EVE General Discussion

Multifrequency pulse lazers on an Abaddon.

its a free market. If more people buy plex with cash, the price of plex will lower, more people start up more alts or stop paying with their cards and it balances out.

No. Buy as much PLEX as you can. Go forth and destroy!

From the perspective of an EVE character and in-game economy PLEX is certainly a limited resource. But as we all know, things are never that simple.

IIRC, CCP use PLEX and ISK confiscated from RMTers and Botters for market levelling operations.

It would cost them nothing except the time and effort to do it, and remove ISK from the economy which would put a cap on inflation. In theory this would "devalue" PLEX, but since PLEX is fixed to the dollar/euro, the "value" isn't going anywhere. I'm not saying they are doing this but certainly it is a tool they have to control the economy and keep it within acceptable parameters. Eyog had mentioned the desire to create a sort of "reserve bank" a long, long time ago. PLEX can easily be used that way to soak up excess ISK. After all you have no idea how many actual players are trading cash for PLEX, and neither do I.

Edit: added the following

I understand from the gist of your post that CCP would "benefit" from driving up the isk value of PLEX, since they would sell more PLEX to the public if you get more isk for your dollar. However I'm sure they take the health of the EVE economy seriously. If the economy tanks, the game tanks, and keeping the game going is much more in CCP's interest than selling a few extra PLEX.

I can see a benefit to try stabilise a market in a real world economy by having a central bank buy and sell stuff. But, in a game like EVE, market fluctuations are not a bad thing because it creates opportunities and gameplay and thus should probably not be countered.

One could make an argument for CCP to try to destabilise the market in order to create more opportunities for players but I can't see why that would be needed. It seems like the players are good at market manipulations all that all by themselves :)

Selling PLEX for ISK on the market with no intention to buy them back would cost CCP future subscriptions and that would create a cost. It would also devalue PLEX and likely also hurt their PLEX for $$ sales. Buying PLEX for ISK however, will generate more revenue for CCP but it would be very unpopular among EVE players since it interferes with the in-game economy and creates a new ISK faucet and probably also inflation.

If anything, I think CCP might be buying PLEX for ISK to increase their revenue (but you didn't hear it from me). Most likely though, is that CCP reserves the right to intervene if an exceptional event occur in-game (for example if a few multi trillionaires wants to have some fun with their ISK before leaving the game).

Edit: As I see it, CCPs main tool to manipulate PLEX market in-game is their marketing of PLEX for $$ special offers (and perhaps also power of 2).

I think their marketing of PLEX for $$ offers has more to do with opportunities for increasing revenue than trying to stabilise the in-game PLEX market. The two objectives just happens to converge. PLEX prices has been going up and I think it is because it is good business for CCP. Players that want's to PLEX their accounts just have to work harder (or be smarter) until that change.

Or they just saw an opportunity to sell a lot of PLEX while they were worth a lot of ISK on the market ...

But, yes I agree. The two objectives converge. High PLEX prices is also a good way to counter RMT. And if CCP really wanted to bring down in-game PLEX prices they could make much better PLEX for $$ offers.

Their main strategy? I remember something from last fanfest that they offered a graphics card for PLEX and they also said they wanted to offer more things for PLEX in the future. And now we have Fanfest tickets and wasn't there a PLEX fee for New Eden Open?.

I think there are two things going on here.

• CCP wants to sell PLEX to players that spend the ISK (I guess on PvP mostly) and they are more likely to buy when PLEX is worth a lot of ISK in-game.

• They also need to sink those PLEX but they are stockpiled on wealthy players that can't really sink all of it into game time. So they need more PLEX sinks targeted at wealthy players (such as graphics cards and fanfest tickets and monocles). This will drive in-game PLEX prices upwards

Hmm, are you talking about transaction tax here because otherwise I can't really see how ISK leaves the game. The only thing removed when a PLEX is converted into a Fanfest Ticket is game time.

Meh... people are lazy... they just want to "power level" so they buy PLEX, sell them for ISK, buy a 60mil toon and get into the game without the time or effort otherwise required to start from "scratch"... or more to the point, at the "beginner level".

Welcome to the manifestation of the "entitlement culture" in EVE.