Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Feel free to spend money on 10,000 PLEX and put them on the market for however much you feel plex should sell for.

That's a good point! I knew I missed something.

Potentially just some sort of system whereby below 30 Day plex are contract only? Or alternatively a new eden store like system for PLEX, seperate from the Market, because region locked markets for plex never made any sense anyway as they can be used anywhere.

This is already true. It's true by definition. It's true in perpetuity. There cannot be such a thing as a PLEX market priced higher than people are willing to pay.

You have a better means of determining who "needs," something aside from market exchange? Do tell comrade.

So here is my honest thoughts on this: single day Plex differences would be a coding and market nightmare, but 3-5 day increments could be workable.

- so it's first redeemed by a user, it's 30 days plex
- if it's put onto the market or used, it's a 30 day plex
- someone else buys it
- it now must be converted to be sold again
- repackaged, reprocessed, an 18 click, yes I really want to convert this for resale menu popup nightmare, or whatever it now must be converted to be sold again
- you can only activate EVE with a 30 day PLEX, incentive to go big and CCP doesn't give away Activated Skills/Ships too soon

The first conversion gives you a shiny new 27 or 25 day plex for sale on the market
The second conversion gives a slightly shiny 24 or 20 day plex for sale on the market
The third conversion gives you a tin foil plex for 21 or 15 days, et cetera

Alternate option:
Each time it's converted the days knocked off are reduced by 2 or 3 more days.
30 days when purchased from CCP - able to be sold on market as 30 day plex.
28 Days when conversion first is complete
24 days when second conversion is done
18 day....
10 days
You now have a worthless item because it's been resold so many times.

at most you are adding 9 new items to the market and providing a few key features:

Plex is no longer great to buy on the market for resale, because you cannot mark it up for a profit anymore. An accidental purchase of this day reduction PLEX would be unfortunate, but so is reprocessing your 5 marauders, 3 freighters, and your 2 carriers in your hangar - it was user error and CCP probably won't care. If you purchase PLEX and decide you didn't really need it that badly, you can still make a little ISK back, so you aren't totally out (you were going to plex that month and suddenly got a huge inheritance whereby you subscribed to 25 years of EVE Online, no longer needing it).

Pros:
You can purchase PLEX from CCP and reap the full rewards
You can hold onto your PLEX as long as you like
Bots suddenly find the PLEX market an EXTREMELY unprofitable place to be
Penny ISKers can still sell an XX-Day PLEX until it finds a new owner
People that actually USE plex will indeed get 30 days for their money
People that for some reason want to use less than 30 days of gametime can do that as well, much like we have 50 aurum, 100 aurum, and 1000 aurum tokens. Sometimes you just don't need a full 30 days.
You need a proper PLEX in order to go to full account

Cons:
Devs have to add items
Player Numbers will thrive thereby increasing piracy, ganking, production, industry, gatecamps, mining, and everything else that happens in EVE making it hard to find peace and quiet

No. No. No. There is 1 currency, ISK. Eve is an example of a fiat currency economy. Saying tritanium is a currency is like saying forks are currency in any RL economy. They are not currency they are goods. While you can barter with them, in theory, the presence of a currency, even a fiat currency, means very, very few people will engage in barter.



First off, PLEX have no real world value. You cannot use PLEX to buy bread at your local grocery, for example. You could try to sell them for real world money, but that is RMT and you'll be banned.

As for speculation, why does everyone think it is a Bad Thing™? Speculation is where market traders help supply information to other market participants. For example, if speculators start driving up prices for some reason that is a signal to allocate more resources to that market. It is actually a useful activity. Of course, if the prices increases are due to market manipulation that is a different thing entirely altogether...and no, the two are not the same thing...this is why we have two different terms, market speculation and market manipulation.

Further, your notion that it will limit market speculation, which is bizarre since such an activity is not bad, also hurts those players who are using it as a hedge against in-game inflation. Hedging against inflation is a good thing, not a bad thing. Why penalize such players?

And are we even sure that the increase in PLEX prices is due to speculation? Where is your evidence of this. Could it be that the massive amounts of ISK entering the game are actually driving PLEX prices up? If so, then PLEX prices rising may be helping to protect against general inflation across all goods in game. Further, in Eve there are no futures markets and no ability to sell short, so the idea that there is significant market speculation should be automatically suspect. About the only time you'll see much "speculation" is when CCP announces some sort of game change. The speculators will jump into the market and drive up (or down if there were people hoarding the good in question) the prices immediately instead of waiting till the change hits the game. This is how markets work.

Lets look at the null sec ore rebalance as a case study.

CCP announced that they were going to make a change so zydrine and megacyte were going to be less abundant. Lets focus on zydrine. Once this change hits the servers, zydrine will have a reduced supply. Supply and demand analysis tells us that a leftward shift in the supply schedule will result in higher prices. Further, since we have advance knowledge of this, currently existing stocks of zydrine become more valuable as well. So speculators knowing this jump into the market and snatch up all the zydrine they can. Those will sell orders will also start ratcheting up their prices as well due to this speculation. So you get an immediate rise in the price of zydrine. Everything is working as intended. Speculation is a good thing as it tells miners, get out there and mine now, and longer if you can.

So, no to your idea. It is just all around bad.

Edit: An additional point. PLEX are also a way to shift ISK from players who are wealthy in game (and who may or may not have much money in RL) to players in game who do not have much in game wealth, but who can afford to spend RL money on PLEX. Basically, it is a voluntary form of wealth redistribution.

Also, a higher PLEX price means that RMT ISK prices have to drop. Which is a good thing because if the price of RMT ISK goes low enough, then the RMT people may just stop selling ISK in favor of in-game currencies for other games.

Ahhh the dubious logic of reasoning from a price change.

Suppose I tell you that next quarter the price of gasoline is going to go up, will there be more or less gasoline on the market?

Sorry, no, that is just not right. If it moves the price it is signalling that the market needs more or less resources allocated towards it.

Market manipulation is the act of artificially changing the market price. For example, if you spread a rumor that a big company was going to get hit by some serious regulatory violations or something, then bought up their stock at the reduced price as people sold on that false information...you'll likely be in trouble for market manipulation.

If you suspect a good is going to become less available and so buy up a bunch of it in anticipation of the higher prices...well that is speculation and you are helping to send the signal that this market needs more resources allocated towards it. You are probably hoping that in the lag between when you bought the good and the time it takes for more resources to increase the supply you'll see a price increase you can sell your quantity of the good at and make a profit.

Two very different activities.




Everybody can hedge against inflation, just buy a PLEX and you'll be hedging too. If you don't have the ISK to buy a PLEX well you aren't facing much of a loss due to inflation.

For speculation to be the cause of the PLEX price increases it would have to be something along the lines of we expect the supply to be limited for some reason. For example, in the RL if a gasoline refinery goes offline in CA then speculation drives up the price of gasoline immediately. Because we know that there will be less gasoline. And because CA has special boutique blend requirement we cannot import gasoline from Nevada or Arizona.

We might also see speculators drive the price down if for some reason we expect there to be a flood of PLEX on the market.

So, what is driving the speculation? CCP gonna suddenly stop selling them? Maybe, but I doubt it. They cost more than a regular subscription so its extra money for them. Some sort of legal action maybe? I doubt it.

The biggest thing I can think of is that people buy them thinking the price will go up because the stupid amounts of ISK entering the economy from rat bounties. But even that will have an upper limit. But then the problem is not the speculators, who are telling you what the problem is...stupid amounts of ISK entering the economy via rat bounties.

The very idea of PLEX, IMO was motivated in large part to curtail and limit RMT. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a multi-pronged attack on RMT in the game. Banning bots who supply the RMT, banning people sell ISK to RMTers, banning people who buy RMT ISK, and also PLEX. Use every weapon at your disposal, IMO. On that front I think CCP is doing it right. Shocking I know. :P

Because you don't have a valid argument as to why their PLEX represents a "need," to anyone. Both the speculator and the individual who wants to redeem a PLEX as soon as he buys it are taking part in an optional investment of their isk. One is simply showing a much shorter time preference to isk investment than the other.

No part of that post, or any other post you've made here, establishes what makes a PLEX purchase a "need," for anyone.