Market Discussions

You forget one sink. People will have to move a lot of their PI investments and people outside highsec will have to invest elsewhere whenever someone takes their CO and decides to cut them out.

Why are there still more than 4 pages worth of replies on this thread? The person who first replied to the OP everything that the OP needs to know:

"PLEX does not devalue ISK (in terms of currency devaluation)."

The OP's point is null.

QUIT DRESSING LIKE ME!

Better than an ugly man dressing like Aunt Jemima!!!!!!

ISK has been devaluing ages prior to PLEX being introduced to EVE. Just search the prices of GTCs via eve-search for a few years back, or how T2 BPOs were selling for relatively low prices in billions despite printing tons of ISK (nowadays they sell for multiples more and have not even a fraction of their ISK return as they used to manufacturing from them).

The vast majority of EVE's population (say ~85%) are bears sitting in high-sec grinding missions and generating ISK from bounties and payouts. Of course the value is going to go down.

Because economics is fun!

CCP has been steadily adding ways to make larger quantities of isk without introducing corresponding isk sinks. Highsec needs to become more expensive to live in somehow.

(and I live in highsec).

People who are not pay to win people still work for isk, and also work so they can play for free.

Effort and brains are not being reduced in doing the game, just transferred to other players.

But true dat about inflation, too much isk farming from isk sources is creating inflation. Though it could also be the factor of more people poor so they want to farm to play.

You don’t know the meaning of the word, do you?

to keep the story short, only creating ISK devaluates it, and isk can only be created via bounties/mission rewards be it on agent missions or incursions.

There’s absolutely NO way to create isk on this game apart from that. None. buying one plex for RL money and then selling it for ISK Doesn’t create ISK, having 30 PI planets running 24/7 doesn’t create a single ISK, and not even 300 mining bots create a single ISK, regardless of how many days they spend mining. They just extract commodities which are then exchanged for ISK.

In fact, ALL those activities actually destroy ISK, plex sales are taxed, PI is taxed and good ol mining uses ships and modules that were taxed on production, and commodities sold ARE TAXED.

Again, only bounties and rewards generate ISK, anything else is just isk changing hands. so, is it "inflation" the problem? Absolutely NOT. There’s some of it, but that not the real problem.

the problem is simple, YOU can’t pay plex prices. ppl that sell plex DONT care if you can’t, because other ppl WILL pay 450, and will pay 500, and will also eventually pay 550 for plex. Now, this has nothing to do with inflation, this has EVERYTHING to do with a the fiction of a free market, when in fact its a free sellers market. They, the plex sellers DONT CARE. They will list plex for 500m and when all the 450 sell orders get bought ppl will have no option but to buy em for 500 or lose the subscription.

Now, THIS is your problem, not inflation. Your problem is that a limited comodity, one you depend on, has its price set not on supply/demand equilibrium, but on how desperate are you. And now, i welcome you to 21st century capitalism.

now this situation is also CCP's problem, because ccp cant set a ceiling for plex because ppl won’t pay money for it unless that ceiling is adjusted/indexed to what they perceive to be the inflation (which often is just that typical old lady syndrome "oh in the good ol days i could buy a meal for a nickel.") nor can they introduce plex on the market and compete with sellers. So the solution is actually even more simple.

DO NOTHING.

i would never advocate for liberalism, yet given the rules of the problem at hand, there’s no way to interfere without destroying both the process and its negative effect. plex is what it is, an alternative to actually paying for a subscription.

ISK represents time. As more isk enters the system, there is more isk to represent the same amount of time. isk gets devalued.

The market determines the value of an individual's time. Over time, some people will accumulate work wealth. The amount of wealth one has is based on their market value of time. ISK always has a ratio to time, so as more isk enters the system, the market will attempt to keep the ratios of each person's wealth the same.

When someone buys plex and inserts plex into the system, they do not devalue the isk, they devalue the plex. Plex is just a form of currency that is purchasable with real world time instead in-game time. As more plex enters the system, real world time gets devalued, but it does not devalue the isk. Actually, plex creates value. It allows for better liquidity of current isk, which allows the same amount of isk to represent more time.

ISK only has as much value as the services it can be trader for. The easier it can be traded for a given service, the more value it has. Services take time to operate, so just like time, they form natural ratios with other types of services.

A given services takes time, but its value is dictated by the market through supply and demand. The less of a given services, the more its value, the more of a given service, the less its value. The more types of services available, the more things money may be traded for. This increases liquidity of isk and increases its value.

I have no idea if any of this is true, but this is how I think of it. So personally, I think plex adds value to isk, just like adding any other type of service adds value.

I would love to have an economist chime in on stuff.