Market Discussions

It's essentially irrelevant. The value of goods adjusts based on the value of their input materials, which in turn adjust based on changes in supply and demand. If inflation factors into this at all it's a tiny effect that gets drowned out by the larger swings.

EyjoG will certainly give us up-to-date numbers at FF

The PLEX/ISK exchange rate is IMO a measure of inflation.

If anyone wants to look at markets which haven't changed significantly from around a year ago, just look at the common T2 modules.

Sure, there's been seasonal variation (player activity levels affect prices, of course), but all in all, they're not /that/ different.

Of course, the prices of these include a large chunk of player time. The only thing with true value in the game.

What kind of money sinks do we have in the game to help counter inflation?

Ship repair is a minor one.... Clones I suppose. The insurance system is a real villain because you lose a ship that was built using real goods and the game reimburses you with ISK created out of thin air.

A lot of goods and skill books on the market are sold by NPCs as well aren't they?

Insurance is minor. The net faucet is perhaps a trillion isk or so, which pales in comparison to bounties (20-30T/mo).

http://blog.beyondreality.se/ISK-faucets-sinks has a decent roundup of sinks and faucets. It's old info, but there isn't anything really new lately.

Insurance by no means is counter-inflation thing. It in fact increases ability of pilots to buy new ships after loss, which means that there're are more incentives for ore to be mined. This is pro-inflation thing (it adds to isk pool).

Bounties are a bit of neither if I know mechanics right. If i'm correct bounties are paid for by players so it's really only change of hands rather than increase or decrease in pool.

It's been a while since I made this but it wouldn't be hard to update. After spending approximately 15 seconds looking at prices (I just resubbed today), it seems the Mineral Price Index has continued to rise, which would push "inflation" along depending on the Price Indexes you choose to look at. The MPI's probably gone up, but I doubt any Index that uses Tech 2 or Tech 3 as the major component has changed much.

Monthly Eve Inflation Rate Graph (CPI, Lifetime to Feb2012)

This is an easy graph to create if DrEyjoG and the Econ guys are still providing the data.

Monetary inflation in Eve has been absolutely enormous, price inflation has been tame in comparison. Fortunately for Eve, most of the monetary inflation is also countered by increases in productivity, which would explain a considerable portion of the disconnect.

The disconnect can be further explained by the main ISK faucet in Eve, shooting rats. That activity produces more than just ISK. Much of what is produced by rat shooting can be converted to the base commodities of minerals, this pushes prices downwards. Shoot 10 mil worth of rats, and you also probably end up with about 10 mill worth of other stuff. Personally, I think this is bad because it harms the division of labor, something Eve lacks. (I suspect Doc E. doesn't mind it much however, since as a 'central banker' relative price stability is a good thing.)

If rats stopped dropping so much stuff, many prices would be allowed to meet monetary inflation, perhaps the point where shooting rats becomes much less attractive than gathering of base commodities. Monetary inflation would slow and become regulated by the market and player preferences instead of regulated by CCP.

Anyway, back to the main question. Monetary inflation was on the order of something like 13,000% a couple of years ago, price inflation was modest for the baskets CCP used in its measures.