EVE General Discussion

You do realize that they've made absolutely NO changes to PLEXes at all?

Thus the price increase is not caused by plexes themselves, and is actually more of an indication of ISK being a bit more worthless than in the past (cause everyone has billions). "Fixing" it would involve getting rid of quite a bit of ISK, by creating a huge ISK sink somewhere. Like, a tax that would affect everyone. That would affect YOU.

Not really accurate. They haven't made a change to the PLEX themselves (still same price afaik, still 30days game time) but they have made some pretty big changes on HOW the PLEX is used recently. With the addition of the new ship SKINS more people are using PLEX to get AUR, and they are buying those PLEX with ISK, thus driving the price up.

At the end of the day unless the constantly bring out new SKINS that a whole lot of people want, or more and more people get into buying SKINS the price of PLEX will start to drop off soon after the interest in turning them into AUR to get SKINS does.

Skins as said above.
Also speculation on people re-subbing or new people joining for Fozzie SOV, so maximising profits on the demands those extra re-sub alts will have.

The Aurum market is pushing the Plex price up.

That is all.

I translate this is "someone do something about PLEX, else the 1% yada yada cry cry".

At current prices a plex is 28 mil per day. There are lvl 4 missions and null anomalies that pay 28 mil in total rewards (and at the standard lp exchange rate, a single High Sec Incursion site pays 38.5 mil). ONE mission or anomaly a day pays for a plex, or you could join an incursion fleet, and do ONE hq site a day for 22 days and make a plex.

In other words, PLEX are ridiculously inexpensive in terms of time per day a player needs to devote to getting one. The people who complain about them are ones who are reckless with their isk and only think about plex when it's time to resub, which is a personal failing.

Stop complaining.

Another reason for the PLEX rise is the PLEX could well be a Giffen good.

In economic theory there is something called Giffen good (good, as in "goods and services"). These are goods which have a reversed supply-demand curve. That is, an increase in price results in a decrease in supply. It is possible that the PLEX is a Giffen good. To see how this could be, first let me recast what I mean by "the price of the PLEX".

Consider how much Real Money (RM) I need to buy, say, 10 billion ISK via PLEX. As the ISK value of the PLEX increases, the price, in RM, of ISK is decreasing. I need to buy fewer PLEX to get 10 billion ISK. Normally one would expect this to increase the demand for PLEX. As the RM cost of 10 billion ISK drops, more players will opt to make the purchase. But if the PLEX is a Giffen good, then the reverse happens. The mechanism may be:

The number of people who would want a supercap is limited by the number of characters who have skills to fly them, not the super's price. Dropping the price of supers will have only a small effect on their demand. (I'm assuming a player does not want spare supers sitting about, they want most every one logged off in space with a pilot sitting in it.)

A player with little ISK can buy a super by using Real Money to buy PLEX, selling the PLEX for ISK and buying the super. As the ISK value of a PLEX increases, the number of PLEX the player need buy goes down. Increased ISK price leads to a reduced supply of PLEX. (Or, to put it another way, the decreasing price of ISK leads to decreasing demand for PLEX). This makes the PLEX a Giffen good.

A numerical example:

Say the ISK price of the PLEX increases by 10%. Any player deciding to make a big purchase now needs to buy 10% fewer PLEX. Lets say as a result of the better price, 5% more players decide to make such a purchase. Yes, the total players buying PLEX increases, and the total ISK bought increases, but as each now buys fewer PLEX, the total demand for PLEX goes down. Again, we have a Giffen good.

What this means for CCP: The increasing ISK value of the PLEX would reduce revenue, and hence is not in CCP’s best interest. My guess is CCP makes the most revenue with the PLEX around 500 million. That is where PLEX trade at Jita peaked.

Is that your official forecast? If it's not gonna happen i'll bring my lawer to raise an official lawsuit against you.

I think quite a few would like to see plex go away completely, not that it would happen. Sadly, the plex to isk conversion is part of what draws newer players in who have the mindset of cash shop pay to win games, hoping to buy enough ships to be "viable in pvp". It's also what funds half of the people who never took the time to learn other aspect of the game and simply spend cash to have ships to undock when a fc logs on. I'm sure we've all supplemented out income from time to time but I think a large majority rely on the "cash shop" to even play the game at all.

For instance; a guy in help chat a couple days ago who had bought 10 garmurs, but had no clue on their usage, fittings, etc. Linking burner fits he asks " How do I make this a pvp ship". "I know they aren't cheap but I bought 10 of them". Obviously they saw the thread about how to kill garmurs and instantly cashed in thinking they'd be a pvp god.

But if ccp take off the PLEX would that impact aurum and gtc costs? High chances that's gonna happen right after.

Well, if the long term trend continues in about 6-8 months the price of a PLEX will be above 900 million and sustained. In about a year and a half, it will be above a billion.

There are a number of possible explanations, but the most likely is that we have more ISK entering the New Eden economy. For example, we have this post indicating that from 2010 to 2012 the amount of ISK entering the New Eden economy increased by 260% (380 billion isk/day to around 1 trillion isk/day).