EVE General Discussion

This is countermanded by the fact the higher value of PLEX rises in isk, the more incentive there is for players to RLM them to earn isk ingame.

You are correct that if the trend contiuned without that consideration, it would rise above 2b, but unless a cartel of PLEX holders managed to deliberately and at great effort shoehorn PLEX sales in at incremental values in each hub, PLEX will still enter the market from independants buying PLEX tonsell at isk value, and each unit the cartel sells would help match demand.

What concerns me more, is identifying and quantifying the largest PLEX consumers ingame.
To my mind, this includes four groups:

-Multibox Miners, which are very sensitive to PLEX price changes in direct relation to how much ISK they can earn with them in accordance with mineral/ice prices in a given 30day period. This is the easiest to analyze. When the cost of PLEXing exceeds whatthe miner alt can produce in a month, they drop the account, leading to less demand. And not just for one multi-boxing miner, but ALL of them, at once, unless they are interested in training that toon at a loss while mining for aome other future purpose. Miners desubbing accounts should reduce demand, and lower prices.
-Multitraining accounts, which is the province mostly of old and extremely rich vets, for whom the game itself has become a means to an end in terms of having pilots to do what they want with. These players are not sensitive to any ingame cost of any resource, merely CCP changes and their own enthusiasm with the game overall.
-Persons who buy/sell characters. Their influence is difficult to guage owing to the sometimes astronomical costs and the ambiguity of tracing their activity. Nonetheless, PLEX sales run commensurate both as a means for them to raise capital to increase their stable by purchase of saleable capsuleers to sell for profit, but also indirectly in the sales of PLEX for other players raising capital to purchase those pilots from them.
-And finally, the mythical PLEX traders. Do they exist? How organised and deliberate are they? Their ability to manipulate the market should be marginal as detailed above earlier, but there is a critical mass beyond which they can, at horrific temporary losses, raise prices high enough to recoup those losses by dumping at a certain threshold.

Sum total of these influences the price of PLEX, as the largest coherent groups of PLEX consumers and suppliers to the market.

My own gut conclusion, is the higher PLEX prices rise, the more an indication it is of less active accounts, in almost every instance, considering all variables. This is corroborated by looking at public and available server population figures.

Two caveats on a 1 year window from 2014:
-Industry changes: Especially salvage/mineral conversion rates. This should have reduced inflation, and slowed PLEX price rises. Either this has resulted then either in people unsubbing, or, indirectly isk being invested elsewhere than in PLEXing an account.
-Sov changes now: By reading of feedback, it seems many people have cut back on maintaining multiple accounts, which again should have resulted in less demand for PLEX and reduced prices.

Considering those, perhaps the inverse of my previous conclusion makes more sense in terms of account behavior.
That current population is dumping isk into PLEX, rather than subbing. Which typically means they are on their way out, and no longer as confident in the games future, and expending ingame resources rather than RLM.

Nope , but everyone has acces to the high-sec markets .

I logged in about a month ago using the 4 hours to buy a plex. I had 800mil, I'll get a plex I thought. Nope.

Yeah, its not a perfect use of the term. But here is what I was trying to say:

Giffen good: When the price goes up, demand goes up. Conversely: When price goes down, demand goes down. In Eve: The price of ISK is going down. That is the amount of real money needed to buy a big block of ISK is dropping, ISK is getting cheaper. So what's happening to the demand for ISK? Well, we cannot really buy ISK, we buy PLEX, and it could well be that the demand for PLEX is going down due to the drop in price of ISK.
Now, that's not really a proper use of the term "Giffen good". But my point I made in my first post remains: The decreasing cost of ISK is causing a reduction in the demand for PLEX. Normally you would expect the opposite. If you get more ISK per PLEX, you would expect the number of PLEX sold by CCP to increase. But is may well be the opposite is in fact occurring.

One month later. 1.1B isk. Da fuq

lovely.

for people with jobs that don't need a videogame job

im dumping all my plex on the market as soon as it hits 1.5, cause i bought in at 980

when I returned to eve with this new account I thought I'll use the free plex I got for extra 30 days...
to my surprise it was 1b already as I logged in.

going to keep it and see how much it will get :P

What's the price of PLEX in China?

Called a Giffen Good, see my sig.