Market Discussions

It doesn't.

In real life manufactured goods can't be made by absolutely anyone with only a minimal barrier to entry that results in cutthroat competition and drives the cost of those goods down very close to the cost of their raw materials, which in turn can be obtained by absolutely anyone with only a minimal barrier to entry that results in cutthroat competition and ruthlessly drives those goods in strict adherance to supply and demand.

That's why T1 goods in 2010 cost half what they did in 2006 despite what was undeniably a massive inflation of isk in the economy due to nullsec ratting, highsec missions, incursions, and wormholes, and why the only thing that prompted the price of those T1 goods to change was the removal of an enormous supply faucet of minerals.

If normal inflationary pressures apply to manufactured goods in this game at all they're utterly lost in the fluctuations created by supply and demand. The only thing normal inflationary pressures do affect in a noticeable way is the price of gametime in the form of plex, and even that's a stretch... as evinced by the faction warfare hilarity last year (for one such example), their price will soar based on the presence of something that puts more isk into the hands of more people faster and all the better if it takes a low amount of work relative to other activities with poorer payouts. That holds true regardless of whether it's a faucet or a sink (the FW stuff was actually a very major sink). The fixing of the FW hilarity has resulted in a steady drop in plex prices, accelerated by frequent CCP sales.


There are other reasons why it may be prudent to limit the size of the net faucet in the game, and there are all manner of ways of doing that, but the evidence available to players, at least, suggests that inflation in the classic sense of "Oh no my all my stuff costs more" is not one of them.

I would say that a bigger chunk of that is the fact that, in RL, people have to eat*. In EVE, not so much.


*to include food, housing, medicine, etc.

I think you misunderstood me. I was agreeing that we don't necessarily have a "positive expectation" on money in RL, just disagreeing on the prime causes. Which could be because I'm thinking about a different meaning of the term than you. I don't know.

You'd be insane to think that it didn't increase some, it was a massive farmer goldrush. Pilot population was 2-3x what it is now in FW. How much of an increase? Dunno. I don't remember seeing specific numbers in the notes (though I'd have to check again). It's beside my point though, which is that something does not have to be a faucet (a la incursions) to affect PLEX prices.

It was 1/4 the LP too. The isk and the LP never de-synced.

Instead of getting 1 module for 20lp and 20isk they got 4 modules for 20lp and 20isk.

Oh boy, here we go again.

My evidence is from the CSM notes the skill books are stated to be down to near 6 trillion sink a month and are the #1 ISK sink and compare that to CCP Diagoras last publishing of the LP store ISK sink which was 6.3 trillion a month.



Its the economy stupid

So, data about months where FW tier didn't affect the way the LP store sunk ISK is your evidence for FW players leaving, for no rational reason, massive piles of LP unredeemed when reaching high tiers?

I'm sorry, what?

Fanfest 2012 was before the FW changes. Two Step's blog was also before the FW changes. December 2012 is over a month after the late October nerf (blame November. It's always a terrible month.).

The primary nerf hit at the end of October.

You're looking at either November or December's numbers and claiming they represent a time when FW operated under entirely different mechanics.

Where is your evidence that FW people looked at what they could do with their LP at Tier 5 and said "Nah, I don't want to convert this massive pile of LP before it converts into 4 times less stuff"? Hell, I'll settle for a coherent argument for why they would want to leave huge amounts of LP unredeemed.

Translation: but that's not really "reducing" the amount of isk leaving the economy so much as it is a matter of less isk being removed from the economy than somehow could have been.

You on mushrooms?