ISK sinks

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
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Hello everyone,

Since I’ve came back from my hiatus about 6 months ago, and after reading the monthly economic reports each and every month, I wonder when exactly CCP is going to do something about the Inflation that is happening naturally and which isn’t anywhere close to being offset by all the isk sinks that ideally remove close to what has entered.

With inflation, I understand the introduction of new ISK vs ISK removed from the game (so, Mining doesn’t count. GoonMining has 0 to do with this topic).

Since a high grade of inflation usually benefits the most wealthy invididuals, while average joes suffer from it, I was wondering if you, as a part of the community, do feel the same. Is the inflation a significant problem outside of prominent items like PLEX? Will the ever growing inflation cause problems down the road or are the problems already crystal clear and you too are wondering when CCP is going to do something at least? Let me know. :slight_smile:

However, most importantly, I think that we as the community could and should come up with something, so I am interested in ideas that might be a good ISK sink.

Unfortunately, with the way a bigger part of the community thinks (or: perceives) an ISK sink, I am affraid I have to lay out some ground rules to have a proper exchange of ideas.

I consider an ISK sink:

  • a mechanism that removes ISK from the game permanently, such as the broker fee, skillbooks or LP stores. You pay ISK to the game and the game doesn’t give you ISK back.

With that said: the following examples are definately NOT ISK sinks:

  • Insurance (to be fair, it can be if the insurance runs out, that doesn’t happen often enough though
  • Ship losses
  • Abyssal Space (it’s not an ISK SINK God damnit!)
  • Player Scams

So, with all that being said: What are your best ideas? I know that a lot of things can be done by tweaking the game (such as decreasing insurance payout or increasing it’s costs) and while I do think that a big problem can not be solved by just one big change and that small changes need to happen as well, I am more interested in new ways.

That doesn’t mean that I want to disregard all the little things that one could do (I want to hear them too), but the challenge for me is to come up with something new. Maybe not entirely new, maybe you’ve seen something on another game and you feel it could be adapted.

If you have something, please: Share! :slight_smile:

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Get rid of structures so that players pay proper broker fees and sales taxes again. Done. Simple. Elegant. Makes EVE a better place.

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Which inflation are you referring to?

If you mean overall, the consumer price index is down compared to 2004 and has been pretty flat since 2014.

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The CPI is a good indicator of how ISK inflation affects the game, that is true and it’s more-or-less my main concern. I am not worried about it at the moment, but I do worry about the future, as I think that the oversupply of hard ISK will have some effects on the CPI at some point in the future.

MPI has tanked quite a lot over the last year while CPI rose over the same period, so I am worried about the day where the oversupply of minerals/Modules/Ships can no longer keep the CPI down.

For now, Inflation mainly affected Plex prices since 2011 (and big time at that) and that’s it, but I certainly worry that it might have a more widespread effect. Simply put: The current rate of ISK sinks vs Isk Faucets doesn’t look too healthy if you ask me.

Maybe I got it all wrong and Plex alone eats the oversupply of ISK until some big ■■■■ happens and then the cycle repeats itself - feel free to share your thoughts on that too.

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Sinks will target the wrong people. If the Isk supply ever becomes an issue it has to be targetted at the area of oversupply. Which right now would be Null sec bounties.

If you introduce more sinks, what you end up doing is further concentrating the isk in the hands of those wealthy enough to not care, who for the most part are those generating that large amount of hard isk from null sec bounties. While the sinks end up hitting all the high sec people instead.

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Is this a genuine thread or another gripe at plex prices?

The ‘over supply’ of minerals isn’t going down anytime soon. And production has been out pacing destruction for something like 5-6 years now.

The ridiculous over supply of production is keeping the oversupply of isk in check, for now.

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I don’t think it’s that easy, but it’s a good argument. Direct Sinks will affect the bottom much worse than the top, so we would ideally need something that is only affordable by the super rich. I.e. target the top and not just everyone.

Some ridiculously priced stuff, much like the Palatine keepstar, just for isk instead of minerals? But then again, would you consider that a good thing in EvE?

I could also imagine to sell skins for ISK. Maybe Citadel skins, just for the sake of removing some ISK from the game, purely optional stuff that only those with spare isk will use etc.

I don’t have any gripe with the plex prices, quite the contrary. Plex prices absorb a big part of the inflation and I consider this a good thing. I pay with cash, so the high price doesn’t affect me negatively.

The reason Plex is part of my thoughts is that it’s the one thing that takes the brunt of the inflation (i.e. looks like it’s the one item affected by inflation) so it’s unfortunately a part of any discussion about inflation.

It’s no concern for me, but what does concern me is the question wether Plex is elastic enough to take that level of inflation for years to come or not.

Yeah, it’s entirely possible that minerals will keep the CPI in check for years to come. The question that drove me is: what happens if that isn’t the case? Eve is Eve and I see the potential to have some rich kid screwing with the market in an attempt to wave his genitals around. It does make the market somewhat vulnerable if you have a few selected people with a big percentage of the capital.

Anyway:

What would be ISK sinks you could imagine? Don’t get me wrong - I like to hear oppinions on inflation, I really do. As it stand’s, there is nothing to freak out at this point anyway, but it could become an issue (and quite fast at that) and I would prefer to have some ideas floating around should that ever happen.

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They could buff suicide ganking.

o/

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Just to be mean:

SOV cost could be based on a % of the ISK generated by the players in the alliance.
Example:
More players making more ISK and holding more systems means higher cost.
Just take Goons, say they have 10000 players, not all of which are making ISK, but as a group they are making the most ISK in game. Say they also own the most space.
So some magic maths could work out that for Goons to maintain their size both in numbers and sov they would pay upwards of 50% of what their players make in SOV tax.
There would have to be sweet spots and such. Wouldn’t want every group to be the same.

Back to work. Will be back to finish this idea.

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That penalises group play.

As mentioned i wouldn’t approach this from an isk sink perspective. I’d look at lowering isk sinks and production and increasing destruction.

What’s that? Remove local from null sec? Well i never…

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We’ve had some inflation in T2 product over the past several months because of the moon mining changes. PLEX inflation will be with us as long as demand exceeds supply - the price in real world currency hasn’t changed but there are more old players buying it in game than new players buying it from CCP.

Otherwise, as noted CPI is stable - we do not have too much ISK chasing too few goods.

I do worry about the money supply growing faster than the economy - that never ends well. CCP should reduce the ISK faucets or increase sinks so growth in the money supply matches growth in the economy. They have lots of levers - just need to decide which is most appropriate and I think shifting a portion of ratting rewards from bounties to loot would be a good place to start.

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Except that loot then steps on manufacturers toes.

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Well, the materials for meta items can come from ratting. Then it’s two birds with one stone

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While they could certainly do, it would not decrease ISK inflation. :slight_smile: Quite the contrary => Insurance is, for the most part, a faucet so increased destruction would only make the problem worse. They could nerf insurance and buff suicide ganking a bit, but I don’t think suicide ganking needs a buff. It’s doing pretty fine if you ask me. :slight_smile:

That’s certainly an approach. Increasing the costs for Alliances could have a big impact. I don’t think you would need to be that drastic, but a small increase, let’s say 1-2% would drain at least something out of the game.

I would consider this one of the “minor tweaks” that one could do if needed.

Well, I would argue that there just are too many goods to make an increase in prize possible on a larger scale, thanks to production being production.

They absolute have a lot of levers to pull, indeed. So many things could be fine tuned to have a small effect on individuals, but make a sizeable impact at the end.

And I would argue that would be a devastating thing to do. From my perspective, the overproduction keeps the CPI in check and prevents it from catching up with the money supply in the game. Lowering supply while increasing demand will most likely result in a price increase which is what I would like to avoid.

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EVE’s inflation hasn’t been so bad since the horror days of Incursion through Retribution, but I think part of that is attributed to the amount of inflation that has already happened. The increase in ISK generation has made existing ISK sinks more attractive, as people have more to spend on them. But it’s still too high and the game could do well to deflate a little.

The important aspect of an effective ISK sink is that you can keep spending into it. Skillbooks and Blueprint Originals are the largest ISK sinks in the game, yet there’s a point at which you stop buying into them. We need big ISK sinks that you continue wanting to pay into as long as you have the money. I’ve got one: temporary skins. You can get some skin types (not all) as a single-use skin that lasts for 1 month and once applied to a ship it is connected to that ship and can’t be recovered. If the ship is destroyed, the skin is lost. These would sell for ISK only in the skin shop.

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What inflation.
The CPI is still down. Most items are still down and those that aren’t can be directly linked to supply & demand changes.
That isn’t inflation, that’s demand.

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That’s what I said. There is some inflation, it’s evident in the price of PLEX continuing to rise (last I checked, anyway). But it’s slowing down.

I think it should have slowed down further back, though. Part of the problem is the large ISK faucets–those would be fine if they had corresponding ISK sinks. But since they don’t, the result is that as time wore on after the big ISK faucets were released in the horror days, the value of ISK-priced items in terms of gameplay hours decreased, and continue to decrease to this day.

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Plex prices rising is not inflation.
That’s a single commodity which is being driven in a price spiral upwards by continual demand due to increased ways to use it, and investment by people who believe it’s always going to rise.
CCP’s own figures showed that most plex go through 3-4 people at least before they end up actually getting used as Plex, which means all those people want a profit, which contributes a lot.

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Well if inflation has finally stopped, that’s amazing. Took what, five years? CCP should have never allowed incursion vanguards in highsec.

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LMAO.
Incursions never were the driving force behind the economy. That lie has been disproved by the MER’s so often now it’s not even funny to trot it out, it just shows how utterly out of touch you are.
Yes, Vanguards were a bit lucrative at one point in time compared to their risk, but that didn’t make them skew the economy. It has always been Null sec bounties being the lions share of the isk faucets.

And for the last 5 years, there has been no conclusive evidence of any significant inflation, I’m sure some months you could point at a 1 or 2% rise if you really sat down and crunched all the numbers. People just keep claiming there is because ‘insert my favourite item’ is now more expensive. Ignoring that typically their favourite item is more expensive because CCP just did a balance pass that made it better in the meta, or CCP just did a materials pass that increased it’s build requirements or placed more demand on it’s build materials. (Or the ever trotted out Plex).

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