Assembly Hall

If I mission for 3 years straight and save up all my isk,
isnt it my right to do with it what I please?

If I want to buy 100 plex and hold onto them - thats my choice - not yours.
I earned that isk like you did and how I spend my time with my isk is nobody elses choice but mine.

If you are complaining that its not as 'cheap' to play for free becaues your plex is now more expensive, is your problem and your tears.

In the end, I feel like it all balances out. PLEX is not the only way of playing EVE and this means people who can't afford the isk, can always pay with real money. If they're unable to do either, they should consider their position carefully.


I've been pondering the issue of the PLEX for a while now, especially in relation to bot users. I was wondering if CCP had an financial interest in keeping bots instead of banning them outright - it's an argument that appears often in bot discussions. It sounds a lot like a conspiration theory and it probably is, but anyhow, it has some valid argument. Bots are accounts, if CCP bans those thousands of accounts, then they must necessary lose money? Not necessarily. Bots are meant to create in game resources without effort. They easily create enough resources to pay for PLEX and then much more. I have the feeling that most bots use PLEX.

Now, the catch is, losing a PLEX account, does not mean that CCP loses money. CCP makes the money when the PLEX is bought from a player with real money. It does not matter what happens with that PLEX afterwards. It could be gifted to someone else or stacked neatly for no purpose; CCP already made the money. So CCP wouldn't directly lose money from banning bots.

However, they would likely feel a smaller impact indirectly. Having less PLEX user on the market means the price of the PLEX goes down, which means that people who would have otherwise paid money for their account switch to PLEX. It also might get people to buy a second account with PLEX.

This was all about BOTS, but the logic applies to anyone that runs the game for free.

The PLEX market mostly affects free accounts. Those accounts don't bring any money to CCP, but they might be friends, corp mates or bots.

My solution: ban bots to free up PLEX.

You may still buy 100 plex and hold onto them... in the form of added gametime on your account. You simple lose the ability to throw out those 100 plex at a later time, which would be a problem for CCP. Wild fluctuations = players quit game when it's high, then potentially crash later. It's in CCP's interest to keep plex stable. The thing rose by 100 mil the past week, then dropped 50 mil in the past 3 days.

Why?

I would suggest that it is in CCP's interest to keep PLEX sales high. Higher prices will lead to more sales. Remember, GTC and PLEX are about legitimate RMT. That they provide game time as a side effect is almost irrelevant to this discussion. A lot of people have been using PLEX to pay for their accounts, and seem to have developed a sense of entitlement. They expect PLEX to remain at a price that is suitable for them, rather than the seller.

It's interesting to note that most of the people I know who sell PLEX insist on selling to buy orders. Most of the people I know who buy PLEX insist on buying from sell orders. These people are so impatient that they've gone and turned the market upside-down.

If you want decently priced PLEX to keep your account active, post buy orders below the current orders. They'll be filled. Don't buy from sell orders — doing so will only inflate the price of PLEX further.

It is quite hilarious how the discussion always goes towards "can't afford the isk" - "prices rise" - "should consider subbing", even the actual reasoning has nothing to do with the current plex price level. It has somewhat to do with questioning is the current plex price level reflecting the true value of it or has it been manipulated by investors.

Personally I would not have any problem buying my game time with 1 billion isk/month. However I've made personal calculations and come to conclusion, that paying over 400m from plex is turning myself to tool, so I rather pay with credit card and have no problem with that either.

However I still feel that plex is not actual in game item what should be used for market games. It is nothing like "scourge missile" or "primae" as someone referred earlier, because you can not control the supply in game.

Plex should bound to account when it changes ownership from account x to account y. It is a service - game time - thing what appears from thin air. You should not be able to make trade profit by investing to thin air. When you buy game time, you should commit to use it in some point. It is that simple.

When you buy a PLEX you're are buying an in-game item. You should make no further commitment than paying the price the seller demands. It's that simpley. Once it's yours, it yours and you should be free to do as you wish with it.




(Flat assertions of my opinion as if it was fact are awesome, tyvm for introducing me to this fantastic concept!)

All the people in favour of linking PLEX to an account keep comfortably forgetting that somebody is spending real money to buy a GTC to convert to PLEX, and they invested real time in that (working for the man) too.

And it is in those people's best interest that PLEX is in fact expensive since it creates a better real money -> ISK conversion rate for them. Like somebody mentioned earlier being able to play for free via PLEX is a perk of EVE not a right. EVE is ultimately a P2P (Pay 2 Play) game.

Well if you're going to imply that the supply of PLEX is inelastic with price, you should maybe reconsider whether you're the one who gets to ask other people not to be idiots.

So the real question is: what is the equilibrium price at which the most PLEX are created. I'll assume that this is the "right" price, as it allows the most number of people to play for free, and makes CCP the most money, and it's ipso facto the best price for the people who pay the money to create them as well (in terms of how much money they're willing to pay)

If the ISK price is low, then people have to buy more PLEX to buy a specific item, but they're less likely to do so.

If the ISK price is high, then people have to buy fewer PLEX to afford their Aeon or whatever, but they're more likely to do so.

I know that I personally was watching the PLEX price rise with interest, and I in fact made a decision that if they hit 600M, I would work a day of overtime and make some PLEX to sell for enough ISK that I wouldn't have to PvE for a year or so. I had no specific purchase in mind.

Unless CCP tell us how many PLEX are being created, then any attempt to say that the PLEX price is "too high" (or "too low") is, at the end of the day, just based on personal perspective and undiluted guessing. (This might be an interesting question for the CSM to put to CCP.)

So you write the same thing as i wrote. Thats something.
It is all up to CCP , so I dont even understand why there is such a topic as this , as it has no real reason, other than some ppl wants lower plex prices somehow.

Perhaps you should learn to understand what you're reading, before trying to throw any answers.