EVE General Discussion

Speculator profits are irrelevant to CCP profits.
All of the PLEX that speculators deal in, has already been paid for in RLM to CCP.
CCP deals in real money. Speculators deal in funny money.
And since RMT is forbidden, speculator action with funny money doesnt directly affect CCPs real money revenues.

As to the further relationship between PLEX speculators ingame and CCP profits, higher PLEX price ingame actually has two benefits to CCP:
-It helps incentivize players who currently buy PLEX for RLM, to continue to do so. And probably some increase in that figure is rational (the extent is unclear).
- The higher PLEX ingame is, the more incentive there is for some players to swap to subbing (again, extent is unclear).

However.

There is one indirect effect of PLEX speculators that potentially can affect CCP.
That is the reduction in player/account activity figures that increased PLEX prices ingame invariably lead to.

Though the EVE business ledger might look good and "in black" at the bottomline when presented in terms of revenue,
its soured quite a bit when followed up by "in red" account drops as lost market share and repeat client interest.

Im concerned PLEX hoarding may be reaching levels of critical mass that is forcing more activity out of the game, than is "good" for the game.

Its Business 101 that its very hard to get customers to return once they have left (even, if as in this case, they did not directly pay CCP at all, so financially they are rather worthless, but they still provide content and value to the game itself, as an equitable reciprocation). Its pragmatically cheaper and easier to take action to retain, rather than re-aquire lost clients. Furthermore lost clients have a bad habit of spreading negative reviews and feedback to other potential new clients.

As the saying goes, keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.
But in business, keep your clients "clenched firmly between your buttcheeks"-kind of close, or your competition will take them from you.

Standard EVE morality states "**** em, they can go play WoT instead, cheap useless bastards that they are", and this has some credit to it. But aside from that moral and subjective prerogative, its very hard to argue, from an objective perspective, that less player/accounts is a "good" thing.

My fear is that some entities in EVE, due to a plethora of factors, have become so exceedingly space rich (and bored, perhaps) that significant PLEX manipulation had become a very real possibility. PLEX lends itself to this uniquely. No other commodity has its inherent qualities. To fail into proverbs again: Sell a man a fish and he eats for a day. Sell him a fishing rod, and he eats for a lifetime. In EVE, sell a man a ship and he can spin it. Sell him a PLEX, and he can actually fly it for a month.

Again, it could be argued that this PLEX manipulation would be fitting of EVE morality, and its player economy. And that too, has credit to it.

But its coming at a significant cost, objectively, as players/accounts drop.

Ive come to my own conclusions (as in this thread and the PLEX thread proper), on the basis of the factors Ive expressed.
The missing rational element to explain the irrational rise in PLEX, over and beyond several very strong factors that should have reduced it, is PLEX hoarding on a massive scale (which is also difficult to detect and quantify).

It will be very interesting to see where it stabilises, and at what player/account activity level.
Hopefully one that is still equitable to those still playing the game at that point.

Incorrect, All that happens with plex is that another dude has paid someone else's sub for the reward of in game currency. If all plex users leave then CCP lose the £16.99 times however many plex users left.. So, financially they are worth lots. Never turn your nose up at real cash just because it was generated by someone who has difficulty affording the sub.

Eh, so many assumptions are taken for granted here.

A)Could easily have the opposite effect - If level 4s don't pay the bills well enough, maybe people will leave for greener pastures. It should be extremely difficult to PLEX an account while living in HS, as most HS wealth generation does nothing to drive player content. Part of the problem driving PLEX going up is just how risk-free and easy ISK is to make in High Sec. It is not possible to be much more risk averse than the people who already earn their bread and butter income in HS.

B)Another thing contributing at least some of the increase in PLEX price is the migration of people to more dangerous places. It takes a real enthusiast (some would say masochist) to absolutely min/max L4 blitzing or incursions, but when power blocs are looking for bodies....i mean pilots, to run ISK spewing anomalies to maintain sov index, the value of ISK decreases. I would be curious to see how much more ISK is injected into the game on a daily basis since FozzieSov.

Blitzing lv4 missions (depending on the LP items bought) is nearly an isk sink. Anom grinding is nearly 100% isk faucet.

LOL talk about ignorant. Your time playing <> money for CCP. You are paying the person you bought the PLEX from for your playing time. People subbing with PLEX bought from Jita are not contributing to CCP's bottom line.

Ok, so people use plex as an investment buying low then selling high. I'm sure you're aware this type of investment has a time limit and I don't think people will hold on to plex at this point. At some point the stockpile will be sold and used to plex accounts.

How are you faring with affording plex? will you find 1.3b and rising hard to achieve every month? What will you do if you can't achieve it or find it time consuming?

If plex users are finding it hard then this must be listened to.

Tsk tsk man what would a plex user like you do without plex buyers (from CCP) like me?

Those plex users are guests of plex buyers, not much more.

And since the value of isk is sinking, you have to grind harder to get those plex.
Remember you play with money others laid out for you.

I'm not a plex user. I can see the path were headed on and I can see we are going to alienate the plex user. I am passionate about this because I know this is/will have an effect on numbers in the game.

Kraft got their money whether the store sells that mac and cheese or not. You are spending real money buying mac & cheese from the store. Your comparison would be like me giving bottle caps or some other barter to the store for the mac and cheese.

Suppose CCP lowered the price of PLEX to equal the exact cost of a sub...who says people paying cash for PLEX would either buy more or sell it for less? If people are willing to pay 1.2B for one, that's what it's going to sell for.



Why? Sellers set the ISK price for PLEX, not CCP. Why do you feel entitled to dictate how much fake money someone wants for something someone paid real money for?

Lot's of people have been paying attention to what you've been say Aaron. Just a lot disagree with the causation that you are pushing.

Provide some real information and not just "this is it" and I'm sure people will reconsider what you are saying. At the moment, in the absence of any solid logic from your argument, the logic is worked through by each person on their own and it seems many conclusions just don't match yours.