Market Discussions

You should better read to the end of my post.

Here is a graphic of what is happening to the Implant prices thanks to T5 ISK reductions in the LP STORES:
http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/6657/minpigfarm.gif

If another faction goes Tier 5 this week expect 700 minllion ISK PLEX as the speculators go crazy too

Now would be a really good time for a PLEX sale.

I am sure there are many players with itchy palpal accounts that will be cashing in very soon.

Only question is what will come first. the market crash or the PLEX sale?

O^O almost missed it. It's already dropping.

SELL SELL SELL.....

If you really stop to think about it.

PLEX prices even at +575,000,000 isk is not really out of line considering the inflation the EVE economy has experienced recently.

For as long as I can remember, aside from a few temp fluctuations, PLEX price has always been about half the cost of a freighter.

When PLEX was selling for just over 300 mil each a freighter was worth a little over 600 mil.

freighters right now are sitting between 1.2 and 1.5 bil. So PLEX could be sitting at 600-750 mil before things level out.

never thought I would ever see PLEX that high.

Edit,
Make that over 1.6 bil for a freighter right now in Jita. Even buy orders are at 1.5-1.6 bil.

how the hell did that happen? I thought 1.2 bil for a freighter was crazy high.

Why is everyone assuming that CCP will step in on behalf and will lower the value of PLEX?

Why is nobody thinking the obvious ....... CCP are BEHIND the escalation of PLEX prices.

Check history of plex prices. CCP has a PLEX "Sale" and reduces the RL cost of PLEX for a limited time. Let's say 100 idiots buy the 30 plex or whatever number it is and then the rest buy the smaller packages. These players are obviously not buying them for game time as it would be cheaper to just sub. So that's a minimum of 3,000 plex floated onto the market immediately. Supply is exceeding now demand and the price goes down on any market under these conditions right? Wrong!

Prior to, during and in a lot of cases just after (like this one) a money for plex sale the price of plex has rocketed. Not once not twice every single time!

Why? Pretty obvious .... it's a cash injection to CCP but who in their right mind is going to buy plex at 400 million isk when they have seen the price at 500 per? They wouldn't so the market needs manipulating by the developer to push the price high to get those people buying.
Unfortunately they started the Catch 22 and now it is out of control. It wasn't that long ago plex were 330 mill (plex "sales" weren't as often or as advertised as heavily as they are now. Coincidence I think not!) but by actually stepping in and raising by buying the price has to keep going up because the sales will not work on the next occasion unless the isk price per plex is at least as good as it was before. People will simply wait until the next sale or the one after indefinitely.

There will be naysayers and trolls on this but give it some thought and do some research on plex price history and it really works out. The biggest problem with artificially controlling what is supposed to be a free market is that you have to trust that the coders and people in charge are competent enough to be able to stabilise the market again after the sale ............. oh wait we are talking about the same guys who tried to sneak MT through the backdoor, took 6 months to get incursions right then had to redress them because people were earning too much isk, rewrote our boot.ini and managed to publish an official video of the remodeled Drake with 8 launchers on it. Forget the competency bit.

I always wondered why CCP don't factor NPC rewards in with game inflation.

As Bugsy pointed out (even if a bit simply), prices of T1 equipment in a lot of cases has doubled in less than a year. Plex prices have increased, as has the cost of virtually everything else. The only thing that hasn't gone up is the ISK reward for NPC bounties and rewards.

The supply is still low, there are roughly only 300 Plex for sale in Jita.
buy: 541m
sell: 549m (about 20Plex)
that is a typical spread for Plex. Coming weekend will be interesting as the volume on a Fr/Sa/So are about 3.5k, expect more volatility.

Anyway the buy price was 505m 2 days ago, right now it is 541m that is a significant rise.

I don't see why CCP would intervene. The higher PLEX prices are, the greater the incentive for people to buy them with RL money and sell them for IG isk.

Because tinfoil hats don't look good on me.

To be perfectly honest, CCP doesn't need to court criticism by working behind the scenes to inflate PLEX prices. Every single account in this game gets paid for one way or another, plus whatever surplus of PLEX exist at any time in the game due to players not being able to consume them at the precise rate at which they're being purchased.

A lot of people argue that CCP has an incentive to boost PLEX prices because the higher the amount of ISK they can be exchanged for, the more players who will supposedly want to purchase them. And yet, one could make a similar argument that CCP has an interest in keeping PLEX prices stable, and tamping down on market volatility, because players will be more likely to purchase PLEX when they feel like they basically know what they'll be able to get for them at any given time. A spike to 700m may show CCP a bump in PLEX sales, but when the price goes back down below 500m, all those people are just going to be waiting for the next spike before they buy again. CCP wouldn't really end up ahead, they'd just be messing with the pattern of PLEX purchases, creating new bumps and dips. Which doesn't serve them at all, if they like revenue streaming in on a consistent, predictable basis.

And like I said before, with all the tinfoil hattery that already goes on in EVE, the last thing CCP needs is people getting up in arms over them inflating PLEX prices. Doing so would hit at the core audience of the game, you know, those who are most likely to **** and moan and threaten to boycott/riot over it, like they did over microtransactions. Those are players that CCP can't afford to lose, because they form the backbone and identity of EVE Online. Why do you think CCP openly intervenes to stabilize PLEX prices in the first place? It's to retain those people.

This is actually a very good setup by CCP.

People make ISK in one of two basic ways: Acquire stuff to sell to others, and from NPCs; bounties and mission rewards. The first method does not increase total ISK in the game, in fact it reduces it via taxes and fees. The second method does add ISK to the game.

Adding ISK to the game tends to drive inflation. As prices rise, more players tend to use method one ( sell to players) for ISK, reducing their use of method 2. This reduces ISK growth and helps control inflation.

Right now we have mineral inflation, but we also have some serious deflation in the implant market. Its not clear if overall we have inflation.