What happens is, people see a poco, they use a poco, they realize how high the taxes are, and think to themselves, this is going to be profitable, or why should i pay taxes when i could own the poco. They take down the poco, put one up, and then realize they’re getting a measly amount. But at that point they’ve already committed so it makes no sense to take it down or anything.
Again, when someone came to attack my poco, I almost felt relieved, thinking I could sell it to them cheap and get some money out of it.
In effect if you want to run PI from those planets long term, then taking the POCO’s that you use makes sense.
In my opinion the only value that the POCO’s have for the players who have these massive POCO empires is that they are war magnets and get the type of combat they have wet dreams over. From my point of view Omega and Friends is linked to the war deckers for that reason above anything else. I always thought he was linked to PIRAT for that reason alone.
If CCP cares about money sinks, then why did they invent citadels, which eliminated much of the money sink effect of sales taxes? This whole scarcity business comes back to inflation, and money sinks are a tool to combat inflation, but CCP pissed away a big one.
Inflation doesn’t just impact money, but resources too. The latter is arguably much more important in EVE, as ISK is effectively a derivative instrument since it’s not backed by anything important aside from skill books, blueprints, and taxes. We have scarcity because ships and modules are too fast and too lose, and not money.
Well, DC, that’s an interesting response. But I’m not sure I agree that “ISK is effectively a derivative instrument since it’s not backed by anything important aside from skill books, blueprints, and taxes”. Enough ISK can buy almost anything - minerals, ships, modules, even PLEX to renew your sub, at which point it becomes something with RL value, at least in a limited substitution way.
Then again, my major was Political Science & International Relations, not Economics. So, rather than assert that you are wrong, I’m going to ask you to please explain a little further.
EDIT
According to the guy with the Youtube channel “How Money Works”, what we have in EVE now is Stagflation, not just Inflation. I’m not sure he really understands, but I’m interested to see how you respond to that idea. You seem to have a pretty good grasp of what’s going on here.
The thing about ISK is that it’s essentially just another resource in the game, like Veldspar or Helium Isotopes or whatever. We create ISK like we create all other resources. It’s just that it’s a much more convenient resource, so we use it as a currency (it holds little value in itself, backed by only some underlying assets like the skill books and blueprints I mentioned, hence its largely derivative nature). It’s not an actual currency, because it doesn’t have the attributes of such (like being issued and controlled by a central regulatory body of some sort).
The value of ISK is effectively pegged to the instrinsic value of all of the goods it can buy. That’s why ISK inflation (in my opinion) is just not that important. We can have 10 times as much ISK in the game, and everything will be 10 times more expensive, but nothing would really change because all other gameplay elements would be intact. Think of it this way: ships can cost 10 times as much, but their component minerals would also cost 10 times as much, so miners would be making 10 times as much and wouldn’t be any poorer).
Resource inflation, on the other hand, has a direct impact on all gameplay. Too many resources means that players are less inclined to take risks to compete for more (e.g. starting wars with their neighbors to take over their territory). Too many resources also devalue risk as a whole, because losing a ship just isn’t that important if you can open the market and buy another one from many thousands of the same one being offered in your system. That’s the “stagnation” part being referenced in your post.
Ah, yes, I see what you mean. While we can buy them for ISK, they are issued only in exchange for RL money, be it dollars, kroner, shekels, euros or whatever. Therefore one could argue that inflation within the game has no effect on PLEX; it may change the value at which they trade within the game, but not their actual issuance in exchange for RL currency. And only CCP can create them.
One final thing to note is that the value of PLEX is, at its core, tied to an [(effort * risk) / time] variable compared against the purchasing power of the real-life cost of the PLEX. It’s kind of an oversimplified way of looking at it, but that’s essentially what it is. The “invisible hand” of sorts decided that, say, 50 hours of high-sec Veldspar mining is equivalent to $20 (which in itself is worth different amounts in different areas of the world in terms of purchasing power), or maybe 4 hours of null-sec ratting with a super. Everything in EVE’s economy ties back to the cost of PLEX somehow.
The true currency of our lives is time. When you’re on your deathbed and, in the immortal words of Jethro Tull, “you snatch your rattling last breaths, with deep-sea diver sounds”, you don’t wish for more money, you wish for more time.
We sell the time of our lives for the wherewithal to live , and that’s the tragedy of exploitative capitalism, but that’s another topic altogether.
Similar principle behind the Basic Attention Token associated with the Brave Browser.
Your attention and your ability to conduct resources via it is valuable in every domain.
Ignorance of your individual value is an element required for exploitation.
Just an update into my investigations into Poco and the Gantry gangster’s
Jita holdings took out the customs offices in a sys close to jita with 2 large backup fleets .
That was a massive effort and over kill , just for a group of Poco that don’t make much money and again null involvement was in evidence and no it wasn’t hoping for a fight it was a deterrent .
