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New dev blog: The Economy “Burns“ (Price Indices – May 2012)

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DarthNefarius
Minmatar Heavy Industries
#41 - 2012-06-10 17:56:29 UTC  |  Edited by: DarthNefarius
Haifisch Zahne wrote:
Alice provides some excellent, well-reasoned thoughts. I think it compliments my earlier post.


Alice Katsuko wrote:
So nominal prices have increased across the board while nominal individual income has remained static or has gone down. Real player income has gone down, aside from a few special cases. In more simple terms, if it took an hour of anomaly running to buy a Drake this time last year, it now might take two hours, so it takes more grinding to get the reward (whether it is PvP or a new shiny module or what have you).


Yes, yes, and a thousand times, yes. And, what happens when players don't want to grind? They buy PLEX. .


Or they unsub which I'm planning on doing this week.
TBH I liked the Incursion grinding pre-Escalation because of the communities but post-Escalation the DEVs just made it way too tedious and DESTROYED whole communities! I bet with the meta-0 NERF the tedious factor of missions has gone way up too. The tedious factor of mining of course is unchanged.

Guttripper wrote:
After reading the blog, I have one question -

Where is the fun factor in the game?



It was NERFed out of the game by DEV's for me.
An' then Chicken@little.com, he come scramblin outta the    Terminal room screaming "The system's crashing! The system's    crashing!" -Uncle RAMus, 'Tales for Cyberpsychotic Children'
Max Swagger
New Eden Browncoats
#42 - 2012-06-10 18:50:55 UTC
I think it is pretty obvious CCP will stop at nothing to sell PLEX. After the Fashion Cluster F*ck (where all they wanted to do was sell clothes and call it content) they were at least smart enough to pay attention to people unsubbing and salvage the situation (by abandoning it) Believe it or not, many companies do not seem to pay attention to their cash cows.

Now they are messing with the economy. They are doing their best to ensure everyone needs to buy PLEX to play this game (in addition to monthly fee). Soon the people who have no interest in the economic side of eve will probably move on, as the price to play will get too high. Until the unsub's increase, we know nothing will be done to easy this inflation.

CCP really really wants have a forced cash shop (PLEX) with a monthly fee. And, this is fine, if the game provides the entertainment value. I am willing to bet, over all, Eve is already one of the highest costing MMO's out there on a per customer basis (not account). Lets say they have 400k accounts, that probably translates to 150k customers (or less) And I bet 20% of those buy at least 1 PLEX or more every month, in addition to month subscription. If the PLEX prices were rising also, I would see less issues, but they seem to be going in opposite direction lately.

They are here to make money. And they have the some of the most loyal fans. Lets hope they don't take us for granted and continue to provide great entertainment value in exchange for our money.
Haifisch Zahne
Hraka Manufacture GmbH
#43 - 2012-06-10 19:54:05 UTC  |  Edited by: Haifisch Zahne
REMOVED TO PROTEST CCP's Community Censorship Protocol ("CCCP").
Haifisch Zahne
Hraka Manufacture GmbH
#44 - 2012-06-10 20:07:22 UTC  |  Edited by: Haifisch Zahne
REMOVED TO PROTEST CCP's Community Censorship Protocol ("CCCP").
Simi Kusoni
HelloKittyFanclub
#45 - 2012-06-10 20:23:49 UTC
DarthNefarius wrote:
Haifisch Zahne wrote:
Alice provides some excellent, well-reasoned thoughts. I think it compliments my earlier post.


Alice Katsuko wrote:
So nominal prices have increased across the board while nominal individual income has remained static or has gone down. Real player income has gone down, aside from a few special cases. In more simple terms, if it took an hour of anomaly running to buy a Drake this time last year, it now might take two hours, so it takes more grinding to get the reward (whether it is PvP or a new shiny module or what have you).


Yes, yes, and a thousand times, yes. And, what happens when players don't want to grind? They buy PLEX. .


Or they unsub which I'm planning on doing this week.
TBH I liked the Incursion grinding pre-Escalation because of the communities but post-Escalation the DEVs just made it way too tedious and DESTROYED whole communities! I bet with the meta-0 NERF the tedious factor of missions has gone way up too. The tedious factor of mining of course is unchanged.

Guttripper wrote:
After reading the blog, I have one question -

Where is the fun factor in the game?



It was NERFed out of the game by DEV's for me.
Posting to confirm that not looting and reprocessing a certain item type completely took the fun out of high sec mission running.

And Darth, we all know that when you say incursion communities you mean ISK. I've read your proposals on incursions, they have all been purely focussed on buffing the reward. The only exception is the incursion bar, which you only started putting in your posts after Serge mentioned it.

At least be honest in your posts, and admit its about the isk. Also, unsub faster. Its been months.

[center]"I don't troll, I just give overly blunt responses that annoy people who are wrong but don't want to admit it. It's not my fault that people have sensitive feelings"  -MXZF[/center]
Apolyon I
Shadow of ISW
#46 - 2012-06-10 22:14:47 UTC  |  Edited by: Apolyon I
Haifisch Zahne wrote:
Follow the PLEX.

What the Eve economy comes down to is simply this: the null-sec players making boatloads of ISK, which they cash in for PLEX to play for free. Meanwhile, the newbies have to grind away, get bored, and buy PLEX to sell for ISK.

The null-sec players are diehard Eve players here to stay. And why not? They play for free. CCP counts on new customer turnover to constantly refresh the supply of PLEX to the null-sec player base.

Dust 514 will be the saving grace for CCP, which has exhausted its supply of new players willing to forkover money for PLEX. Endless fodder of young kiddies needing new shinies to fight, after getting griefed by the Goons.

Thanks, but no thanks. I'll continue to grind, never having bought a PLEX ever on principal.

Or, get wise, like the rest, and quit.

hisec carebears whine about hisec income??

I mine for an hr with 2 accounts and make enough to buy 1 PLEX, L2makeisk
Olleybear
Pandemic Horde Inc.
Pandemic Horde
#47 - 2012-06-10 23:54:12 UTC
Am I really reading these responses correctly?

People have been saying for years that mining needs a buff to be a valid profession in Eve. The reason is you can run lvl 4 missions in hi-sec or belt rat in 0.0 and bring in more minerals in addition to the bounty paid and the salvage collected. So, drone regions get a change and start paying bounties and mission runners have meta 0 loot removed. These two things, in addition to hulkageddon having some effect on mining, and apparantly the war on botting has reduced the supply of minerals, has made mining a profitable profession and mining appears to be needed more by the player base now....

...and people are complaining because they are getting exactly what they wanted?

Whats next? Someone figures out the isk / hr a hulk pilot is now bringing in? We are going to start hearing, "Nerf hi-sec mining! People can make tons of isk mining in hi-sec with little risk while us poor 0.0 and low-sec people have to run gate camps to get our minerals to market.".

Roll

When it comes to PvP, I am like a chiwawa hanging from a grizzley bears pair of wrinklies for dear life.
Simi Kusoni
HelloKittyFanclub
#48 - 2012-06-11 04:24:52 UTC
Olleybear wrote:
Am I really reading these responses correctly?

People have been saying for years that mining needs a buff to be a valid profession in Eve. The reason is you can run lvl 4 missions in hi-sec or belt rat in 0.0 and bring in more minerals in addition to the bounty paid and the salvage collected. So, drone regions get a change and start paying bounties and mission runners have meta 0 loot removed. These two things, in addition to hulkageddon having some effect on mining, and apparantly the war on botting has reduced the supply of minerals, has made mining a profitable profession and mining appears to be needed more by the player base now....

...and people are complaining because they are getting exactly what they wanted?

Whats next? Someone figures out the isk / hr a hulk pilot is now bringing in? We are going to start hearing, "Nerf hi-sec mining! People can make tons of isk mining in hi-sec with little risk while us poor 0.0 and low-sec people have to run gate camps to get our minerals to market.".

Roll

Gate camps? JFs... Hell, can even just bridge a regular freighter.

But yeah, the people complaining are the ones who see the Eve economy as a real economy, or they are new to the game and they don't realise there was a time when ships were genuinely valuable. In a game economy cheap and readily available gear is not always a good thing, being able to grind out the money for a drake in an hour in high sec is silly.

I sincerely hope CCP mess with the economy some more.

[center]"I don't troll, I just give overly blunt responses that annoy people who are wrong but don't want to admit it. It's not my fault that people have sensitive feelings"  -MXZF[/center]
Qvar Dar'Zanar
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#49 - 2012-06-11 09:08:20 UTC
The amount of whine in this forum is overwhelming.
Haifisch Zahne
Hraka Manufacture GmbH
#50 - 2012-06-11 10:06:09 UTC  |  Edited by: Haifisch Zahne
REMOVED TO PROTEST CCP's Community Censorship Protocol ("CCCP").
Simi Kusoni
HelloKittyFanclub
#51 - 2012-06-11 11:34:55 UTC
Haifisch Zahne wrote:
Seems recent posts are trolling to portray me as a whiny carebear.

My original posts were intended to come to understand what CCP is trying to do with the Eve economy, theoretically-- something few understand these days, Alice excluded. And to point out that the alternative to the grind is shelling out real money to CCP for PLEX or take the plunge into low/null sec.

So "take the plunge"?

By your logic, anything devaluing high sec is dismissed as CCP forcing players to purchase plex. Maybe it's not, maybe it's them redressing a risk/reward imbalance that has crept into the game?

You even place claim their anti-botting efforts, something which has been almost universally praised by the community, are secretly motivated by a desire to force players to buy plex? This does not strike me as a logical set of arguments. It sounds to me more like you are angry, presumably at not being able to afford plex, and are attempting to vent your rage at CCP by assigning an ulterior motive to every single action they take.

And that's without even getting into whether or not their actions will in reality increase plex sales.

[center]"I don't troll, I just give overly blunt responses that annoy people who are wrong but don't want to admit it. It's not my fault that people have sensitive feelings"  -MXZF[/center]
Vincent Athena
Photosynth
#52 - 2012-06-11 16:51:06 UTC
Olleybear wrote:
Am I really reading these responses correctly?

People have been saying for years that mining needs a buff to be a valid profession in Eve. The reason is you can run lvl 4 missions in hi-sec or belt rat in 0.0 and bring in more minerals in addition to the bounty paid and the salvage collected. So, drone regions get a change and start paying bounties and mission runners have meta 0 loot removed. These two things, in addition to hulkageddon having some effect on mining, and apparantly the war on botting has reduced the supply of minerals, has made mining a profitable profession and mining appears to be needed more by the player base now....

...and people are complaining because they are getting exactly what they wanted?

Whats next? Someone figures out the isk / hr a hulk pilot is now bringing in? We are going to start hearing, "Nerf hi-sec mining! People can make tons of isk mining in hi-sec with little risk while us poor 0.0 and low-sec people have to run gate camps to get our minerals to market.".

Roll


Its different people complaining. The miners are not complaining. They like to watch the isk roll in. The hours of mining needed to buy a PLEX has dropped significantly.

Now on a different note, the PLEX has been slowly dropping from its high at the graphics card offer. Sort of expected, and does not look too different from typical market variations. But what is odd is the PLEX daily traded volume has been dropping (this is all based on Jita data). That is a little odd. Its been rising steadily since the creation of the PLEX. This is the first real drop in traded volume. Is that an indication of a contracting economy? Or a sustained anti bot and RMT effort?

Know a Frozen fan? Check this out

Frozen fanfiction
Max Swagger
New Eden Browncoats
#53 - 2012-06-11 17:08:22 UTC
Simi Kusoni wrote:
Haifisch Zahne wrote:
Seems recent posts are trolling to portray me as a whiny carebear.

My original posts were intended to come to understand what CCP is trying to do with the Eve economy, theoretically-- something few understand these days, Alice excluded. And to point out that the alternative to the grind is shelling out real money to CCP for PLEX or take the plunge into low/null sec.

So "take the plunge"?

By your logic, anything devaluing high sec is dismissed as CCP forcing players to purchase plex. Maybe it's not, maybe it's them redressing a risk/reward imbalance that has crept into the game?

You even place claim their anti-botting efforts, something which has been almost universally praised by the community, are secretly motivated by a desire to force players to buy plex? This does not strike me as a logical set of arguments. It sounds to me more like you are angry, presumably at not being able to afford plex, and are attempting to vent your rage at CCP by assigning an ulterior motive to every single action they take.

And that's without even getting into whether or not their actions will in reality increase plex sales.



If CCP management is not thinking about how to raise the subscription numbers and how to maximize revenue from each customer, they better be looking for new management. If you think they just willy-nilly make changes to the ingame economy, you are mistaken. They employ economists for eve.

I agree, the removal of botting is not 100% motivated by their desire to sell PLEX. But when you take all their actions into account, I beg to differ. I think it is a pretty simplistic view if you think they do not understand the effects of all these changes.
Fracture Antollare
TEMPCO CORP
#54 - 2012-06-11 17:10:12 UTC
CCP Guard wrote:
CCP Recurve is known for keeping a close eye on the economy and how it reflects your various undertakings. Check out his latest price indices blog, complete with sexy graphs!


More importantly Guard, you didn't mark on the graph when "Burn Jita" was announced. Much of the price speculation and hoarding occurred because of the psychological impact of the threat to the high sec lifestyle.
Scatim Helicon
State War Academy
Caldari State
#55 - 2012-06-11 17:19:04 UTC
Vincent Athena wrote:
Now on a different note, the PLEX has been slowly dropping from its high at the graphics card offer. Sort of expected, and does not look too different from typical market variations. But what is odd is the PLEX daily traded volume has been dropping (this is all based on Jita data). That is a little odd. Its been rising steadily since the creation of the PLEX. This is the first real drop in traded volume. Is that an indication of a contracting economy? Or a sustained anti bot and RMT effort?

Most likely its at least partly due to the players who ran Incursion alts to fund multiple accounts all switching back to paying in real money and/or cutting back their alt army now that their risk-free gravy train has left the station.

Every time you post a WiS thread, Hilmar strangles a kitten.
Simi Kusoni
HelloKittyFanclub
#56 - 2012-06-11 17:26:46 UTC
Max Swagger wrote:
If CCP management is not thinking about how to raise the subscription numbers and how to maximize revenue from each customer, they better be looking for new management. If you think they just willy-nilly make changes to the ingame economy, you are mistaken. They employ economists for eve.

I agree, the removal of botting is not 100% motivated by their desire to sell PLEX. But when you take all their actions into account, I beg to differ. I think it is a pretty simplistic view if you think they do not understand the effects of all these changes.

Me?

I'm not complaining about them increasing subscription numbers, just at the statement that all of their anti-RMT and incursion rebalancing efforts are supposedly a thinly veiled attempt to force people to buy plex instead of a monthly subscription.

I'm also not of the view that CCP does not understand the effects of market changes, just that Haifisch doesn't.

[center]"I don't troll, I just give overly blunt responses that annoy people who are wrong but don't want to admit it. It's not my fault that people have sensitive feelings"  -MXZF[/center]
Jared Tobin
Bloodstone Industries
B.S.I.
#57 - 2012-06-11 19:57:01 UTC
Just an observational question to CCP Recurve's analysis and graphs...

This observation in particular:

"In the long-term, the economy is probably in reasonably good health, although it does seem to have bad case of the flu at the moment."

It appears that every notable "incident", "period" and "upgrade" are mentioned, especially the first graph, however, there is no mention of the 10 (+2) patches involving the Unified Inventory UI bugs and errors which, in my economic observations (it's a large part of what I do), also should be noted as at least part of the lower counts on mining and the economy in general.

The "at a glance" approach is adequate, but it would be nice to see the graph "In the short-term" outlining these mining amounts/figures between May 22-Today, noting each day all 12 patches were thrown into the mix. Regardless of what people think of the Unified Inventory UI, I personally have seen mining players from, not only inside my own corp and alliance but, outside (contractors) who regularly have mined in 0.0, low and hi sec... whom, surprisingly, have definitely quit the game.

Guess I found that shocking, and therefore naturally would be poignant thing to note among the graphs of miners and merals mined after Inferno's launch date.

Just a genuine comment after reading the Devblog written less than 3 days ago using data dated up to (what appears to be) June 1...ish.
Alice Katsuko
Perkone
Caldari State
#58 - 2012-06-11 22:29:01 UTC
Those of us who live in the drone regions have been fairly ambivalent about the removal of drone alloys. I supported their removal, but on the assumption that it would be accompanied by a thorough review of mining, especially nullsec industry and low-end mineral supplies, and by the addition of rogue drone officer and faction loot. Neither have occurred so far. CCP appears to be using rogue drones to seed experimental module BPCs, but I do not think that is sufficient in the long-term to make the drone regions truly competitive with other nullsec regions of the game.

From what I understand, CCP does have plans for mining and industry, however, so I do remain hopeful.

In general, there must be a balace between grind and reward. If the period between rewards is too long, players will lose interest and find other things to do. In EVE, grind has increased since Escalation. Note that it does not matter where you live; so long as your ISK comes from a static source such as bounties, your income has gone down since Escalation. Income from selling PLEX probably has not gone up in the long-run nearly as much as folk think for the same reason: it takes more ISK to buy stuff now than it used to.

Check out this article for why balance between grind and reward is important.
Louis deGuerre
The Dark Tribe
#59 - 2012-06-12 09:46:12 UTC
Good stuff, but the economy is still in for trouble if action is not taken.
Moon minerals should become a dynamic resource of which finite amounts will appear at random in 0.0. This will have dramatic benefits
- In 0.0 it will become worth fighting again for territory where new moon minerals appear.
- Consequently, PVP will become much more prevalent which will boost the economy.
- This will also prevent a strangehold on moon mineral market which is ruinous to the economy, driving up prices and discouraging people to PVP.
- It will allow small alliances a chance to gain a foothold in 0.0 as territory will lose and gain value and alliances will start to move around more.
Ticarus Hellbrandt
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#60 - 2012-06-12 09:54:19 UTC
interesting to see that mining hasnt increased very much in null sec since before the drone alloy changes, yet the high end mineral prices continue to fall.