Market Discussions

Well.. honestly; what's really stopping CCP from spawning isk and buying lets say 50%+ of all plexes that reach the market?

Before they created the plex market all GTC transactions happened privately on the forum and it would be a full time job to bid on them there.

Now that the plexes are ingame they could just spawn isk and buy all plexes.

They would never admit to it but.. what's really stopping them? It's not like it's in the EULA or anything that CCP aren't allowed to spawn isk.

CCP has been involved in shady business several times before, being greedy and all.

Would be surprised for one nano second if it really was like that.

Could also be a good reason why they suddenly care so much about removing isk farming bots, now that they effectively are the isk farmers.

I cannot believe how much confusion/ignorance there is in this thread, and in market discussions of all places!

Let me break this down - CCP profits, whether you pay for your account with isk/PLEX, or pay with your credit card.

Thats right, if you take your isk, buy a PLEX, and use it to pay for your account, CCP wins.

THERE IS NO PLAYING EVE FOR FREE. It doesnt exist. Those of you who buy PLEX with isk, are not playing for free. You're just trading your grind time for another persons RL cash, in a legal fashion.

CCP makes MORE money when you pay for your account in PLEX's. They WANT you to pay with isk, to buy a PLEX. The reason being, that it is much less efficient to pay for your account using PLEX than just using your credit card. You could pay $15 for a month of EvE, but someone has to pay $36 for a 60 day GTC to convert into two PLEX.

And I think this whole inflation thing is overblown. There is one real big reason why PLEX prices are skyrocketing - people ignorantly think they are "playing for free" when they buy a PLEX with isk. This false notion, along with the massive protests that surrounded Incarna, converted a bunch of credit-card paying customers (where CCP makes the least money) into PLEX paying customers (where CCP makes the MOST profit).

The players all pissed off about Incarna who refused to buy a year with their credit cards, are now spending isk to buy PLEX's instead, thinking they are somehow "sticking it to the man" by not using their hard earned cash. Instead, what they're doing is whoring their isk grind time out to someone willing to pay even MORE for a subscription than the protester would have to begin with.

To summarize, there is NOTHING wrong with the PLEX market, this is absolutely market supply and demand. CCP has not, and will not, intervene and lower prices. The only thing you all can do to lower the PLEX price, is to stop buying PLEX's.

The more you try to buy PLEX to pay for your account, the higher the price. If enough of you used your credit cards again, those profiting off those who use PLEX will have to lower their prices to find buyers.

This is nothing more than an "emorage" bubble in the economy, which will subside once the expansion is released. Everyone can relax. This expansion will appease the angry mobs, and people will start paying with their credit cards for a year at a time out of pure joy. PLEX demand will fall, and so will the price.

If you're looking for the cheapest way to pay for EvE, just pay with your credit card. Otherwise, you're at the mercy of those that will profit off your desire to "play for free", and you'll have to deal with their prices.

Even if you have a crappy job and are poor, you really can make more RL cash in an hour than you could grind an equivalent amount if isk when you do the math. You'll just have to decide what is more worth it - an hour or so of working IRL for cash, or several hours grinding isk to pay for an account. There is no cause for alarm, and CCP won't intervene other than to dangle freebie ships to entice people to pay for PLEX with cash, because everything is functioning as it should and they're making more money than ever.

I agree. If you look closely at the traded volumes for PLEX in the major hubs, the volume has been picking up in the past months. Since the price is moving up as well, this increase in volume means that people are chasing PLEX and paying the ask price - for whatever reason, there is increased demand for PLEX. Of course this is compounded by human greed since I am sure more than one trader with deep pockets has seen the upward move in PLEX prices and decided to add to the demand buy buying them up now while they are still "cheap".

At some point (probably after the expansion) I expect the speculators who are holding PLEX to dump it on the market which should halt the price increase. At that point anyone who plans on buying PLEX from CCP for cash will rush and do so while they can still get lots of ISK for their dollar/euro/whatever, further adding to supply. And we'll see a move back towards traditional prices.

Get out of my account management page.

really.... asking CCP to step in and set a cap? name one item on the market that ccp can force me to sell at a certain price? if i want to sell a ship for 1 isk i can. if i want to sell a plex for 10 billion isk i can do that too. grow up. its a market ccp cant step in and force people on the market to sell stuff at prices they want just because some people are whining too hard. they will just find other ways to get you to buy the plex.

I don't understand what's so complicated.

ISK is easier to earn in-game than it used to be (Incursions + Wormholes + PI)
Cash is harder to earn IRL than it used to be (High unemployment + Flat wage growth)
The new "exchange rate" of Cash/ISK has changed because of these things.
Slightly shrinking player population means there are fewer new players looking for a leg up and creating new PLEX.

I'm also guessing that speculators are expecting the price to go even higher, and increasing demand/restricting supply that way as well.

If the Vinter Expansion is awesome, expect PLEX prices to drop like a stone and slowly go back up as people find their footing. If it sucks, PLEX will skyrocket as people burn up their spare ISK on subscription fees while they wait to see what CCP does next. Then they'll quit, and PLEX won't be worth diddly.

That's my take on it, anyway.

QFT.

But i AM playing for free

As Tegh from ISK would say; The bowl that is eve is over flowing with igame isk, because the faucet is too large for the sink. Just like RL econ, when there is too much currency, inflation takes place. Plex's time cards are the best evaluator of ingame inflation, because it does not take any ingame resources to create. What Eve needs is a bigger sink, a massive war or more loss in incursions or missions to lower the isk bowl.

Me too,

And while my isk might have taken 1000 hours of game time to earn they still have no cost in real life to me (well unles you want to say that anytime I spent having fun had an oppotunity cost becaue i could have been working more of my waking hours).

I had FUN earning my isk.

Not everyone likes to earn isk, but hose that do can sell them for a rate that would equate to 25 cents an hour and still rationally find that an excellent value.. maybe call it more of a financial windfall.

Plex might be worth real $ to people who consider buying them,, but they can be worth very little real money to many other players.

Plex cost players real money to create yet using those earned playing the game is nothing like me spending 17$ each.

What ccp gets from playiers buying and turnin around and selling the plex for isk is real $

What they get from me in exchange for giving me game time is a way for them to transfer money to people who want to buy it with cash and by not flooding the virtual market with more Isk than has been earned via game play fountains they create and regulate the flow of.