where are you see that?
All that ultimately matters is whether CCP is making more income. That is not a totally cynical statement as a better and more active game should correlate strongly with how much money players are willing to give CCP. If PLEX at 4B/month means more PLEX are sold, then it is totally in CCPâs interest to let it reach there.
The thing is though, I just donât see that it is. Putting aside the effect on concurrent player numbers as low-income casuals are squeezed out, a higher PLEX value means the week-end warriors who buy PLEX to fund their PvP losses need less and less PLEX. Maybe there is some psychology involved where some whales buy more thinking they are getting more value for their real-world $$$ but I would imagine most of that class of players will just buy the same or less. So all that happens once PLEX starts to rise out of the price range of the bulk of the players is that in-game activity decreases as players start quitting, further reducing the content and need for both assets and buy PLEX from CCP and this positive feedback decreases activity and PLEX sales more.
I donât have the numbers though, so who can say what the sweet spot is to maximize PLEX sales for CCP or if we have entered such a spiral. But I canât help be concerned over the shape of that PCU history and the shape of that PLEX trade history.
Nothing I can do but hold on and ride the wave. I donât think anyone knows how either the activity numbers or PLEX prices while shake out or what they will stabilize at.
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Totally prepared - and able - to pay the equivalent of Chinese EVE prices per month.
He didnât. The numbers CCP released around the time of the carrier nerf shown that carriers only accounted for about 34% of ISK generation. Heâs just exaggerating with that whole âalmost 50%â thing.
Maybe CCP Quant could make us a bounties-generated-by-ship-class graph. 
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it indeed doesnât make sense if you only think the same thoughts all the time and thus come to the same conclusions as always. thatâs why i went a different route, which also makes sense, but not for those who cwnât try different perspectives. 
A third is still quite a lot, actually. that âonlyâ in your line doesnât really belong there.
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Agreed - a third of the total being accounted for by a really small minority is indeed way out of proportion, hardly any less so than a half would be.
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just to clarify my post: I was thinking independent of that, actually. a third is a third and quite a chunk of a whole.
Iâve deleted some off-topic posts in this thread. Try to keep things from devolving too hard guys 
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The numbers given by CCP were this:
22.3% (2.3T) of the ISK was generated by 1.4% of characters earning bounties, using Supercarriers 24.2% (2.6T) of the ISK was generated by 4.8% of characters earning bounties, using Carriers 19.1% (2T) of the ISK was generated by 16.6% of characters earning bounties, using T1 CruisersJust under half (46.5%) of the bounties earned during the time period was generated by Supercarriers and Carriers, meaning a small percent of the population received a huge portion of the total bounties.
So 46.5% of bounties collected by 6.2% of characters
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Interesting article, didnât know CCP was providing data on plex âcreationâ and usage. As you can see, for the price to remain somewhat constant, the stockpile has to increase (slightly more created than used).
I bet atm the stockpile is hovering around the tipping point or even decreasing.
Damn my Inuyasha allegory is gone.
ASTONISHING! 
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What if CCP would today announce removal of option to PLEX your account to Omega? Only subscription left and microtransactions? I mean, you can already play for free ans Alpha.
If PLEXers would stop PLEXing their account, suddenly the big amount would be left on accounts unused. If many PLEXers are not able to PLEX their account as of now, there would be only small amount of players to protest!
They would immediately lose the sub-set of players who PLEX their way through the game. Of course many may still want to sub, but lots wouldnât simply on principle. Thatâs a chunk of player interaction gone in one stroke.
Then youâd lose all the alts that are plexed, whilst thatâs not losing an active player as such it is ultimately going to annoy the active player who used to run them for whatever reason. Again this may well cause a drop in active players.
Also PLEX was introduced as an anti RMT measure, so removing PLEX would kick that off pretty much straight away again.
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But I was not writing about removing PLEX entirely, only option to PLEX account to Omega. With gradually less PLEXers PLEXing their account because its too expensive, it would be like players already excluding themselves from Omega status.
What about player activity when PLEX would drop sharply in value because of that?
@Corraidhin_Farsaidh lol, baited on a Nana
tl:dr
plex wai too expensive, canât plex my alts, help.
I only have one alt and heâs just fine thanks
There is a problem I guess in all the SP farming alts though. The cost of PLEX and injectors/extractors are intrinsically linked, so eventually all PLEX will be consumed simply to maintain SP farms.
If this runs away qwith itself itâll ubalance the market and hence the economy as a whole. Screw that up and you damage the industry side of the game. Once you do that you are destroying the very heart of the game, the balance between the makers and the destroyers.
The thing is, PLEX is there to facilitate a tripartite symbiosis:
- Players with disposable income to throw around who want in-game advantage/acceleration by throwing money at it - WIN
- Players who want or can only spend time instead of real money in order to play - WIN
- CCP gets paid in full (in fact, slightly more than that) for the extra subscriptions - WIN
Take away a part of this tripod, and the system falls over. And then, because CCP becomes one of the parties that suffers, EVERYONE ELSE who is not already member of those three parties, also suffers (the game as a whole, in other words.)
Yes, PLEX becoming the unified in-game cryptocurrency to buy off the NES and add skill queues means itâs not ONLY for enabling subscriptions - but Iâm fairly certain thatâs the dominant market segment for its use - I simply donât see SKIN sales making up the void that the loss of all those players would create. Also, as others have pointed out, a reduction in the population is undesirable as it reduces in-game activity and interactions, which lowers demand for various in-game expenses, and ultimately also leads to paying customers leaving for better-populated, more lively games.
Anyway, thatâs my hypothesisâŚ
EDIT: Itâs important to note that the days of the purely subscription-based MMOs are over - while some players are still willing to throw money at their games on a ârentalâ basis (I never was - Iâve always thought that itâs totally fair that I pay for a game by BUYING it - but I am not a repeat-sucker to be milked over a course of years), I think many are waking up to the fact that this is just another manifestation of consumerism gone mad.
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