So you’re deliberately misinterpretating the argument?
Daily reminder that removing local fixes AFK cloaking.
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This is why I pointed out that the opportunity cost is limited to the plex price of keeping one account active.
He does not have more time, you can only be active for 23.7 a day. His opportunities in running that account aren’t mutually exclusive beyond the price of that one account being active, because once you have enough to activate an account you could then activate a second account and do whatever else you wanted to do and still keep that camp active full time.
Basically, his entire opportunity cost argument has holes that can easily be pointed out by a toddler.
What? The fact that there is opportunity cost does not say anything about the magnitude. These things are largely subjective. I might really, really, really dislike various ISK making activities…in which case the opportunity cost would be low.
I have not cloaky camped in a long time. But when I did it I did not have the alts I do now, nor was PI a thing and I did it on my main. Still for me AFK camping with a single alt would mean a moderately decent amount of ISK given up. For example for a month, depending on the alt anywhere from 300-500 million ISK at least. Lets say 450 million ISK.
For others that cost might be larger or smaller.
This is nonsense. If a character can make more than enough ISK to cover a PLEX cost then this is not true.
The notion of opportunity cost is the ISK forgone by not cloaky camping…not some arbitrary limit you set.
Edit:
Sorry this is just errant nonsense. If I add a second account it does not negate the opportunity cost argument. It is really simple:
A. Assume a player has 2 accounts.
The player can either:
- Earn ISK 1 account and cloaky camp with the other.
- Earn ISK with 2 accounts.
If the player goes for 1, his opportunity cost is the forgone ISK from the cloaky camping account.
except you can only play actively 23.7 hours a day.
Your limiting factor is player time.
Player time is not a limit for an afk camp, that’s pretty much it’s whole point.
Since player time is the limit, afk cloaking is not a mutually exclusive activity, you can do it and make money at the same time, at the cost of plexing the afk account. As such that is the limit of your opportunity cost.
You could make money with 1 account, +plex to afk camp.
or you could make money with 2 accounts, +plex to afk camp.
or make money with 3 accounts, +plex to afk camp.
Onward to infinity. At no point does your cost ever go up past the price point of plexing a single account to maintain an afk camp, because there is no other mutually exclusive cost to maintaining that camp and opportunity cost must be mutually exclusive or you have not missed the opportunity.
So what? There is no real limit on how much ISK one can make. Granted it depends on what you do. But other activities like market trading does not really have an upper bound.
To determine the opportunity cost you look at the forgone benefit…in this case ISK.
You just don’t seem to grasp the concept of opportunity cost. It is what you give up. It could even be roaming if that character could be used for that. Could be ganking freighters.
Edit:
So what? I could also use that second account to make ISK or do other things in game. That there is a choice as to what to do with that second account means there is opportunity cost.
Once you have a choice. In anything, there is opportunity cost, if there is a choice involved.
No. once you have a mutually exclusive choice you have opportunity cost.
In this case there is no mutually exclusive choice as soon as you hit the price point of plexing the second account.
Without having to forego an opportunity you have no opportunity cost. It’s really that simple. As soon as you make the ISK to plex that account, you have given up all you will ever have to, and that’s the limit.
Because you could use it to make ISK with 2 accounts, but as soon as you make enough for the extra account then have 2 accounts and an AFK camper. No matter how many times you say ‘but I could use that account to make ISK too’ it only takes enough plex to activate an account to have a full time AFK camp, and you simply don’t have enough time to manage infinite ISK making accounts, but you do have the ability to ignore an afk camper account while managing as many ISK making accounts as you do have time for.
There is no mutually exclusive cost other than the plex to activate the account to run an afk camper account. Without it being mutually exclusive your argument is deader than disco. It’s not that I or anyone else does not understand opportunity cost, it’s that you are grossly misusing it in a way that indicates that you are perhaps not the economist that you claim to be, or you are so dedicated to your dogma that you are willing to lie to support it.
What does that even mean? If by this you mean a player can PLEX a second account it could be used for cloaky camping, then you are wrong. It could still be used for making ISK. Thus ISK is still forgone which is the opportunity cost.
Yeah, but there is still a choice with the second account. Cloaky camp or make ISK.
No, then I face the same choice again with the third account. Further, there is opportunity cost in the ISK I have. Do I use it to buy PLEX or do I use it buy stuff in game?
When I say opportunity cost is everywhere I mean it, literally. It is everywhere. At all times so long as there is a choice involved.
The idea that opportunity cost disappears because you can PLEX another account is not true. Everything you do in game has opportunity cost. If you could mine, mission, roam down through to Stain and back, or go do exploration…which ever you pick, the next best choice is your opportunity cost.
So AFK cloaking always and everywhere has opportunity cost.
This is where you continually show you either aren’t and economist, or you are deliberately misusing the term.
Opportunity Cost requires that the choices be mutually exclusive. You have to make a choice between doing thing a or thing b. If you can do both thing a and thing b then you don’t have an opportunity cost.
Your limiting factor is the time you can spend managing the accounts. There is a limit to how many accounts you can manage because you, the player, only have so much time per day that you can spend on doing that. Using an account to AFK camp something takes so little time that for the purposes of this conversation it may as well not exist— you turn on the computer, start the game, and hit cloak.
So you say you have to make a choice in what to do with the account, but that ends when you plex another account because alt accounts are not a limited resource beyond the plex to use them. As they take none of your actual limited resource (player time) then your opportunity ceases to be mutually exclusive as soon as you can pay the plex. It does not matter how many times you decide to do something else with the account, at the point where you make enough to plex one more the choice ceases to be mutually exclusive. Eventually you will say ‘but I can make ISK with that account too’ and it won’t be true, because you no longer have time in the day to manage that account, but you can still AFK camp with it because that took negligible time to set up.
You simply cannot support the statement that you have an opportunity cost greater than plexing an account under those conditions.
…
WTF is this nonsense? Alt accounts are now free, because you can pay billions of ISK to PLEX them? The PLEX cost alone is enough of a cost for an AFK cloaking account that saying “AFK cloaking is free” is utter lunacy.
They are mutually exclusive. I have a choice with each account. I choose with each account.
Again:
Account 1: Cloaky camp…or make ISK?
Account 2: Cloaky camp…or make ISK?
Thus there are mutually exclusive choices for each account. I cannot both cloaky camp and make ISK at the same time.
Yes, but that choice applies to both accounts. I can choose to make ISK with both accounts. If I choose not to make ISK with both or one account the opportunity cost is the forgone ISK. If I choose to make ISK with both the opportunity cost is the next best options for using those accounts. If it is cloaky camping that is the opportunity cost.
Basically.
Pretty much.
Once again you skip over the part where at the price of a plex the mutually exclusive aspect of the decision goes away, because you can plex and afk another account.
No matter how many times you make that decision, you can always plex one more account to afk, and eventually you cannot choose to make ISK with that account simply because you no longer have time to manage any sort of ISK making activity on it that isn’t also completely AFK, and if it is completely AFK then you can do it while also camping.
The price of a plex is the cap of the opportunity cost. period. Trying to inflate that cost past the point of a plex is just grasping at straws because your whole position is indefensible without major misrepresentation.
I really don’t see what the point of this is. Paying a PLEX per account just to passively AFK cloak, without ever doing anything with that account besides sit there draining ISK from your wallet, is a massive cost. There’s really no need to inflate the cost beyond the price of a PLEX because that’s already an obscenely high price to pay.
Try to keep up, Dear.
His position is that the opportunity cost is some astronomical figure based on whatever the most lucrative thing possible to do with any character anywhere can make, because he could choose to do that instead of AFK camp.
That is ludicrous.
The cap is the price of a single plex. That’s not nothing, but by the standards of the gankbears in nullsec it’s barely more than pocket change. He is trying to present the opportunity cost as some kind of major expense above and beyond what his targets expend trying to use the space as to justify the disparity in cost between hunter and prey.
But the issue is that one plex provides the opportunity for him to decide to make Isk or camp, which is the cost. As soon as he can plex a second account, he has the same choice again, ISK or AFK. He can make that choice into infinity, but every time he makes enough to plex a single additional account he can choose to AFK, and that was his only cost.
Eventually he cannot choose to make ISK because he, the player, physically does not have the time to manage that account in making ISK, but he will always have the time (essentially zero) to ignore that account while it sits AFK, and the only cost to do so other than time was that single plex.
But that is already done. The AFK cloaker expends a PLEX per account to do nothing. The farmer expends zero ISK. The cost disparity is already overwhelmingly against the AFK cloaker.
No, all other costs are at best a wash.
Both hunter and prey had to get into system, both have to train for their profession, both have to buy their ships, plex that first account, etc. It would be a stretch to say those costs, especially in terms of ISK, were equal, much less in favor of the hunter. I mean, come on… you can set up an afk camp in a t1 frigate or even a newbie ship, lets not pretend that the low bar to entry on afk camping is any kind of real cost compared to ratting in null sec, and that cost differential only gets worse as you scale towards the high end.
Even adding in the plex, it isn’t going to justify one party being completely safe under their magic safety button until they choose not to be while the other has to put at least the effort of flying right and staying vigilant 100% of the time to insure their own safety.
You can’t measure that cost with ISK. Both sides need to be required to stay active to stay safe.
I was told on the neighbour forum that since we have skill point extractors you can have as many “free” accounts as you want.
I don’t agree that they are really free, but there is some point in it.
No Mike. I am pointing out that that is irrelevant. If I make enough ISK to PLEX an account it means I have a second choice: cloaky camp or make ISK. It changes nothing.
Given your stunning display of ignorance of the concept of opportunity cost you are not one to talk here. Even if you were right that opportunity cost is capped by the price of enough PLEX to have a second account it is still a substantial cost for AFK cloaking. What is it 1.6-1.7 billion ISK/month. How much ratting do you have to do to get that much ISK.
And more generally, you are wrong as I have shown. Adding another account includes opportunity cost. First if I buy PLEX to get a second account that entails opportunity cost. I could have spent that ISK on something else. And when I have a second account I face a choice of what to do with that account.
You basically just dug yourself deeper here Mike.
WTF? Costs are not a wash. Costs are incurred–i.e. they are paid. Either directly or in terms of forgone benefits.
No, not really (and I note you used the word free in quotes). If I extract SP, I can use it to buy PLEX to start another account…or I could spend it on other stuff. Thus opportunity cost still obtains.
Opportunity cost is like a tar baby. You can never ever get away from it if you have choices.
At which point you accomplish nothing. Zero reward, zero cost. It will be about as effective as nullsec farming in a T1 frigate, so I’m not sure why you’re wasting our time talking about it.
You can’t measure that cost with ISK. Both sides need to be required to stay active to stay safe.
Of course you can. One side is paying what, ~2 billion a month, to sit in space and do nothing. The other side is making billions of ISK per month farming. I don’t see why you have such a hard time grasping the concept that an obscenely profitable activity should require greater effort than passively sitting in space.
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