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EVE's Economy - "Not Player Driven"

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Malcanis
Vanishing Point.
The Initiative.
#41 - 2013-06-04 08:09:32 UTC
Cinara Miriam wrote:
So I had a discussion with a gentleman about player-driven economies in video games, and he had the following to say about EVE's economy, and how it was a bad example of a player-driven economy.
Quote:

Of course, EVE is one of the readiest examples of a game that wants to have a player-driven economy, but doesn't. EVE has always had incessant economic crises resulting from their coercive economic mechanics, for example the fact that shuttles came at a fixed price from NPCs, which created an absolute and arbitrary maximum price on the minerals that a shuttle could be reprocessed into. CCP even hired a supposed economist (hah!) to correct the game's problems and improve the enjoyability of its economic systems, but he was unable to do anything meaningful as a result of CCP's infatuation with introducing coercive economic influences.

If any game is to have a truly player-driven economy, the currencies must be freely selected by the players, and there must be absolutely zero external, arbitrary source or sink of resources in the game. You will never come close to balancing currency sources and sinks, if you make the foolish mistake of introducing them. Let each transaction be a barter of resources, and don't even consider letting NPCs participate in the economy
.

And to follow up after I asked him to explain exactly why players didn't drive the EVE economy:

Quote:
It seems like the EVE economy is player-driven, since players get to set prices for their sales and purchases. The reality, however, is that there are coercive influences that, most optimistically, provide boundary conditions on the economy, but, realistically, poison and drive it. Here are a few of the circumstances that make EVE's economy not player-driven:


  • Natural resources are arbitrarily limited. This comports with the real world, sure, but we're talking about a game and discussing player-driven economies. You don't want natural resources to be unlimited and unthrottled, but when considering the balance between availability and effort to acquire, EVE is so dramatically on the side of restricting availability as to remove effort to acquire entirely from the picture. There is so little effort required to acquire resources, once territory has been captured, that several of the notable major alliances don't harvest them at all. I am all too intimately acquainted with the real-money negotiations certain major alliances routinely engage in with ISK sellers for harvesting privileges.
  • CCP has established territorial ownership mechanics which disproportionately reward those who already have territory over those who would acquire it. Defense is far too heavily weighted over assault, which, when coupled with the catastrophically small map (another arbitrary limitation), results in a total absence of frontier and grossly limited opportunity to displace, giving existing territory-holders coercive pricing influence.
  • CCP continues to create market-breaking systems within the game. Every time they make a half-hearted swipe at revamping FacWar, for instance, they create more mechanisms by which their fiat currency enters the game, generating market exploits and inflating the economy. Then they introduce more ISK sinks to try to balance their colossal screw-ups, resulting in both more market exploits and greater market disruption.


EVE's economy is only nominally player-driven. In reality, it is a detestable amalgam of the CCP-protected influences of key alliances and the forceful disruptions of CCP attempts to band-aid their mistakes.



Does anyone here at MD have anything to add to this discussion? He has made some fair points I think, there are some strong external factors that influence EVE's economy, but he hasn't convinced me that everyday players are the main driving factors of the economy, and not some mega CCP-BOB conglomerate.


So far from being "infatuated with coercive mechanisms", CCP has been steadily withdrawing them.

Most of the rest of the points don't seem to contradict or reinforce the assertion that EVE has a player-driven economy at all, only that it's different from the real world economy. Which is a different thing entirely.

"Just remember later that I warned against any change to jump ranges or fatigue. You earned whats coming."

Grath Telkin, 11.10.2016
Teodo Maasin
Phronesis.
#42 - 2013-06-04 14:21:05 UTC
Adunh Slavy wrote:
No government was required to encourage cave man Grog to trade meat for spears with cave man Gonk


If Grog and Gonk were more than just toons in a hypothetical “state of nature” narrative, I might be inclined to agree.

Actual history, however, suggests the opposite.
Adunh Slavy
#43 - 2013-06-04 14:43:27 UTC
Teodo Maasin wrote:

Actual history, however, suggests the opposite.

Ok, feel free to explain to everyone how and why communities came together in the first place or is it your suggestion that the state existed prior to any community?

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.  - William Pitt
Tinu Moorhsum
Random Events
#44 - 2013-06-04 14:48:20 UTC
Damn... .and I'm all out of popcorn :0
Teodo Maasin
Phronesis.
#45 - 2013-06-04 15:47:13 UTC
Adunh Slavy wrote:
Ok, feel free to explain to everyone how and why communities came together in the first place or is it your suggestion that the state existed prior to any community?


I haven’t the faintest idea how or why communities came together in the first place, or whether the state or the community came first. And anybody who says they do is full of it.

But … if you read ancient history, you notice that most very early societies (Sumer, Egypt, etc) actually functioned on a complex system of credit and debt, with no bartering and certainly no cash at all, using accounting systems that were dictated and managed by the state (not unlike ISK). Markets, as we think of them today, first formed around palaces and armed camps, and were allowed to exist because they proved to be an efficient way to feed and equip armies (also rather like in Eve, hmm …). Rulers strongly encouraged this, because it shifted part of the burden of logistics away from them.

As for Grog and Gonk, what little pre-historical evidence there is suggests that if they relatives or were in the same clan or tribe (or community), they didn’t trade or barter at all. There were strict, traditional communitarian mechanisms that distributed things to people who needed them. And if they weren’t in the same tribe, then Gonk was far more likely to use those spears to take the meat from Grog, or die tryin’.

For the record, I'd much rather be playing Odyssey than trolling MD, but I'm stuck at work for another few hours, so ... Ugh
Adunh Slavy
#46 - 2013-06-04 17:06:50 UTC
Teodo Maasin wrote:

I haven’t the faintest idea how or why communities came together in the first place, or whether the state or the community came first. And anybody who says they do is full of it.


So people just gathered together for some unimaginable reasons. Got it.

Teodo Maasin wrote:

Markets, as we think of them today ...


Moving the goal posts, how convenient for you.

Teodo Maasin wrote:

As for Grog and Gonk, what little pre-historical evidence there is suggests that if they relatives or were in the same clan or tribe (or community), they didn’t trade or barter at all.

There were strict, traditional communitarian mechanisms that distributed things to people who needed them. And if they weren’t in the same tribe, then Gonk was far more likely to use those spears to take the meat from Grog, or die tryin’.



You just mentioned above that anybody who says they know what happened must be full of it. So how do you know? You know when it is convenient for you to know, and no one else can know anything when it is not convenient for you.

I suppose doing a search on google for prehistoric trade is too much effort.

This is not chicken or egg stuff. A little common sense goes a long way.

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.  - William Pitt
Teodo Maasin
Phronesis.
#47 - 2013-06-04 18:01:26 UTC
Well-played, my friend. You have skillfully avoided making a substantive counterpoint, while cherry-picking quotes from my post and giving the appearance of participating in a debate.

I see a career in politics in your future. Roll
Tinu Moorhsum
Random Events
#48 - 2013-06-04 18:49:55 UTC
Teodo Maasin wrote:
Well-played, my friend. You have skillfully avoided making a substantive counterpoint, while cherry-picking quotes from my post and giving the appearance of participating in a debate.

I see a career in politics in your future. Roll


Are you going to respond to what he said?
Teodo Maasin
Phronesis.
#49 - 2013-06-04 19:47:42 UTC
Tinu Moorhsum wrote:


Are you going to respond to what he said?


Sure. Which part?

Adunh Slavy wrote:
1. So people just gathered together for some unimaginable reasons. Got it.

2. Moving the goal posts, how convenient for you.

3. You just mentioned above that anybody who says they know what happened must be full of it. So how do you know? You know when it is convenient for you to know, and no one else can know anything when it is not convenient for you.

I suppose doing a search on google for prehistoric trade is too much effort.

This is not chicken or egg stuff. A little common sense goes a long way.


Hmmm, not a lot to work with there.

1. Did I say that? "Unimaginable reasons"? Let's see ... nope.

2. What "goal post" did I move? Weren't we talking about markets? Was it the phrase, "as we think of them today"? How else should we think of them?

3. Who can argue with common sense? Not me. It goes a long way, after all.

This is great fun, guys! Shall we go again, or call it a day?
Adunh Slavy
#50 - 2013-06-04 19:56:49 UTC
Teodo Maasin wrote:
Well-played, my friend. You have skillfully avoided making a substantive counterpoint, while cherry-picking quotes from my post and giving the appearance of participating in a debate.

I see a career in politics in your future. Roll



I pointed out your fallacious tactics. Don't like it? Too bad. Maybe you're used to people playing that little game, allowing you to get away with that sort of thing. I didn't. Deal with it.

I can see from your response to Tinu, you still want to play those games.

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.  - William Pitt
Kali Maat
PVP FAST
#51 - 2013-06-04 20:04:43 UTC
Eve is not perfect
but as far as I know it's the best one out there..

also that point in the OP where there should be no input output in the system?
how you want to do this in Eve?
dead ships dust flying together to form asteroids?
(wait that sounds awesome! )
Teodo Maasin
Phronesis.
#52 - 2013-06-04 20:04:54 UTC
Damn! My fellati ... er ... fallacious tactics didn't work on you! You are a sly one, Adunh Slavy ... very sly, indeed. X
Markus Navarro
Osmon Integrated Robotics
#53 - 2013-06-05 05:26:14 UTC
I came in the thread, saw the libertarian ubermensh argument. SIghed loudly

Then i've read the responses and felt better

I like you, MD

I sell drones and drones accessories.
Jan VanRijkdom
House VanRijkdom Trading Conglomerate
#54 - 2013-06-06 06:36:55 UTC
I think we can, mostly, all agree the sad, ignorant malcontent the OP mentioned is hopelessly blinded by ideology and paranoia, and out of touch with reality, and clearly has no reasonability as to what constitutes a 'player driven' economy in an mmo.

He also is completely blind to any comprehension of how things work in the real world, vs utopian models of some impossible scenarios.

Glad we can all agree.

.
Bugsy VanHalen
Society of lost Souls
#55 - 2013-06-06 15:28:26 UTC  |  Edited by: Bugsy VanHalen
Cinara Miriam wrote:
So I had a discussion with a gentleman about player-driven economies in video games, and he had the following to say about EVE's economy, and how it was a bad example of a player-driven economy.
Quote:

Of course, EVE is one of the readiest examples of a game that wants to have a player-driven economy, but doesn't. EVE has always had incessant economic crises resulting from their coercive economic mechanics, for example the fact that shuttles came at a fixed price from NPCs, which created an absolute and arbitrary maximum price on the minerals that a shuttle could be reprocessed into. CCP even hired a supposed economist (hah!) to correct the game's problems and improve the enjoyability of its economic systems, but he was unable to do anything meaningful as a result of CCP's infatuation with introducing coercive economic influences.

If any game is to have a truly player-driven economy, the currencies must be freely selected by the players, and there must be absolutely zero external, arbitrary source or sink of resources in the game. You will never come close to balancing currency sources and sinks, if you make the foolish mistake of introducing them. Let each transaction be a barter of resources, and don't even consider letting NPCs participate in the economy
.

And to follow up after I asked him to explain exactly why players didn't drive the EVE economy:

Quote:
It seems like the EVE economy is player-driven, since players get to set prices for their sales and purchases. The reality, however, is that there are coercive influences that, most optimistically, provide boundary conditions on the economy, but, realistically, poison and drive it. Here are a few of the circumstances that make EVE's economy not player-driven:


  • Natural resources are arbitrarily limited. This comports with the real world, sure, but we're talking about a game and discussing player-driven economies. You don't want natural resources to be unlimited and unthrottled, but when considering the balance between availability and effort to acquire, EVE is so dramatically on the side of restricting availability as to remove effort to acquire entirely from the picture. There is so little effort required to acquire resources, once territory has been captured, that several of the notable major alliances don't harvest them at all. I am all too intimately acquainted with the real-money negotiations certain major alliances routinely engage in with ISK sellers for harvesting privileges.
  • CCP has established territorial ownership mechanics which disproportionately reward those who already have territory over those who would acquire it. Defense is far too heavily weighted over assault, which, when coupled with the catastrophically small map (another arbitrary limitation), results in a total absence of frontier and grossly limited opportunity to displace, giving existing territory-holders coercive pricing influence.
  • CCP continues to create market-breaking systems within the game. Every time they make a half-hearted swipe at revamping FacWar, for instance, they create more mechanisms by which their fiat currency enters the game, generating market exploits and inflating the economy. Then they introduce more ISK sinks to try to balance their colossal screw-ups, resulting in both more market exploits and greater market disruption.


EVE's economy is only nominally player-driven. In reality, it is a detestable amalgam of the CCP-protected influences of key alliances and the forceful disruptions of CCP attempts to band-aid their mistakes.



Does anyone here at MD have anything to add to this discussion? He has made some fair points I think, there are some strong external factors that influence EVE's economy, but he hasn't convinced me that everyday players are the main driving factors of the economy, and not some mega CCP-BOB conglomerate.

CCP's influence on the economy, although very heavy at times, can some what be compared to the influence the world governments have on the world economy. For example the U.S.A. government manipulates the world economy by giving money to thrid world contries to develop infrastructure that will support the north American economy. More specifically the U.S. government will give a third world country the means to extract its natural resources they otherwise would not be able to exploit, in exchange for exclusive rights to buy those resources from that country. The third world country gets a big economic boost, and the U.S. gets cheap resources.
Akemi Kashada
Perkone
Caldari State
#56 - 2013-08-31 15:58:26 UTC
Everytime this issue comes to light, people on the "condescending" side of player driven market says the same. I came to this thread to avoid having to write all that is written here again in another thread talking about industrialists.

This is the causality link in that:

Player driven market would be when raw materials are harvested by players, sold to other players or used by them to make goods sold to other players, and otherwise not available.

When you introduce a NPC corp in the scheme, selling things that can be reprocessed, sold or used to make trade things, you are indirectly establishing a control over price. Read the post about reprocessing. LP still some kind of currency, and still make NPC corps as traders of some sort. Once you have that items introduced in the market, their value will serve as a threshold for market bias. On top of that, you are introducing a origin for products that is not player driven, because it has infinite supply of a given product that cant be controled by players. So if all the players in EVE that produce say, mjolnir light missiles, decide to stop selling them to a given person, or to a given corporation/alliance, or for less than a given price, people will still be able to get them from NPCs.

You use a fallacy to imply that because players can define the price of what they put to sell, they drive the market, much as in real life some people really think that you have free market. That may be the problem, because despite the injection of millions from governments in products or money itself in order to influence prices, people still believe when they say in "some countries" that you have a free market. Same principle.
Vaerah Vahrokha
Vahrokh Consulting
#57 - 2013-08-31 17:01:22 UTC
Akemi Kashada wrote:
Everytime this issue comes to light, people on the "condescending" side of player driven market says the same. I came to this thread to avoid having to write all that is written here again in another thread talking about industrialists.

This is the causality link in that:

Player driven market would be when raw materials are harvested by players, sold to other players or used by them to make goods sold to other players, and otherwise not available.



Let's say that EvE Economy is not 100% pure and kosher.

What does this brings us to... the better alternative being...?


EvE is the best compromise given the alternative, like it or hate it. Plus exercising EvE's "gimbal limits" is not so common, the game economy does not taste of horrible fake like most other games do.

EvE Online portal | EvE markets tutorials
Zero Sum Gain
FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDOOOOOOOOM
#58 - 2013-08-31 20:37:30 UTC
His arguments about limited resources and territorial control favor the opposite of player driven.

This guy is an articulate English major bullshitter, not an economist nor an expert on mechanism design.
Rhivre
TarNec
Invisible Exchequer
#59 - 2013-08-31 22:51:44 UTC
holy thread necro batman

Fluffy Bunny Pic!

Felicity Love
Doomheim
#60 - 2013-09-03 03:37:57 UTC
... loves all the pseudo-intellectual windbaggery concerning "real world" this and "ingame" that, and thinks CCP should get Warren Buffet to be a Market "guest Dev" for awhile.Blink

"EVE is dying." -- The Four Forum Trolls of the Apocalypse.   ( Pick four, any four. They all smell.  )