So I’ve been hearing a lot of rumours about how inflation is crazy in EVE, and at some point I also believed in it. I often hear people say “EVE economy have an inflation of 50% every month”, or “A rifter only costs 3000 isk back in 2005”. However, recently I begin having doubts about this claim as I’ve been observing EVE for around 2 years, before I even started playing this game. It doesn’t appear to me that there are any crazy inflations, but I am not sure if its applying to all items or specific items.
Can anyone please describe the situation of inflation in EVE? Do I constantly lose money when I am not buying things? Do items and resources keep getting more and more so their real value decreases?
There seems to be a general consensus that slow consistent inflation is good and healthy for an economy. Because eve is s video game and there are additional economic complications that come from that such as meta changes in game and massive economic events suxh as global wars happening much more frequently in game than in real life, it was generally understood that a healthy inflation would be higher in game than in real life. Historically there were long periods in eve where it seems that inflation was consistent and healthy but higher than what would be considered healthy in a real economy.
In around 2017 though the economy started to get fairly out of balance. This was caused by several things but foremost among them was the massive isk/hr and subsequent industrial potential of rorqual mining. Umbrellas made these fleets essentially unkillable, and they were pulling in an amazing amount of ore. Some prices, such as for minerals and ships did not inflate during this time, but other commodities such as plex and sought after modules entered a period of accelerated inflation for several years. I remember being a mewish player during this period and plexing my account for the first time for 2.3billion isk.
Recently ccp acknowledged that this whole period was a mistake and the economy was going downhill fast. They deliberately put the economy into a state of deflation. Prices of modules, implants, and other non mineral based goods have mostly been falling during this period, while prices of various ships have increased by 200-500% The playerbase has mostly been upset with these changes, arguing that they either were not neccessary or were not implemented well.
At this point ccp feels that they have successfully undone the worst of the damage of rorqual era, amd they are looking to put the economy back into a healthy state for long term. Time will tell if this is successful.
Eve previously entered a phase of hyper inflation which felt at its worse prior to the sale of CCP to PA.
Firstly when looking at the Eve ecconemy you should generally ignore ISK. ISK is a fauceted currency that can be devalued or up valued by the flick of a switch from the game Devs & often is.
Instead we look at a consumer price index, a shopping basket of goods then compare it to the real life $ or the price of PLEX. What we put in the basket is up to us depending on the activity we wish to value. They too can have their value changed but the Devs are more cautious with such changes.
I myself tend to use only a handful of items which include PLEX as I do not subscribe to this game, Titans and supers as they are the strategic backbone of the fleet war game.
Supers 4 years ago were trading for as little as $40, they are now trading for over $200, titans previously traded for less than $800 they are now trading around the $1k mark.
As such Eve is not in inflation as of current, but the rumor is that tackling the hyper inflation with poverty patching is costing the Devs too much $ and that they may chicken out and allow the game IP to hyper inflate again.