Market Discussions

The whole thing is about how these types of features have inherent emergent properties..

The best example atm is that little concept of player billings via wallet function, similar to what we get via npcs.

Something like that will have a whole range of potential usages, everything from null rental bills, to corp member salaries, and even metagame confirmed services.

CCP should spend a lot more dev time on features with inherent emergent properties, because these give so much more gamplay bang for the bucks. The more they can hand over to a lateral integrated system and nerf npcs the more they can lean back and only occasionally tweak a few imbalances.

Back when I did a lot of pen and paper I called this kind of method "Easy Mode Gamemastering".. You dont prepare much, you just let the players come up with the content and follow their lead. The only thing needed is strong realism, consistency and a well defined cosmology / Lore. I believe ccp should put something like that as a high priority in their development ideology.

I tought for a while how fun it could be to buy stocks in the corporations themselves, and possibly receive monthly dividends proportionnal to share prices. Dividends would come from the different station revenue, like office rental, refining fees, research fee and loyalty store. Put a cap so that the npc corp stays NPC controled, and it could be rather fun.

Badly worded my stuff, ratio would be like real life, based on % of shares possessed. Possess 10% of shares, receive 10% of the whole dividend payout for the month


Price per share could start at approximate value of a full year dividend (and so make profitting form shares a more long term affair)

What happens when the cost af renting an office in Jita 4-4 requires an equity in excess of 51% of the total shares of Caldari Navy? What about when it hits >100%?
Obviously these situations can only arise within the space of a single billing cycle but let's hear the answer anyway...

More likely, what happens when the equity cost of an office in Jita 4-4 hits (total shares/# of offices)?

It's an interesting question. I suppose the cases where this could happen are a dramatic rise in rent, or a dramatic drop in stock price.

Let's see what happens in the extreme cases of high rent changes:

Office rent is calculated in the following manner: 5% will be added each DT if there are less than two offices available, it will go down 5% if there are more than 2 offices available, and if two are available, the price does not change. This gives us a maximum increase in price, in the space of a month, of ~450 percent. In Jita's case, that would be 8.6 billion ISK worth of equity for one office.

Now let's suppose that happens, those who want to keep their office are going to have to start buying up shares, and a lot of them, this is going to create a lot of demand for shares, the price of the shares should also increase rather dramatically. This should create an incentive to sell shares as well. As the share price goes up, the number needed will decrease.

If we add in Caleb's suggestion of Corps also having a rental fee of 50% of Equity Required, then this extreme Jita case would not only require 8.6 billion of equity, but also 4.3 billion in rent. Then, 50% of that rent would be paid in dividends, but only to shares which are not being used to maintain the Equity Required. Stock prices are going to go up with those sorts of dividends. As the stock price goes up, the number of shares required, by a renter, is going to decrease.

A downward adjustment could be made to that 5% number, the additional rent fee of 50%, as per Cal's suggestion could be increased, dividend percentage could be increased. These changes would mitigate run away situations, and could be used as dynamic valves them selves.

Five percent formula discovered and explained here, http://oldforums.eveonline.com/?a=topic&threadID=1228425

Now what about the case of a dramatic drop in share price.

In the case of Cal Navy, where dividends are being paid as per Cal's suggestion, this simply will not happen. Players would have every incentive to purchase shares that are paying dividends, so we have to look at the extreme opposite of Cal Navy. I don't know what corp that would be, but let's call it Foobar Industries.

Minimum Office rent as things are now is 10,000 ISK. Let's suppose Foo has a stock price of 0.01 ISK. We can't go any lower. That would require 1 million shares of Foo. An easy way to mitigate this is, all NPC corps, have a permanent buy back of shares for the value of 1,000 ISK per share. Now to rent an office at Foo requires 10 shares. There's no need to have any more. Granted there are some odd behaviors on Eve, but I doubt most people would hold on to something for too long that is never going to go up in value, so what incentive is there to purchase all of Foo? Add this buy back idea with ideas from post 47, and share availability will not be an issue in cases of very cheap stocks.

The danger in a dramatic share price drop is likely the middle of the road NPC corps. Again dividends, as per Cal's suggestions, would create a significant incentive to buy the shares on the cheap. This will increase the price of shares as players scramble to get in on a good P/E ratio.

To conclude, my former ambivalence with regards to an additional 50% of Equity Required monthly rental Fee, and 50% dividend pay out to outstanding shares that are not being used to maintain Equity Required, is no longer ambivalence, but instead now endorsed.

I don't like removing a major money sink from the game.

I like the idea (adding content, especially something that adds to the eve economy ) but why the complication.

Why not just make it so players can own non-voting shares in npc corps and dividends is paid from the rental income. This system is simpler and will have all the benefits without the complications (I might be wrong so correct me if I am). That way people that want to dabble in this market will and nothing will change for people that actually rent these offices. The only problem I can see right now is that a sink will be eliminated, but I think relative to the eve economy is it very small and could be countered rather easily.