Market Discussions

Been thinking this one over for a while. I've just spent a significant amount buying up PI materials despite them being above historic trend prices. This is an explanation of why I've speculated the way I have, and why I think there's space for PI components to increase 30-40% in the short to medium term (once existing stockpiles are depleted).

Of course it could be a pump and dump too - like any in-game financial advice, carry out due diligence before acting on it.


The underlying cause:

First the starting point is the same as the cause for increased PLEX prices - a disinterested playerbase. Specifically, less people spending RL money on EVE; and consequently, more people allowing alt accounts to lapse.

All resources in EVE are limited by one of three things.

1) Resource nodes available in game (e.g. Dyspro moons, only a set amount is generated each day)
2) Player time investment (e.g. Scordite - supply depends upon how long players and/or bots spend harvesting it)
3) Number of characters harvesting the materials (e.g. PI).




So what's changed with PI mats?

It was possible until quite recently to comfortably PLEX an account with moderate effort by running PI in a wormhole, even assuming you suffered a few losses. PLEX have gone up; PI mats haven't really followed.

As well as that, there's fewer subscribed accounts, but not a notable decrease in the number of really invested players. Because of the changing playerbase, the average player is getting better at generating ISK, at mining, and there's the same amount of resource node limited items as always.

But unlike ratting, or mining, PI doesn't scale well as the players involved in it acquire more SP.

As such, supply of PI mats is actively falling right now. The people with accounts PLEXed by PI are dropping them, and it requires understanding of niche game mechanics for new people to fill the void.

People will fill the void eventually - if Robotics hit 125k/unit (a very ambitious price) then alliance theorycrafters will start telling their line members 'do PI, it will make you lots of ISK'. But right now, why bother when ratting offers more ISK per minute of player attention than PI does?

PI is passive - you set up a planet (takes a few tens of minutes of paying attention to the game) then you need to wait days IRL while it 'recharges', then you send an Iteron to collect it.

That's not what the OP is speaking of I believe, but rather the decline in active accounts = less PI mats being gathered yet the demand for them remains similar, thus the price increases. Therefore the price goes up. Demand is higher than the produced amount.

I think you should start killing more iterons who are coming to collect PI stuff.

the only important things for PI prices are devblogs related to the citadels coming in spring.

What if the Jump fatigue changes will make more regions in range for Jump Freigthers to supply PI materials to jita?

Won't the circel of systems with a few LY jumps from jita become more interesting for PI production? Since you can get it out much easyer?

wow. how fast peeps seem to unsub and resub in this thread.

most fascinating. keep it up bois

sure, it takes action to log-in

That lag is why we need more market speculation, not less.

Not that I expect many people to agree with this...well maybe in this sub-forum.

All of the Gallente industrials were called Iteron x for years.