EVE General Discussion

I see lots of nonsense assumptions and even suggestions around the forums these days. Sadly however the topic at hand IS complicated and doesn't have an easy solution. Each good solution will bring some problems along.

First we need to define a goal for CCP. The in my opinion primary goal for CCP should be to have as many players in Eve as possible, while still earning enough money. A huge playerbase helps more longterm, than shortterm dollars. Having enough players will automaticly increase the content and therefore CCPs income.

The following things are a given: (I guess noone can dispute any of them):
1. Eve is very old. New players often felt discouraged, as they had no way of ever catching up with skillpoints. I see reason in allowing them to somewhow catch up with enough effort, while using something like skill injectors. The introduction of skill injectors has a slight benefit on active players.
2. Currently plexing a month costs you 500*3,4=1,7bil isk. A month of skillinjectors costs 3,3*838=2,765bil. (In my opinion these values are MUCH MUCH to close to each other.)
3. Relatively cheap skill injectors will obviously get bought a lot. The most efficient way to produce these are remapped, implanted injector farms. Currently each month of injector farming takes around 500+3,3*112=870 plexes out of the market.
4. Selling Plex makes CCP dollars.
5. CCP looks for ways to remove isk from the game.

Supply and demand
a) Plex prices obviously are subject to supply and demand. The supply comes from (mostly) new players putting in cash to buy ships and stuff. Many new players will therefore decrease plex prices.
b) Demand comes from people actually playing the game and their currently used accounts. Thats how its used to be. Now a huge chunk additionally comes from people running injector farms, that would usually not even have these accounts active. Each skillpoint moved from one character to annother therefore inreases plex demand and therefore plex prices.

Conclusion
I do not see an easy way to increase the supply side, as this would usually mean running commercials or making the game better. I DO however see a way to reduce demand side. If skill injectors become more expensive WITHOUT plexes becoming more expensive, plex prices would go down and injector prices up. In my opinion this would be healthy for the game.
For this to happen one easy solution is to implement an isk-cost in the skill-injector-producing process. Buying a skill-extractor could cost like 150-400mil isk. I think this value could even be depenendant on the amounts of extractors used in your region or something. plex needs for extractors could be decreased or even removed accordingly.

This would mean less plex sold for CCP shortterm. This would also mean ccp has to decide on hard isk-values. But it would be the huge isk sink ccp is looking for. It would decrease plex prices. Each skill injector farm would still sell ccp 500 plex. Affordable plexes will longterm benefit the playerbase. This would in return mean more plex sold longterm.
Imho CCP should try to make their eve-money with monthly subscriptions only. Other income sources should only be temporary, as it is decremental to the game. I don't mind skins/clothing and other purely graphical trinkets. But skilling is one of the foundations of eve and shouldnt be polluted through greed (: The only exception should be if ccp needs this shortterm income to function properly. Decreasing their longterm income through these means should however be handled with care.

Tltr summary:
- Exchanging some/all of the needed plexes for skill extractors with an isk value will benefit Eve longterm. Lower plex prices, more players.

Your "wrong" is wrong!

On a more serious note: please elaborate what you disagree with.

You're actually making it too complicated.

It's VERY easy to change the supply side. Think about the agency event... CCP is creating PLEX out of nothing. They aren't creating very many (6 plex maximum reward per account), but they ARE increasing the supply of plex by a small amount.

If CCP determined the supply of PLEX needed to be increased... they could run an event like the current "Agency" event... but up the rewards to 100 and 500 plex. POOF! Instant significant increase in supply.

The fact CCP doesn't do this means they don't currently see the supply of PLEX or the cost of PLEX as an issue. They have a very easy solution if they do... inject plex into the game.

Not really. A PLEX sale is still giving away free plex... it is just a give away to those who buy plex. I'm sure that would be CCP's preferred method if they want to inject plex to control prices. A big part of a sale is borrowing from future sales of PLEX as opposed to creating more people willing to spend real currency on PLEX... it's still costing them money.

Again... IF CCP thinks the plex price is too high... they have a way to control it. They can increase supply. They could give bonus plex to anyone subbing an account (say 100 plex per month subbed). They could give a discount to plex price or bonus plex to those purchasing. They can give plex away as rewards in game (events/rat drops/mission rewards/whatever). They can even just give everyone 100 free plex.

I don't think they view the price as a problem... because they aren't doing any of these things. There probably is a price where the loss in omega players is worth them losing some money on plex sales. But they aren't there yet.... or we'd see more of the above actions (which are all ways to artificially inject plex into the market).

In my eyes, plex price is too low. It has been too low for too many into thinking that plexing should be the primary method of continuing omega status.

I don't normally comment on plex price post because plexs are kinda easy to get; however 2 billion for a month of game play is starting to become troublesome...

The last thing CCP needs is Eve feeling like a job not a game. I know lots of people who have stopped playing for that very reason.
It only takes me like one or two days to plex an account, but not all people can get 80 - 100 mill ticks.

I personally don't think the rise in plex price is because of injectors or extractors... Plex was hovering around a billion even after injectors came out... the price went through the roof when CCP changed it from a single plex for game play to five hundred...
People will sell plex higher and higher because of this simple line of thought "Oh it's just three million, oh it's just four million." And before we know it the train of thought will be "oh it's just ten million." if it gets to that point, the only people who would rly be able to plex an account would be super carrier pilots who have glass cannons.

Again I honestly feel the price jump is due to the change in the plex system... If CCP kept the plex as a single plex for 30 days the jump in price would not be so suddenand would not be such a shock.

IMHO it would be in CCP's best interest to find a way to make a soft cap on 30 days of game play... 500 plex should not be more than actually paying for 30 days of game play. 500 plex should not be 20$ it should be 15$ the same price as a one month sub...

I'm not going to say the plex price skyrocket will be the end of eve, but it will be rather destructive to eve. If CCP can see past their own greed they will in fact notice the plex price will eventually start to be destructive to the game... Currently 500 plex is still easy to get, there does need to be some form of soft cap put into play by CCP before the price becomes too destructive.

His thought is that if you give people a reason to sell horded plex, plex will flood the market.

It's not an unreasonable thought... but I disagree with the solution. If CCP announced that they were monitoring plex price and would be implementing methods to inject plex into the economy if plex prices got too high, some of those hording would start to sell due to a fear that the price would drop due to CCP actions in the future.

If there were enough horded plex to have an impact, it might even cause the PLEX price to drop without CCP taking any action... just because they indicated that they would if it reached a point they considered "too high".