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Inflation adjustment
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Black Varanus
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#1 - 2013-02-25 17:36:31 UTC
Well, had quite a long pause in Eve Online but was noticing that the prices fluctuate quite strong. As an Amarr which is using Scorch M ammuntion, it's extremely expensive to actually mission running. From what I can tell the steady increase in ISK is a major problem especially for new players, cause the buypower is steadily decreasing.

The only balance method I see here, despite extending services which burns ISK, is only to produce even more or find more stuff...Well, like in the real world there are some issues to this...

First off you can buy plexes for real money and artificial increase the money circulation. While I know it's a major income for CCP and thus can't have a real interest in taking out this option, there should be some adjustment nonetheless. It get's increasingly more difficult for new players to make a living with only playing like 1-2 hours. For example playing an amarr is pretty expensive. For approximately 1000 shots, which are 2 1/2 lvl 3-4 missions, I have to play 460k ISK. With 6 turrets that's almost 2,8k mio ISK for 1000 shots which is pretty expensive, especially if you compare this to missiles II which only costs a fraction per 1000 shots.

It just doesn't payout to play an amarr for mission running if you compare it to other ships. The main problem besides balancing problems I see here that there is no alternative to the main currency ISK. So I have some rough suggestions which might help getting some more fun out of the game:

1. Inflation Adjustment: This is a pretty difficult solution. If CCP wants to make the market system more adjustable, then there should be inflation adjustments for the payout of the jobs for example. When the ISK circulation increases, so the value of the ISK is decreasing. Because there are methods using real money to inflate the money, there should be an adjustment, like an inflation tax for agents giving missions, which means they have to pay more for the same jobs in order to counter the decreasing value of the ISK and thus making it more worthwhile again doing missions. Of course there has to be made more adjustments in order to counter the increasing money, but doing "work" like mission running gets more and more less incentive while stealing ISK/stuff from other gets rapidly more incentive. There should be some kind of balance.

2. While the first option is pretty difficult to adjust, CCP could go a simpler way. Like giving some options to have an alternative to ISK. One simple way would be to adjust the rewards. Most missions just gives ISK, but there are some other things I'm interested besides ISK, so CCP could make the missions more interesting by allowing players to choose from a variety of rewards, like for example ammunition, rigs and other stuff you need for your ships. That would increase the incentive quite a bit to do missions again. Of course peeps like engineers would loose some profit, so it has to be adjusted rightly. The problem is everything is solely coupled on ISK, so doing "work" like misison running actually loses incentive, because there is no alternative to ISK. Which means less fun, less players thus less money.

I know quite a difficult topic but wanted to share my thoughts about it. Other then that the game is great, only pretty time consuming ;)

Best regards,
Black Varanus
Destination SkillQueue
Doomheim
#2 - 2013-02-25 18:24:50 UTC  |  Edited by: Destination SkillQueue
Maybe I'm missing something, but this doesn't make much sense to me.

You complain about the price of laser ammo. So every 1000 shots costs you 460k ISK, while 1000 T2 heavy missiles will cost 1000x447=447k ISK. Seems about the same to me. Less if you use T1 vanilla missiles and many times more, if you use faction missiles. You also have the option of using infinite T1 ammo, if ammo costs is truly a problem for you, but I expect you won't, since you know T2 ammo earns you much more money than it costs you. A couple of mil in ammo cost when you earn millions every mission in bounties, mission rewards and LP seems like a minor expense.

Your inflation adjustment. You want to fix inflation by increasing the amount of raw ISK everyone gets. You want to fix the problems of inflation, by giving everyone more money to compensate, which leads to decreasing that value even further. How exactly is this a fix to anything?

Your alternative to ISK. Like loyalty point stores already in the game? They have a fixed price for items and sell modules, ships and ammo, so this already exists to an extent. If you're looking an alternative to player produced products, you're never going to get it and that is a good thing.

It just seems to me, that you're making large claims without anything to really back them up and then offer solutions, that are either non-sensical or already exist. Again, maybe I'm missing something, but I don't think I am.
Hakan MacTrew
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#3 - 2013-02-25 18:45:10 UTC  |  Edited by: Hakan MacTrew
I would like to point put that PLEX isn't actually an ISK sink. It generates no ISK, when you sell one, someone is giving you their ISK got it. They then use it for game time, and its gone. No ISK left the world, no ISK entered the world.

Rats are the single biggest ISK faucet in the game. The more of them are killed, the more ISK enters the game world. The more ISK there is in the world, the more stuff will cost. Insurance is another ISK faucet. That ship cost little, if any, ISK to produce. It's cost is in resources, which are another matter entirely. When am insured ship blows up, resources leave the world and ISK enters it.

So, if we increase the amount of ISK available in the world, prices inflate. Your idea makes it worse.

More ISK sinks and more resource faucets and production will lower prices. That is the way to go. Oh and I'm fairly sure the big coalitions price fixing stuff like Tech and Neo isn't helping the situation.

Friends
Zella Polaris
Pitchfork Uprising Holdings
#4 - 2013-02-25 19:29:52 UTC
Hakan MacTrew wrote:
Insurance is another ISK faucet. That ship cost little, if any, ISK to produce. It's cost is in resources, which are another matter entirely. When am insured ship blows up, resources leave the world and ISK enters it.

You bring up an interesting point. A bit off-topic, but this could remedied if you used real actuarial science to determine the price of insurance based off of previous loss frequency. Or other factors, such as active wars or a bad corp K/D ratio.

Pitchfork Militia, part of Catastrophic Uprising, is recruiting. 0.0 SOV, emphasis on PvP, NBSI
Athena Momaki
#5 - 2013-02-25 19:38:05 UTC
Hakan MacTrew wrote:
I would like to point put that PLEX is actually an ISK sink. It generates no ISK, when you sell one, someone is giving you their ISK got it. They then use it for game time, and its gone. No ISK left the world, no ISK entered the world.


They are not a sink. I buy a plex and sale it to you. you give me your isk and then I got and buy something from someone else. that is not a sink. A sink would be if the NPC sold it only, and you had to buy it from them. (ie skillbooks, PI, Office rents, System dues)

Hakan MacTrew wrote:
Rats are the single biggest ISK faucet in the game. The more of them are killed, the more ISK enters the game world. The more ISK there is in the world, the more stuff will cost. Insurance is another ISK faucet. That ship cost little, if any, ISK to produce. It's cost is in resources, which are another matter entirely. When am insured ship blows up, resources leave the world and ISK enters it.


Yes minerals left and isk enters, but they have set it up to be on average for every 5 isk in 1 isk out (on average). Now when Eve make around 1 trillion+ isk new every year, but that is also a lot out. It is not taken out of the game when you buy a ship from someone on the market. The only time isk is taken out on the market is if you buy from someone at 300+ days. That is an NPC sale.

Hakan MacTrew wrote:
So, if we increase the amount of ISK available in the world, prices inflate. Your idea makes it worse.


I agree with this.

and yes this is not  my main.
Black Varanus
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#6 - 2013-02-25 19:42:12 UTC
No, for the most part you're right. Well, the missile comparison was bad, so this one was my mistake. Started yesterday again after a long years pause and thought you get a stack rather then only one quantity. So that mistake goes on my bad. The main issue I meant was the incentive to play missions and the possibility to inflate the ISK by using real money. I saw the really big fluctuations on the price history chart, which probably comes with high ISK injections which have been saved over the years by seasoned players and then spend or been bought via plex. Address this issue with increasing productions and add more random drop alone would seem rather difficult and damages the economy of the game, cause more time is needed playing.

What I meant by increasing the payout is getting it more incentive to do missions again and less incentive to steal stuff/ISK even though I know that's also a personal preference. It should be more balanced. Of course you would have to take out the increase in ISK out elsewhere, so some creativity is needed on that issue as it has to add to the fun. That is what I meant when I said this would be more of a difficult problem to adjust, so the other option having to choose from something else would be easier. Well right, the LP Store gets to the right direction. But the LP-Points are just another currency again. The idea is not bad and definitely adds to the game, but you should have a more of a variety for getting rewards in normal missions rather then just stacking points up to a certain point. It just get's too repetitive over time, especially if you don't have that much time thus having limited options decreasing the time needed.

The overall problem I see here is that the ISK are getting easier and easier to get for experienced players while for newbies it gets more and more difficult because of the decreasing value of the ingame currency, thus making new players more and more dependent on seasoned players. Money always tends to add to other money because the more you have, the more risk you can spend without loss, that's also one of the main reason why an currency based econonmy restart is some day inevitable, because of the monopolization of the economy and the corruption it brings. Of course there are other issues as well. I'm pretty sure CCP takes some actions against this issue by taking out some ISK manually but that's rather inefficient. But I can understand the issue here. Plexes are probably quite an income plus for CCP.

Well, personally you can compensate the issue by spending more time in the game and playing in a corp or buying plexes which is rather boring(the plexes I mean). I think addressing this issue would lower the threshold a bit, thus increasing the players who actually stay in the game. There just isn't any sort of compensations for the decreasing part of the currency, best options would be to actually have some alternatives to ISK, that would add definetly to the fun if played out right. Like I said the LP Store goes in the right directions but just isn't enough in the long run. Of course playing multiple characters would be an option too to get more playable variety , but despite the fact that you can only do that with two accounts and thus spending money again, the value of other players profession would decrease cause you could fit more holes. Quite a difficult task I know ;)

Best regards,
Black Varanus
Black Varanus
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#7 - 2013-02-25 19:49:23 UTC  |  Edited by: Black Varanus
Hakan MacTrew wrote:
I would like to point put that PLEX is actually an ISK sink. It generates no ISK, when you sell one, someone is giving you their ISK got it. They then use it for game time, and its gone. No ISK left the world, no ISK entered the world.


Ah and here I thought you actually get ISK, well had too long of a pause. But there's still an issue with that option, even though I can live with that. ISK is acually wandering to people who spends real money because it then only works as a means of shifting ISK from one person to another. But atleast the plex is coupled on real game time, so this issue shouldn't be too serious anyhow.
Kirimeena D'Zbrkesbris
Republic Military Tax Avoiders
#8 - 2013-02-25 21:15:58 UTC
Athena Momaki wrote:
They are not a sink. I buy a plex and sale it to you. you give me your isk and then I got and buy something from someone else. that is not a sink. A sink would be if the NPC sold it only, and you had to buy it from them. (ie skillbooks, PI, Office rents, System dues)

They are. You forgot about broker fee and sales tax.

Opinions are like assholes. Everybody got one and everyone thinks everyone else's stinks.
Hakan MacTrew
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#9 - 2013-02-25 23:41:43 UTC
Athena Momaki wrote:
Hakan MacTrew wrote:
I would like to point put that PLEX is actually an ISK sink. It generates no ISK, when you sell one, someone is giving you their ISK got it. They then use it for game time, and its gone. No ISK left the world, no ISK entered the world.


They are not a sink. I buy a plex and sale it to you. you give me your isk and then I got and buy something from someone else. that is not a sink. A sink would be if the NPC sold it only, and you had to buy it from them. (ie skillbooks, PI, Office rents, System dues)

Hakan MacTrew wrote:
Rats are the single biggest ISK faucet in the game. The more of them are killed, the more ISK enters the game world. The more ISK there is in the world, the more stuff will cost. Insurance is another ISK faucet. That ship cost little, if any, ISK to produce. It's cost is in resources, which are another matter entirely. When am insured ship blows up, resources leave the world and ISK enters it.


Yes minerals left and isk enters, but they have set it up to be on average for every 5 isk in 1 isk out (on average). Now when Eve make around 1 trillion+ isk new every year, but that is also a lot out. It is not taken out of the game when you buy a ship from someone on the market. The only time isk is taken out on the market is if you buy from someone at 300+ days. That is an NPC sale.

I relised my error and altered the post. My phone had a 'moment' and reverted the post to a draft.
PLEX indeed is not a SINK, its a Transfer.

As for Ship sales not being a sink at all, not quite. Taxes are still a sink, although I think they could stand to be increased. The origional payment for Insurance cover is a sink, Office rental is a sink, alliance fee's are a sink, CSPA charges are a sink...

I know there is more isk coming in than going out, and there is too much coming in.

I dont think making insurance calculate payout on K/D ratio would be a good idea. Those with a positive ratio would be well in, but miners who get ganked once or twice would be screwed. EvE is pretty unfair to start with, it really doesnt need any help to be more so.

I think a reduction on the payout would suffice, say 20% less. I also think that all players should pay taxes on their incomes, regardless of the source, just like if you were in an NPC corp. Even 5% of all income would make a huge dent. 2% would probably be enough. (basically, Tax ISK tranfers)

Friends