EVE General Discussion

Observations, speculations, considerations.
Discuss.

The way I see the game and the economy in it is CCP for 10 years have honored a creed of Sandbox. They didn't want to control the economy, babysit it or keep it healthy. Due to that they can't fix it either. They can however move some mechanics around to allow us to bring it back down to a level where it doesn't 'look like UO' as was described earlier.

SWG is one example I can better identify with. In the start if you had 5 mill creds in SWG you were pretty much rich. You could do anything in the game you wanted to, could always afford good armor and Doc buffs. At the end, 2 billion was average. So it went from 5 mill being alot to 2 bill being m'eh.

CCP say they don't want ISK to do that but again I would say they have never been part of it and don't really have to tools to fix it. Simply stopping ISK isn't going to solve much. It just makes sure rich people get richer though maybe a little slower and poor people never get rich. Granted rich people in EVE are for the most part responsible rich people so maybe that's not a problem. They could wreck the economy and could have many times and they didn't.

New money holders seem to have no issue with that and will on a regular basis go in to Jita and lock a market up, send it in to a spike to make a few ISK. It is one of the things I've noticed as a back lash to "new Money". Some times they get burned but all to often is is just destructive and adds confusion that isn't really good for the whole of the game. One Hub EVE is a big part of this problem but how to make people break up the hubs and not see them as just roads to Jita. Another problem is that BPO's are unlimited but we know from T2 BPO's that pulling them is a bad idea.

Of course the other issue is PvP doesn't sink ISK and it's the core of why we create it. Dust might see new Sinks, only CCP can say what the case is there but they will need to target the wealthy rather than the poor for any ISK sink to be usefull in EVE and bring the population down to a level playing field. Knowing some people need to be wealthy to make thier contribution, getting back to that responsible wealth aspect earlier.

Perhaps the best thing CCP can do is nothing? Let players get rich but let them lose it all doing stupid things with it.

'nuff rambling. Anyone else got thoughts in thier head about the economy? Something they can't quite flesh out while they are in thier head?

Only perhaps the potential to unlock monies as per investment and other banking systems as opposed to sitting in virtual matresses. Considering that CCP said we "had grown up" and could potentially run Jita I'm not sure what is fully implied here as future investment opportunities and what overheads may be involved.

I would call to say perhaps introduce a banking system with stocks, shres, bonds etc. But the idea of trust or the need to have commodities to act as the gold standard represent a real challenge in a virtual reality despite how helpfull they would be to provide self regulation to some extent and allow for investment opportunities to move unused isk around. It would also mean more interelationships with different transactions adjusted by those changes associated with the faucets and sinks we have now.

Those kind of proposals are very ambitious however, and likely wouldn't be an immediate change either.

In the meantime, happy for CCP to provide sanity checks to regulate the economic structure as needed.

Mass-transaction tax. A transaction tax that increases based on how many transactions you perform in one day.

While Soundwave(?) seemed convinced that the economy is in bad shape after playing UO, Dr. E was much more tempered in his assesment. My bet is that anyone's assesment of the state of the economy is largely going to be dependent upon the time scale one wishes to use and what kind of assumptions one makes about the growth of the game going forward.

That's just it, it isnt a sink.

You want a 50 Bill Titan you don't buy it from Amarr or Gallente. You buy it from Chribba or Goons. You don't eliminate your ISK, you give it to someone else. In the real world governments circulate money. If a government has 10 trillion in circulation based on thier economy they put the rest in a big kettle and burn it. In EVE that is called a Sink but you only need to buy the Sink BPO once. After that is is keeping ISK you pull in from that BPO in the game.

Let's wait and see what happens.

Drone poop change, Crimewatch change, WarDec change, charges for Shield Boosters (not 100% sure on SB charges, no details yet). Each of these will have an impact on the basic raw material for everything in the game, minerals.

Two things happen when these prices go up - Mining becomes more attractive, which means less people adding ISK because they are not shooting rats. (Not sure if it will lead to 26 trillion a month of activity shift but it could if prices went up high enough) And as prices increase, the amount of ISK in absolute numbers, taken by taxes and broker fees, increases.

Price inflation and divisions of labor are the ways out of the problem. Until doing something other than shoot rats is as valuable as shooting rats, the monetary expansion will continue. If CCP taxes too much, trade will slow and even more ISK will be hoarded until it explodes into a new and unexpected inflationary manifestation. Adding sinks, that are not related to shooting rats, makes those activities less attractive, not more attractive.

The new security status ideas, exchanging tags for security, could be helpful as well by creating an opportunity to reduce bounties while increasing tag drops. That will require its own balancing, but should not be too difficult.

The one thing eve has advantage with is the inflation is magic money. People have more isk, and as such, they hoard, but it has no effect on it's actual value. Value of items is only determined by day to day supply and demand.

The problem is now there is a bit too much of it, so more people are buying the shinies than being produced. As such, the poorer market is no longer able to afford stuff like T3 anymore. The real risk to the market is if mass purchases start happening too. The real difficulty is of course, an is output for isk and not much of a way for that to happen. So we need to look at an isk cycle, how the money flows, where stuff is added, where it is lost. Really it comes down to ships.

Alright here we go, lets see if I can ascii a tree. Right will be isk output, should be clear, where stuff adds value to system will be left.

Mining
\/\/\/\/\/
Manufacturing->isk tax/bpo copies, research, etc
\/\/\/\/\/
res items->Research This section can see where money flows. Each step adds profit to industrialist
\/\/\/\/\/
Market-> isk tax/broker fee etc
\/\/\/\/\/
Insurance-> Ship->Pew pew gone

Outside of the production tree, there is not a whole lot of isk expenditures. You have offices for corporations and hqs to start with. War declarations another. Alliance corp expenditures (medals, etc). And clones.

In terms of industry, it is the best system in the game for maintaining inflation. Note that outside of say the ratting that might occur, there is no actual isk flowing into the system, only an expenditure. the idea of adding cost to research items or other manufacturing steps is a good one. It will drive up ship costs, that that is a counterbalance to isk made farming, etc.

Insurance cannot be removed, there is still a loss to any player collecting insurance and if that happened, it would be slower to replace pvp losses and would be negated by fewer ships being destroyed. Less isk leaving market in industrial section.

The ideal control for inflation would be if the average rate of earnings matched the cost of manufacturing over the same period and loss. However like with what I said of insurance, increase in ship cost could possibly be offset by fewer ships being destroyed.

And this goes for anything on the consumable scale. Increased costs to combat and replacement would slow combat down and as such, disappear. LP store items, well that is similar to manufacturing, the cost to the purchaser is more than consumed, as such, more isk must be farmed. In the manufacturing sector, isk cycles. either back to production, or to pay for the pvp.



TL:DR any way to control isk has to be in terms of getting tangible for isk from npc directly. That is the only way to control inflation really. Find that everyday item that people use and transfer it from going to a player into an isk sink. I like to point out the dramatic change in isk flow when PI came into the scene and instead of POS going to npc market pockets, it went to planetary people. Combined with more and easier isk, inflation was due to happen. So, what can we add to put isk back to the NPC's.


Well we might need to head back to the dev forums for this idea. Dust can be an excellent isk sink if much of their stuff is npc sold. It flows to dusties, and then is gone. There is another option, and if you think about it, is a logical isk sink, though not sure if I or others would like it.


Umm..... hirable npcs..... alliance npc spawns for sov?

Don't know how it could be implemented, salaries for ship crews is one possibility. So I present ugly option one.
1. Ship crews. The horrible idea of ship experience, and a regular cost, with possibility of crew promotions? Costs more, needed to fly ships around (if collector, no cost for dock storage, no pay, no crew experience, need to pay to undock again, works like insurance) Is ugly, but would offer an isk sink that is universal across the board from miner to titan pilot.

2. Hired NPC's Allow sov alliances to invest into the systems a monthly tax infrastructure cost that can allow gate guns and npc faction ship of the alliances prefered faction which set like pos defence. second gen AI.

Both ideas are rather meh, but unless we put some stuff back where players just pay to npcs and don't have it marked up to cover and make a profit, there is really no way to control inflation. The more we put in players hand to sell/buy etc, the more the isk just builds up in a pipe cycle.

I find it funny that the tl:dr of that post was as long as the part it was supposed to give a summary of.

Inferno is all about wrecking the Eve economy. It stimulates PvP, which through insurance is one of the largest isk faucets. PvP furthermore destroys "stuff" leading to a double sided inflation boost. And then we also have the drone nerf. Maybe CCP should listen to an economist before doing stupid things.

I was thinking insurance, then brain shorted and forgot insurance. Very valid point. End of insurance? That feeds down to the industrialist, for the pvper, it really does not earn anything, because it was replacing that which is lost. Less insurance means fewer pew pewing, at least for me and fewer ships bought. Cannot try to drain it out in the industry system because they would charge more for products in order to make up the difference. But I could live with no insurance all the same, means I need to rat more to make up the difference. End result is no change.

Here is what we really kind of need, how can the pvper combat people get money from the industrialist? I think what we need to look at is what if anything does an industrialist/miner have and get that the combat/ratting could supply instead? POSes already have manufacturing slots and research. What is needed is maybe charged rates for them. How can the high security industry expenditures be transfered to combat people? Right now the nullsec minerals and the like are the only way.

Okay, the null industry!

There we go, drone poo nerfing to spread out the sources of the ratting goo is good, fewer minerals in high is good, what is needed is that greater incentive to get people wanting industry out in null and low security. Stronger ships and a greater diversity of ore stuff maybe (will have to re-link my T3 industrial at some point).

What we really might have to do is ALL meta items, anything from a loot drop should no longer reprocess into lowsec or nullsec ores. Why do people highsec industry? Cause highsec ore is worth the most. I never heard of the California Sand Rush, it was a gold rush. Combined with industry changes, if we make the hardest to get ores properly worth the most, you are right, that is where people will go. Isk returns to pvpers in terms of more renters, insurance not needed since there is that cycle of isk or in house production pure.