Market Discussions

I guess that's the point.

The 'poor player' is paying real money to sell the PLEX with the intention to CONSUME the money and buy wares and reflate the markets.

The trade itself is completely neutral, but the trade makes a money swap into the hands of a consumer.

I'm trying to wrap my head around this. On the surface what you say makes sense.

Does that mean mining bots are good for EVE? I can't believe that.

Let me work through this and see what I can write. It's screwing the economy. I just need to figure out how to tie it all together in a coherent post that makes some sense.

Mr Epeen

The introduction of the Plex item long time ago made, makes and will make the ISK more valuable then if it didn't exist. Because:

1. Every Plex transaction on the market (be it contract or market sale/buy order but not direct trade) takes a small percent of ISK value outside the game. Less ISK in game -> more valuable it is.

2. If the people spending the ISK on Plex would buy any other item (supposing Plex wouldn't exist), the price of that specific item would go up. Hence the devaluation. But since the Plex does exist, people can buy IT from the market with ISK and not some other item so the prices of the other items go down.

The Aurum has a similar advantage of making ISK more valuable. People can buy Plex from the other players (sinking ISK through trade tax) to convert it to Aurum (besides game time, players have now another incentive to buy Plex). So instead of the item prices getting bigger by player purchases, Aurum conversion makes ISK more valuable. That's why CCP must invent periodically new in game items, to keep the price inflation down. You will rarely see CCP replacing items with ISK (old skill books were replaced with the new skill books not reimbursed with ISK).

CCP is closely monitoring the balance of ISK sinks and faucets and when the situation will get critical ISK wise, they will create more content and modify game mechanics according to their analysis.

The only ways to directly create ISK in game are: bounties for killing NPC, mission agent rewards, ISK received from NPC for item sales, insurance payout. These are the reasons why the OP feels like there is more ISK in the game then before.

Then why did you originally post this in General Discussions?

Here's an interesting thought for further discussion:

What would happen if NPC wallets actually had balances? As in, Concord pays out bounties for ratting, but that reduces their isk account balance. A portion of market taxes flows into Concord's wallet, replenishing it. As their wallet balance changes, bounties paid out either increase or decrease dynamically to compensate.

Good point.

Any negative consequences?

Insurance is an isk sink.

incursions devalued isk! how did nobody see this?! getting 10mil a site in highsec and lp that makes even more isk for people really inflates the market. ive noticed a price drop in tons of faction items from highsec because of lp being transferred to empire corps and getting the faction mods nearly for free.

WTF, when did they start refunding that ffs.

I'm almost as shocked as you, I think, realizing just that. That mining bots do have a profound effect on the EVE economy and are currently having their share in keeping prices stable. Before any flames roll in, I'm as much as a hater of bots as most players.

But we have to face the fact that bot miners are in fact actively increasing the amount of material values in the game by creating ore supply for the market. (So are drone region ratters that salvage, as a short sidenote). If the extent of bot mining is as high as I fear it might be, then the effect of shutting down all bot operation might have DRASTIC impact on economy and tip the balance quite heavily towards an inflation, since the amount of material values would not be able to keep up with the increase of ISK in the game.

Maybe that is an incentive for CCP to not go about botters as aggressively as I'm sure they might be able to.

So, ugly as it might sound, the bot miners are a blessing especially for all players that are looking for low prices. On the other hand, bot mining decreases the ISK equivalent value of the total assets every player possesses.

Now... the question is: What's the more "real" measure for values. ISK or assets?

That's mostly true - Block has been keeping an eye on Minerals for years now, the MRD is a snapshot of a set amount of minerals and their "value". The Value is actually BSAC's value but the same formula has been used the whole time. The result shows a slow increase of mineral value over the last year, with small drops every so often.

I don't have a complete table of data, Block may be able to provide it as a source of interest. Increased value of a mineral basket would indicate a decline in ISK value. Since items in game still remain dirt cheap despite the inflation of the mineral basket, this tells me one thing.. Competition drives prices down and they can drive the price down because they are getting the minerals cheaper than then basket indicates. I hate saying it because we've all heard it a billion times before - "The stuff I mine is FREE!!!"

I have perfect reprocessing/refining skills in Jita, no tax, no waste. I've been refining more recently because items are getting cheaper simply reprocessing them for the minerals. The strange side effect of this, it acts as a sort of mineral price ceiling, or at least a soft ceiling. The item always has a floor of whatever it can be melted down and sold to bids..

It would seem manufactures don't look at these much any more, they probably think.. WOW I sold all my 42 cruisers to a guy for this price, LOOK AT ALL THE ISK I MADE!!! Despite the fact he could have melted them down and turn a 4% extra profit.

I think item price and ISK value are loosely connected at best, PLEX and ISK is a different story, but ISK and Item.. Two very different factors are involved.

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