Ever increasing Plex / Skill Injector Prices

Communications Center General Discussion
21

SP farming eats a ton of plex, it was like 5 months of running a normal account when I did the numbers the other day. 500 (plex acct) + 485 (mct1) + 485 (mct2) + 1200 (extractor cost) or something like that.

the way I see it there are 3 options

  1. nerf incomes everywhere, this would be massively unpopular.
  2. lower extractor prices, reduces pressure on plex, and lowers the required margin for sp farming to turn a profit. Might actually make sense if a character sale takes 1000 plex, well a partial SP sale makes sense at much lower rates.
  3. lower plex prices. CCP hits themselves in their own wallets here.
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1 - You just need to hit the higher level sites in null, as well as Incursion LP rewards. There is no need at all to hit the legit newbro running missions in HS or the newbro in a VNI out in null who are just trying to afford daily eve life let alone plex an account.

2 - Making extractors cheaper only reduces a small fraction of the pressure on PLEX created by the thousands of SP farm alts. It by no means solves anything, merely delays the inevitable. We do NOT want SP farms to be profitable, the fact that they are is what has created this whole mess to begin with!

3 - While this may cause a small influx of PLEX to the market just as any sale does… people typically only buy PLEX when there is something they want. When they have it, they don’t buy more. Very few people will buy PLEX just to have more isk in their wallet or PLEX sitting around in their hanger/vault. This would end up causing more harm to CCP as a company than good if say 500 PLEX suddenly became worth the same as a month’s sub or god forbid - less.

The solution to this must target the profitability of SP farms by hitting demand for extractors/injectors as well as consumption of PLEX itself. One problem introduced at the introduction of extractors. The other introduced with the fluidity of nuPLEX.

Best solution to extractors is by limiting injector usage. Making an injector apply a train rate bonus based on their current SP rather than direct SP, stacking or not doesn’t matter, will reduce their usage. As long as players cannot inject dozens in a sitting for a perfect pilot and a heavy DR remains it will significantly reduce their usage. Reduced usage means market can be easily flooded to the point of no profitability. Alternatively, you could limit injector usage to Alpha level skills only, which allows new players/alts to catch up to the many T2 doctrine ships faster - as was originally promised/intended by their introduction. All while removing the ability to have perfectly injected capital pilots by consuming dozens of injectors in a single sitting.

A less subtle way of going about this would be to implement a kind of brain-pudding effect on using too many extractors in a given time. Pulling memories and experience from one’s consciousness cannot be good for your cognitive health or well being. Jokes aside, I’m saying a possible solution would be to put a space AIDS type effect on extractor usage. The more you extract in a span of time the more SP you actually need to pull to get that 500k. Giving about a month timer per.

As to the fluidity of PLEX, CCP already made it clear this is the direction they want to go to make things more understandable for their player base. There is literally nothing they can do to stop the accelerated price fluctuations this has and will forever more produce. What this means, however, is CCP must aim to keep a closer eye on all aspects effecting PLEX pricing and react quickly. So this is on them, from balancing price points in game to pricing out of game. And they cannot slack or else the whole system will run away on them.

1 Like
23

*wonders if there is a plex price complaint thread counter

Chribba?

24

LOL! :smiley:
However, as the saying goes, “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” - these wouldn’t be popping up if the issue weren’t a real problem…

25

Depending on how many hours your day has, I don’t consider this an especially good income. This can be achieved in any space - for example with: Incursions, dedicated Lvl Blitzing and specialization on burner missions, fw missions and almost all wh sites.
The difference between those activities and null-sec anomalies is not in the income, but in how simple it is to achieve.

The only preparation for your null-sec ano is a quick look into the intel channel, maybe three letters in the ratting channel and you can start. VNI/Ishtar ratting requires the unbelievable amount of maybe 20 to 30 mouse clicks per hour for maybe 50m Isk. And this can be done for as long as you want - which works in both directions: rat all day or stop at any time without any negative effect (try that in a 12 fw mission run that must be finished within 24 hours or else…).

As mentioned above, this doesn’t really work. 100m+ income (through shooting things) is possible in all spaces. And all spaces have areas which are more dangerous than other areas in the same space. A secured WH system with all entries closed and signatures watched is probably one of the safest situations you can get and can potentially turn into one of the most dangerous (where you can actually lose everything you have in that system) within minutes.

1 Like
26

I’m not talking 100m + is possible, I’m talking 200-400m a day is guaranteed in sov space pockets where all players do is rat. It’s literally an AFK factory, you look at the report they put out before they were going to nerf carriers, 2 TRILLION isk was generated in null sec due to Tech 1 cruisers, that means Vexor Navy Issues. 3 Trillion was done by carriers. And another 2.5 Trillion was done by other ships.

It’s not about “Can I make in high sec” It’s literally guaranteed in null sec. I was spending 8 hours after work grinding out 60 million isk ticks in my ishtar, 8x60m + escalation sales. It’s not that I can’t afford to pay for plex or I can’t afford to pay for injectors, I refuse to play in an environment that is spirling out of control and the bleeding isn’t being stopped. I am worth 60 billion + Isk is not a super big deal for me.

1 Like
27

The Eve economy is largely player driven. On the in-game market, PLEX is worth whatever players are willing to pay for it. In the real world, the price of PLEX has been stable as long as I have been playing the game. $19.95 buys 30 days of game time - 1 PLEX or 500 of the new microPLEX.

CCP does interfere with the Eve economy. ISK faucets add 100 trillion to the money supply each month while ISK sinks remove roughly 60 trillion. That 40 trillion increase in the money supply every month is a large part of the problem. When governments print money that currency loses value.

They can reduce the faucets, increase the sinks - or both, but status quo will result in hyper inflation - at least for “imported” goods and services like PLEX and stuff purchased from the NES. There is no scarcity of materials harvested in game so the “domestic” economy (measured by CPI) has actually been experiencing deflation for most of the past decade.

I expect a dip in PLEX prices later this year when people raise capital for Refineries but, other than that, it’s onward and upward until CCP gets the money supply under control.

2 Likes
28

I find it very insane people having 18-100 toons and not see how damaging they are for the game and complaining about plex prizes because they can not keep their 10+ accounts

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29

I have access to 68 own pocos in null, then 0% tax. I am doing p3 and p4 if i want. Is not very difficult get 1.2b monthly between the three characters in an account. I was active in 10 accounts making that. Is near impossible to do 1.8b in a month when neuts are 2 days of the week , and because the implant +5 prices, , i am letting my accounts expire.

  • My POCO customers are the same people than past months. i am getting 1/3 of taxes, iassume many of them think dont worth the hassle to do so
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This is just one of the myriad of indirect effects a doubling in PLEX price will produce. Many industrial activities will become non-viable. While the economy will no doubt adjust to such upheaval and PI products will increase in value, those that think that because they pay for a subscription they are somehow immune to the effects skyrocketing PLEX will have on our shared sandbox are kidding themselves. Players are going to leave, activity is going to drop more, and the player-driven economy is in for a rough ride.

Still, there is nothing to be done other than for CCP to get their house in order and make players want to subscribe, buy PLEX and play the game.

4 Likes
31

Or for far less ISK and training than you need for a supercarrier, you can run incursions in hisec and make 200m an hour. Just an idea.

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32

This game is goin down the Black Hawk way. Was unsubbed for almost 2 years, came back to find the game in this state. So many problems, so few solutions.

Plex prices because of to much isk ingame for different fixable reasons (no fix to it anyways),
buyable skill pts with no limit (wtf???),
connection problems every week,
totally stuck game, almost no new content in 2 (10) years while free games give it out every month,
bots everywhere and they do nothin against cause still “acc money”,
and many more problems.

If u just watched the latest Twitch streams, man I laughed my a** off. Not professional at all. Was thinking I watched a fan made stream of Bob and Fran sitting in their trailer.

Where does all the money go, definitly not into community work AND brainstorming into things like balancing the market/isk problems out.

Guess this time I leave forever … I think this game wont last much longer in a state, where u can actually call it an enjoyable game “for everyone”. They’re not communicating with the community about fixes enough and u are already wasting your time playing it right now.

May the big fishes have their fun for a bit more, till they are left alone to turn off the lights.

1 Like
33

These threads have been happening for years, people have never been satisfied with PLEX price.

34

Running incursions takes large amounts of people, in skills that take months upon months and hundreds of millions of isk to get started.

I’m not lying to you here when I’m telling you this…

Get level 5 drone skills get level 3 in each of the sub skills, get heavy faction drones, get a vni fast enough to tank, orbit 30km drop heavy drones, go afk come back 20 minutes later site is done. If you’re lucky you will of got an escalation for another 100m.

This is literally how the 2 trillion was made in tech 1 ships in their report about the economy in null sec/sov space.

You keep bringing up high sec as a culprit to the isk problem, it’s not. Someone less then 40 days old can go into null and make several hundred million a day by afking, that’s the problem.

3 Likes
35

Normal inflation of plex prices and people complaining is one thing, artificially inflating plex prices as a side effect of using plex for every cash shop item, is most likely an unintended side effect.

Eves claim to fame, quite literally is the fact that you could play enough in game in a month to afford your next month subscription with out having to pull out your debit card. That is becoming less of a reality for an ever growing percentage of the population due to artificial inflation and isk faucets in eve online.

Eve is only 13 years old, there is a lot to learn. Don’t be so quick to dismiss threads just because you’ve seen them before, this is a critical issue that is facing the game and will be the death of the game. The moment it’s not reasonable for people to earn a plex per month via casual game play will be the moment the game dies.

Why? How do you know this? Because the plex model is the only reason this game has stayed alive over the last few years, that coupled with gambling websites that drone tens of thousand of actual big plex sales over the years that is no longer there.

The moment that it becomes unreasonable for a normal person to get a plex via normal game play the less value a plex actually becomes, and it becomes a commodity for the rich and the elite. Which means it will get used less, traded less, and less exits the game. Ultimately plummeting the market driving the price down, YET at this point it could take years to reach, years.

The game has already had 9 years of inflation on plex since it was introduced.

Three things that hurt plex prices, skill injectors, isk faucets in sov space, and the shutting down of the gambling websites in game. Those sites brought in so much plex to the market that it helped keep the price down even though it was growing.

I’d dare say that if the gambling websites didn’t exist, from 2010+ Plex would be over 3 billion right now, that’s how much it helped keep the supply available to keep the price down.

Then you have skill injectors not really going to talk about those here but they drive up plex prices.

With all this said, something has to be done. And these are my final thoughts on the matter.

Don’t dismiss threads just because you’ve read them before. You’re always going to have greedy people and hard decisions to make. Is it worth upsetting a few thousand players in order to maintain the game and keep revenue coming in? Absolutely. I wouldn’t even blink an eye to destroy 10k players experience to save 600k players experience.

FIX THE ISK FAUCET
FIX PLEX PRICES

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Please refer to the other forum threads on PLEX prices that are active right now. I am closing this topic for redundancy.