These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

Market Discussions

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

Loyalty Point Stores close to collapse?
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
Nikuno
Atomic Heroes
#1 - 2011-09-25 21:06:59 UTC
I've been watching the prices of critical navy insignias for the LP stores and have noticed a lot of rapid inflation. In particular, the vice admiral navy tag for the gallente store has gone crazy with someone trying to make a market at 12mil apiece.

The problem stemming from this is that the LP themselves are becoming worthless compared to the value of the raw materials. Missions that CCP created for a return of 20 million isk or so are now creating 100mil+ with ease.

The issue with this from a game perspective is that these missions do not get offered frequently enough for the tag types required in the stores. It's ridiculous to have 2-4 tags that are such a restriction on the whole process. Then, even if the missions were to be made more readily accessible, many don't want to do them because of the limitations the standings loss imposes.

I ask CCP to revisit the stores, balance out the tag requirements of the items to reflect ALL of the available tags in proportion to their drops and mission availability, and to remove the ludicrously high standing hits gained from shooting structures in missions. When was it ever reasonable to suffer a 2.4% loss to standing for shooting a stasis tower when destroying the pride of the enemy's battleships loses you less than a tenth of that amount?

If something doesn't happen soon, the LP stores are about to become a total washout.
stoicfaux
#2 - 2011-09-25 21:29:45 UTC
Five birds with one stone: encourage FW participation for tags, make it difficult to earn PLEX via high-sec mission running (via LP store) thus reducing CCP's purported/imagined stockpiled PLEX liability problem, thus encouraging high-sec people to buy PLEX with cash instead of isk, thus increasing NEX store sales as people get comfortable with buying PLEX with cash, with the final result of giving null-sec a buff as high-sec folks just flock to null-sec with it's uber direct isk generation.

Or maybe it's a CCP conspiracy to make the LP store prices so unappealing, that CCP can, in good faith, add faction items to the NEX store in order to ensure that such items are always available.

Or not.


But yeah, the tag shortage has gotten silly.

Pon Farr Memorial: once every 7 years, all the carebears in high-sec must PvP or they will be temp-banned.
EvilCheez
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#3 - 2011-09-25 21:36:01 UTC
I've always assumed most lp's were turned into ammo, but don't know for sure. So I guess my question is - what do you mean by "collapse"?
AureoLion
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#4 - 2011-09-25 23:44:23 UTC
It's a bottleneck.
Compared to the salvage bottleneck, it's not even that ridicolous.
Herman Klaus
Touched By Klaus
#5 - 2011-09-26 07:54:41 UTC
I personally have invested a little in tags. They are climbing and it's inevitable they are going to get more and more expensive. The LP store items are slowly reflecting this rise.
The mixture of less regular faction missions and everyone wanting to grind incursions instead means the tags going onto the Market can't meet the demands of the player base. Maybe 12m for the tags you mentioned is a little high but they certainly won't sit on 6m for much longer.
battlefar galactica
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#6 - 2011-09-26 08:28:34 UTC
incusions are drawing most high sec dwellers away from missions and possibly militia....... also if you haven't noticed- the price of the navy megathron falling through the roof- since all of the remaining mission runners cant afford to put lp into tags required items- such as the ones you mention.

Until incursions are stopped (possibly december) or not at all expect to see the fall of navy megas and other ships and a sudden increade of 'tag required' lp items.
beor oranes
Tranquility Tavern
Pandemic Horde
#7 - 2011-09-26 08:36:55 UTC
battlefar galactica wrote:
Until incursions are stopped (possibly december) or not at all


Hold it right there my friend, where did you find this little nugget knocking around? Or is that just pure speculation?
Cyniac
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#8 - 2011-09-26 14:02:15 UTC  |  Edited by: Cyniac
What you have with LPs is a market pinched on both sides - costs go up as the supply of tags diminishes compared to its demand while at the same time profits go down because of decreased demand for LP store items and increased availability of LPs.

Reduction on level of tags

Standings & Incursions - because of the nature of incursions (you need to be able to travel throughout K-space to participate in them) many mission runners with an interest in incursions are far more averse to having deep negative standings with an empire. Effectively Incursions "punishes" those pilots which run missions against factions.

Faction Warfare - Requires tags but does not generate tags.

Speculative: Did change to agents affect the rate at which faction missions are offered?

More speculation: People these days are far more averse to having negative faction standings as it has overall a greater impact than before. Points of impact include more WH exploration (you don't know which empire you will end up with) or access to trade hubs etc.

Increase in LP

Blitzing - More people blitzing away these days

Agent access - Much easier agent access following the changes to the agent system - everyone gets more LP

All of which leads to an increase in the expense of tags. This is exacerbated by a decrease in the demand for LP store items (from missions) because of competition from:

Exploration - becoming more prevalent in some instances the dedspace modules perform better and are cheaper than LP equivalents.

Drop in demand - Reduced player activity particularly from the bitter vet category has reduced the demand of the LP store items.

Incursion gear - in some instances (e.g. implants) high end incursion materials is preferred to traditional LP stores - this creates a surplus of LPs which go into items which require tags.

LP value is overall decreasing - yes there are still some good items out there but not many and not as good as they used to be.