EVE General Discussion

This will change the game.

You see, there is a lot to drive people away from this game. It's usually other players, but those who stay have to have multiple accounts to be effective - I refer to those players who would not be considered "casual".


But who has the money to pay for all those accounts? People are using PLEX.

Now what we see is the possibility that this "Moss Isley" of MMOs never really had 300K subs, but perhaps a small minority of MMO players - of a certain type - feeding off a rotating pool of trial accounts, sci-fi fans, and people who like space ships that get griefed out of the game or are die-hards who eventually just get bored.

When they start to become less able to PLEX all those other accounts, subs will drop.

Hence when you allow "certain" things to go on in a game that individual players will simply decide not to put up with (RL has enough problems why pay for a second job that does not pay?) , and rely on multiple-account players to comprise the whole of the player base or community, you have a very big liability on your hands.

300K INDIVIDUAL subs is more secure in income and a future. But CCP cannot maintain enough interest in the game for that, because of the usual reasons - basically the "Great wall of carebear" and eventually boredom that comes.

It's not just bitter vets with the 10 subs each getting mad at something and leaving that is risky, it's those who are bitter or not simply not having the money to maintain so many subs (the world economy is falling apart, BTW) while at the same time, the great ISK pump keeps on churning out the ISK so those who can find the time can still buy PLEX.

CCP is going to have to do things that will be appealing to people who not only try out the game, but stay - meaning that some means of breaking down the Great Wall of Carebear - the very thing that has created what might be no more than 50k players having multiple subs - and getting more individuals playing one or two subs and hence building a stronger community.

Let's consider that an MMO company, in need of capital, might actually have it's future determined in the strength of the community. When it's a niche game relying on multiple sub accounts, with a very steep wall around new players who will get bored or griefed out of the game (or both). Were I a capital investor I would pause before investing or lending to CCP just on this alone.

EvE does not have a large strong community. It has a small community that relishes in being asshats to new players and driving them off if not by PVP or "gank", then by being poor representatives of the playerbase at large. Most people, when given a choice, will not put up with semi-autistic sociopaths on their spare time, and therefore will not stick around when the mechanics of the game make it difficult to avoid them. The game relies on that small community to have multiple accounts, which are becoming too expensive because people are broke more so these days. Thus the demand for PLEX goes up.

Things are going to have to change.

I'll well aware of that, which should have been clear from the part of my post you snipped. But my post was in response to someone saying "hey watch out, if the price goes much higher I will stop buying PLEX and CCP will lose out". Except if enough people *do* stop buying them, the price will just drop back again to an equilibrium point.
Also we don't know how elastic the supply and demand of PLEX is. If there's people paying 450mill a month for their accounts but they'd be perfectly willing to pay 600 million or more, CCP are losing out. I think its more likely that the supply of Plex is more elastic, as going without extra ISK is less of a big deal than doing without an extra(or any) Eve account.

Fair enough. But on the other hand, with ISK prices as high as they are, people should be more inclined to buy PLEXes and sell on the market, which would rather benefit CCP.

Really? No one has figured this out yet?

PLEX activate an account, recieve implant set, profit.

How many implant sets do you want? Do you think that implant set will be >500m in a few months?

There is a ceiling on what these things will be worth.. and it's not much. Pirate implant sets are much better than these. The reason the Apotheosis and Echelon have any value is pretty much just collectors, or people who just want to cruise around in a new model for a bit... you can't even fly implants, so they end up just being sill items. I still have a big stack of melted snowballs MMV and MMVIII... not to mention launchers. The only reason I haven't sold them is because they are silly to have and not worth a whole lot. I would say look to the gift Quaffe booster prices in contracts as an indicator of what these implants will be worth.

Wait what? Are you talking about the cerebral accelerator? That thing is barely worth 100m, but even if it was worth 10b you would only need a single plex to start an endless cascade of accounts getting referred by each predecessor and produce unlimited supply of cerebral accelerators.

Edit: K i just checked the news and see what you mean. However, the same method as described above applies. One plex to rule them all.

Yah... and I'm sure they will continue to do so... but that dood was saying 500 mil and I'm just saying 'no'... maybe in a few years 50 mil but even that might be a stretch.

I don't think the game is going to die. I think that some decisions are going to have to be made to increase the player base and I think they are doing it in a manner of a rising tide that raises all boats (Literally). Look at the change to insurance and the Destroyer upgrade plus Tier 3 BCs. The incentive to gank pointlessly without paying more is being removed, but for strategic or profitable ganking there will be newer and better tools. That's but an example of how a new player with nothing to be taken is more likely to be left alone yet those who should know better will be more easily taken advantage of.
I think that is going to be the future of this game. A little safer for noobs - so they stick around and pay for sub(s) - less safer for experienced players who already stick around and pay for sub(s).

All I am doing is raising the notion that niche game seldom survives a competitive marketplace and I have confidence that EvE will not die, but instead CCP is going to pull off some very tricky balancing that brings in the new players without WoWifying the game and driving off the (bitter) vets.

Now what makes things cost more? Scarcity. People have less money these days - that means less sub(s) and less PLEX too. Few PLEX - which have to be purchased - coming into the economy while at the same time, fewer people have the disposable $$cash$$ to pay for subs but want to use ISK for PLEX.

Add to this the incursions being a major ISK faucet, and this amounts to money printing. Printing money out of nothing - without being tied to a limited material or a expendable commodity creates what?

Inflation.


So more ISK out of nothing plus a demand for a replacement for RL cash that at the same time is also down is going to create this situation.

Notably the higher the PLEX prices the higher the RL-ISK ratio.

Question I have is, how is the price of everything else doing?

Bubbles never last forever. They pop. You are betting on continued exponential growth and forgetting that in order to sell, there also has to be a willing buyer.

Look at the volume. Volumes have dropped significantly over the past week. It's very easy to push the price either way with low volume, both in real life as on the EVE market. That's why you never trade stocks between Christmas and New Year's...

I wouldn't scream manipulation by CCP yet. It's much more likely that the only people buying PLEX are people who are then selling the same PLEX at a higher price since there's not a lot of people actually playing EVE thanks to Skyrim and the other games just released. Once people come back and start buying new PLEX from CCP and dropping it on the market you'll see it come down very fast as the speculators try to dump their PLEX quickly to avoid huge losses.