Player Features and Ideas Discussion

So you have no interest in looking up the plethora of posts on this site explaining why a nerf to highsec income (which will achieve the same relative end result) is better for the game than a buff to nullsec?

Given the last time they tried it the economy almost went into meltdown I would say that yes inflation does matter.

CCP cant buff null income without bad things happening which leaves only one option.

So the idea is penalizing system popularity..

It's quite hypothetical -- it sounds awkward and worth gaming.

Why not just reduce jump fatigue on the edge around the map? Why not add interesting / lucrative (and plausibly announced) and NPC-guarded *stuff* around those edges, so that making laps around the map is worth a fleet and being nomadic? This sets up a great risk.. but also a map meta and a treasure sport; and it could also push a lot of sovereignty for the edges, making room by security space.

You can only nerf highsec so much if you want your customers happy. Here's a hint, you remove all elements of highsec and EVE goes offline in less than three months.

People will not go to null if they don't want to, no matter how much you want to force them to.

Just throwing this out there to the pack of wolves, but what if CCP did a few things to the moons

1. Increased the number of resources on the moons
2. Increased the number of moons with valuable resources
2. Make each resource deplete over time so if harvested for a long period of time. As an example, if you have been harvesting Tech from a moon for a month, it would generate 90 resources per hour instead of 100. So eventually, it would be beneficial to flip your harvesters to one of the other 2-4 resources on that moon for a short period of time so the moon can regenerate the Tech. Or if you still had a strong need for Tech, you would be required to take another moon that has a higher Tech production the moon you currently own.

There are two ways to buff NS income. One is via money creation, but that comes with the problem of inflation.

The other is make it possible to obtain various items in game. Or for example change ore compositions. Reducing the supply of zydrine and megacyte in general buffed NS incomes for miners.

And what really matters is relative rewards or benefits, not absolute benefits. So if increasing NS incomes is problematic (e.g. the anomaly buff causing wide spread inflation) then nerfing HS incomes would be an alternative approach.

Okay, lets walk through the effects here. So, income is going down, "If everyone in highsec is earning less" this means that the demand schedule will shift "inwards" or to the "left" if you are looking at a graph of the demand schedule and given that supply is not going to change this means a reduction in prices in a competitive market.

Sticky prices has a number of possible reasons (note price stickiness is nominal, not real, in other words price stickiness is where prices due not change as a result of inflation), one is that the market is not competitive. Firms facing little or no competition rarely lower prices. Another reason might be contractual obligations such as labor contracts which force employers to hold wages constant even when market conditions would normally lead to lower wages. Another argument for sticky prices are menu costs. With menu costs the notion is that changing your menu to reflect higher input prices thus higher output prices is costly, so you'll put off such a change as long as possible.

Further, price stickiness is usually downward stickiness--i.e. prices are resistant to moving downward due to say a change in demand as noted above*. Price stickiness rarely applies to upward changes. The significance of this is that if prices stay above their market clearing level, then you have excess supply. That is you'll have more goods on the market than consumers are willing to buy (a glut if you will) and then firms will start to shut down, fire people, etc. because even though prices suggest they should be making a certain amount of goods consumers will not be buying them. This is how macro economists explain things like unemployment and business cycles.

My issue is I am not convinced prices are "sticky" in Eve. Mainly because most markets are competitive, there are no labor contracts, and there are no menu costs--i.e. people aren't reluctant to change prices although people not being logged in 24/7 could mean that prices in the very short run are some what rigid. So the idea of price stickiness causing prices to rise is not a very persuasive narrative.

As for the price of PLEX you do not know what is going on with demand or supply, all that we can see is the price and quantity pairs over time. Think of a supply and demand graph, at the point of intersection you'll have a price and a quantity number. That is what we see. That tells us nothing about demand or supply.** Is it possible for prices to go up and the quantity to stay the same? Yes, if the demand schedule increases (i.e. shifts out or to the right) and supply decreases or shifts to the left. And it should be noted that in looking at eve-marketdate.com it looks like the quantity has decreased over time. This is consistent with less players selling PLEX (because there are less players in game) and possibly an increase in demand due to so much ISK being created via rat bounties (incursions and ratting in NS). This is not price gouging but the market working as intended.

*One reason I've always been a bit skeptical of the menu cost explanation is it would seem to apply symmetrically, but as noted above, price stickiness is usually meant to mean prices do not go down to help equilibrate supply and demand.

**This was the mistake Sir Robert Giffen made when he argued that sometimes demand can increase as prices increased, he was looking at equilibrium prices and quantities and noting that sometimes price went up and quantity went up. To date there has never been a Giffen good that anybody has been able to find.

1: Overhaul PI skills to include moon colonies. Max of 6planets or moons.
2: take planets and set them up where a player picks a 40x40 degree area. Make moons have 2-4-8 slots.
3: High-sec and low-sec NPCs would have claim in slots. This reduces the total number of open areas for players to stack claim.
4: SoV holders should be able to allow access to planets/moons based on standing (just like it is for stations).

5: make moon mining and PI extraction based only - move all upgrading/production should take place in outpost/new structures
6: break up the moons so one guy can't just own all the good moons in an area - this spreads the wealth out.
7: our Isk will be invested in the structures that can produce/upgrade our planet-moongoo, which should balance the risk vs reward.

I quite agree with this. Not sure how we could do LP, but maybe figure out a way for an alliance to set up an LP store...or bring in representatives from either the empire or NPCs associated with their space (e.g. for Branch it would be something like the Caldari state or Guristas). Just an idea off the top of my head, so don't kill me over it. I realize there could be serious possible issues with this. The nice thing is that LP would work as an ISK sink. Sink enough ISK via this system and heck even PLEX prices might come down.

Yeah, I thought of that too, but was too lazy to edit my post. Anoms could still be the primary source of LP, but now it would be an ISK sink. Or missions...either way.