EVE General Discussion

EVE's economy is largely player driven. There are plenty of items on the market that are being injected by NPCs, and market NPCs also inject ISK. There are also plenty of mechanics in (and outside of) the same market that lets NPCs gobble up items (and cash).

As it happens, these NPC interactions tend to have a (relatively) fixed exchange rate when it comes to both items and ISK, whereas the value of ISK in player-to-player trades can vary wildly.

Again, go back and study Figure 1 in the UO article. That's what they created based on the idea of a closed market. Note the closed-loop nature of the whole thing (which is a strong hint towards its nature). When that failed, they had to create something that simulated an open market, so they came up with what's being illustrated in Figure 2. EVE features a similarly simulated open economy, with “outside actors” that do not form a the closed system that defines a closed economy.

Where is this nebulous 'simulated other world' that somehow performs imports and exports with New Eden? An item that is produced in New Eden stays in New Eden until it's destroyed. ISK sinks are artificially-introduced methods of economic control, designed to maintain adequate levels of supply and demand in a closed system.

No, but it does affect the movement of ISK without taking part in the economy in any way.

Player 'A' has a billion ISK sitting in his/her wallet. Just sitting there.....

Player 'B' converts GTC to PLEX and sells them to Player 'A'.

Player 'B' is suddenly 900,000,000 ISK richer without taking a single step into the EvE economy.

What I don't understand is how people continue to completely fuckin fail to understand that selling a PLEX does not create ISK, it merely transfers it from 1 player to another.

ISK is created by (but not limited to) Mission Payouts, NPC Bounties, Insurance etc etc

Everything else is just a transfer between players.

JESUSHFUCKINCHRIST.

/RAGE





/RAGE

ISK sinks don't cause ISK to vary in value, they change the 'purchasing power' of the individual ISK unit by removing excess currency from the system and preserving the purchasing power of the currency.

'Purchasing power' is how many of a given item a unit of currency will purchase. When a currency becomes too abundant, it loses purchasing power and eventually becomes worthless. ISK sinks prevent too much ISK from flooding the New Eden economy without having a 'drain', such as imports or exports.

When ISK is removed from the game via an ISK sink, it's not sent to a 'simulated country' to recirculate; it's destroyed and removed from the economic cycle. Likewise, an NPC's bounty brings ISK into the system to offset the effects of the ISK sinks, maintaining the amount of ISK in New Eden at a (roughly) steady level.

Seems like we all get to go through this conversation at least once a week these days.

PLEX does not create any ISK, PLEX does not create any wealth. PLEX actually removes ISK from the economy due to broker fees and taxes charged by NPCs.

What PLEX does do is increase the general level of liquidity. It shifts ISK from those who do not spend it to those that want to spend it. This can also be expressed by saying PLEX increases the velocity of ISK in the economy. The increased velocity very likely has an inflationary impact.

There was a comment someplace in this thread that the monetary base in Eve, the total supply of ISK, is not geometrically inflating. This is false. Go open a spread sheet with a graph ability, like Excel, and go look at it. Use any positive percentage value you want, heck make it random, so long as it is a positive number. You will find a hyperbolic curve. What can not be known for this curve is the frame of reference, where is the "top", the end. When does it all go to hell in a hyperbolic event.

Truth of the matter in Eve is, that it can't, not really. Eve money is not the same as the money in the real world. It can not inflate to the point of being worthless, it can only inflate to the point where accumulating wealth from ISK faucets is worth less in terms of time than accumulating wealth by gathering other resources. Notice I said wealth, not ISK.

What could happen in Eve is that there becomes a point that there is so much ISK, that ISK faucet activities are no longer attractive. It would become instead more attractive to mine trit. If inflation could push trit to say 50 ISK a unit, but missions/faucets pay the same ISK rate as before, then were is your time better spent? This production possibilities curve, although a bit odd in Eve compared to the real world due to a lack of the same marginal return constraints, does insure an upper boundary on the rate of ISK flow into the economy. Exactly where that point is no one can know for sure, but trit at 50 ISK a unit is a good illustrative example.

Will Eve ever reach that point, who knows.