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New dev blog: Price Indices – February 2012

First post
Author
Hellanna
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#81 - 2012-03-17 17:04:07 UTC
So when do we get the numbers showing what came from highsec/lowsec/0.0?
Zircon Dasher
#82 - 2012-03-17 17:31:24 UTC
Hellanna wrote:
So when do we get the numbers showing what came from highsec/lowsec/0.0?


This.

Please? Pretty please? With whip cream and a cherry on top??

Nerfing High-sec is never the answer. It is the question. The answer is 'YES'.

Hellanna
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#83 - 2012-03-17 22:15:30 UTC
Zircon Dasher wrote:
Hellanna wrote:
So when do we get the numbers showing what came from highsec/lowsec/0.0?


This.

Please? Pretty please? With whip cream and a cherry on top??



My guess is it would never happen. Imagine the forum rage when it was confirmed that, id bet, atleast, 80% of the isk coming into game comes from high sec means whether from high sec bounties/incursions/missions.
Alx Warlord
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#84 - 2012-03-18 02:04:14 UTC
Want to increase the offer of products to drop inflation???

Introduce the cloak hunter ship! There will be more people in nullsec, minning and producing stuff! Since now the most safe thing to do there is to farm bounty! Check on the eve sov development indices on the map menu! Every time some industry reaches lvl5 someone camp afk in the system.... and everything cools down...

CCP Fix this! there are no production without minerals! So the prices run UP! If there are more minners in null the prices will go down and there will be more fun!

We know you guys are working on it! Also we know that it have to be a destroyer! And we know that the sooner you release it the better!!! Start the Sisi Tests asap!!!
Tres Farmer
Gallente Federation Intelligence Service
#85 - 2012-03-18 06:05:51 UTC  |  Edited by: Tres Farmer
Funnily enough I'm not so much concerned about a rising money supply(*) if it is correlated with population growth/character development (a vet brings in more isk than a noob *doh*), but the first graph looks to me like it is rising exponential and we're only at the beginning of the spiral there..

Could we get the first graph LOGARITHMIC(**) scaled on the vertical axis and supplemented with two more graphs please?

1) population growth
2) average income per char (age of char >5months, 'income' being sum of incoming transactions over a period of time (week/month?) to a chars wallet except donations from other chars)

.. might even need a combined graph of the above two.. multiplied: "Population x Average Income"

Cheers.

(*) CPI is/was falling and Velocity of Money is going down.. so as the blog states, additional money that doesn't turn up on the market doesn't do harm (yet).

(**) the CPI curve is pretty flat and resolution is low.. would be easier to see it's behaviour in comparison to the money supply if the vertical scale of the graph was logarithmic..
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#86 - 2012-03-18 07:56:54 UTC
Hellanna wrote:
My guess is it would never happen. Imagine the forum rage when it was confirmed that, id bet, atleast, 80% of the isk coming into game comes from high sec means whether from high sec bounties/incursions/missions.

According to the day slice numbers I collected from CCP Diagoras' tweets, it looks something like this:

Highsec — 889.4bn / 49%
Lowsec — pffahahahah (ok, maybe a few billion in insurance). / 1%
Nullsec — 693.9bn / 38%
W-space — 223.9bn 12%

Some of the nullspace ISK might be lowsec ISK if it turns out that lowsec exploration is actually very common.
FlameGlow
Perkone
Caldari State
#87 - 2012-03-18 09:21:12 UTC
Nerf bounties!
Mara Rinn
Cosmic Goo Convertor
#88 - 2012-03-18 09:24:05 UTC
It would not surprise me to find a great majority of the ISK that is sprung into creation comes from Hisec in some form. Many null sec denizens will head to hisec to run Incursions or run L4s in relative peace and quiet. This is not about "safety", it's about not being hassled about joining mandatory CTAs, being hassled about joining POS bashing fleets, not being hassled about XYZ mandatory alliance-wide activity which all members are required to attend in order to convince the rest of the alliance/NAPtrain that your corporation belongs in that alliance in that space.

So you log off the null sec main, plug into the hisec mission runner and quietly blow up red crosses on your own time, at your own pace, with noone breathing down your neck telling you how you're supposed to play the game.

For every inhabitant of null sec, subtract one hisec inhabitant. That will give you a better idea of how many people are actually hisec care bears. Then take another hisec resident out of the count to account for the null sec guys who head to hisec with mining fleets.

Now find a way to replace all that income that the null sec denizens are heading to hisec to collect, and you'll find hisec PCU will drop, null sec PCU will rise, and this will happen without any null sec alliance recruiting more members.

Incursions are still broken, and they are a significant contributor to price inflation. This works wonderfully for industrialists, not so well for people grinding L4 missions. Eventually we won't need to nerf L4 missions because they won't be worth running ;)
El 1974
Green Visstick High
#89 - 2012-03-18 10:10:07 UTC
Ok, so I kinda ignore the comments in the blog and just look at the graphs.

Graph 1:
- money supply: currently growing faster than before incursions
- CPI: first deflation, now inflation

Graph 2:
- CPI with more detail: deflation as Eve kicks off and people skill to produce their own stuff, then basically flat and inflation since the introduction of incursions
- Velocity of money: drops as some people get enough isk to start saving, the line gets more flat over time.
Lack of correlation between both lines especially recently, seems to indicate that changes in the velocity of money did not cause the current inflation.

Seems like the people claiming that incursions are causing inflation can find at least some support in these graphs.
Alx Warlord
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#90 - 2012-03-18 11:59:46 UTC
Tippia wrote:
Hellanna wrote:
My guess is it would never happen. Imagine the forum rage when it was confirmed that, id bet, atleast, 80% of the isk coming into game comes from high sec means whether from high sec bounties/incursions/missions.

According to the day slice numbers I collected from CCP Diagoras' tweets, it looks something like this:

Highsec — 889.4bn / 49%
Lowsec — pffahahahah (ok, maybe a few billion in insurance). / 1%
Nullsec — 693.9bn / 38%
W-space — 223.9bn 12%

Some of the nullspace ISK might be lowsec ISK if it turns out that lowsec exploration is actually very common.


This are nice numbers. But this must represent value generated, or the ISK generated? since W-Space don't generate ISK directly.... So this must also include minerals and loot values....

We need to see some other numbers from the devs to try to think on what to do for example in theory:

The EVE economy can be related to Real values and Relative values:


First we need to determinate the real ISK vallue:

Also, there are really few ISK sinks in the game... keeping in mind that the only thing that actually removes ISK from the game and Insert ISK in the game are NPC rellated. (Player related only makes things change hands) And there must be a comparison between the number of players(that increases every day), ISK generated and ISK destroyed. Because if there are no balance in this, in some point the economic system will ruin! (Like the real one that is based on interests and debts, that from time to time have partial collapses and someone bankrupts preventing from everything from fall apart)...

So to prevent the system to fall out of balance, the ISK sinks and player growth must be = the isk generators, so the isk real vallue will be keept the same ,based on real value, not speculation. For example there is 1 player in eve that have 1/3 of the total game isk, and he acts like an Player Isk Sink, but if he sudenly releases all his ISK in the Market, like buying plexes from other players, the ISK value will drop like hell and the plex prices wil go up many times what it is now this would probably generate a big economic crysis in the game, making all PlaytoPlay players quit playing...

I can say some ISK generators and ISK Sinks that I remember so you guys can compare.

Isk generators:
Bounty
Incursion
Mission rewards
Insurance
Comodities bought by NPCs

Isk Sinks:
BPOs and implants bought from NPCs
Taxes from NPC Stations
Ship Repair
Unpaid Insurances
Concord and Interbus PI taxes
System Sov Taxes
Clone services

Variable ISK Sinks:
Player Wallet.

So, as you guys can see... In the moment the ISK "value" is beeing depreciated, regardless of the offer and demand rules ... (this means that the plex prices will keep going up and up because of this factor, comparing to RL currency related to the EVE vallue.) So CCP can Interfere in this By Adding New ISK sinks... There are good opportunities for this, like:
- Fixing the Player Bounty system.
- Adding new services in stations and new industrial processes with taxes (Probably related to T2 or T3 materials like converting moon materials inside Stations From one type to other using particle acceleration labs, Hi taxes)
- Adding more Structures and SOV upgrades that consumes TAXES.
- Increasing the player base



About the relative ISK Value:

There Is the Offer and Demand rule. The less industrial players there are in the game, and the more PVP players there are, the Higher will be the prices. So to reduce the prices we need more industrial ones.

Actually the only good thing to do in Null-sec is to farm bounty or some moons. So, we can see this in the sovereignty Development indices inside the map Menu In-game, comparing military with Industrial. We can clearly see that this are very unbalanced. And how can it be fixed?

Fixing some old know issues that Breaks Industrials legs in Nullsec and improving Industry features and contents:

- Introduce the cloak hunter ship! There will be more people in nullsec, minning and producing stuff! Every time some industry reaches lvl5 someone camp afk in the system.... and everything cools down... We know you guys are working on it! Also we know that it have to be a destroyer! And we know that the sooner you release it the better!!! Start the Sisi Tests asap!!!
- There are no Space in POSs to store minerals and ore so people uses X-Large Ship assembly array! There should be Some sort of Ore Storage Facility that we could Use to store large amount of Ore and minerals also there should be a capital corporate hangar and the possibility to put more labels on hangars and Ship assembly arrays for individual use!
- Mining Barges are too vulnerable for PVP attacks, they should be like in many EVE movies a Combat Point, not a 1shot pvp target. And how to do this? SIEGE MODE! Forcing some Minning barges ships to be anchored in place while mining, Increasing its range, resistances but preventing it form moving for some time. Also Rorqual (or some new ore capital) should have like a triage carrier repair bonuses and resistances. to give the minning fleet suport on the field. and Protection in case of an attack, to increase its survivability of the fleet untill the Support arrives. This way minners would have some role in null-sec and would generate some real nice PVP events!

Well, some changes like this would definitely improve allot the industry in null-sec. and would be good for everyone! Reducing prices and decentralizing the industry!
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#91 - 2012-03-18 12:35:17 UTC
Alx Warlord wrote:
This are nice numbers. But this must represent value generated, or the ISK generated? since W-Space don't generate ISK directly.... So this must also include minerals and loot values....
It's ISK generated, and W-space does its ISK injecting through “blue loot” — stuff that only serves the purpose of being sold to the NPC buy order ISK faucet.

If you want some semi-recent numbers for most of the faucets and sink, you can check out this post and the follow-up post where I collect some of the data CCP Diagoras has been posting.
Hakaru Ishiwara
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#92 - 2012-03-18 12:58:22 UTC
Mara Rinn wrote:
It would not surprise me to find a great majority of the ISK that is sprung into creation comes from Hisec in some form. Many null sec denizens will head to hisec to run Incursions or run L4s in relative peace and quiet. This is not about "safety", it's about not being hassled about joining mandatory CTAs, being hassled about joining POS bashing fleets, not being hassled about XYZ mandatory alliance-wide activity which all members are required to attend in order to convince the rest of the alliance/NAPtrain that your corporation belongs in that alliance in that space.

So you log off the null sec main, plug into the hisec mission runner and quietly blow up red crosses on your own time, at your own pace, with noone breathing down your neck telling you how you're supposed to play the game.

For every inhabitant of null sec, subtract one hisec inhabitant. That will give you a better idea of how many people are actually hisec care bears. Then take another hisec resident out of the count to account for the null sec guys who head to hisec with mining fleets.

Now find a way to replace all that income that the null sec denizens are heading to hisec to collect, and you'll find hisec PCU will drop, null sec PCU will rise, and this will happen without any null sec alliance recruiting more members.

Incursions are still broken, and they are a significant contributor to price inflation. This works wonderfully for industrialists, not so well for people grinding L4 missions. Eventually we won't need to nerf L4 missions because they won't be worth running ;)
That is a very conservative estimate of Null-to-High chars. In truth, that value ranges from 1 - 5+.

The funding of null-sec activities for a single PvP char can require several alts, depending on the ISK-earning activities pursued and hardware requirements of the PvPer.

I wonder about the proposed migration of ISK-earning alts back to null-sec, though. CCP's grand Dominion-era experiment ended roughly when they ****** anoms a year ago and many of the smaller guys saw their sovereignty infrastructure upgrades turn worthless nearly overnight. The daft CCP game design crew burned many bridges with that change.

TBH, it is much more of a sure thing to pursue high-sec ISK earning via bounties than to gamble on a potential pay-off via significant null-sec investments that might get yoinked by CCP on a whim. Pirate

+++++++ I have never shed a tear for a fellow EVE player until now. Mark “Seleene” Heard's Blog Honoring Sean "Vile Rat" Smith.

Vincent Athena
Photosynth
#93 - 2012-03-18 15:19:38 UTC
CCP, Dr.EyjoG,

Ive often wondered if the current growth in the ISK supply is really out of line with what would be desired. Some growth is needed, as we cannot have our present economy without it. Some growth is needed as new players enter the game, and older players tend to have more ISK than younger ones. Which brings me to my question:

Does the average 3 year old character have more ISK than the average 3 year old character in 2009? Imagine a chart where the horizontal axis is "character age" and the vertical axis is "ISK in wallet". What would that chart look like when drawn in 2009, 2010, 2011, and now? In other words, are characters intrinsically getting richer, or are they just getting older and more numerous?

Also I would be interested in knowing what the sources and sinks would look like if you considered accounts that un-subscribe to be an ISK sink to the economy, and accounts that re-subscribe to be an ISK source.

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Zagdul
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#94 - 2012-03-18 15:44:05 UTC
Tippia wrote:
Darth Gustav wrote:
The ISK earning potential of the average Incursion runner vs. the average Anomaly runner vs. the average Mission runner would be really nice too.

Or if that's impossible, a total number of players who received bounties as compared to the total number of players to receive incursion payouts.
We do have some of those numbers, courtesy of CCP Diagoras, even if they are a mix of a single day and over a month.

In January, some 175k characters ran 6.8 million missions and collected 4.37 trillion ISK in rewards and time bonuses. No number has been given for the amount of bounties collected in those missions, but some of the old omgz-L4-pays-too-much threads arrived at a suggested 1:2.25 ratio between those rewards and the bounties paid out, and if that's true, missions accounted for just under 10 trillion ISK in bountes.

That equates to an average of 2.6M ISK per mission runner per day.

On February 1st, some 1,780 incursion runners collected some 302 billion ISK for an average of 169M ISK per incursion runner for that day. Granted, some other numbers he posted suggested that February 1st was a particularly active day, paying out roughly 15% more than the average, so we should probably reduce the number by that much

That equates to an average of 144M ISK per incursion runner per day.

Both of these activities pay out LP, and in January, 5.7 trillion ISK were sunk into various LP stores. Historically, mission running has had an amount of ISK equal to pretty much all of its mission rewards and time bonuses sunk into LP, and if we assume that this trend still holds true, that means 4.37 of those trillions went to mission LP and 1.33 trillion went into incursion LP.

Mission runners thus sink 805k ISK per runner per day, reducing their net injection to 1.8M ISK per runner per day.
Incursion runners sink a hefty 24M ISK per runner per day, reducing their net injection to 120M ISK per runner per day.

That leaves the rest of the bounty payments, but no numbers have been given for how many anomalies/complexes/belt-ratters there are. A total of 27.03 trillion ISK were injected through bounties in January, and if we choose to believe the mission runner bounty calculation above, it means 17 of those trillions come from ratting in its various forms — that's 548bn a day spread over an unknown number of people. If there are more than 4500 of them on average per day, they injects less per person on average than the incursion runners do; if there are fewer, they inject more.


This post needs to be emphasized.

Not even a PHD gets it.

Dual Pane idea: Click!

CCP Please Implement

Sigras
Conglomo
#95 - 2012-03-19 06:48:51 UTC
Lilliana Stelles wrote:
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see why CCP would need to intervene with inflation. It's not something new; the charts clearly show that the entire market has been inflating since day one.

Eventually, those running Incursions and ratting for bounties will actually be put at a disadvantage, as the value of pure ISK decreases over time.

However, everyone else will notice a negligible change. Mission runners may earn less value from their ISK rewards, but the price of their salvage and loot will increase, along with the tags that they collect and what they get from LP. Researchers and manufacturers will also be relatively unaffected, as their products will increase in price to match the inflating economy.


At a base level you are correct, except there are several things in the game that dont scale dynamically yet such as blueprints and skill books. When you allow rampant inflation, you risk trivializing this game content, and alienating noobs who may see such high isk amounts as obtainable and get discouraged.

Additionally it should be of note that the most probable reason the inflation doesnt show up in the CPI is because most of the isk is flowing into the hands of the top 5% anyway; whether through selling technetium, or ratting in titans (until the nerf)

The CPI doesnt look at contracts which, I would be willing to bet the inflation shows in the price of officer modules.

The best way to measure the strength of the ISK is to compare it against other currencies like we do with real money, and, as you all have probably noticed, the price of PLEX have been steadily rising meaning the ISK is losing strength against the USD, and considering the USD's terrible buying power, that doesnt say great things for the ISK.
Wukulo
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#96 - 2012-03-19 07:45:34 UTC
CCP Guard wrote:
CCP Recurve has a smokin' new price indices blog out on the internet. Check it out here to hear all about recent developments in our amazing economy.


I miss the QEN. =/

Posted on main because I'm not a coward like the rest of you.

MacLuven
EL Bernays School of Strategic Communication
#97 - 2012-03-19 13:17:45 UTC  |  Edited by: MacLuven
Quote:
- money supply: currently growing faster than before incursions


Average money supply Growth Rates by year.

2008-2009 - 7.5% / month
2009-2010 - 4.6% / month
2010-2011 - 2.6% / month
2011-2012 - 4.29% / month

The rate of money supply growth decreased year over year (and this is, I hope, for obvious reasons). Incursions returned the monthly growth rate in money supply to 2009-2010 levels. So, you are right in the technical sense because the money supply growth rate had dipped to an all-time low the year before, but not correct for the years preceding.

Quote:
CPI: first deflation, now inflation


Monthly Inflation in the CPI, 2003-Feb 2012 - http://eve-files.com/dl/253053

There is a trendline in here, but it is hard to see since it's so close to flat along the x-axis. Constant inflation is considered to be a necessary factor in online games since new content tends to drive prices up on new items, but besides, a modest amount of inflation is not a priori a bad thing to begin with for reasons explained by someone else already in this thread.

Quote:

Graph 2:
- CPI with more detail: deflation as Eve kicks off and people skill to produce their own stuff, then basically flat and inflation since the introduction of incursions


The period of deflation was first due to markets reaching an equilibrium from initial states, particularly in the mineral market. It continues due to changes in Tech2 manufacturing processes that removed the Tech2 BPO monopolies.

Eve went through year-over-year deflation until 2008-2009 where it saw 0% inflation. The first year of inflation was 2010 and the first datapoint where we see that was June 2010, the first month of data after the release of Tyrannis that included Planetary Interactions.

Quote:
- Velocity of money: drops as some people get enough isk to start saving, the line gets more flat over time.


The point of these this graph is to look at both lines in relation to one another and establishing correlation or non-correlation. But the flattening of the velocity of money arm is more of a measure of how peaceful Eve has become than anything economic.

Quote:
Lack of correlation between both lines especially recently, seems to indicate that changes in the velocity of money did not cause the current inflation.

Seems like the people claiming that incursions are causing inflation can find at least some support in these graphs.


The first sentence and the second sentence in this above quote contradict one another. You cannot on one hand claim that incursions are "causing inflation" and on the other note that velocity of money is not correlated with "inflation" (increase in the CPI).

The monetarist theories of inflation that rely on money supply as the proximate cause of inflation rely on the velocity of money for their explanation of how inflation comes about. The mechanism underlying these assumptions can't easily be found on a Wikipedia page, which is what has probably led to the fundamental misunderstanding and misapplication of monetarists theories (which really only apply to economies with a central bank and robust credit markets).

This graph is the coup de grace for the "incursions cause inflation" camp based on their typical argument that the cause of inflation in Eve is the expansion of money supply. It shows that there is a fairly flat velocity of money -- a surrogate for the amount of trade, or maybe the intensity of trading -- despite rising prices and despite an increase in money supply.


These two graphs (from the DevBlog) show the exact opposite of what you claim in your final line. They show that people who claim that incursions are causing inflation have no support in the common theories of inflation they've been espousing.
Keen Fallsword
Skyway Patrol
#98 - 2012-03-19 13:31:05 UTC
What about drones regions ?
Billy Kidd
Breaking Plaid
#99 - 2012-03-19 13:36:19 UTC
CCP Recurve wrote:
An important factor in this was probably the absence of a trusted banking sector, which could offer interest and distribute the unused ISK to those in need of funds.

I know it would be nigh impossible to implement a proper banking system in EVE, but I would gladly invest money if CCP guaranteed that the banker couldn't just walk off with my cash.
Misanth
RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE
#100 - 2012-03-19 13:43:28 UTC
Scrapyard Bob wrote:
CCP has already stated in another thread that they are looking at both faucets and sinks, with the possibility of adding new sinks to the mix.

They definitely need to move away from "raw ISK" as a reward. Better to have the rats drop items that have to be sold to NPC buy orders if you must have an ISK source. That's a bit harder to bot, and requires a bit more risk in order to profit to the maximum. And far better to have more of the reward come from dropped items that you have to sell to other players.

The other major issue that incursions cause is that CONCORD LP can be traded in for every other store's LP in the game, which devalues everyone's LP. CCP needs to change the trade-in value formula so that unless you have high corporate standings with the target corporation, you will not get max value for your CONCORD LP. Which would force corporate standings to matter again and bring missioning (to raise standings) back into the mix.


That'd be a good start.

Add in that more risky PvE content should have higher reward too and you've already done alot to improve the economy.

AFK-cloaking in a system near you.