EVE General Discussion

Actually, the PLEX is almost a completely inelastic good. It's usually bought on a just-in-time basis, and the price isn't a factor for people who wouldn't otherwise pay cash subs anyway. They either afford the PLEX, or don't play.

If CCP bundles other crap with PLEXes without raising their cash price, the price of PLEXes would probably go down due to the much-increased supply. In fact it would probably go down to the point where the value of the PLEX and the value of its bundled items would together be equivalent to the value of a PLEX today. People would be buying more PLEXes from CCP due to the bundled stuff until the price reaches equilibrium.

If CCP seeds PLEXes, then the price would indeed go down, as long as CCP prices them aggressively. Since this would create a pretty big ISK sink, it would have a double effect: first because of CCP selling PLEXes for less ISK, and second because this would cause deflation, pushing all prices down.

But in either case I think that $15 charged by CCP would be equivalent to about 2-3 hours of high-end pve in-game. If CCP releases incursions 2.0 tomorrow and you can suck 500 million an hour from them, you can bet your ass that PLEXes would be pushing 2 billion within two weeks. Everything else would rise in price accordingly.

I actually did the math on this once, and I figured that if I'm earning 300m ISK / hour by webbing & painting little red crosses for the dreads to kill, it's actually a tad better than what I get IRL, so I very definitely fund my accounts with PLEX.

I agree with Plex, I believe without it EvE wouldn't be how we know it today, the ones who hate to grind can fund ship losses (keeping them playing EvE) and the players who can't afford to sub are able to play.

I also believe that Plex are undervalued, the pve population easily grind a Plex a week without working excessively hard I don't think 800-1000m would be to much.
My opinion is the miners strangle Plex from reaching its true value.

If CCP did this and someone found out, it would be the biggest gaming shitstorm since the release of Superman 64.

They manipulate the economy all the time. The moon goo consortium was too restrictive so they implemented alchemy. Drone goo was problematic so they removed it. Mining wasn't turning enough so they increased the efficiency of mining barges. CCP has complete control over the Eve economy and they use that control all the time.

Why would there be a "shitstorm" over PLEX buyback?

CCP is a business, they can charge whatever people will pay. Its not illegal! There's nothing in the EULA or the description of PLEX saying that they are intended for players, its just a way to get real world money into the game, like tokens or coins on other games. They can do whatever they want with PLEX.

I guess what it would come down to is that the players PLEXing their accounts to play would have to play a little bit longer to grind enough isk to purchase a PLEX.

They'd be selling ISK for money. Considering how they advertise their game as having a "fully player-driven economy," one could potentially make a case out of the [fact] that they're not delivering on their promise. Shaky legal ground, sure, but the possibility is there depending on how good the lawyers are. They could, of course, simply change the game's description, and then they'd be fully covered.

Either way, it probably wouldn't matter, since they'd lose tens of thousands of customers when word of this got out. It would be quite a bit worse than Monoclegate.

Right, Glad to see you fully understood everything we both wrote and made a rational response.
Thanks!


I think a lot of people make wrong assumptions about who is buying PLEX for ISK and the minimum wage comparison. Sure most activities in Eve would pay less than minimum wage but do bear in mind for a lot of people 500m/account/month is a trivial sum of ISK.

Considering how many ways there are to passively return 2% a month you only need 25bn per account invested somewhere to pay the subscription, things like research would mean fueling a POS once a month and maybe flipping some science jobs. Even loans from MD will pay 2%. Of course many people earn much more than 2%.

I'm sure there are plenty of players who spend hours farming missions to pay ISK for plex, which is fine as long as they enjoy it, but for many people its an easy way to save 1/2/3X £10(?) per month without much hassle.

Generally, I don't spend real money on virtual things.

It's like buying music off itunes; one change of policy, one infraction, and it's gone forever and so's your money. Besides, RL money is only provided through my own effort. ISK is acquired through a purely electronic process that I actually enjoy messing with. If I need more ISK, I can just put more effort in to make it. If I need more RL money, that means putting in overtime shifts and waiting a month or more for the return.

As for CCP manipulating PLEX? Unlikely. It'd be much more likely to be that every time the PLEX price shoots up, people stop spending ISK on it, speculators release stockpiles, and the market goes back down. No different from any other market item.

No.