EVE General Discussion

There could be some additional factors. PLEX does help create inflation. PLEX moves ISK around the economy, from those who just sit on it and have no use for it, to those that do. PLEX increases velocity and liquidity. This was pointed out some years ago, the ignorant LOLed. Also, I think it has probably finally dawned on many people just how much idle ISK is in the economy, sitting around in wallets and not doing anything. When all that ISK starts moving, instead of just sitting around doing nothing at all, the prices are going to reflect it.

None of this is to disagree that the monetary base is indeed inflating, just other things to keep in mind.

It is too bad Eve does not have some sort of enforceable loan mechanic, so we could see what interest rates in Eve would be. That would give us very good look into things.

On a per-participant basis, but not on a per-person level. Your calculation is NOT per capita. Your calculation is potentially misleading, explicitly because it is NOT per capita.

If you take the same values you used and instead of using a per participant value, look at isk inputted per active Eve account (something closer to per capita), it's not nearly as impressive.

So, looking at the numbers for January, as a per active Eve account (using the 10% rule (10% primetime log ins of total active population base) as we've discussed earlier), we get 16.3 million per active account per month for Incursions and 28.4 million per account/month for missions and bounties. This is a dramatically different number than what you're producing, both in magnitude and it's comparative ranking to other activities that directly access isk faucets.

There is old data in a DrEjyoG presentation at a previous FanFest and I think it's also in one of the QENs that shows the relationship between high sec and lowsec bounties, it was something like 3:1 at the time, but that was before wormholes and before other game mechanics changes, and so obviously the data would need to be updated.

For January you posted that there were 27 trillion in bounties, and 4.37 tn in mission rewards. That means for our 2.25 ratio, 9.8 trillion in mission bounties (on 4.37 tril in awards) and 17.2 trillion in null sec bounties. So, for January it was 34.4 million per account per month in 0.0 bounties.

So, Incursions, instead of being the largest contributor to isk in the game as a per capita, is actually one of the smallest inputs into the community, when examined per capital, and therefore it is one of the least possible contributors to rising prices/inflation (assuming that's what people are worried about.) These numbers I'm producing, just to note, end up being per account per month. Do you honestly want us to believe that anyone with decent skills can't figure-out a way of drowning out the effects of 16.3 million per month in the economy if they so choose? Just running level 4 mission for an evening would do it.

You will remember that earlier in the thread I questioned your use of per-active participant numbers. When looking at abstracted, global economic impact of a faucet, I think per active account per month is a more interesting number because, as I said, it better captures the fact that people can CHOOSE to move through these different economic income sources rationally. There are barriers to entry, sure, and those are a bit higher than they are for missions, but that is an argument for, not against, higher payouts per operation. Anyone who practically has the ability to do Level 4s, has the ability to be involved in Incursions. There are lots of people who would jump on me for saying this because you do need specialized training and specialized ships with a limited role (logistics namely), but barriers like those are an argument for higher comparative payouts.


These two calculations are different ways of calculating something meaningful from the same set of numbers. My way gives a more standard "per capita" value, this provides an easier measure of what everyone in Eve might choose to do to maximize their income in Eve, it gives a clearer sense of how little per account per month we're really talking about when we talk about these relative faucets and sinks, and we get a better sense of how these faucets are actually affected the entire economy. Inflation, for example, is only an issue if it's a global phenomenon. The kinds of isk we're talking about being injected into the economy is minimal, and it's really quite easy for your average player with decent skills to come up with a way of making the 16.3 million isk per month that you think is so damaging to the economy.

The implicit argument that you are trying to backdoor with your "per participant" calculation is that since it's SOOOO profitable to do incursions, more and more people will do it and we'll get even MORE people doing these. Since there are lots of people with the skill points and ships to do it, and they could all go to Incursions. Right? Maybe not.


There was 8.13 trillion isk earned in January for Incursions compared to 14.20 billion for missions (4.37 for rewards plus bounties at our aforementioned 2.25 bounty:reward ratio).

Incursions became such an attractive thing in the Eve community, that in February, a whole two days shorter than January saw a whopping 8.57 trillion laid out for incursions (up 5.4%). Impressive? Unfortunately, mission rewards also went up, from 4.37 to 4.84 (up 10.8%).

Eek.

Okay, maybe not "eek". Look, two months isn't evidence of much of anything, and we need to see more data. And I look forward to more data from Diagoras and more of your efforts to analyze it, but, so far, it's a bit tougher for you to convince people that people are running to do Incursions over other possible isk making activities.


So, so far I have demonstrated why your per-participant calculation can be misleading. I have demonstrated that both missions and bounties contribute more to the economy per account per month than incursions. I have also shown that the payouts for Incursions have grown slower than the payout growth for missions; albeit over a very short time frame, but does show there's been no "swarming" toward Incursions.

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the problem is people who don't understand monetary operations watching fearmongering youtube videos with taglines such as "DEBT" and "OUT OF THIN AIR" who then apply their newly found 'knowledge' without exactly knowing what they even want

Or just the fact that human species havent changed their thought patterns in last 50k years. Even monkeys are more clever.

I create some number, take it out of my ass, move it through dozens of rating companies, which will move those numbers through another thousands of some other agencies, and hurray we have some number which is indeed completely imaginary but it put an "value" "exchange rate" on the currency...

Hurraaaay, we won this by making something which does not exist to something real.

Real life? You do realise that you can't create items from thin air right?

and you realise that we have about twenty times more cars then people. Same goes for very much everything. Include food.

Sure there is some limitation on resources such as petrol etc. but the use of this has been overcomed inearly 20th century. But for business sake we have to make people pay.. Because dont know. Because people are just stupid.
Another interesting thing,,, who makes money ? debts, interests, banks aka they make it from thin air.

The problem is that incursions inject far too much ISK compared to the amount of people engaging in it that it risks 1) drastically increasing the ISK injection as more people catch on (up to a limit depending on the farmability of incursions), 2) draw people away from other activities that might counter this massive influx, and 3) even without any growth in use, already causes extra influx of ISK into an economy that doesn't need it.

Look up Dr. EyjoG's fanfest presentations and he'll give you the theory. Off the top of my head, I can't remember whether it was the 2009 or the 2011 presentation that directly spoke to the matter (most likely, but not certainly, the 2009 since that one discussed the problems of bots and the effects of Unholy Rage).

It was part of his presentation to the CSM in their December meeting. Check out the transcripts (and I'm sure there are more in the old ones as well).

The problem is that all of these inflationary activities are “top-heavy” — it's the “elite” (for the lack of a better word) ISK-injectors that cause it, leaving new and casual players in the dust. Those causing it cannot feel it; those feeling it have no part in it. It is also unevenly distributed across space which causes demographical problems which further shift how other economic factors are activated.

…and that last bit makes incursions a problem even without any connection to inflation and other economical woes — it's simply too rewarding for what it entails, and it hurts variety and versatility of gameplay.

BECAUSE CAPSLOCK IS CRUISE-CONTROL FOR COOL, OK M8M811!!!111ONEOENEONE11!!

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Since you're obviously concerned with inflation, you must know that simply increasing money supply does not mean necessarily mean inflation. You can add money to an economy, but inflationary theory assumes that that money goes into circulation, and gets circulated many times over and over. So, you can't just say in a game that inflation occurs when faucets are greater than sinks. There are too many other reservoirs of isk (namely assets and wallets) that keep isk out of circulation.

I'm open to being convinced that monetarianist inflationary theory applies directly to computer games. And, hey, if you can make this argument effectively and formally, you could be able to get a nice publication in an academic journal.

However, I have never seen the data necessary for us to know this in Eve. Some of what we know, for example, is that a wallet in Eve is the equivalent of hiding money in the mattress, it is neither circulated as money or asset. In the real world, when you get a dollar you either spend it buying goods, purchase assets, or invest it (in a bank account or otherwise). I guess you could put it in a mattress too, but Friedman's monetarism theory presumes you're going to inject it back into the economy, not take it out of circulation.

Velocity, the reinvestment of dollars, matters. Is the ~50 trillion in faucets compared to the ~340 in total market activity mean that each isk is getting spent more? I don't know, we need feedback from Dr EjyoG. I don't suspect that 50 trillion to 340 trillion is very "fast", but that's why CCP hired an economist.

Anyways, Dr EjyoG has talked about the relative low velocity of isk in Eve, and the fact that most of it gets parked in wallets and packaged up in ships and items that sit in hangers. That isk is not circulating, and even if it gets handed around once or twice, that is not sufficient to conclude it is contributing to inflation.

Someone else was just talking in this thread about when Dr EjyoG talked about isk velocity, funnily enough.
But, this is not simply a story of isk injected - total isk flushed. There's certainly a lot more isk in the game now than when I started, yet when you look at the Price Indexes, you've seen a generalized trend of deflation. Why? Because there's a lot of non-circulating cash and a lot of non-circulating assets.



There is NO evidence that this is a problem for the game community. I'm open to being convinced, but you haven't even attempted to construct an argument.



Your calculation grossly inflates the problem and doesn't make it clear how little this actually affects people in the community. But you can't both say, "look at all this isk that a few guys are making, it's not a comparatively big isk faucet to others, but it could be huge later on" while arguing that Incursions are the cause of inflation in Eve, now. To be fair, you have been pretty cagey about making this latter argument directly. You've just referred "the problem" without clearly articulating it.

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What the **** are you smoking? I have been playing since 12/08 and plex has not cost below 300 mil between now and then.