Market Discussions

Agreed. The "problem" is that there is just too much ISK in the game that plex will rise indefinitely.

I predict it will break 1billion isk sometime in December.

The only solution would be to nerf the way players casually make 500million isk in a day ratting.

So in summary; CCP is printing far too much money in the game, this is simply the raw inflation and the actual "price" has not gone anywhere, however, as aspects of the game such as mining and industry do not get higher tiers like officer spawns and incursions and wormhole ratting and big fat complexes to roll through, there is going to be a massive drop in multi-boxing players and even folks with just a few indy accounts. Prices on ships and well, anything in the game that is manufactured, ESPECIALLY capital ships, are going to skyrocket to accommodate the inflation and utter disappearance of the industrial backbone that provides anyone in this game with a ship to fly.

Good luck guys.
And keep in mind, the price is not rising, you just have too much money in the game.

The only solution:
Expect a massive nerf to ratting across the game, as that will be the only fix since the industrial ship balancing was a year too late to matter.

CCP simply needs to just drain the swamps of isk they provided to players. Game mechanics are easily taken advantage of to manipulate faction and officer spawns and veteran pilots just know how to play the game now and ratting in a 0.0 is stupid easy.

Good luck.

The costs of running this game and keeping a development team as well as events and other services functioning are quite costly, cutting their income in half would destroy the functionality of CCP

Seems like the free market is operating. If the ISK supply grows inflation ensues.

I appreciate the #'s you posted if they are correct, they show the plex supply is pretty constant over the year.

There's a reason why Inflation numbers are based on baskets of goods. The price of PLEX is not a particularly good way to measure inflation.

For instance, the reason why PLEX prices have risen is likely the rise of FW PLEXing which, by dint of being a ISK Sink and Stuff Faucet, exerts a deflationary pressure on the market.

don't know about you guys but i'm quite content with my package. yes, i went there.

No... those who won't move out of hi-sec because of the perceived security risk would instead switch to tier 3s or other activities. That should be obvious if you had more than 2 brain cells and did not just regurgitate the usual claptrap.

You can't judge the market based on PLEX. There are too many variables to PLEX prices to make it any kind of standard. As was said, the price spiked because Min cashed out. If you look at all the other goods from their LP store, they crashed, because of the cash out. As always, the key is to buy low, sell high. If you know the cash out is coming, buying PLEX at 500, and reselling at 700 is great. If you don't, then I guess you come to the forums and talk about wild shifts in the economy.

industrialists who multi-box and produce massive amounts of modules, tech2, ships, capitals, and fuel quit their alts because ratting with 2 characters is far more proffitable than plexing 5-25 accounts then yea. Prices are going to rise substantially if multi-account players do not temporarily turn off their extra accounts.

See, the problem is, CCP is printing too much isk by making it too simple for players to spam the same old anomalies, to run the same old complexes and kill the same or better newer faction spawns. The game is becoming easier and easier the longer players play, obviously, and releasing higher tiers is always a good idea but the market always suffers inflation.

Now, how is isk made? Isk is rewarded to players, 99.9% of the time from the following two sources: Ratting and Missions.

Ratting and Missions are the only places ISK itself actually comes from, so when there is inflation in a game like this, it is because there is simply too much money in the game, too much wealth in the pockets of the players. Money flows too fast in large quantities. Of course not with everyone, don't be naive or a smart ass.

Well then how come industrialists are not making a killing then if players have more money? Because asteroids are the same asteroids and moons are the same moons and planets are the same planets and ice is the same ice that they have always been and players who rat and run missions lose less ships and go through missions and complexes faster with higher skills and better fits, and are rewarded with higher tiers of ratting such as wormholes and incursions and officer spawns.

"But remember when tritanium was between 1 and 2 isk each?" Yes, and that was during the combined aftermath of Atlas and a lot of other large alliances collapsing or being defeated, their massive amounts of assets going on a fire sale, drone space and botters in full force farming base resources, and the market was packed with buy and sell orders as alliances gained and lost sov in 0.0. A quick fix to a market is to hit a reset button, the only reset button would be a massive alliance collapsing on itself and lossing hundreds of billions in anchored assets and without a safe haven to keep their capitals, fuel, and manufacturing backing safe in a 0.0 station that is days from being overrun, they need to move it or sell it, flooding the market with goods like a broken dam. Tritanium got so ridiculously cheap back then because a demand of titans and fleets of battleships disappeared and a ton of the extra ships and assets flooded the market. Stability makes prices rise as people sit on wealth, the same happens in times of absolute instability where demands is higher than what is available.

So, plex prices are a bad way to analyze market inflation, but this will produce its troubles. As multiboxers quit, fuels and mineral amounts will decrease on the market causing a massive rise in prices on everything across the board including pos towers the manufacture t2 and t3, then it will either make the game fail and become unplayable to new characters or the markets will reset as the biggest of alliances cannot keep up with fueling their war chest and/or collapse.

Hang in there, the market will rise drastically, but then it will fall and it will be a feeding frenzy. if it does not fall, then this game is going to be on its last leg. Unless if CCP can double the population in 6 months, kiss EVE goodbye. Otherwise, CCP, stop printing more isk for players. Making your players wealthy will destroy the market.

If you say, "But how can only a few hundred players effect the market this much?" Remember when goons made ice prices double? That only took a few people to do. by few I mean more than 10 and less than 100. And it will only take between 10 and 100 players to keep a market inflating, as there is in fact an operation to do so with plex prices currently going on.

Yeah, this.

To elaborate: New money entering the game has little to do with plex prices, because there's already a few hundred trillion isk sloshing around on active accounts in the game - given that, the net 10-25T that enters the economy every month isn't all that big a deal.

What does matter are the magnitude and number of ways for players to make isk, period, whether it's a faucet or a transfer. The easier the better, the large the amount of isk, the better, and if you can get both at once, that's just perfect. Way back in the day, datacores were a good example - supremely passive and, at first, an account funded itself and then some. They were self-regulating though and the market drove itself below plex prices. More recently we've had Incursions, which weren't especially passive but were a large amount of safe isk, and PI, which is relatively passive and is also a large amount of safe isk. These days its near-AFK mining - very passive, decent isk given highsec mineral prices - and Faction Warfare - a lot of isk for orbiting a structure, or a ridiculous bonanza of isk for the slightly more active option of flying a bomber around.

CCP does not seem to understand this.

Funny thing is the current Monty Haul PvE thing isn't growing the ISK supply with am ISK faucet. In the short term its probably actually decreasing the ISK supply ( over the long term it will however increase the ISK supply compared to what it would have without the Tier 5 ISK reductions but thats months away ) and yet we are seeing run away PLEX inflation although the LP store items are actually deflating in price which would make it look like a net zero unless you are dependant on PLEX to play the game.