PLEX is very expensive right now thread

Communications Center General Discussion
203

That still don’t solve anything because then plex still just becomes relatively expensive to everyone. Until the problem of SP farms created by the introduction of injectors/extractors is resolved there will always be a significantly higher demand on plex from the old norm.

I will continue to push for the idea that injectors should not grant SP, but instead grant variable increased train rates depending on amount of SP at time of use. Stacking or not stacking doesn’t matter. As long as people can’t inject 70 in one sitting for a perfect-anything pilot you will reduce usage thus reducing the benefits of operating an SP farm.
Alternatively allow for use of injectors on Alpha-level skills ONLY at a set rate (5:4). Allowing them to be used for newer players to catch up to the requirements of multiple doctrines that exist without allowing them to be instantly perfect, yet not be completely abused by vets (the real ones creating the demand) to create perfect cap/subcap pilots.

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204

hellokittyonline4h
That doesn’t solve the problem in the slightest. That’s only a temporary fix. What needs to happen is the NPC bounty system needs to be removed and the rewards for killing NPCs reappropriated. Until this happens isk will continue to be worth less, hoarders will continue to hoard, and PLEX prices will continue to rise.

How many subs would you be prepared to lose for that to happen?

Plex sales in the past have seen ingame market prices drop a little and even stabilize for a time. Plex sat around 1.2 bil for a good while, each time it crept up too much CCP would have a plex sale.
I believe, this time they are waiting to see what the market will bear before taking action. I also believe that if they don’t take action soon the summer downfall in numbers will become the status quo. Injector farms only add to the low numbers online while at the same time help allow plex prices to increase. This has nothing to do with npc bounties, it is a play style CCP deliberately introduced and now they are finding ways to punish everyone for their short sightedness.

The cost of plexing a single account for me has gone up by near to 6 hours game play (an additional 2 days of the month) due to, reduced income per hour and the extra cost of plex. For now because there is little actual content I’m ok putting in the extra hours doing PVE but what do I do once things I want to do [joining fleets, going on roams, etc] start up again?
I don’t want to be spending more of my online time doing PVE than actually playing the game. I can’t afford the $20 a month to sub with money. [Being an Aussie we pay a lot more for a subscription than our US counterparts, whose currency we are forced to use. Even with the current sale on sub time we still pay more than US consumers do without the discount.]

Some of us (more than those who do) don’t have mountains of isk in our wallets - Yet it is us that CCP constantly nerf with the reasoning, there is too much isk in the game… They are right, there is too much isk in the game but the changes made don’t affect the target group. Those with mountains of isk don’t have to spend hours upon hours shooting boring npc’s to remain active in the game.

I’m not sure how CCP hasn’t worked out, there is too much isk in the game because there is just not enough content that sees isk destroyed. Supers are in a huge abundance with more and more entering the game every day but due to recent “balance” changes they aren’t being used because they just aren’t effective in their role.
Isk doesn’t get destroyed if there is no fights and while ever Devs keep finding subtle ways to nerf the most expensive combat capable ships, isk in game will continue to rise.

Re-appropriating npc income into LP and or more loot drops would achieve nothing more than breaking other parts of the game.
Remove npc bounties add in LP to compensate = Crashed LP markets all over the game.
Reduce bounties, add more loot / different types of loot to compensate = Crashed markets, destroying the incomes of many who don’t shoot npc’s but rely solely on market trading to make isk.

So again I ask, just how many subs would you be willing to sacrifice to “fix” npc income?

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205

Yeah, isk abundance is the underlying issue.

The huge increase in isk from ratting was “fixed” too late and PLEX price will likely never recover from it since isk is not destroyed in the process of acquiring PLEX, just changes hands.

Truth is that it is getting harder and harder to PLEX, and PLEX price increases are outstripping an increasingly greater deal of player’s ability to generate enough isk.

Ironically, EVE is increasingly become more difficult to play “for free”, whereas other MMOs are generally becoming easier to play “for free”.

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maybe dynamic plex cost for pilot license
ccp decide on a reasonable isk cost for monthly sub say 300m isk per month
if plex is selling 3m isk that month then sub will cost 100 plex
this lowers demand for plex so maybe next month price of plex drops to 1.5m
so next month it costs 200 plex to sub
this way the value of a pilot license can remain more roughly static while the price of plex can still go up if hoarders wish to hoard

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You have it all wrong. First of all, if null bounties were gone the price of plex would drop substantially making it easier for you to plex your account (assuming that income was reappropriated to loot drops and or LP. Though ,I agree those drops would have to be balanced)

Second of all:

Fights do not destroy isk, they destroy ships and modules, which will increase the demand for those ships and modules making isk effectively worth less and doing nothing to the price of plex.

So this really bothers me. You don’t realize that people don’t get mountains of isk for nothing, and until recently you wouldn’t get mountains of isk from sitting around half afk shooting red crosses. Why should they be nerfed because you think you’re entitled to easy money? They’re not the problem, you are.

Nothing could break the game more than what you are doing. Devaluing isk AND raising the price of plex. I’m sorry man, I get where you’re coming from but at some point you have to realize that what you’re doing needs to be heavily adjusted for the greater good of the game.

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208

You can’t anchor the value of a real world service on a virtual in game currency unless you want to go broke.

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209

is that an unwritten rule
ive never heard that before

210

If you think about it a bit you will understand why it does not need to be a “written” rule.

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i have thought about it for roughly 2 or 3 minutes and ive determined that there are too many variables to make an accurate prediction of an outcome
maybe you have thought about it more than me and made an accurate prediction
perhaps you will share that with me

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I have no idea if @Frostys_Virpio’s claims are true, but I know of a couple videos that could help you find an answer:


My very quick take on this is that you can’t have money faucets and tie your in-game money bilaterally to a RL currency: in EVE, you couldn’t fix the PLEX price: inflation = PLEX value decrease = nobody buys plex in the cash shop anymore, as it no longer has a significant value on the isk market.

213

How do you do any planning if one month your income will be “number of subs * 20$ worth of PLEX” and the enxt month, it’s “number of subs * 2.14$ worth of PLEX” ?

You still have to pay your employee, utility cost and any other running cost you have.

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the income is never number of subs * $20 worth of plex
once plex is sold its sold
the number of people who use it to sub is irrelevant
only the number of plex sales plus directly paid subs matters

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The PLEX is a deferred income that only count once it got used for game time or other service. One month of game time cost 500 PLEX because that’s the equivalent of about 20$ and that’s their anticipated cost per player + expected profit margin. If the sub can drop to 200 PLEX, then your income crash for the month. Yes you might have the cash on hand but you now have much more service to give to your customer for the same total gain in money. Instead of giving the player a month of sub for 500, you might have to give me 2 month for 250 each for example. Meanwhile, your expenses stay the same each month which can rapidly kill and profit from the operation.

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216

yeah i had considered all of this in the 2 or 3 minutes i spent thinking about it
still too many variables to accurately predict an outcome
personally i think its more likely income will stay roughly stable
i shall explain why i think that
firstly
cheaper subs means more alts
if i can sub for less isk each month i am more likely to start alt accounts
secondly
cheaper psubs makes it easier for alphas to go omega
again it increases sub numbers and you have more people actively buying plex from the market
thirdly
greater speculation if plex prices fall due to cheaper subs
hoarders gonna hoard
fourthly
maybe bring back old players who quit because plex cost got too high
introduce new players who are encouraged by cheaper cost of plexing accounts

217

You still have a broken system. At what point do CCP can say NO to player who want to subscribe for 300 million if that was deemed the “right” price? Can every single sub be paid at 300 million ISK no matter how many PLEXes were actually bought from CCP? What happen when so many people are able to pay 300 mill a month that there are more than every single PLEX gettign into the game? Does sub now cost a fraction of a PLEX per month? Does CCP create PLEX out of thin air thus giving away it’s game time for no RL money income?

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218

are you asking what happens when demand for plex spirals out of control
well thats easy
the price of plex spirals out of control
what you are suggesting is what happens when the price of a single plex gets closer to 300m
so now a player can buy 500 plex for $20
and that will be 500x300m isk for $20
wow crazy prices man
so what happens
people buy plex and drop it on the market to take advantage of high prices
hoarders stop hoarding because its too expensive to hoard
instead they drop their stockpile on the market to take advantage of crazy prices
market gets flooded
prices stabilise
most likely

well they already granulised the plex into 500 pieces
no reason they cant granulise it more
to maybe 2000
200000
whatever is required

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So at that point CCP has to provide 500 account with 1 month of sub time for a 20$ income?

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seems unlikely but if demand is really that high then yeah i guess so
you understand how that balances out though right
if ccp is subbing 500 acounts for $20
you know how many accounts ccp would be subbing overall right
like 500x more than they are currently
most likely

221

Here is why PLEX inflation happens and why it will keep inflating.

  1. Eve was already a game where people can completely defend their PvE activities if they are one of the largest supercap forces in the game. This is now called a “supercap umbrella”. If you have a proper umbrella, you will not lose a meaningful amount of PvE ships. More importantly, you will not fear losing them. If you are in such an alliance, ratting and mining is yours for the taking. Do as much as you like.

  2. Before there were limiting factors on the total amount of mining/ratting these alliances could do. Namely the number of capital pilots, and the time it took to raise a capital pilot and build a capital. There was a balance on the amount of capital pilots, as old players left the game, and new ones raised their toons to use capitals.

  3. Then SP injectors and Rorqual changes hit. People were now able to multibox-mine with multiple accounts. The more they mined, the more money they made. The more ISK they made, the more accounts they bought. Early after the Rorqual changes we began seeing 10-20 Rorquals in the same belt. Alliances with a good supercap umbrella did not lose these Rorquals easily. These people began purchasing SP, and building more Rorquals. They now are multiboxing 50 Rorquals. And the amount of such people increased greatly.

  4. Suddenly it was much easier to build a super and get a toon for it. If you have a friend. A toon costs about 40b in character bazaar, and a super 20. That’s chum change if you had a friend in these mega alliances. Then you could pay it back in about 100 hours of ratting. If not, then you can still access a ratting supercapital if you spend a few months farming in a carrier or even a Rattlesnake. So the amount of super ratters increased greatly.

  5. As the amount of Rorqual and Super PvE activity increased, the amount of minerals mined and NPC bounties farmed increased. As NPC bounties are conjured ISK to Eve economy, they inflated total ISK pool in the game. As happens in any economic system, the inflation of the currency meant inflatory pressure for exchange values of all commodities with respect to that currency. Things got more expensive.

  6. On the other hand, since Rorquals mine so much, there is a downward pressure for prices of anything that is either directly mined or that has mined components in their production process. The upward pressure from ISK inflation and the downward pressure from the increase in mineral supply created an equilibrium. Thus we do not have a significant effect on the prices of T1 or T2 ships, or any other things whose ISK value comes from mostly the minerals mined.

  7. However, for anything that is not mined we should see the effects of inflation. As PLEX is one of the most volatile such commodities, the inflation hit it first. In time it should hit other stuff, like exploration materials, DED loot or LP store items as well, if it didn’t hit already. This trend

  8. The losers here are lone players who want to PLEX their accounts or use blingy ships. Or smalltime miners who do not have access to a Rorqual and the safety of a supercap umbrella. The winners are already established players, especially those who already had setups to multibox 50 Rorquals even before the patch. Also, anybody who flocks to a nullsec superpower and gets in their supercapital asap is among the winner.

  9. Apart from stating the losers and the winners, I will not make any normative judgement here on what should happen next. You decide for yourselves what’s good for this game and whether these changes made Eve better.

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The problem is that it completely detach their income from their subscription expense. If they have a mean cost of 10$ for a month of sub currently, the lowest you can effectively pay is around 11 by credit card taking advantage of the largest offer. Your system mean they have to provide service for however many account the player want as long as it generate the ISK and completely unrelated to the amount of $ they get from PLEX buyers. As long as the numbers stay around what they are now, then their income will saty the same. If more player re-sub/upgrade to alpha than the number of people who dump extra money for PLEXes, their income per account start dropping while their cost stays essentially the same. Their PLEX sales can stay stable while their player base in term of account grow which would push them down the drain.

Your system only work of enough player start dumping RL cash on PLEX for ISK but the 20$ price point mean there are a lot of people who can’t anyway and also a lot who won’t bother because they don’t want to throw extra money at their game. Is there enough and/or big enough whales to supplement the income needed to service all those new account generated by a relatively low in-game cost? I think not.

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