Market Discussions

They work couple of days to pay for plex. Working a week or 2 weeks for plex is long distance from this price.

This is where it is really tricky and where things could break.

As long as what you say remains the factor with the INCREMENTAL buyer isk>plex , the prices of plex will stabilize in a rough range where in

game hours spent playing farming ~= hours a marginal seller of $>plex>isk makes a decision based in large part to keep up with a common level of spending in the range of those earning it in game.

That balance is also reasonable for people who neither play to play or pay extra to pay as with a moderate amount of pay , they'll be able to equip ships (yet not play for free)

Q: WHERE can things Break down.?

A: Things can break down when elasticity largely disappears on Either side of the purchase / sale equation

a1) on the buy isk>plex side - where the Incremental buyer is no longer a player that earns isk through a more direct hours played farming to purchase decision but where the incremental buyer has huges stores of isk (like over 20 billion.. although there are many much higher) or has huge semi passive income in terms of production, datacore(just a tiny boost here), and moon mining which would mean that they might need those accounts as closing them could cost billions a month in semi passive effort.. (and/or they know that even with some inactivity between datacores and an occasional char sale on the account a very high hurdle could be largely met anyway even if they miss a month or two of production due to temporary loss of interest in the game)

--- tldr on A1 --- if the incremental buyer isn't thinking play time to isk purchases prices could settle well higher than comfortable for people who do things like mining or missioning or plexing to pay for game time

b1) on the sell side ($>plex>isk) - supply coming to market is dependent upon player interest in the game first and foremost... without and interest in the game, almost no value scenario will get more buyers off their butts.
-- not an exact analogy (analogies rarely are, yet still useful while not exact where they can cast light with a partial relation)... but there is something similar to a federal reserve "pushing on the string" impact where even zero interest rates don't boost capital spending anymore because the rate of money is no longer the cusp motivation of expansion investment decision

b2) risk that when getting higher amounts of isk per $ that the number of buyers does not expand because of better value but actually contracts. Because game goals drive the decision to use more $, and game goals are based upon game dynamics, if the incremental seller has his game goals met selling fewer plex they may actually reduce the plex coming to market
- RL analogy(again not perfect but illustrator) - Buy one get one free Shoe sale - the better value for the 2 pairs of shoes could actually cannibalize over-all shoe sales. Someone coming in to buy one pair of shoes for need(even if need is old shoes look crappy) might spend a tad more to get a second set if the promotion sets prices slightly higher for the first pair—most people expect shoes to be discounted and the lack of a discount on one pair is an effective price increase). However those coming in with the idea of buying two pairs very likely spend a tad less than they anticipated given the bargain
- Very very few people coming in to buy 1 pair, would walk out with 4 pairs buying more because of the bargain.. clutter becomes a bigger consideration than value
- Those that do take 4 shoes probably cannibalize from future demand.. they’ll almost certainly wait longer till their next shoe purchase

Bad scenario = shrinking number of players (or changes in things that can motivate occasional huge $>plex>isk sales like a nerf to super carriers) could mean less Plex being sold regardless of value situation

TLDR
If # of plex coming to market falls (due to decreased player base),
and that # volume is below the # of very isk rich players
( who might even buy game time at 1 billion isk per month for lack of beter use of the isk and the abilty to still earn many times that)
THEN the isk>plex relation can lose all connection to the earnings of a more typical player makes in isk per hour.

Knock on effects of what I consider an entirely possible outcome (say it happens in 1 one out of 4 futures… I think there is a 75% chance that it will not happen yet a 25% chance is something that needs to be prepared for ---
 Loss of interest in the game from those depending on relatively affordable isk>plex ratio to continue playing
 Vicious circle of the above quitting causing paying players to quit because friends leave and less people to draw people to the gave via word of mouth
 Inbalance created by remaining $>plex>isk sellers getting so much isk for their $ that with small amounts of $ they completely eclipse the earning power of those players who were never buyers or sellers.. decreasing the game satisfaction of those players who were never buyers or sellers … less sense of balance will lead to incrementally less players and vicious cycle continuing.

People are figuring out how easy it is to make enough ISK within a short time period to cover a PLEX all the time. Only direction PLEX prices are going (long-term trending) is up. People who buy PLEXes to sell them for ISK make CCP happier, the more ISK a PLEX generates the better it is on their end.

If you have too much ISK floating around or you plan to quit EVE for a while, dump it into PLEXes. I bought a massive stack of them back when they were 270m, and back then players were adamant that the prices would never go higher, calling those who argued against idiots. A year from now you'll see players wishing they bought them up at 400-420m each.

Pretty slow way to make ISK if you're used to trading, but if you're not playing it's awesome coming back to ~60%+ growth that takes no work whatsoever and is more or less 100% safe.


Edit: Another point, about 4-5 years ago 90 day Game Time Cards (which EVE used to have) sold for between 250-300m ISK, the equivalent of 1.3B ISK of PLEXes today. 30 days used to go for around 120m.

I am waiting one of next promotions where for 199$ I'll get 13 PLEX, T-Shirt, Mug, EVE magnet, a pen, boots, battleship model, couple of other trinkets and bunch of ingame stuff including 2 monocles.

New promotion fast, PLEX is wild.

Well, we have, but it seems not all listen.

But honest, you would not beleive me.

I think there is no winers in this situation of high plex price.

PLEX traders don't want price jump, since there is not much profit there, and the price is going into unsafe areas.
The PLEX trading is all about turnover, not stockpiling and resselling, coz of a huge capital involved.
Stockpilling 1.000 PLEX, waiting, selling, in the end the profit from this big jump is less than if traded those every day.

My point is, there is not much profit from this jump.

And in long term, high Plex price is bad.
So, either will correct somewhere and stay there or this is a only first step from a bigger change.
Interesting times ahead.

No, sorry.

You pay again for 1 account, but now instead of working 4 days to earn for PLEX, you work about 5.

The only relation I see is the isk is cheaper compared to RL money. Devalued or whatever.