what if the option to sub with plex is removed and only the other uses for plex remain
will ccps income remain unchanged
You are again applying additional conditions of your own submission.
I did not say that a person might not sub and plex separate accounts, only stated the fact that they do not need to do both per account, and thus the two sub models are antagonistic.
If im subbed, I dont need plex.
If Im plexed, I dont need a sub.
If I have no intention to pay money to CCP, I will not pay money to CCP.
but thats exactly what youre doing
my point is youre talking in absolutes and making rules as you see them without considering all the variables
They have no competition. None whatsoever. If they had, EVE would have died quite a while ago.
And while EVE is still around, the health of the overall game is in a poor state, with active player numbers on a steady downfall.
okayâŚ
i guess i need to point out, that subbing via isk (through plex) is the worst option for CCP now, because they have to provide 30 days of gametime for it.
for isk worth 30 days of time, they have to provide access to the game and spend money on energy, cpu, database storage, and bandwidth. itâs the only option that actually actively costs them money, reducing the income from the 20 bucks paid for such plex. all other options are purely digital, which cost CCP money ONCE for creation and then they can sell it over and over again.
vOv whatever, though.
people will learn, adapt and realize that the amount of players is less important than the type of players. anyone claiming that âmore players is always better than less playersâ is likely an expendable one himself. sorry. itâs simply not true. quality matters.
it is obvious that they want to get rid of most people who only leech 30 days of servertime off of the money of others, and there is no going back. this thread has no point, because besides throwing people bones to shut them up, CCP will do nothing to lower the price, unless it somehow goes out of wack for some reason.
which is why they stopped people subbing for plex
and the plex market is now driven by players who buy plex with isk purely to spend on the nes store
lolâŚ
No, itâs simply shortsighted.
Everything that makes a Plex more attractive - doesnât even matter how often it is used - increases the potential income generated by Plex sales.
And that is exactly the point why it doesnât matter in the first place for what Plex are used as long as every option they offer is used sufficiently to justify the development and maintenance.
By the way, your âargumentâ would also be valid for every usage that the user hasnât bought the Plex himself for with real money.
It should be obvious that without those, there wouldnât be many reasons to buy for real money and sell for Isk left, resulting in reduced income for CCP.
And I say it again: CCPâs income through Plex is achieved by people buying those for real money for whatever purpose. As long as this transactions is attractive enough, they will earn money from it. To keep it attractive, you have to keep up the demand by creating enough attractive possible uses.
you donât realize that youâre not thinking this through, right?
CCP makes tons of money through skins, extractors, etc. see also their financial statement from 2016. an increasing plex price also means less people buy â â â â with plex and rather pay real money. their whole marketing is geared towards attracting Whales with loose wallets, and if it wasnât working, they wouldnât be doing it.
sheesh, pleaseâŚ
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subbing with isk is the worst option from CCPâs perspective.
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and who buys them
players buy them
the same players who sub their accounts with plex
the ones you think have no value and are low quality
if they stop playing they stop buying skins and skill extractors or skill injectors which drive the extractor market
Iâm still not convinced this is entirely true.
For once, we donât know how much game time contribute to Plex usage and if there would be sufficient demand without that being used.
Second, the option to keep up playtime via Plex must always (at least for the foreseeable future) seem viable as itâs a decisive factor of what makes Plex such a sought-after item â 
sure, if we ignore the alpha players, then thatâs correct. i donât, because it would be wrong. 
the f2p crowd loves buying crap from cash shops, which is how the model can be sustained. and the subbed ones too, of course. the rest leaves, or doesnât.
i donât understand. itâs a simple fact that every other item has less expenses, because for every other item the expenses are a one time thing only, ignoring the occasional bug or badly applied skin, which arenât the norm. plex for sub isnât the carrot anymore. thatâs just still an idea in the heads of the older generations, but the newer generations (will) grow up learning that it takes a significant effort to sub via isk, especially because the price will just go up.
The #1 PLEX sink is SP farms. Those are subbed with PLEX and they use a lot of skill extractors, which are also bought with PLEX.
Quick math off the top of my head is 500 PLEX for base sub, + 2*485 PLEX (870 PLEX) for MCT. Thatâs already 1470 PLEX every month just to generate SP. Then you need 4 extractors a month per character, 12 extractors total. I believe 10 extractors go for 1100 PLEX, thatâs 110 PLEX per extractor, so another 1320 PLEX for the extractors.
In total thatâs 1470 + 1320 PLEX = 2790 PLEX every month for one SP farm account. Enough PLEX to sub 5 1/2 legitimate players every month that are actually playing the game as compared to logging in once a month to extract, never undocking.
Now keep in mind that SP farms scale very well and people running those usually run them on tens to hundreds of accounts.
Now the real question isnât how many PLEX are used for game time, itâs how many PLEX are used by active players for game time.
your analysis indicates that players who sub with plex are providing a large amount of income for ccp and sp farms supported with plex may be their biggest income driver
this seems to contradict yellow parasol assertions
And how many Plex are used for other purposes.
The point of the carrot is that itâs not easily achievable. Which for sub by Plex has been the case for several years now, at least for younger and less engaged players. But overall it must be achievable somehow or it wouldnât work and Iâm pretty sure that Plex for game time is still the biggest contributor to Plex usage.
And by the way, even those âone time effortâ things do have costs attached:
- you have to keep the NES running
- you have to keep the stock fresh by adding and removing stuff
- you have to to advertisement and special sales
- in case of the occasional update to shaders (or something similar) or ship hull, you have to regression test your ever growing number of shiny skins
and probably some more thingsâŚ
I wouldnât be surprised if, due to the number of people involved on both sides, the costs for the NES including all related contents would be higher than the server costs - in relative terms between revenue and expenses, of course.
I doubt that there are many âf2pâ players that donât pay for Omega but for cosmetic items (beyond the Plex that they got as bonus to the more slots and weapons).
The people who buy the PLEX for cash provide income for CCP. The people who use ISK to buy the preciously bought PLEX simply consume a now existing resource. A player PLEXing their account generates no additional income for CCP. In some cases they may well be creating content by being an active player which is good. In other cases they may be inactive characters such as SP farmers.
Are these inactive characters bas though? Higher PLEX price means more ISK for your cash, making PLEX more attractive. On the other hand it also makes it harder for a player to PLEX their accoutn now and then which can lead to disgruntled players.
Bottom line is that PLEX is a nice to have commodity introduced to combat RMT. Itâs great to be able to PLEX an account, but this should be a nice bonus from playing the game, not necessarily a goal in game in itself.
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How many twists did you need to come up with that strawman conclusion based on what I wrote?
so each sp farmer is consuming potentially as many plex as 550 actual players per month
are you gonna tell me that has no affect on ccps income
Newer generations will not waste time trying to reach a carrot they canât reach easily within a month. people will tell them not to burn themselves, as they do now. the higher the price goes, the longer it will take for new players to reach a state that makes it achievable relatively easily. Throw away the old way of thinking about it.
No. Creating a skin has the cost of a dev sitting there creating a skin, or the cost of pressing a button to create one procedurally.
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you have to keep the NES running
yes, sure, but thatâs not attached to the creation of the items. the more items there are, the lower the percentage of contribution necessary from each item. and these costs are LOW. so low, anyone can run such a service thanks to the bazillion of services allowing you to run your own personal shop. thatâs how low it is. -
you have to keep the stock fresh by adding and removing stuff
i donât see this as seperate point. this is covered already, as stuff needs to be created someone. digital items have a one time cost. when theyâre done, theyâre done. bugs happen, of course, but arenât the norm. -
you have to to advertisement and special sales
that doesnât add any additional cost. you could argue opportunity cost (as in, this ad takes the spot of another ad), but thatâs silly, because they can just add another one to the chain the launcher scrolls through.
When you look at it your way, that might be the case.
the NES could literally run on a seperate six core 60 bucks intel cpu from years ago, stuffed with lots of old, cheap ram. all it needs to be taking care of is delivering bytes to the client, and sending bytes to some other machine handling transactions, plus waiting for co firmation of said transactions.
the NES itself, on its own, isnât actually anything modern low end machines couldnât handle. weâre long past the point where itâs non-trivial to run such a server. it shows you stuff and handles transactions, or more likely, just routes them to a different machine. you get that for cheap, or âfreeâ, as a service on the internet.