It is very relevant. With normal “real world” inflation the price of materials would increase as well as you cant magically produce 3x more iron or food. In a game with infinite faucets you can thou.
Some items have dropped 6-10x in price*, while plex went up 4x, making it 30 times harder to plex an account with deadspace loot (for example).
*now price going up, but drop got nerfed so much it’s still same average isk/site
What it actually means is that there isn’t real inflation in EVE. The material produced still takes player hours to make, and inflation is actually about the CPI change, not the price of an individual commodity.
Plex is more akin to the housing bubble or the share market, in that it’s driven by investors wanting the market to keep going up in order for them to make continual profit.
TLDR Don’t confuse all price changes as inflation, they aren’t.
I could act as a broken record player but I won’t.
Read up the thread to see why what you say isn’t true.
As a PLEX trader I only can say: DEMAND is much higher than supply.
It is difficult to get enough PLEX in BUY. this is main reason for this up-move
as long as supply will not significantly increasing this move will not stop
So
No you’re wrong, demand is the same (people wanting plex) the high price is why it is not selling (many can’t or won’t pay the extortionate prices).
I paid 1.7 bil to plex an account for the last time today. It has 2 weeks worth of jobs running, once they are done I’ll be extracting all the SP from it and it can join the others I no longer use…
I can’t squeeze any more isk ph out of them to cover the cost of a plex so they are of no use to me.
By allowing plex to be manipulated by traders and hoarders CCP is losing subscribers. I wonder how long they will let it go on?
It’s 2.
The people buying PLEX from CCP have only slightly increased, if at all. Whereas demand has skyrocketed due to CCP introducing more and more ways to use that PLEX apart from just game time.
SP farms are a major driving point in that. They consume a crapload of PLEX and with prices rising, more and more people will jump on that, or the farmers will up-scale their operations because it’s just that easy and effortless, driving demand even more.
Then there’s also the matter of massive ISK-inflation through nullsec ratting and them hoarding PLEX with that ISK, also driving demand.
The easiest way to explain this is 3 currencies at play ISK, PLEX, and Dollars.
Currently this is graph everyone is tripping out on.
mostly static 19.99
ISK is taking a nosedive versus the dollar via the PLEX inflation however ISK maintains its value floor via CCP market items.
For players why would you hold any good other then PLEX? PLEX is a currency with a great return on investment at least short term.
Mate most nulsec ratters aren’t the ones hoarding plex. It is a few disgruntled bittervets with way too much isk.
Don’t blame all for the misdeeds of a few. CCP do a good enough job of that without misinformed players joining them…
I never claimed that to be the case. There’s no difference between 100 guys in carriers ratting to soak up PLEX and 1 guy multiboxing 100 carriers soaking up PLEX. The demand on the market is effectively the same.
I’m one of those 
But I also pretty much stopped hoarding PLEX a few years ago and am now just sitting on my stockpile.
June/July what happened?
Vacations happened.
PLEX sale, people preparing for war, alliance tournament, the aurum -> plex conversion.
There are plenty of possible reasons. Very likely a combination of several. The trade volume of PLEX only doubles over night when one or more big things are about to go down and people liquidize their plex stockpiles in preparation.
Low volume means more less money to move the market.
So am I missing something the PLEX market data just shows order volume outstanding orders or is that volume of sales from completed buy and sell orders?
What are the arguments against PLEX being a ‘Use it or lose it’ item with a 90 lifespan (for example)?
It won’t happen. Ever. At best, they could introduce a new item to facilitate RMT between players, but that would be in the opposite direction of all the effort they just spent unifying their RMT offerings.
Thanks for the concise response, the legal side would be the real kicker as they would be technically taking a service away that someone had already paid for. They could probably argue that it’s a game asset and the EULA covers that as always belonging to CCP, but it would be a grey area at best.
I think CCP need to look at something though since they are enraging a lot of players who don’t hold PLEX too.
Would changing the system from buying PLEX to straight buying ISK help? Then the existing PLEX can still be used to sub an account but would gradually be consumed, with everyone else simply buying Omega time directly with ISK. Is there any real value to PLEX being a separate trading item?
Summer of Rage Lite:
PCU is plummeting. Players are unhappy and going outside. The few remaining players that sell PLEX also need less to fund their fun, both because there is less activity going on and they get more than ever for each PLEX they buy from CCP.
The uncommonly low number of sell offers is reflected in that and probably the major driving of this PLEX spike. CCP could intervene with a PLEX sale, but this isn’t going to stop until they address the amount of ISK flooding into the game, and perhaps more importantly, people start playing the game again in the fall, buying PLEX and listing it on the market. We will definitely blow past 2B by the end of the summer, and probably consolidate around there for a while before the next leg up as players come back and people adjust to the new normal.
If the PCU doesn’t stabilize and players keep leaving, then we enter full market-meltdown and the sky is the limit for PLEX.
Why would I buy PLEX for cash and sell it now, when I can wait until demand has doubled or tripled the amount of isk I’ll get for that PLEX?
THAT is why demand is outstripping supply. The PLEX suppliers are pulling an OPEC to artificially increase their profit margins.
Good point. Also, it occurs to me: some (many?) of those who already made a killing with PLEX speculating/trading or even simple reselling, probably bought injectors enough to train into supers and can now get whatever ISK they need that way - thus, they no longer to wallet-warrior it, they can simply spend a day or two clearing Havens or what-not. This, too, lowers supply…
(EDIT: Funny how it keeps coming back to them extractors and injectors, in one way or another…)