These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

Market Discussions

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

ISK to Aurum exchange!
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
Tom Hagen
Twilight Empire
#1 - 2012-06-27 07:49:08 UTC
I am bored, and probably haven't thought this through. But since I have time to refresh MD in my browser every five minutes it seems to me like not much is going on. So I might as well ask in here if someone else have any thought about this. Smile

Can anyone think about how the reasoning around ISK to Aurum goes at CCP?
I mean you can already buy Aurum in game if you do it in large enough chunks (Plex and tokens).
Now they introduce the possibility to buy smaller chunks Aurum directly with IRL money.

Why don't they just put up Aurum in the in game market instead?

To me it seems like a exchange rate would settle around the same as in the PLEX market.
It would let people buy smaller sums of Aurum on a need basis and most likely an increased sale in the NEX store.
I don't see any real drawbacks here, does anyone else?
Vaerah Vain
#2 - 2012-06-27 08:00:48 UTC
An even more fascinating question is: CCP tried introducing "controlled RMT" during the years, first only off themselves, then they added the PLEX for XYZ. Then they added Video card for PLEX.

At the same time they tried Aurum for PLEX and now for cash.

When (not if) are they going to allow Aurum or PLEX => Cash?

That would align EvE to other modern games and would finally implement an economy that not only is realistic, but is real.
Private Pineapple
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#3 - 2012-06-27 11:31:35 UTC
Vaerah Vain wrote:
An even more fascinating question is: CCP tried introducing "controlled RMT" during the years, first only off themselves, then they added the PLEX for XYZ. Then they added Video card for PLEX.

At the same time they tried Aurum for PLEX and now for cash.

When (not if) are they going to allow Aurum or PLEX => Cash?

That would align EvE to other modern games and would finally implement an economy that not only is realistic, but is real.


The risk is too high because once in a while CCP does slip up and some people earn trillions of ISK in little to no time. Just like the FW thing recently. There is a reason why people do not allow PLEX --> CASH because then rampant hacking would occur to steal people's assets and ISK and quickly turn then into $$ and from there CCP cannot do anything about it. This happened to Diablo 3 and is still happening because the RMAH is up.

.
Vaerah Vain
#4 - 2012-06-27 13:45:57 UTC
Private Pineapple wrote:
Vaerah Vain wrote:
An even more fascinating question is: CCP tried introducing "controlled RMT" during the years, first only off themselves, then they added the PLEX for XYZ. Then they added Video card for PLEX.

At the same time they tried Aurum for PLEX and now for cash.

When (not if) are they going to allow Aurum or PLEX => Cash?

That would align EvE to other modern games and would finally implement an economy that not only is realistic, but is real.


The risk is too high because once in a while CCP does slip up and some people earn trillions of ISK in little to no time. Just like the FW thing recently. There is a reason why people do not allow PLEX --> CASH because then rampant hacking would occur to steal people's assets and ISK and quickly turn then into $$ and from there CCP cannot do anything about it. This happened to Diablo 3 and is still happening because the RMAH is up.


Do you mean you think CCP are so vastly inferior than the other companies which already do that, that they'd stand no chance to stand up and compete with them?
Liza Nicley
Central Monetary Reserve
#5 - 2012-06-27 14:15:09 UTC
It isn't that CCP couldn't do it the issue is more that EVE is not designed to work like that. Most of the currency exchange games the only way currency gets into the game is if it is bought from out of game money or they have big gambling industry stuff like Entropia and it chance to succeed manufacturing. Even if you had to use PLEX as a medium for this exchange CCP would have to make some dramatic changes to the company and the game since PLEX sales could not be seen as straight revenue anymore etc. Most games do not allow for you to get rl currency like you ask.

To the OP though I fully support ISK to Aurum but it may never happen as PLEX and Aurum items can be sold for ISK. That is likely the best we will get and it is just minorly inconvenient as the market is not large enough to really establish good equilibriums.
David Forge
GameOn Inc.
#6 - 2012-06-27 16:37:13 UTC
Combining real money trading with the Eve culture of scamming, theft, and general unpleasantness seems to create a legal minefield that CCP would do well to steer clear of.
Vincent Athena
Photosynth
#7 - 2012-06-27 17:41:17 UTC
An Aurum market has the opportunity for being a different kind of market because it is an intangible asset. A ship is an item that sits in the inventory and has to be actually moved to get to a different station. But Aurum, like ISK is just a number in the wallet, you always have it. The other intangibles item in the game that can be transferred between players are shares in corporations.

What if we had a market for all such assets? There would be be one such market, not one per station. There we could have money trading and a real stock market.

Know a Frozen fan? Check this out

Frozen fanfiction
Aina Sasaki
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#8 - 2012-06-27 19:04:56 UTC
David Forge wrote:
Combining real money trading with the Eve culture of scamming, theft, and general unpleasantness seems to create a legal minefield that CCP would do well to steer clear of.


Agreed. Besides, wouldn't the RL money have to come from CCP? That doesn't sound like a very good idea for them to do.

- Rei
Tom Hagen
Twilight Empire
#9 - 2012-06-27 19:19:54 UTC
My original question was why ISK to Aurum on the in game market isn't something that CCP want. Instead they make Aurum available in smaller chunks for RL cash.
How and why is CCP's reasoning for this?


ISK to Aurum or PLEX to cash isn't a viable option in the EVE universe as it is today.
We print ISK for free every time we get bounty or finish a mission, I dont think it is good practice for a company to pay out to their customer under those circumstances.
I only played Entropia for an hour or so and read the forum during the installation, so I don't know much about it. But it seems to me that a lot of the income was kind of lottery based. That is their way of controlling how much money they gave back to the player base and nothing a like free ISK printing as we have in EVE.
I for one don't want to go that way...
Vaerah Vain
#10 - 2012-06-27 19:25:33 UTC  |  Edited by: Vaerah Vain
David Forge wrote:
Combining real money trading with the Eve culture of scamming, theft, and general unpleasantness seems to create a legal minefield that CCP would do well to steer clear of.


You can scam in those games just fine and with little to no consequence.
See, being a 3rd party service in there really takes a whone new meaning, as you hand some thousands of dollars not some fake currencty. Fun!



Aina Sasaki wrote:
David Forge wrote:
Combining real money trading with the Eve culture of scamming, theft, and general unpleasantness seems to create a legal minefield that CCP would do well to steer clear of.


Agreed. Besides, wouldn't the RL money have to come from CCP? That doesn't sound like a very good idea for them to do.


No, their business model works in 2 ways:

1) Everything eventually wears down. IE even if you use a knife, it gets blunt and you need a new one. Bullets cost as well.

So you need to buy or craft a new one and guess what, if you buy it it's by using their convertible currency.
If you get out and mine (mining is WAY nicer and active than in EvE btw) you will use explosives that cost, with a probing equipment that wears down.

In the end the overall economy is made to slowly lose and wear down stuff more than it's recreated or repaired or refilled. Therefore somebody has to shell RL money to convert into in game currency.

2) Now the process is identical to PLEX: richer guys who want to "win" (*) with no grinding just buy that in game currency with RL cash. The current "most winning plan" (it's posted on a website) out of 4, costs about $100 a month. That's how much those companies can make off rich players.

Those with more time or wits instead, will just trade and generally do stuff that nets them a positive return over time. Some guys managed to make multiple hundreds of thousands USD.
They are the equivalent of EvE traders who pay subs with PLEX bought by the above "I am rich" other players money.



(*) Notice, this does not mean you get "gold ammo" or "power items", you just get to buy the same stuff instead of having to personally grind / trade for it.






All of this not to say EvE will or should become a game like those. I am just stating how CCP are doing experiments and "evolve" their RL cash exchanging features over time, like they have a long term plan. What plan, I don't know, but a logic explanation is to exactly earn more money (doh!) by slowly introducing concepts I stated above.
Vincent Athena
Photosynth
#11 - 2012-06-27 21:02:01 UTC  |  Edited by: Vincent Athena
We may be able to create ISK in game, but that alone does not invalidate a PLEX buy back run by CCP. The PLEX only exists because someone spent real money to create it. If CCP allowed PLEX to be sold for RM no player could get an unlimited amount of RM no matter how much ISK they could create.

What would happen is the ISK price of a PLEX would go sky high. Even with the PLEX for video card offer the PLEX had a major spike. Could you imagine what would happen if every older player, deciding to move to another game, had the option of using all their saved ISK to buy PLEX, then sell that for real money?

But back on topic: Yes I think players should be able to do "money exchange", buy and sell AUR with ISK. Right now you can buy those Aurum tokens for ISK off contracts. If Aurum tokens were a NEX store item, we would have it. The other way to get it is to make AUR a way to pay for contract items. "You will receive 200 million ISK. You will pay 1800 Aurum".

The only other thing we have is

AUR, use to get NEX item, sell for ISK, use to buy PLEX, break up to AUR. And buy NEX items for ISK that others have placed on the market.

So no matter if you got ISK, PLEX, AUR or items, you can get any of the others. Its just cumbersome and in many cases ruinously inefficient.

Know a Frozen fan? Check this out

Frozen fanfiction
Block Ukx
420 Enterprises.
#12 - 2012-06-28 14:31:57 UTC
Vincent Athena wrote:

So no matter if you got ISK, PLEX, AUR or items, you can get any of the others. Its just cumbersome and in many cases ruinously inefficient.



Maybe is more cumbersome to implement AUR transfer between players. I don't know why is taking this long.
Vaerah Vain
#13 - 2012-06-28 15:18:45 UTC
Vincent Athena wrote:
We may be able to create ISK in game, but that alone does not invalidate a PLEX buy back run by CCP. The PLEX only exists because someone spent real money to create it. If CCP allowed PLEX to be sold for RM no player could get an unlimited amount of RM no matter how much ISK they could create.

What would happen is the ISK price of a PLEX would go sky high. Even with the PLEX for video card offer the PLEX had a major spike. Could you imagine what would happen if every older player, deciding to move to another game, had the option of using all their saved ISK to buy PLEX, then sell that for real money?


What would happen is... market!
It'd spike like crazy like PI did and then it'd settle down at its fair price.


Vincent Athena wrote:

AUR, use to get NEX item, sell for ISK, use to buy PLEX, break up to AUR. And buy NEX items for ISK that others have placed on the market.

So no matter if you got ISK, PLEX, AUR or items, you can get any of the others. Its just cumbersome and in many cases ruinously inefficient.


If they manage to decouple the various currencies it'll develop opportunities, not problems. You'd have FOREX right inside EvE! Mmmmm!
Claire Voyant
#14 - 2012-06-28 18:14:00 UTC
Why can't people stay on topic? To the OPs point, a way to trade aurum for isk would kill the seconday market for aurum goods. Why would anybody trade apparel if the buyer could just buy the exact number off aurum he needs. No secondary market would mean less inventory and less money for CCP.
Also many of us have piles of gift aurum that we would love to trade but there is no chance in hell that CCP would let us do it. In other words, forget it.