EVE General Discussion

concord guarantees you are not unemployed

I've written extensively on the problem with trying to make mining nearly-identical to other high-sec sources of income, and it's not germane to this thread, so not going to go into it here. Regardless of how CCP offsets the loss of minerals from drone alloys, they will have to do it. One other suggestion I've heard is that the mineral requirements for ships might be reduced instead.

One big concern I've heard voiced is that there are not enough sources of tritanium and other low-end minerals in null. That is another area I hope CCP takes a good look at as they rebalance the drone regions. Else expect the prices of all tech-1 ships to increase even further. In the long run prices will likely come back down as more players start mining, but there may be an upper limit to the amount of minerals which asteroid belts can provide.

Either way. As has been thoroughly pointed out, if we were experiencing true inflation, we'd be seeing a steady increase in price levels across the board. I've been in games that have experienced inflation, and the price levels rose fairly steadily throughout the game's lifetime until additional money-sinks were introduced. Prices never spiked.

In EVE, intead of steady price increases, we've seen a spike in prices, concurrent with a major war in a region that has historically supplied a significant amount of minerals to the EVE market, and coincidental with a revelation that a major source of minerals will be soon removed from the game entirely. That is not inflation. That is an increase in demand for minerals (which go into building virtually every item in the game) concurrent with a decrease in supply (disrupted supply chains and reduced ratting/mining in the drone regions and in various other regions of null). If incursions were responsible for inflation, we should have seen an increase in price levels across the board soon after incursions were introduced. That has not happened. If wormhole space, which is a much greater source of ISK than incursions, was responsible for inflation, than we should have seen an increase in prices not long after the release of Apocrypha; that also has not happened.

Furthermore, a simple increase in raw ISK flowing into the world economy is in itself not a problem. It only becomes a problem if the money supply relative to the total population increases. Wikipedia has a good explanation on inflation and the total money supply in the economy.

PLEX prices are not indicative of inflation, for several reasons. They'vealso been pointed out earlier, so won't go into them here.

In general, I wouldn't be too worried about inflation in this game. CCP has several mechanisms for controlling the in-game money supply, and can track precisely where ISK comes from and where it goes. So there's no reason for CCP to allow for uncontrolled inflation.

Excellent post, only two nit picks.

One would actually expect an increase in raw ISK entering the economy at a slightly greater rate than the population increases, because along with the population growth you'll have a population that is becoming more "skilled" at making isk with a concurrent increase in the resources they consume. So an ISK supply that only increased at the rate of population growth would actually be a sign of a dysfunctional economy ,not a healthy one.




I actually worry more about CCP's tinkering, their economist buys into a lot of the same OMG inflation nonsense that the chicken little's are constantly going on about.

Great post otherwise ;-)

Go look at the entire market graph for the last 365 days on eve-markets.net , what you will see is that with the exception of some temporary spikes is a mostly flat market right up to the 21st of December when prices spiked.

If monetary inflation were a problem you'd have seen a steady increase in prices through the entire year. What we see instead is a near instantaneous jump which is consistent with the supply disruption as a result of the DRF hostilities compounded by the increased demand caused by the war in the north.

As to T2 prices, have you forgotten that CCP made changes in the material requirements for T2 production? Also has it occurred to you that the war in the north might just have affected the supply of tech while the CFC and Tech Cartel battle over control of Branch and Tenal? A war that also happens to consume a prodigious number of those very same T2(not to mention a truly mind boggling number of Maelstroms and Abaddons) ships and components you are seeing a price increase on?

Evidence Liang, that's the measure of reality.

Once again if inflation due to ISK injection were a problem we would have seen a steady increase in prices as the ISK supply increased, Since what we've seen instead was a price spike coinciding with major in game events that would simultaneous decrease supply and increase demand that should lead a rational person capable of critical thinking to the obvious conclusion that there is no ******* inflation problem!

I started playing eve in April 2005. When I started the price of a Raven was 122 million. I bought that Raven about three months later. I used it to run Level 4 missions. I still have it. It has sat in my hanger in Empire ever since.

If there had been 1% inflation a month since I started playing Eve, the current value of that Raven would be 278.63 Million Isk.

The effective rate of inflation on the value of my first Raven is -7.12x10^4% per month.

I didn't state a conclusion. Nor did I intend to state a conclusion.

Anyone can go drag out a QEN or look at the last Dev Blog that included the economic indicators and do their own inflation calculation. The equations are on the internet.


I will say this, what we're seeing in these forums is a debate that's not that different from what goes on in academic economics.

The difference here is there are a lot of people working with only vaguely understood concepts, a plethora of unstated and unexplored assumptions in their arguments, lots of vitriol in response to valid criticisms rather than reflective contemplation, and people stating conclusions that far exceed what can be justified by their data.

I take it back. It's exactly like what goes on in academic economics.

o boy by that logic every time a new incomes is added in the game older incomes should be Nerf so no major inflation happens.

Your conclusion was a stated effective rate of inflation - though we don't actually know whether you bought that Raven at a reasonable price, got scammed, etc. Furthermore, the laws of physics have dramatically changed since then - such things as the shuttle change.

However, since Incursions there haven't been similar changes.





-Liang

You don't need to annoy parts of the playerbase for getting the situation under control. Increasing taxes or lowering bounties will create a severe outcry by the carebear faction - which is completely unnecessary. Instead you could simply create more isk sinks. The way you introduced Custom Office Gantry BPCs for example was a step in the right direction. I "killed" over a dozen billion isk by getting those BPCs from the NPC store myself. This kind of nieche items are not enough to keep pace with incursions and bounties currently, but you could create more such things.
Example: +6 attribute Implants for 100.000 FW LP and let's say 500 million isk. This will inevitably lead to an deflation. Or faction Capital BCS for LP + lot's of isk ... can be anything that is 1) in high demand and 2) costs lot's of isk that has to be paid to NPCs.
This way you create love instead of hate, carebear rage-quits and forum riots.

What if WH moons also provide moongoo, but only at a lower level of efficiency depending on the WH-level? Say 25% for a L3 and 50% for a L6. Adding the additional logistical headaches, WH corps will never be able to really compete with null-sec moons, but they can crack up the monopolies a bit. Especially since there is an abundance of free moons to be found.