EVE General Discussion

CCP should have stuck to their plans with the Carrier nerf - too many cry baby Carrier pilots threatened to unsub but they probably were PLEXing their accounts anyway...

Sometimes there is a mistake so blantant in someone's post they accidentally reveal that they don't actually know what they are talking about. This is a case in point. You can't "afk" a carrier and haven't been able to since the introduction of Fighter Squadrons.

"AFKing" Drones ships (mostly vni's and ishtars) is bad, but only on the principle of "you should have to be at your keyboard to earn isk via combat PVE". When you could afk carriers and people were afking ishtars all over the place the money supply was fine.

FIGHTER SQUADRONs from carriers and supers are indeed the problem (before fighter squadrons, economy is fine, after fighter squadrons, disaster) and CCP chickened out on fixing that problem. But it helps to actually know something about the activity and methods people use BEFORE posting.

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There wasn't enough people using carriers and supers for ratting to raise that much of a fuss. The fuss came from people's aversion to the idea that a PVE situation could cause a ship to be changed in a way to makes it lose a lot of utility in PVP.

I'm very much in favor of fighter squadrons being nerfed into the ground and honestly don't care about the loss of PVP power, but it's important to know the real reason why people feel the way they do rather than pretending it's about something else.

You have to remember what group is most organized, and motivated to maintain this new null-sec faucet . There are many RL examples where a tiny minority can dictate public policy via lobbying and contacts. Also look who controls the CSM. The majority of the player base, the casual player, (still true, though CCP's policies over the last few years have certainly changed the ratio) are currently completely unrepresented by any voice in the Eve community. Further, CCP has demonstrated over the years that any voice from the casual player base is at best, ignored, at worst, censored or banned.

So CCP implemented a nerf to a gifted ISK faucet, and that nerf, as you said, is not nearly enough.
Supercarrier players will now go from 260M ticks, to maybe 180 M ticks. Big deal.

Plex prices are up 29% in the past 3 months.
They are up 23% in the past 2 months.
And those numbers are irrelevant to CCP.

CCP loves the laissez faire, libertarian economy, and they really don't care what wealth redistribution is occurring ingame. And this is really what this is. Low sec, wh, and high sec ISK generation potential is flat, which has resulted in null sec's insatiable need for all of the economic pie continues to grow. And CCP is A-OK with this, for now.

CCP had record profits last year, due to a number of factors. One of those factors was the ability to monetize each account for a larger increase than the decrease in the subscription rate. Perhaps that trend will continue. I personally doubt it, as there is only so much blood in a stone. But I am sure CCP has other ideas on how to increase their income per player.

So bottom line, plexes can hit 4 million, or 5 million, and CCP will only pay lip service to "fixing" this. They won't get serious until they get tangible proof that their corporate income is being hurt by in-game Plex prices. And that may be months before they figure that out.

BTW, I converted virtually all my free cash into Plexes quite a few months ago, and think I have 16 or 18 left. So I plan on taking CCP to task over that time frame, or until other factors outside my control stop me. I am betting on those outside factors.

PLEX is not a luxury. It can't be. Any more than ISK is a luxury.

PLEX is a medium of exchange. More a symbol than an item. Like ISK is not an item. You see it in your wallet but you can do nothing tangible with it.

You can't fit PLEX to your ship. Or research them in a lab run. Or mine them out of rocks. They are not an item so can't be a luxury. Just another way to write ISK.

Mr Epeen

Post how much PLEX you have.

14500

At least with oldPLEX, it was a luxury, at least the ability to purchase them from the market to pay for your game time. It was not needed for any in-game activity. It was purely used to mediate RMT between two players and you could play EVE without even knowing they existed and not have it impact on your game play. ISK is not a luxury as you could not play the game if you didn't know ISK existed.

Also, from the other side, you do not need to engage in RMT to play the game and buy power or resources from other players. That is also a luxury, one CCP added as a best solution to a problem rather than as a true feature to the the game.

Now though that PLEX is used to purchase other goods and services, perhaps you are more right. nuPLEX can be used for many more things than just to mediate the exchange of virtual assets for real-world cash of other players (or vice versa), including the storage of wealth or as a currency used to buy some items from CCP. It's still pretty optional from the core game, but there is much more utility than when GTC trading was sanctioned or when PLEX was first introduced.

I tried to explain a possible solution to control PLEX pirce market: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=522666

You don't get 260m ticks all the time. Also we can't blame players for the addition of capital rats, which are intended to be killed by capitals and have capital scale bounties. We didn't do that, CCP did.



Those numbers are relevant to CCP.

CCP has a problem with plex, in that if the value of plex goes too high, people start to need to only buy the equivalent of 1 old plex or less with real cash. ie the demand curve for plex is more complex than a classic S curve because the utility alters with ingame price.



They'll do all the things they always do, wait for eu winter when they get more value (more alphas and more subs) for campaigns, and then run a campaign.



No they won't, they will be aware of when the upper bounds for plex hurts them, and they'll work to keep it in the healthy range that maximizes their income. Our only issue is we don't know what it is.

I just sold all mine. Since I'm not particularly greedy and not much into speculation, I was fine with selling the PLEX I bought at 2.5 for 3. I made a decent profit on them.

Mr Epeen