EVE General Discussion

@CCP_Diagoras has been putting up some interesting statistics.

Here's information on the faucets:

Month of February:
Sell-to-NPC from Wormhole items - 10.43 tn
Incursion Rewards - 8.57 tn
Missions - 2.47 mission; 2.37 tn time = 4.84 tn
Insurance Payouts - 3.37 - 1.62 (payout to purchase) = 1.75 tn +
NPC bounties - 32.1 Tn

TOTAL: 57.69 tn

Total purchased from NPCs = 13 tn (so, without including all the sinks hat drops it down to 44.69 tn)

Assuming 500,000 active accounts (10% rule, in prime time MMOs see about 10% of people online; 50,000 people online means about 500,000 active accounts), that means there was a 89.4 million isk added for every active account in the game last month. This does NOT include ships/mods exploding, taxes, clones, ammo expenditures.

As a reference for total economic activity: total market transaction 297.4 tn; contracts 42.6 tn (340 tn)


I admit this is a rough number, but 89.4 million isk per account for a month (not even including all the sinks) is not a lot. Especially when anyone with decent skills can generate that much in an hour if they so choose.

I find it really hard to accept that isk faucets are extreme or even problematic, especially since wealth accumulation (either stuff sitting in your wallets or in your hangers) does not circulate through a banking or investment system and contribute to "currency velocity".

tl;dr - If the amount of ISK entering the Eve economy outpaces the productive output of the Eve economy, prices will go up - more people will stop generating ISK and go do something industrial. ... this is how it should work, but there are some artificial constructs that distort normal behaviors.

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First thing one has to do to understand the Eve economy is dismiss the notion that ISK is anything at all like real world fiat money. RL fiat notes are backed by debt. Eve fiat notes are not backed by debt. Eve ISK takes time and effort to produce. It can not be printed, (unless of course someone were to find an exploit.) Although ISK is a fiat money, it is not redeemable and it is money because CCP has made it easy to use as money, it functions and behaves more like a commodity money than a fiat debt money.

Next thing to do is get a grasp of what inflation is versus what its symptoms are. The word "inflation" has more than one use. One use discusses the amount of something, and another use speaks to symptoms. Most people are familiar with the usage that describes symptoms, "the general increase in prices." from your Econ 101 text books. The other usage is an verb to describe a behavior of the monetary base. Imagine all the money as a balloon. When there is more money, the balloon -Inflates-. It increases, an increase in the monetary base.

Symptoms of inflation are price increases, price increases are not the cause of price increases. How much more money is in the system - the rate at which it changes relative to the overall productive capacity of the system as a whole - is what causes inflationary or deflationary price changes.

If the amount of production is fixed, but the supply of money increases, the prices will go up. More money chasing around the same amount of stuff - the relative value of the money goes down. Now, if productivity increases at a rate faster than the inflation of the money supply, prices will go down. More stuff being chased around by less money - the relative value of money goes up.

In Eve, we generally notice that, as new players enter the game, they not only can generate more ISK, they also become more productive on the industrial side of the game. That means that each new player has the potential to generate equally ISK and productivity, keeping relative values somewhat in balance.

A couple of other things that are a check on price increases in Eve are that ISK generating activities are also goods (production) generating activities. Salvage, minerals, modules. No player has to produce these things. This keeps those prices lower than they other wise would be if they could only be sourced from activities that do not also generate ISK. (To me this is bad, but there are merits to it as well as price stability in some sectors of the economy can attest.)

There are also quite a few things in Eve that are sold and redeemed at a fixed price, skill books, rents, tags, some LP items, etc. This makes pricing of some items immune to changes in the money supply.

Now is all of this good or bad for Eve? It depends on your perspective. If fewer things were sourced from shooting rats, the prices of those things would go up. This would encourage some people to stop shooting rats and instead go produce those things. This would add more diversity to the game and provide players more options. It would mean that for a time some prices would go up, but since there would also be less ISK entering the economy, because those people choose to do something else, prices would again find stability at a new equilibrium. No longer based upon false price caps and homogenization of activity, but more inline with what the monetary base were signaling.

As to the OP wanting numbers, good luck. CCP does not release comprehensive numbers with enough regularity or enough detail, to be very useful. If you have five year charts of prices of raw materials, certain things are easy to see. But do not expect anyone with such data to just hand it over. This is after all, Eve.

PLEX Volume and Cost Graph

Look at the price from March 2010 to November 2011, you see a flat line in PLEX availability. Look at the start int he price rise in March 2011 until now, a flat line in PLEX availability has led to a steady increase in price.

The supply of PLEXes is very closely tied to the price.


Instead of Incursions being the cause, you would almost have an easier time convincing me of some fairy tale Rich Russian Oligarch who funded this alliance by buying PLEX with his own cash. His leaving the game would result in the complete and utter collapse of that alliance overnight.

Although it might not make a big difference to you, this guy leaving the game would mean a vastly decreased supply of PLEX in the game.

And, if that happened, CCP might be motivated to find ways of increasing the supply of PLEX into the game, things like offering discounts on bulk purchases or something.

But, hey, just a fairy tale. Nothing like that has happened in Eve in the last few months. So, keep raging about Incursions.

sOME Inflation is always better then any deflation... Reason why 12% inflation isn't that bad in Eve is because no one ever should live on their retirement savings IT FORCES THEM TO KEEP ON PLAYING & EARNING NOT SITTING ON THEIR ASSES LETTING SKILLS GO UP WHILE DOING NOTHING

But it is not printed on demand, someone has to go out and get it. Someone has to expend time and effort, generate labor, to produce ISK. ISK represents labor expended, work done in the past. Fiat debt money represents labor yet to be done, work, time and effort in the future. This is a significant difference. Although ISK and Federal Reserve notes are money, because an authority makes it so, (fiat - let it be so), one is a money based on past labor, and one is a money based on future labor. This gives ISK different characteristics than the money we are used to dealing with in the real world.

As for the sovereignty, public sector, tax/sink statements, no offense intended, that's all a bit of loose sophistry to me, so will ignore it as it has no bearing on what is being discussed.

I AM NOT IN FAVOR OF PENSIONS IN EVE (or other MMO's) AT ALL
That is why 12% inflation in a MMO is a better thing then any deflation
Tell me how pensions in this game would be good? Sorry but Eve is not RL
You planing on retiring in Eve & sit on your butt??? To bad old man I wanna force you outta your POS rocking chair in hi sec to make more iskies

This morning the price of trit was 0.03 isk away from hitting 5 isk per unit and all minerals are rising. The sell price of a drake has risen by 10 million in the last 3-4 months.

Inflation is now a problem and it started not long after incursions were added. We simply have too much isk entering the system and not enough exiting.

There's depressions and then there's a free market, learn the difference, in a free market civilisations and currencies compete and fall all the time but no one is pulling the strings behind so it's a lot less destructive.

Doesn't the EVE economy come broken, as money is getting made every second by mission runner sand ratters and such.

Depressions come part &parcel with free markets that is why market regulations are necessary to make sure it does not run completely amuck with monopolies and other nefarius manipulations which cause excessive overheating & freezing. With freedom comes responsibility and the market by itself has no consciousness