Market Discussions

I'm not worried about inflation in fact I think we need more inflation (driven by demand of course). A healthy eve economy is one where people are willing to spend isk freely, knowing that assets are the best investment whereas a deflationary situation means that investing in isk itself (sink exploitation such as incursions and missions) is the best policy to make more isk. So in terms of inflation a bigger factor is actually people's real demand for goods.

A large factor also is that the consumption model is very distorted in EvE; other than ammunition, the running costs for a missioner or incursion runner are minimal. The multiplicative effect compared to the amount of isk needed to get into those professions is staggering actually. You can get an efficient level 4 runner off the ground for 500 mill and make 100 mill a day easily. Compare this to average returns on passive investment for the same amount of capital (which varies but I don't know of anyone that could claim a reliable return of 20% per day and it is certainly not the norm), and you see that the economy encourages isk sinks over real good production.

Obviously at a certain point capital can snowball to be more effective than mission running but for the average player pve is simply the way to generate isk.

What I think would be most effective for the eve economy would be to eliminate bounties in high sec altogether. The rewards then for the mission runner class of pilots in isk terms would be much less.

In order to produce a situation where there is stable increase in prices you must have a credible need for products. So by reducing the incentive to grind isk sinks in high sec you create a situation where the more reliable isk from a labor perspective (that is acquiring isk by the "labor" of your ship shooting npcs) is actually in space where the chance of engaging in asset destruction of other players (pvp) is higher.

It should be noted that in this situation the average reliable income for a missioner/incursion runner would go down as their costs to cover the loss of assets to pvp increased, but the amount of isk being transacted through the same person's wallet would be increased.

The combination of these incentives could mean that for the average player who is risk averse, trading would become a more viable option. Note also with increased consumption trading would become easier. There would be more "space" in the market for capital to operate and prices on products would more reliably rise over time.

Also note for the truly risk averse and market shy high sec mission running would still provide passive isk through mission rewards and loot from wrecks( a segment of the income that would then be a strong majority of their income), so mainly high sec mission runners would be producing more raw materials and salvage per capita.

I know I've articulated this without enough prior schooling to properly identify and communicate a lot of the concepts I'm employing but tell me at least if you agree in general with any of this xD thanks.

so you're forcing new pilots to plex their ships or do what they hate most, trade?
not everyone *likes* trading. the whole point in eve is that it's a sandbox, not a dictated method of playing.

i'm pretty sure you mean isk faucets and not sinks.
There are almost no isk sinks in the game compared to the huge faucets.

if you want to fix anything, it's not missioning, you do not want to hurt the low-end player.
make CONCORD leave incursion space(or limit incursions to LS/null), you'll get more explosions there.

also inflation is "pretty much" just ISK/goods, if you increase isk, or reduce goods, you're creating inflation. doesn't matter if you call it "by demand" or by "over isk". when the real mean of inflation is a price rise.

I'm pretty sure there's an inflation goal in eve just like in every other economy, to speed up the velocity of money.
Also what you say will kill demands, not increase them. prices will fall, instead of rise.
no more carebears running missions, fewer nullsecs financing their way with missions.

I'm not forcing anything, by limiting mission income in high sec to loot and mission rewards the focus for players would be on production of goods. Also what I meant by saying eliminating bounties in high sec also included eliminating concord bounties for incursions in high sec (or eliminating incursions in highsec).

I think giant isk faucets (heh got it right now thanks) are acceptable in low/null sec space as they are accompanied with an offset of a larger amount of destruction of assets that then must be purchased again.

I guess what I should of articulated is that what I'm most concerned about is creating a situation where the incentives are such that players produce real value for other players rather than this current system where isk faucets are the majority of income for the average player.

[quote=DoraTheExplora Taft
I'm not forcing anything, by limiting mission income in high sec to loot and mission rewards the focus for players would be on production of goods..[/quote

you are forcing them to focus on production, because you think it's better.

As to the whole inflation thing, if you could somehow make bounties player-oriented, meaning that it's the individual pilots that set the bounties(maybe into a CONCORD fund that spreads that into individual NPC bounties) you could stop the isk faucet from rats. you still need to solve the faucet from incursions.

If you would stop generating new isk, you *might* stop the inflation, maybe. you must control the isk flow.
Bounties/Incursions is like a central bank paying the public sector with printed money. sooner than later that money becomes useless.

While stopping the isk faucets might not stop the inflation(or reduce prices, though i believe it will), as soon as any isk you recieves comes from a different player, that means the *economy* wanted to make that transaction.
right now, getting isk from missions is a one sided deal, breaking the whole free-economy concept.

in reply to the last post. Bounties are not all that great in incursions it is the lp payout that makes the isk. So increasing the lp will do nothing but make incursions more profitable. See Lp is the reason they grind incursions and it is the same reason FW pilots do their missions. So if you want to make incursions not so much a faucet you need to A) limit LP payout- this would do noting but enrage the carebears. B) make the items bought with LP cheaper to aquire making the market flood and thus reducing the isk they can make from sales.

More money there is in any capitalist place or game or whatever, more inflation there is.

Which persons in cause ?

CCP International Banking Cartels !

ZeitGeist is coming ! :P

The difference between passive investements and running missions for a day is that I have to run missions for a day. 3$ worth of isk for a day's work.

A few personal opinions.

First of all I agree that some level of inflation is healthy (or at least not damaging) to the Eve economy. The system may not be designed with inflation in mind (skillbooks having a fixed price), but since we've had lots of deflation as well, inflation doesn't seem like a major problem - yet.

About low consumption activities: industry is not a low consumption activity. It takes lots of stuff to make stuff that's only a little bit more valuable.

Then you talk about risk vs reward. I believe in the market. Let the market decide what a fair reward is for different activities by setting prices on the stuff that comes out of activities. Your ideas to make missions less dependent on bounties fits into that idea. Let the loot, salvage and LP be most of the reward. Same thing should apply to incursions. Hopefully when they iterate incursions they will let some of the new BPCs drop as a reward in incursions. They should let NPCs drop more stuff and less bounty. Drones... what was CCP drinking?

I don't think I could claim as specific understanding as what you're saying (.5-1.5%). The money supply issue concerns me little. I do know that increased demand/supply based economics in a game like EvE makes sense, rather than simply faucet exploitation. If real value production could surpass the isk faucet at whatever level it is at that would be ideal.