EVE General Discussion

Support your statement of Killmails.

What is needed is to put more value into losses so to speak. Make it so fighting during a potential loss isn't just a "TPK" The best way to do it is to make a 100% efficiency impossible if you are facing any competition. If combat skill had as much value as bling, that would remove press F1 combat. this means that a skilled fleet could be total loss but still cost the enemy more. It would also remove unpredictability and encourage skilled players to take more losses if they have a chance to win outnumbered.

Ok, I think we are getting somewhere with this. The price increases are due to all the other items/services PLEX can provide. PLEX can be used for the following;

Game Time
Aurum
Skins
Dual Character Training
Fanfest tickets and other Events

See the problem here? I think we need to go back to the old school and make PLEX about game time only, I don't think we can continue with the PLEX being used for other things. If you can afford a Skin you should be able to buy it (Skin alone and nothing else) from CCP and either use it yourself or put it on the market for isk. If there is a separation between the extra services that CCP can provide I am sure that we will see the true value of all of the above items/services.

If one is interested in paying for game time only with isk then one should be able to do that without having to pay extra isk value for other items/services that they are not interested in using. To me this sounds fair and reasonable. What do you guys think?

Yes, basic supply and demand applies universally, and underlies everything as a rule.
That is a given and understood as implicit, and considered into many of the posts here.
We all (or, well, most), know this.

The "underpants gnome" factor is in intelligently identifying and interpreting how different market segments/movers react and behave in that supply and demand environment, and for which reasons, so as to deduce the extent of their influence upon it (and each other) as a result.

You posit, rationally and with a degree of validity, that their influence is marginal.
But this is arguable, especially in a dependant micro economy like EVE, with its virtual and integral peculiarities ESPECIALLY related to PLEX as such an unprecedented commodity.

Imagine in the real world, if there was a commodity you could buy that extends your lifetime by one month. Without it, you die.
Imagine further, that every unit of this you buy off the market, increases the value as a factor of controlled supply, of every other unit in your stockpile. Furthermore imagine the "underpants gnome" objective of killing off your competition by removing off the market that which they need to live for another month.

Do you have a model for this?

Its a common paradox, which Im sure you've had to endure often, that economists are rarely rich (and loathe to make predictions).
To my mind, this is because you underestimate the influence of these "marginal" actors and factors.

Ive posted extensively in this thread, with to my mind rational, progressive and valid arguments and deductions, considering as many nuances and factors as I can include, for and against, why the last year has seen such a huge increase in PLEX prices.

I dont think the market has behaved as was to be expected, purely from a natural supply and demand quotient.
PLEX price should have dropped. It did not. Instead it increased dramatically over and beyond a whole sequence of many significant factors which each alone should have dropped it, let alone when considered together.

Thats the part where the "underpants gnomes" factor comes in, and economists fail.

You are underestimating the complex factors, decisions and the the sheer market force of significant operators in this environment.
That is the reason movers/shakers get rich, whilst economists do not.
They recognize and act upon opportunities provided by changes and dynamics.
Whereas you merely report upon it afterwards, with a blanket statement of "supply and demand as usual", which ofc it is, but doesnt in anyway explain or identify why or how the market did what it did, except after the fact.

Game time is a simple product which is needed to be part of the game. I know you'll disagree with this; Skins and Aurum appeal to peoples vanity, character services appeal to people who want an advantage, within character services you can dual train and transfer characters, these services give people an edge within the game if you have lots of real life money to put into Eve then this is for you.

The fact you can buy fanfest and event tickets with plex is realistic and it is a very good product, again, we are using a person who has credit/debit cards to help out someone who does not for an isk reward.

CCP have mixed too many product types into one, and based purely on "I can't afford/be bothered to plex game time" forum replies we can see this is having an effect, no matter how small.

Why? What are you trying to solve?
How will this solve your perceived problem?


You have reinvented aurum. We already have that. It's called Aurum.
It does not solve whatever problem you perceive — we know this because it already hasn't.

I'm happy for you, more ppl do the same, prices will fall. You happy that some ppl are real life poor?

You forgot a few uses:
* You could buy the collectors edition with 12 PLEX for quite some time.
* Donations for charity are also done with PLEX (6910 PLEX were donated to the last charity in May.)
* Probably the most popular use: PLEX as gold. (Some rich players hoard thousands of PLEX as gold reserve.)

Its just stupid that PLEX has so many other uses. This drives up the price and quite a few players quit because of it. Everyone with little bit of brain knows that loosing active players is terrible for EVE. (The more players, the better the sandbox.) Average active players decreased by almost 50% in the last year. Im not saying that high PLEX prices are the only cause for the decline, but they definitely make the decline worse.

In my opinion, RL PLEX price should be reduced to the price of a sub and PLEX should be used for gametime and nothing else. Give PLEX a limited validity period, i.e. 3 months, to prevent hoarding as gold reserve.

You have made a fatal flaw in your analysis, IMO. In fact, 2 fatal flaws.

Your RL PLEX is not like PLEX we are dicussing here. First off, if I don't get a PLEX in game I don't die in game, at least not necessarily. I have the option of switching to the lower cost option of paying the subscription itself. Second of all, if I do "die" as in stop playing that is a bit less serious than dropping over dead in RL. RL things like that tend to have a very inelastic demand--i.e. price is not going to have a significant effect in terms of changing (the quantity) demanded. For example, this graph shows the problem. The (perfectly) inelastic demand (the red line) leads to the same quantity, Qe, at both prices P1 and P2. Whereas the blue demand curve when the price goes from P1 to P2 the quantity goes from Q1 to Q2.

So your RL example does not have a substitute...substitutes tend to make demand more elastic. Second of all the consequences are much less severe than your RL example. This too tends to make demand more elastic. Luxury goods, for example, tend have more elastic demand curves.

As for things like market manipulation bia buying up PLEX there is always a problem...it can often be self defeating. Lets say a guy has lots of ISK and tries to manipulate the PLEX market. As he starts buying up PLEX he'll drive up the price, but that means continuing the manipulation becomes increasingly more costly.

For example, if I could buy up say, 100 PLEX at the low cost of 800 million ISK each or 80 billion and drive the price up to 1.2 billion I'd make 40 billion. But the price wont stay at 800 million, at the end the last PLEX I buy will likely be pretty much 1.2 billion--i.e. I made no profit on that last PLEX. Very little on the PLEX bought before that and so forth.

And if I start selling them and try to do it fast to capitalize on the higher price the price will drop. And if I start a big sell off by other PLEX holders (i.e. people who are speculating on the PLEX market) then the price could drop faster than you can dump them and end up taking a significant loss.

And speculators are rarely the source of a sustained increase in the price of something. Speculators in real life can buy and sell and can even sell short. These activities will result in both price increases and decreases.

And I don't see why the price of PLEX should have dropped? We have increased demand in game due to things like skins, the NEX store and the like. We may very well have reduced demand in the RL market with less players...which reduces the supply in game. That too would lead to a price increase.

As for this:



I'll be blunt. You have nothing supporting this. You have no story, no evidence no nothing. Trying to tear down my story/argument is not an argument for your position In fact, I'll go even further, it is intellectually bankrupt. If you think that somebody is manipulating the market...how? Many times market manipulation is done by means that are designed to disrupt the normal operations of a market in an artificial or misleading way. So the idea of buying up lots of PLEX to drive up the price really isn't even market manipulation.

For example, if had a bunch of PLEX and I started a rumor that CCP was going to stop selling PLEX...or that they were going to raise the price. Went around to a bunch of forums posting this. Put it out there on twitter and reddit. If I wanted to be really clever I might try to get my hands on some CCP letter head and gin up a fake "internal" memo or a screen shot of somebody's e-mail. Anything to add some degree of credibility to my rumor. Maybe me and some buddies are doing this. Then when people buy PLEX in game before the in game price goes up I start selling when I think prices are nearing their peak. That would be market manipulation. I'm getting others to drive up the price via buying ISK based on the false information I put out there and I cash in on it.

So come up with something besides attacking explanations you do not like and vague bromides about these market operators.

This.

Apparently only PLEX users have a right to value and they shouldn't have to do too much to achieve it.

PLEX sellers, they're just evil people and don't deserve value for their money.

I'm certainly glad CCP doesn't share that view.