTC  |  Edited by: Akita T
Katran Luftschreck wrote:
PLEX is +25% profit over their regular subscriptions. Sadly, CCP too greedy

And also a huge financial liability on the books compared to a subscription, because it represents an unclaimed service with no expiration date for the moment in time it could get claimed, representing a potentially huge cashflow problem just waiting to manifest at the worst possible time.
Also, it's just ~17% profit over regular 1-month subscriptions (it's higher compared to longer sub intervals, though, true).

Oh, and let's not even begin to pretend we have to argue about just how much RMT would be running rampant if PLEX would not exist.
After all, it's pretty clear that the demand for ISK is actually a bit higher than the demand for "no-cash subs", since PLEX keep stockpiling in time (the difference is eaten up by hoarders and speculators).
If anybody believes that huge demand for "EULA/TOS legal" ISK in exchange for cash would completely vanish due to becoming "EULA/TOS illegal", I have some bridges and primo swamp real-estate to sell them alongside some pyramid scheme bonds.

Draw a line and make a total, PLEX does more good than bad to the players, and it's not all just roses, milk and honey for CCP either.

Akita T evewiki profile | | | Build your own EVE-ready PC
mynnna
State War Academy
Caldari State
#65 - 2013-01-03 18:54:30 UTC
Kitty Bear wrote:
RubyPorto wrote:
Kitty Bear wrote:
TharOkha wrote:

Remove NPC bounties and replace them with LPs...


As ideas go, thats actually not that bad.



One radical idea that I've seen that I like (though I can't remember the source), is to remove as many ISK sources from HS activities as possible. Missions pay out LP only, HS rats pay out LP, etc. The concept is essentially that ISK doesn't properly act as a currency in EVE, so treat it like the commodity it is and have Null export ISK while importing other things.


A bounty is a bounty is a bounty.

If bounties need to go in highsec, then they need to go everywhere else aswell.
nerf all the sec's, not just 1, as that is unbalanced and biased and would contribute to poor gameplay.

There should be no distinction between Highsec, Losec or Nulsec other than what we the playerbase create. (well the scaling in value terms needs to stay ofc Smile)


In general, there must be some isk faucets in the game, so removing all bounties everywhere is a very bad idea. His suggestion to commoditize isk and make it an export from nullsec is sound, but not the only route. Replacing only a portion of bounties in missions with LP would be just fine as well.

Member of the Goonswarm Economic Warfare Cabal
RubyPorto
RubysRhymes
#66 - 2013-01-03 19:33:19 UTC
Kitty Bear wrote:
A bounty is a bounty is a bounty.

If bounties need to go in highsec, then they need to go everywhere else aswell.
nerf all the sec's, not just 1, as that is unbalanced and biased and would contribute to poor gameplay.

There should be no distinction between Highsec, Losec or Nulsec other than what we the playerbase create. (well the scaling in value terms needs to stay ofc Smile)


1) Where did I suggest a nerf. Replacing Bounties with LP in Missions != a Nerf.

2) Show me where you have been calling for the many one sided nerfs to Nullsec income and livability to be rolled back.

3) Show me where you have been calling for the many one sided buffs to HS income and livability to be rolled back.

4) Why would NPC corps give LP for actions taken in random areas by random people not working on their behalf?


People aren't calling for HS to be nerfed "just for funzies," we're calling for it to be nerfed because we're sick of it being, objectively, the best place to make ISK for just about any activity not specifically prohibited in it (i.e. Supers, Cap Building, Moon Goo), due to the combination of nearly identical income to Null and nearly perfect safety (that takes no effort whatsoever to maintain).

That said, the "replace HS ISK bounties with LP" proposal is not meant to be a nerf to HS. It's meant to reduce the inflationary pressure on the EVE economy.

"It's easy to speak for the silent majority. They rarely object to what you put into their mouths." -Abrazzar "the risk of having your day ruined by other people is the cornerstone with which EVE was built" -CCP Solomon
Burseg Sardaukar
Free State Project
#67 - 2013-01-03 19:54:52 UTC
Emma Royd wrote:

I'm not sure where a lot of the isk is coming from, I seem to remember that Incursions got their payout's nerfed a bit, but no doubt that was a big part of the isk generated when they were at full payout.


Soundwave came right out a while back with straight numbers saying that Incursions (at their peak) still didn't inject as much ISK as nullsec anomalies.

Also, the biggest ISK sink ever is being introduced next year: Dust514.

Currently there is no manufacturing for that game, and from what the dev's have said, its going to be a little while before they completely intertwine the two economies, but the straight transfer of ISK from EVE to Dust will be absolutely possible. And since everything in Dust is seeded from NPC orders, each suit/tank/rifle/grenade purchased, and then consumed, will remove ISK from the game.

Can't wait to dual box my Dust toon and EVE toon on the same machine!
Zack Korth
Livid CO.
#68 - 2013-01-03 19:54:57 UTC
Callic Veratar wrote:
It's very important to consider that the ISK faucets cannot be less than the ISK sinks. If more ISK is leaving than entering, gradually everything will come to a grinding halt as the economy collapses under it's own stress and there's no ISK left.


no, people with none leave the game, and a select few have trillions that they have no reason to spend, or if they do, it goes to other players who already have decent wallets. the main problem with this game is, if you wanna fly solo, have fun being poor, get a few hundred people together, and you don't even need to log in anymore, the money prints itself, works just like real life, only funner.
Zack Korth
Livid CO.
#69 - 2013-01-03 20:01:01 UTC
Katran Luftschreck wrote:
Abu Tarynnia wrote:
- stop of using PLEX .. just remove


This would be hilarious to see, just because the flood of tears would be so epic that I'd have to start building an Ark.

PLEX is +25% profit over their regular subscriptions. Sadly, CCP too greedy for that to ever happen. In fact I'm surprised they haven't just gotten rid of subscriptions altogether and started forcing people to buy PLEX just so they can put another foot on the end of their yacht.


hows that work? alot of people get plexes, make money on that money, then when its time to resub, buy another one. which doesn't rip into the massive isk pools at all, which are the main problem. in fact for all i know, it adds to them.
mynnna
State War Academy
Caldari State
#70 - 2013-01-03 20:33:46 UTC
Burseg Sardaukar wrote:

Also, the biggest ISK sink ever is being introduced next year: Dust514.

Currently there is no manufacturing for that game, and from what the dev's have said, its going to be a little while before they completely intertwine the two economies, but the straight transfer of ISK from EVE to Dust will be absolutely possible. And since everything in Dust is seeded from NPC orders, each suit/tank/rifle/grenade purchased, and then consumed, will remove ISK from the game.


Dust is only an isk sink if players in Eve feel it worth their while to fund players in Dust. For that to happen, the integration between Dust and Eve has to go well beyond a decidedly optional interaction in Faction Warfare.

Member of the Goonswarm Economic Warfare Cabal
Tyberius Franklin
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#71 - 2013-01-03 20:37:29 UTC
RubyPorto wrote:
...the "replace HS ISK bounties with LP" proposal is not meant to be a nerf to HS. It's meant to reduce the inflationary pressure on the EVE economy.

Seeing things over the past 3 years has me convinced that bounds on mineral sources and mechanics tend to have a stronger influence on price inflation that isk injection/sinks. I really wish though that we could get more granular and detailed information regarding market performance though. Maybe then I could see what is being referred to here.
Sergeant Acht Scultz
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#72 - 2013-01-03 20:58:12 UTC
Andski wrote:
Frank Otichoda wrote:
Isk comes from bounties, incursions, ( I want you say faction warfare but that's loyalty points, so more adding items to the game than isk), mission rewards. Think that may be it.

Could make incursions pay loyalty points instead of isk.



Maybe Concord requires a tax (like insurance). Depending on how much you pay determines how fast they respond. (100 mill a month for 1.0 sec speed, 10 mill for 0.6 speed, free for 0.5 speed) or I dunno, something along those lines.


Insurance is a pretty big faucet too.



How can we decently call "Margin Trading" ?

So much isk ... Cool

removed inappropriate ASCII art signature - CCP Eterne
Sergeant Acht Scultz
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#73 - 2013-01-03 21:04:30 UTC
Katran Luftschreck wrote:
Abu Tarynnia wrote:
- stop of using PLEX .. just remove


This would be hilarious to see, just because the flood of tears would be so epic that I'd have to start building an Ark.

PLEX is +25% profit over their regular subscriptions. Sadly, CCP too greedy for that to ever happen. In fact I'm surprised they haven't just gotten rid of subscriptions altogether and started forcing people to buy PLEX just so they can put another foot on the end of their yacht.



This is smoothly being done by nerfing the heck out of individual income for regular "farming" activities supposed to support your ability to explore and progress in game.

It's like most free fps's, you can get all the stuff for free but you have to work thousands more time to have it than the guy buying his credits to support his uber tràlàlà ASAP, some call that pay-to-win, but it's just a business model.

Welcome to your Eve Online retail version Lol

removed inappropriate ASCII art signature - CCP Eterne
mynnna
State War Academy
Caldari State
#74 - 2013-01-03 21:20:55 UTC
Tyberius Franklin wrote:
RubyPorto wrote:
...the "replace HS ISK bounties with LP" proposal is not meant to be a nerf to HS. It's meant to reduce the inflationary pressure on the EVE economy.

Seeing things over the past 3 years has me convinced that bounds on mineral sources and mechanics tend to have a stronger influence on price inflation that isk injection/sinks. I really wish though that we could get more granular and detailed information regarding market performance though. Maybe then I could see what is being referred to here.


This is true. Readily available materials with an extremely low barrier to entry to both acquire most of them (mining etc) and use any of them (various production skills) mean that the markets react to shifts in supply and demand far more than they do to traditional inflationary pressures such as a rise in money supply. In fact, if you look back over the old QENs and other resources, you see that the CPI (consumer price index, which is one of Doc E's favorite indicators of "inflation") is actually stable or even decreases throughout much of the game's history, with the handful of major shifts that do exist being easily explained by supply/demand changes. An excel file with the price indicies is available here.

Take a look at it and it sort of illustrates my point. Mid-2009 the CPI was hanging around 65, and then they nerfed Dyspro/Prom, which dramatically reduced the PPPI (primary producer price index). The effects are rather obvious in the CPI, but by mid-2010 Technetium prices started to take off again, pushing that back up, and CCP introduced Planetary Interaction as well. its effects are dramatically and immediately obvious on the SPPI (secondary producer price index), which includes the PI materials whose prices were increased a whole heck of a lot by PI. The SPPI goes from 71.9 in June to 101.9 by August. Meanwhile, even as the PPPI and SPPI hold steady from mid-2011 onward, you can see the MPI (mineral price index, the contents of which should be obvious) steadily climbs, driving up the CPI. The spike upon the removal of the drone regions is especially obvious.

Yet throughout the entire timeline, especially those periods during which the amount of isk in the game would have been increasing dramatically, there is no hyper-inflation to match. Indeed, from 2007 onward the CPI dropped considerably, and even today hasn't gone back beyond the 100-point it was at at the time.

Member of the Goonswarm Economic Warfare Cabal
PalkAn4ik
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#75 - 2013-01-03 21:34:41 UTC
The problem is the NPC government is being ran like the USA government where it just prints more money. What we need is some way for NPC pay outs to be funded by NPC taxes with a much smaller amount of created isk.
Tauranon
Weeesearch
CAStabouts
#76 - 2013-01-03 22:19:25 UTC
mynnna wrote:


It works pretty well when you drill into the numbers, though. LP redemption from missions is one of the biggest sinks in the game already, at about 5-6T/mo. Mission rewards and time bonuses are a faucet of similar size, so those already cancel. Meanwhile, the bounties faucet is in the vicinity of 25T/mo. I have no way to tell how much of that is nullsec ratting and how much of it is highsec missions, except to know that the number of rats killed in the busiest highsec regions exceeded that same number in the busiest nullsec regions by a factor of ten. Given the similarity of anomaly rats to mission rats, it wouldn't be unreasonable to say, hey, 90% of the bounties faucet comes from highsec.

But here, we'll assume it's merely half, and that 25T/mo remains accurate.



The market circulation of objects is done with isk and is many, many times the 25T monthly income. ie people seriously underestimate how much isk gets sunk in fees.

As a small fry ship maker, I used to circulate 3 bil 3x per week, and as that circulation was a full buy and sell, I effectively created 18B in transactions per week, or about 80B per month, for some 300mil in fees (of which 150mil is on my books).
RubyPorto
RubysRhymes
#77 - 2013-01-03 22:55:36 UTC
Tyberius Franklin wrote:
RubyPorto wrote:
...the "replace HS ISK bounties with LP" proposal is not meant to be a nerf to HS. It's meant to reduce the inflationary pressure on the EVE economy.

Seeing things over the past 3 years has me convinced that bounds on mineral sources and mechanics tend to have a stronger influence on price inflation that isk injection/sinks. I really wish though that we could get more granular and detailed information regarding market performance though. Maybe then I could see what is being referred to here.


That's not inflation, that's the costs in one sector going up. While ship Hulls and T1 items went up dramatically after the drone poo nerf, T2 modules (which use negligible amounts of Minerals) stayed pretty steady.

"Stuff that I buy is more expensive" doesn't necessarily indicate inflation.

"It's easy to speak for the silent majority. They rarely object to what you put into their mouths." -Abrazzar "the risk of having your day ruined by other people is the cornerstone with which EVE was built" -CCP Solomon
RubyPorto
RubysRhymes
#78 - 2013-01-03 22:57:47 UTC
PalkAn4ik wrote:
The problem is the NPC government is being ran like the USA government where it just prints more money. What we need is some way for NPC pay outs to be funded by NPC taxes with a much smaller amount of created isk.


CCP tried a closed economy like the one you propose when EVE first started. It didn't work.

"It's easy to speak for the silent majority. They rarely object to what you put into their mouths." -Abrazzar "the risk of having your day ruined by other people is the cornerstone with which EVE was built" -CCP Solomon
Frostys Virpio
State War Academy
Caldari State
#79 - 2013-01-03 22:59:11 UTC
Sergeant Acht Scultz wrote:
Andski wrote:
Frank Otichoda wrote:
Isk comes from bounties, incursions, ( I want you say faction warfare but that's loyalty points, so more adding items to the game than isk), mission rewards. Think that may be it.

Could make incursions pay loyalty points instead of isk.



Maybe Concord requires a tax (like insurance). Depending on how much you pay determines how fast they respond. (100 mill a month for 1.0 sec speed, 10 mill for 0.6 speed, free for 0.5 speed) or I dunno, something along those lines.


Insurance is a pretty big faucet too.



How can we decently call "Margin Trading" ?

So much isk ... Cool


Technically, all trade on the market is a sink because of tax paid which remove ISKs from circulation. Noone ever geerate any ISK in the game with margin trading.
mynnna
State War Academy
Caldari State
#80 - 2013-01-03 23:52:29 UTC  |  Edited by: mynnna
Tauranon wrote:
mynnna wrote:


It works pretty well when you drill into the numbers, though. LP redemption from missions is one of the biggest sinks in the game already, at about 5-6T/mo. Mission rewards and time bonuses are a faucet of similar size, so those already cancel. Meanwhile, the bounties faucet is in the vicinity of 25T/mo. I have no way to tell how much of that is nullsec ratting and how much of it is highsec missions, except to know that the number of rats killed in the busiest highsec regions exceeded that same number in the busiest nullsec regions by a factor of ten. Given the similarity of anomaly rats to mission rats, it wouldn't be unreasonable to say, hey, 90% of the bounties faucet comes from highsec.

But here, we'll assume it's merely half, and that 25T/mo remains accurate.



The market circulation of objects is done with isk and is many, many times the 25T monthly income. ie people seriously underestimate how much isk gets sunk in fees.

As a small fry ship maker, I used to circulate 3 bil 3x per week, and as that circulation was a full buy and sell, I effectively created 18B in transactions per week, or about 80B per month, for some 300mil in fees (of which 150mil is on my books).


Or we can go with actual numbers.

Quote:
81.9bn spent on transaction taxes, 95.9bn on broker fees. Player owned stations earned their owners 6bn in broker fees.

One day.
Quote:
According to my data, 18th Oct 2010: Broker fee -46.78bn ISK (also +3bn isk, to outpost owners), -42.2bn ISK Trans tax.

Another day.
Quote:
1.98tn ISK spent on broker fees in Jan 2012.
1.75tn ISK spent on transaction taxes in Jan 2012.

A whole month, although that first number would include fees to outpost owners which obviously aren't sunk. Subtract around 5-8% on account of that, if the daily numbers are any indication.

My point is that while fees and taxes are undeniably in the top 5 isk sinks by size (Diagoras even said so) they're not as big as you think they are and pretty damn miniscule compared to faucets, especially the bounties faucet.

Member of the Goonswarm Economic Warfare Cabal