People will pay for the experience of stomping someone. This will lead to blatant stratification of most game ecosystems roughly along the players’ real-life disposable income levels. As this happens, the “base” product gets to be seen as less and less valuable, which is kind of what’s been going on here. Add to that all the other base products out there to play with, and you’ve got an exodus pretty much set up to happen. That’s just what the money does with it. Of course, everyone learns that they’re prey pretty fast, and when you offer the not-prey version of the game for $$$$$$… yeah. Market segmented, solo roaming for most people becomes no-poors-online, which in turn seriously limits demand (or: the number of people willing and able to pay to play that aspect of the game is inversely proportional to the price of that aspect of the game, which is terribad for your game if your game design depends on a really big playerbase).
It does not touch what the skill and power creep do to more direct PvP aspects of the game less and less inviting to newbies over time. So you walked uphill to school and back both ways in the snow. In places where people can freely engage you, that hill has gotten a lot higher for anyone going to the metaphorical school today, even if CCP has gotten rid of a lot of the snow.
That’s because one reason this “fairness” (and related sportsmanship) concept happened was because you’d have limited numbers of players, and people eventually figure out something’s un-fun, thereby making the time spent playing of negative entertainment value for the serially frustrated, which in turn means the serially frustrated player goes and finds something else to do which holds non-negative entertainment value.
CCP has at least felt out some of the above over the years, and that’s why we got PLEX, skill trading, and alphas. They know paying to be someone’s chewtoy doesn’t fly like it used to, so they’ll offer the experience for free in hopes that they can keep space alive. It’s also why they’re messing with AI that behaves more human-a lot of the human players who could be (and used to be) content don’t really want to be anybody else’s content any more.
Measuring the inflation rate in Eve is tricky because there is no scarcity associated with in-game commodities. The only external reference is the price of 30 days game time expressed in ISK. This has been appreciating by roughly 2%/month over the 4 years I have been playing. Worrisome but not hyper inflation. I think CCP has time and a small course correction will do the job over time. Better tools to catch and ban bots would help. The active ISK delta, which includes accounts banned for breaking the rules represents 1/3 of the ISK leaving the game in November!
Either someone needs isk fast, or they predict the market will continue to drop and not recover in the next few months.
I dont see the latter as rational, so its likely the former.
The dispersal of that PLEX to such unusual markets at such volume, in that few Citadels, would indicate its probably one org/person doing it.
Could be an attempt to scam but I cant think how.
Perhaps someone that really loves Minnie Space and refuses to trade outside it.
This is entirely possible. There are a lot of Minnie players that want to support our own fellow brown-spacers. I also sometimes dump stuff cheap for a quick buck to the benefit of my fellow duct-tapers in Rens/Hek.
Could just as well have re-packaged the PLEX, and dumped them via PLEX-Vault on a Jita alt for immediate sale for a better price. Maybe a returning player trying to raise isk, that doesnt understand the new PLEX-Vault system, and is worried about shipping them to Jita.
Anyways, get them while they are hot.
PS: No, its not me. Im nowhere near that space rich. I am almost certainly the poorest of all GD regulars, by faaaaaar.
I’ve lost count of the number of the things that fanbois were 100% SURE were never going to happen, so sir, not in a million years, only for it to be announced 6 months later, and the exact same fanbois will hail it as an inspired decision by the Devs. But then that is the nature of the fanboi.
The money supply is, if anything, growing more slowly.
Edit:
Here are the the growth rates in the ISK Supply based on the date in the MERs
Here are some graphs I uploaded in another thread about the money supply. First up is daily growth rate in the money supply from August-November 2017 using a 4 day rolling average.
Next the growth rate for the period August 2012-November 2012,
Now the money supply growth rate in the 2017 period does have some higher values (several observations above 0.2%) there are also quite a few negative growth rates that offset that as well. And in 2012, notice there are far fewer negative values (7) whereas in 2017 there are 4 maybe 5 times as many negative ISK growth observations. And the overall growth in the ISK supply from August 1, 2012 through November 30, 2012 is 8.55% whereas the growth rate for the same months in 2017 is 4.14%.
Really, the idea that there is too much ISK flowing into the in game economy is not supported by any facts at all.
Oh it did, I dropped 3 of my omega subs because they can now be used for free, leaving me with just one omega to pay for. Which is great, more money for other things.
Over the past 5 years the amount of ISK in the game has roughly doubled and the price of 30 days gametime denominated in ISK has roughly tripled. The ISK to PLEX rate of change is averaging about 2% per month - not hyper inflation and not reflected in the rest of the economy because PLEX is the only scarce commodity. Velocity has improved since the introduction of Citadels - more ISK is being put to work but it would be nice if CCP Quant could give us a GDP chart so we can track growth in the money supply against growth in the economy.
In a real economy banks create money by issuing loans that are, for the most part, reinvested in the economy. In Eve, CONCORD prints money - seemingly without any reserve requirement and a large component of the sink in most months is the active ISK delta - presumably people leaving the game or getting banned for RMT or other infractions.
I don’t think the economy is going to get into serious trouble anytime soon but CCP can make small, barely noticeable changes now to forestall problems or they can make large, disruptive changes later.
There is no other indication of major inflation and PLEX are both superior goods and CCP has been increasing the number of services associated with PLEX. That is, an increase in demand is not indicative of inflation. And one has to ask how much has the real economy grown as well. If the real economy has grown by 5x then we’d expect little or no inflation.
As for GDP…look at production. Assuming that the numbers are daily production, subtract destruction and it should give you a good idea. Doing this for November production less destruction grew 8.7%.
The change in ISK on a daily basis is relatively small lately, like on the magnitude of 0.03%. Earlier it was growing faster on a daily basis. With a 0.03% growth rate we’d expect doubling to take longer than 5 years.
That is one way, and only by having the central bank changing reserve requirements which is a bit unusual. In the U.S. the Fed typically influences the money supply by open market operations via buying and selling of government securities.
No. In EVE players create ISK via bounties, yes paid by CONCORD, but the ISK is not created without ratting. As such ISK is more like a type of commodity backed currency but instead of a commodity it is the players time. With a commodity people are incentivized to look for more of the commodity backing the currency when prices are going down, deflation. And when prices are going up, then they are disincentivized. Similarly as a players time becomes more or less valuable relative to the purchasing power of ISK they are incentivized to rate more or less all other things constant. Monetary theorists has likened currencies like bitcoin to synthetic commodity currencies, IMO…ISK is the same.
People have been banging on this “too much ISK flowing into the game/inflation is a problem” but looking at the pirce indices it is not so clear at all. Especially the CPI. From 2012 till about 2017 or so, the CPI was trending down. The MPI while going up and down, was pretty much back to 100 by 2017. The PPI was decreasing from about mid 2012 till about 2017.
Really, there is very little indication of runaway inflation.
I just started Alpha after playing multiple trials in the past. The fact is, not many brand new players are going to be heading straight to nullsec with a BS to farm rats for hours. I’d expect that from a returning vet maybe.
Most people that try out the game are just trying to get a handle on the systems and mechanics and interface. Then they are told later on that a Titan or BS aren’t the “best ship for everything”, as would happen in other MMO’s with a sort of “skill tree”.
Although I think it’s kind of odd that a BS semi AFK farming rats for hours is considered fine for the alpha player. But a mining barge or better skills at industrials is considered off limits? I’m interested in the logic behind it.
In the real world you exchange labor for money but, while your labor may create wealth, it does not create money - that comes from customers or taxpayers depending where you work. If CONCORD taxed players and corporations to raise the funds it pays as bounties we would have a sustainable system.
When a bank writes a loan, it creates a deposit on behalf of the customer and the bank only needs to hold a small percentage of it’s deposit value in reserve - most of the money lent is created out of thin air. If the Federal Reserve wants to loosen credit, it will buy government bonds and deposit the payment into reserve accounts - allowing banks to write more loans. This is government printing money and can cause problems if it gets out of control. To tighten credit the Fed will sell bonds and remove payment from reserve accounts reducing banks ability to lend.
I wish we could see the stockpiles. Production has been outpacing destruction as far back as I can see and the conventional wisdom says the game simply isn’t growing fast enough to absorb that output. Same with ISK - how much is sitting idle in wallets?
