Knowing full well that 1. universal income is a phenomenally good idea IRL (when implemented properly, that is) 2. OP actually has a degree in mathematics or a related field by which to make a sound argument (I don’t remember which degree specifically) and 3. OP is actually an EVE vet and isn’t pitching this as a crybear asking for more ISK, I think it’s worth discussing. I don’t think inflation would be a concern whether or not measures were in place to mitigate the impact. At worst the contributory rate of inflation is relatively static and bounded, and at best it’s going to end up being burned in non-recoverable ways anyway (in contrast to real currency).
On a related note, Corvettes could use some love to both improve the NPE (something that raw ISK doesn’t necessarily address even for Omega players) and also improve their utility as a bootstrapping mechanism for players who need to rebuild their wealth but retain their knowledge and experience.
Recent Corvette Commentary
Don’t want to derail this thread so I just collapsed the commentary above.
There is no need for a slippery slope argument here. EVE has no shortage of static ISK fountains (eg. rat bounties, payouts for blue/red loot, etc), and the static nature of these payouts play a major role in keeping item prices relatively stable not just over the span of a few months but even over the span of a few years. It takes massive eco patches - which haven’t even touched these specific fountains/sinks, by the way - to rattle the economy, but the economy stablizes after a short while each and every single time such a patch is released. Let’s be perfectly clear here: OP has not proposed a variable payout like the way insurance works. Could it be implemented that way? It could, though I personally think, and OP implies, that a static payout would keep the economy more stable and would be less likely to lead to high or superlinear inflation than if a dynamic payout were used. In real life, UBI would need to be calibrated every now and then to keep up with cost of living and inflation; that would not happen in EVE as it would be both unnecessary and harmful to the economy.
Ignorant players are going to benefit from this more than non-ignorant-but-still-poor players. Classic example: the forums have no shortage of threads of players who think that HS mining in a Venture is a sensible way to make ISK even as Alpha or even Omega. (I am excluding from consideration players who actually think that’s fun - that’s their business if they do.) I even remember one poster asking something along the lines of “don’t you remember mining for an hour to make your first million?” on a rage post about his losses and how he was going to have to mine for hours on end in a Venture to recoup them. Even if the universal income were closer to, say, 1m-3m a day, that saves ignorant newbies like these several hours doing mindlessly boring stuff like HS Venture mining so they can actually buy a frig or destroyer, learn the game, and have some degree of fun while doing it and not end up dropping EVE because they thought HS Venture mining was part of climbing the ladder. And I cannot stress enough that unlike real life, currency in EVE gets burned, and that’s one of the reasons why inflation is not as big of concern in game as it is IRL.
Indeed. And giving newbies the ISK to buy a frigate/destroyer instead of spending hours Venture mining in HS gives them the opportunity to learn the game, which ultimately leads them to learn proper ways of making money (most of which are simultaneously fun).
1m/day isn’t much to us, though it is many hours for them, if we scale back OP’s proposal by an order of magnitude