Market Discussions

Think about what happens with the PLEX transaction. The originating player buys a GTC from CCP or some other retailer and redeems it into 2 PLEX. At this point CCP count their product obligation as fulfilled; the player has receive what he has paid for, regardless of what happens to it in the future. So far, this is pretty much identical to any other MT: gief publisher monies = can haz in-game itemz. But what can you actually do with your PLEX?

Well first you can add it on to your own account, which enables you to play the game for another 30 days. Of course this isn't really a MT in any way that people care about, just a slightly roundabout way to pay a subscription, but I presume we can agree that this promotes gameplay, insofar as it means that the original purchaser will play EVE for +30 days.

Secondly, you can sell it to another player for ISK. This is where it gets interesting, and where it starts to look like RMT and so forth. The most important difference is that the ISK exchange is between two players, not between a player and CCP. This sounds too obvious and trivial to be worth mentioning, but so many people don't seem to understand how important this subtle difference is. Player A sells a PLEX to player B for 500M ISK. (In and of itself, this is a player interaction just like any other market trade, BTW) The amount of ISK ingame stays the same. The ISK that player A receives, he receives apparently without doing any work for it, but the important thing is that work was done for that ISK. So player B had to do missions, convert LP, play the Jita market, risk his ship ratting, run a research POS and sell BPCs or do whatever other activity he engaged in to raise that 500M ISK. If Player A wasn't lazy or time-restricted or whatever other reason he'd rather pay $17.50 than make 500M for himself, he would have done all those activities. As it is, Player B did it on his behalf, but those activities still had to take place, with all the normal implications for wider interaction with the EVE economy and community.

To the rest of EVE there is no functional difference between player A selling a PLEX to player B, and player A using his ISK making alt A2 to make 500M.

Additionally, the value received is determined directly by player supply and demand. The amount of ISK you can get for your $17.50 is always dynamically set to exactly what the EVE playerbase as a whole thinks it should be. If CCP sold ISK directly, they'd pick a value (and you can bet your ass it would be hilariously wrong) and stick to it .

Conversely, if Player A was simply able to buy ISK directly from CCP then all that activity would not take place. In addition, it is quite possible that Player B simply wouldn't be playing, as for many people, being able to play for free is all that keeps them subscribed. Even if they kept their mains going, the number of "ISK making alts" would plummet, as the Player B's partly have them to pay for PLEX. So Player C cant buy his faction ammo from B, sell his stuff at Jita to B, gank B's ratting Drake or do whatever other interaction might take place, or at least has less opportunity to do so. Player interaction is reduced, player population is reduced, gameplay is reduced.

Additionally, because the amount of ISK you can buy is limited by the amount of ISK that other players are willing to spend on PLEX, there's a hard cap on how much ISK you can buy this way. It's a pretty high cap, but it's there. If CCP sold ISK directly, they'd sell it at the rate which maximised the amount of money people give them, which obviously means that they'd have every incentive to sell it for ever cheaper prices, since they can spawn as much as they want for free. Hello galloping inflation!

No - you!

Learn 2 economy.

Also, CCP is in the position of being able to "print" PLEX, ISK and game time independently of each other. Therefore they can easily fine-tune the EVE economy. How do you know you are buying that PLEX from another player and not from a CCP market-bot? How do you know you are selling that PLEX to another player and not a CCP market-bot? You don't.

However another interesting point is that CCP announces PLEX "sales" when ISK prices for PLEX are high. Since it's very human to buy things when the price is high instead of when it is low (which is exactly how markets work and why bubbles happen), and since EVE players care about the ISK value of things almost as much as the dollar/euro/pound value, CCP is really cashing in on that human behavior, converting ISK into real money for them every time the PLEX price in ISK spikes.

....Again really?

fine you must love this.


OP is an Idiot.

Sounds like some very important changes are coming, indeed, PLEX are probably the most OP item in the game, odly enough AUR is not powerful enough.

This will remove ccps ability to steath manipulate their income so what you want will never happen...

Yes again: items on market can be adjusted by moderater / dev tools.. they say it never happands but who knows if you can create any pixel related (corp history ect). Basicly ccp creates rl money with this game if they would like too. you are asking if they would take that option away.... its never going to happen, hilmar sais no

Iv met my match, this guy is a leet sniper with no scope, XXX

Thread should end with this. One more time - and follow along - The buying and selling of PLEX does not create ISK.

Bad idea. There is nothing really wrong with PLEX as far as I am concerned. If you want to be space-rich you can either blow RL money on plex or just do it in-game the "normal" way. :)

There's not really much to say in response to the OP when his responses already indicate that if you disagree with him, you must be a "Typical elitist EVE troll"



I think you vastly overestimate the amount of people who consider participating in the EVE economy to be a fun endeavour. Look through most of the disucssion about PLEX in the forums - There'll inevitably be smug types who consider their RL time "too valuable to spend grinding for spacebucks". Force them to do that and they probably won't stick around for too long. On the other side most of the regular market people are perfectly happy to pay for multiple accounts with said spacebucks through market activities that don't necessarily involve mindless grinding. Accounts that they might want to pay for otherwise if they had to fund these multiple accounts with RL cash instead of being competent in - game.

Also, I believe you're thinking of PvP from the lens of "arena" PvP prevalent in many other MMOs, where PvP is done largely for its own sake instead of being a vital component in the never - ending cycle of empire building and busting in EVE. Yes, a good number of people find PvP fun for it's own sake, but I'd hazard a guess that a lot more find it fun because they're doing their part to grow their space empire and pull down those of their enemies. The ability to jump straight into the EVE "end game" isn't necessarily a bad thing for game longevity since the sandbox nature of the game means dynamic, multi - faceted "PvP with purpose" that doesn't necessarily need the "Challenge of progression" factor to keep it fresh and interesting. Null sec wars and politics are pretty much interesting on their own even without ever taking into account the economy funding their war machines, the logistics to and from other areas of space, etc. Of course, if you can appreciate all the factors involved then more power to you for getting the fullest enjoyment out of the game.

Personally, my opinion is that PLEX just introduces another market facilitating trade to give both sides what they want out of the game, and make more people happy with what EVE means for them. You could argue that it devalues the "difficulty" factor, and hence the quality of the game, but it's hardly going to result in less subscribed accounts for CCP when PLEX trade keeps a lot of players on both sides happy with their time in the game. A larger number of - shall we say - less than competent types who wouldn't survive otherwise if they couldn't pay for their ISK with RL cash, definitely. But not less subscribers. Whether that's a good tradeoff or not is another story.

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