Market Discussions

Whether or not they plan to in the future is fairly beside the point. Ice has been steadily increasing in price and yet all but one of the indices are down. The crowd that seems to think that inflation is a problem are not basing it off of future speculation, they are basing it off of the price of individual ships increasing in value following the balance.

It's just another bandwagon. Many people jumped on it and called out CCP on supposedly out of control inflation. They had no justification or evidence. All they had was innacurate and subjective recollections of past pricing, a flawed understanding of sinks vs faucets, poor grasp of the impact of recent balance changes and a collective dislike for people that were making "too much money" from the twin evils of Incursioning and FW.

Given that their historical viewpoint was based on nothing more than rumour, ignorance and prejudice, what makes you think that they would revise their viewpoint when better information became available? Those people are just as ignorant and full of impotent rage now as they were before. The people haven't changed and so the problem hasn't changed.

I agree, that is certainly worth discussing.

The question I would ask is if the increase in value of ice will be a cause or effect in all this. Certainly if ice prices go up due to constrained supply and growing demand it will become more important and may drive additional conflict, but is that the only way this can work? Will ice become more important for other reasons aside from the market price?

Also, how wide will be the inflationary impact of increasing ice prices? Certainly it will have more impact than just increasing the price of one commodity in an index basket, but how much more? Ice prices have been heading upwards for a while now and yet the numbers from our economists show widespread deflation, is the impact of ice less than many believe or is something else cancelling out the impact of ice?

Ice is used as a fuel and acts "like" a fuel. That is, look at what happens in RL when fuel price rises: the ramification are complex and wide and also dependant on a country's economy.

I.e. a country with lots of rail transport will suffer less than a country where trucks provide the most logistics.

But in EvE, fuel is a bit less at the foundation of everything, all those sectors not relying on it will be less affected.
In example, T1 production does not really require anything but initial BPO research (usually done years ago, so POS fuel is a non factor).

But now consider the same industry done outside of hi sec: you'll possibly get fuel derived costs and as they rise it becomes more and more competitive to just do it in hi sec. That's just one of thousands reasons I always said hi sec should not exist at all, it's a powerful economy distortion factor (not counting ships PvP!)

Now, consider this: back at the time I was making freighters and all sorts of large-ish stuff that may affect markets without a need for an ounce of fuel. That's why you see indexes acting up even in counter-intuitive ways.

What's going on for real?

As you know I am fairly "knee deep" into ices. Only one shows true demand outpacing offer and even that one is being abandoned. I have witnessed the same multiboxers stopping mining ice exactly right now that it'd be more profitable.
I have seen my "home ice system" going from 150 in local (pre spawn belts) down to 70+ at beginning of spawned ice belts down to 35 in local even now that ice brings in profits.
There are 2 main reasons for this, evident to anyone who "lives ice" most days. But I'll leave them to be found as exercise to the reader, as I don't want to give Mynna or others the idea I actually (also) perform fundamental analysis on the markets

Not in charge, never said I was. It's an associate of mine.

That said, two reasons exist not to take it down instead. Well, three, really... Nah, actually four.

1. Taking it down is much harder to do because it would entail working against natural market motion instead of with it.
2. Taking it down is both harder and riskier to realize a profit from. If short sells were a thing, that'd be another matter.
3. It just so happens that CFC space is home to the entire nullsec supply of nitropes bearing ices.
4. Tears.

An increasing price of ice, due to reduced supply, or increased demand because of game mechanics, is not "inflation", much less "price inflation", which is the more common (though inaccurate) use of the term inflation.

How high the price could go, could be attributed to inflation however.

Enjoy the confusion.

You know, I do not think that you like me, but I was thinking about all of this. Before ice emphasis turns into inflation it can take years. There are so many steps along the way. The idea is to think of immediate step and do that trade, but know the chain. As I said already, I think that the first step is racial ice price compression. After that it may be same thing with carbides or maybe even something else like sylramic fibers shortage. Or maybe actually tech 1 items requiring mins in high sec instead due to mineral shortage in high sec. And on and on. I do not know yet. I am busy with racial ice compression atm for the next 6 months.

Why would I not like you? I don't like or dislike you.

Anyway, what I am trying to point out is, "inflation" (either definition, monetary or price) always refers to the supply and demand for money, not the supply and demand of anything else.

CCP constraining the supply of Ice, and other mechanics changes that increase the use of ice, may cause prices to increase in some parts of the economy. However those price increases would not be caused by inflation.

How much those prices increase, or could increase, is where inflation matters.

I don't like this helpless stuff. I am all in on cheaper ice isotopes and derivatives of this trade until the summer expansion hits. Goons cannot crash these prices but if they do they will crash prices of their own assets.

Trading is not personal. Bigger entities are not as nimble as smaller ones. So there is no reason to hate them or feel helpless. The thing to do is to front run them and that is what I intend to do. There should be supernormal profits in this endeavor and that is what I want to try.

As someone who has played the game a long time, read the forums regularly and watched the political landscape evolve I agree with VV. As VV states a couple posts up, the Goons do deserve credit for what they have done and are still doing but as VV has said is it healthy for the entire game to be manipulated by a select few individuals?

I'm kind of a noob, but it seems to me that CCP want to keep selling PLEX. And if people keep buying PLEXs to convert into ISK... prices for items will undoubtedly get more expensive. Especially since many of the people buying PLEXs probably won't be too interested in mining or manufacturing.