EVE General Discussion

Naaaaaw from the CSM minutes there's CCP Soundwave's mentioning carriers in NULL SEC anoms are obviously the real ones to blame.

Ship and mod prices have fallen since CCP fixed the inflation so I dont see why we would blame level 4 missions. More likely PLEX are up because more are shifting.

So, is PLEX like real life gold where when the price of PLEX starts climbing, it's a good indicator of inflation?

Please run the logic for me.
Are you suggesting that there is a huge spike in demand for plexes because many people are re-upping accounts to take advantage of the mining barges and alchemy?

I would suggest that any increase in demand for plexes for mining accounts would be countered by an equal supply in plexes being supplied to the market as people need ISK for the Mackinaw.

A number of months ago, prices on plexes were going up on a steady basis.
Null sec/ anti-high sec zealots used that increase as an opportunity to scream "Plex price increases = runaway inflation caused by high sec incursion runnners. CCP, please destroy incursion running."

Which CCP then did.

I expect if this current plex price trend continues, the same zealots will start up the propaganda machine to attack L4's.

And DarthNefarious, you know full well that reality has no impact on the zealots' propaganda. I know you fought the losing fight against the propaganda machine the last time.

Yes pretty much.

L4s were a prime suspect looooooong before Incursions came along. Incursions just became an obvious, immediate, and far larger suspect.


…that said, a 5% jump in player activity might indeed have some effect on the demand for those things that let players be active.

"oh no I can't farm the incursion equivalent of level 2 missions for stupid amounts of ISK anymore"

The new mining barges offer far less of a yield difference between T1 and T2 variants than they used to (compare current vs former Retriever and Hulk), all T1 barges got their prerequisite training routine drastically cut (all are now barge 1 plus astrogeo 3, then compare that to the former barge 5 and astrogeo 5 for the former Covetor), and mining in a Retriever or Mackinaw is pretty much almost as good as jetcan mining before in a Hulk, but without the risk of can-flipping... which basically means mining should become HUGELY more popular than it was before (at least in the short run, in the long run, not really that much), and with a drastically reduced barrier to entry.

People that are likely to engage in mining are UNLIKELY to be PLEX sellers to begin with, they are far more likely to be PLEX buyers. Also, a good portion of former serious miners would have already had a Hulk, which they can still sell off at a decent price and only add a bit more to afford a Mackinaw (they can even buy a Retriever as an intermediary, the current Hulk market value more than covers quite a few of those). Or, you know, just get a Retriever either way, even if you had no Hulk to sell, a Mackinaw is not THAT much better if you can be bothered to be even remotely semi-active.

At the same time, the mere ANNOUNCEMENT of technetium alchemy has dropped technetium prices (they're in a bit of a short-term rebound, but it will keep on dropping), which means in the long run, exhumers will end up being noticeably cheaper - which is an added incentive to just go with a Retriever instead of a Mackinaw while price have a time to settle down.
On the other hand, mineral prices are also likely to go down slowly, so in time, some that did re-pick-up (or just newly picked up) mining will probably get bored of it. And less tech moongold revenue probably will also mean less alliance-subsidized PLEX or alliance-subsidized ships, which might increase supply of fresh PLEXes (from people that start buying more of their stuff instead of getting it from the alliance) and decrease demand for PLEX (as some players might start dropping less useful alts that used to be alliance-subsidized to some degree). Probably not a very huge change, but still a change.
...

All in all, there's no much reason to suspect a huge SHORT-TERM influx of PLEX sellers due to just those factors above, but a good reason to expect a significant SHORT-TERM demand increase in form of PLEX buyers due to just those factors above, which basically means price sort of has to go up to compensate and rebalance supply with demand.
Long story short, the MOST LIKELY MAIN CULPRIT is the mining ship redesign, with technetium alchemy possibly relevant but not greatly so, and possibly several other smaller-effect factors also playing some even smaller role in it all.
It probably won't last very long, but it's not sure how much time until a re-normalization will happen, or if it will happen at all soon.

To those that suggest that the plex spike is based on miners re-upping their accounts, I can see that.
So does that mean that we are looking at a new price point, or is this transitory?

And it does not change the fact that the anti-high sec whiners will soon be beating their drums again, ignoring facts.