EVE General Discussion

You definitely can: if you like to fly small cheap ships and do small cheap stuff. I personally cannot make myself care about killing and losing such stuff.... Too small risk and cost. Too low reward.

ISK price of PLEX has doubled in one year.

All things considered, I think this is a very bad indicator for the health of the game.

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Some may argue this incentives more cash for PLEX purchases, but I dont believe that:
a) those players prepared to pay cash need playtime first, before ISK, meaning they will buy cheaper gametime rather than PLEX.
b) those players prepared to pqy for both PLEX for resale as ISK, as well as playtime, are paying almost two subs per month just for one account.

The cause of PLEX price doubling in one year, is likely an intermix of:
i) The longterm consolidation of ISK wealth by super rich entities by buying up and stockpiling PLEX for years.
ii) Nerfs/restrictions to multiboxing activities.
iii) Less player retention of new players whom are unwilling/unable to sub or find themselves incapable of earning enough ISK to afford the 1.2bill current price ingame.

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It is rational to deduce, that the higher the PLEX price, the less new/returning players this game will retain, meaning less content/growth and a higher demand on existing PLEX among persisting players, albeit with less PLEX introduction, because new/returning players cba to pay for both a sub and a PLEX for ISK inorder to play + sustain play.

PLEX price in ISK is too far exceeding the price/effort of earning it, especially for newer players.
This invariably leads to an incestupus market where PLEX s5ockpilers will have to compete, by price reduction, with each other.

That would be well and fine, but thier means of production and ISK generation by these entities supercede their need for PLEX, except as an investment. Meaning sale of their stockpiled PLEX is incidental and only when necessary.

PLEX price in ISK has doubled in one year. Ask yourself, why? And who profits?
CCP certainly benefits from both purchases, and hence does not regulate the market.

The PLEX concept, ingenious as it was, has been usurped by player PLEX stockpiling/retention, by sufficiently ISK affluent entities. As an extreme example, assuming a constant rate of PLEX introduction, if I buy 1000 PLEX off the market, I immediately create a demand vs the supply I detracted to make an immediate profit on the fraction of PLEX I reintroduce before others can adjust their sell orders.

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EVE is famous for the concept that you can make your way in this Universe.
Inorder to play EVE, you must either sub or PLEX.
Sub price has not changed.
PLEX price has doubled in one year.

As someone who occasionally uses PLEX to turn RL cash into ISK, I'm gonna have to vote in favor of a high market value for PLEX.

Oh Christ here we go.

Welcome back salvos, try not to incur the wrath of the powers that be.

For the purpose of this post I will refer to people buying PLEX with ISK as "poors" and people selling PLEX as "ballers"

There is no reason CCP would want to intervene. The fluctuating price of the PLEX market doesn't directly impact how much money they make.

Lets say PLEX gets so high that a bunch of poors decide to quit playing EVE. After all, they can't afford to pay for a sub that costs less than a PLEX per month in real dollars, so the only way they can keep their accounts active is to PLEX them.

Now, keep in mind that those poors don't buy that PLEX from ccp. Some baller somewhere has to buy it. That baller is more likely than not buying it in addition to their sub. Because, you see, subs are cheaper than PLEX. If you can afford to buy PLEX, you can afford your sub.

Now, those ballers that buy PLEX to turn in to ISK on a semi-regular basis are doing two things. First, they're spending more money than their sub demands. This makes them a much more attractive customer to CCP, and one CCP doesn't want to alienate. Telling people you're putting clamps on the free market doesn't increase the sale of PLEX, and it actively pisses off the people buying the largest amount of PLEX. The end result here, CCP loses money.

"But what about those poors leaving the game? Won't the reduced demand for PLEX result in less plex bought?"

No. No it won't. For, you see, there will ALWAYS be people with more time than money. There will always be poors that will do whatever it takes to PLEX their accounts. Those poors will buy PLEX, and the specific market doesn't matter. As long as PLEX remains an avenue for ballers to give CCP money in order to take ISK from poors, CCP will continue to sell PLEX just fine.

Now, what MAY happen is the resulting lack of demand naturally drives down prices, as supply of PLEX outpaces demand. If SO MANY poors quit the game over PLEX prices that it goes in to a freefall, it only serves to make that market more attractive again for new poors.

And new poors, my friend, are the best poors.

See, an old poor has a system. He knows exactly how to make exactly enough money to buy his PLEX every month. He's making that ISK through some sort of passive, grindy, or otherwise low risk activity because an old poor has spent considerable effort and skill points to enable him to do exactly that. The old poor can comfortably PLEX himself while asleep, and if he loses that ability, that system he has invested so much time in, he is far more likely to just stop playing that account than pony up some of his own hard earned money. See, the old poor has THINGS in EVE, and he needs to PLEX to use them. His inability to PLEX, to him, becomes an inability to play the game.

Anyone that complains about the ISK price of PLEX is an old poor. They have a certain system that can only support them at a certain ISK to PLEX conversion rate.

New poors, however, they don't know what the **** they're doing. They're far more likely to **** up and find themselves a couple hundred million short. They're far more likely to have to actively grind and spend lots of time doing stuff they may not like. new poors don't have ****. If a new poor loses the ability to PLEX, they're far more likely to just consider PLEXing unsustainable and pay for their sub. Once they do that, they're STILL likely to buy PLEX, as a new poor, or even a new baller sees a single PLEX as a pretty substantial sum of ISK compared to an old poor, who has a much better idea of the way costs and risk work in EVE. Old poors don't buy 5 PLEX "just this one time" to get "just this one thing" and then get it blown up the next day. New poors do.

Or, to put it simply, an old poor is highly unlikely to become a baller. A new poor is much more likely to become a baller.

CCP doesn't care about pleasing poors. They're not the ones supplying the funds. The ballers are supplying the funds, and thus CCP is chiefly interested in maintaining a system that encourages balling out of control.

That's why there are so many things to spend PLEX on now. Not only to encourage ballers to sell it to poors, but to encourage ballers to consume it themselves.

If there are so many ballers that the market floods with PLEX... guess who comes back to even it out again? Old poors. Once word hits that their largely passive PLEX farm is viable again, there they are, stabilizing the market in the other direction. After all, in their minds the account is effectively "free" for them again.

Now, with ALL this in mind, consider Alpha clones.

Alpha clones create a way for old poors to remain engaged, which makes it far more likely they'll keep track of those prices than stop paying attention and remain gone. Alpha clones also create a new breed of less efficient new poors. People that might not be able to become ballers for financial reasons, but maintain a status as sustainable poors by buying a PLEX "when they can" and enjoying omega for a month before they get back to alpha and have to grind out another one. That's a whole new class of "middle poors" that treat PLEX like an old poor, but don't actually quit the game like an old poor. That means, overall, more consistant PLEX sales for CCP even if the ISK price of PLEX doesn't move as a result.

As for the actual ISK price of PLEX? It doesn't really matter. What matters is the balance of old poors to new ones, the number of ballers that keep on ballin', and the free market fluctuation of the PLEX market keeps that in check quite naturally.

The fact is that PLEX costs doubled in fall of 2014.

This was a substantial change with substantial repercussions.

The alpha/omega clone project is a good attempt by CCP to rectify the deleterious effects of this.

It is much, much harder for newer players to sustain themselves ingame today, than ever before.
The "old" players have had the benefit of far less cost to do so for years on end.

Yes, they deserve it, as a sort of "veteran" privilege.
But it also means they have been able to build an economic, account and ISK base under circumstances far more favorable to them, in eariler iterations of the game and with cheaper PLEX throughout. Not to mention the added advantage of profiteering onexploitable CCP changes over the years as well as associated bugs/oversights before they where corrected.

As anectodal, in fall of 2014, I could sustain two accounts + some 500mill spending cash with PLEX by actively running DEDs while present in my free time, and continually mining on an alt whilst working IRL, per month.

It was tough, but manageable. I felt pretty happy with that.
Now, this is no longer possible. The profits from both these acrivities are nowhere near sufficient.

Compared to established/connected players, my income is and was peanuts, but new players income today is as small as ever, yet cost of PLEX is doubled.

Perhaps Im doing it wrong,and I certainly regret some decisions I made, but true vet players need to understand how significant the doubling of PLEX price is to the operation costs of newer players.

There are posters in this thread whom state they can s4ill PLEX 4 accounts, easily.
This is u thinkable to a newer player today. Obviously not to say they should be able to compete with the income of an established vet, but because the cost of achieving and sustaining their accounts is now more than twice of that which it was for vets in their own age.

Vets had the benefit of a golden age of cheap PLEX with which to sustain multiple accounts, and more i portantly, skill them up so as to leverage their productivity.

Now, it costs more than twice as much, in terms of ISK, per account.

For the good of te game, I truly hope the proposed alpha/omega model will help reduce PLEX price, but I am cynical, and (as I argued 1yr ago when I predicted a 1.2bil price for this period) am concerned that the PLEX market is controlled by enormously wealthy ingame elements which will resist and indeed exploit an influx of new players as a function of increased demand on a supply which they control (as stockpiled PLEX).

How much did PLEX cost 1 year ago

In ISK

I double checked price history.

Ok. Granted, you are right.

It was autumn of 2014 when the price doubling occurred.

Ill edit my post to correct this. Not that it changes anything else relevant.

The dramatic growth and spike happened following from around 18.04.2015.

GD never change.

I had almost forgotten the incredible capacity of EVE players to subvert, obfuscate and exploit any and all proposed changes.

Kudos to the post you made in this thread and the one you linked.
I dont understand the implications quite as thoroughly as your enviably conniving mind, but I do see the overarching problems with CCPs proposal as you poke holes in.