I believe that what we are seeing right now is a perfect storm of unrelated factors putting upwards pressure on the injector and plex markets.
its summer, plex prices always go up during the summer, this is nothing new and is a trend that can be seen reliably year after year. generally peaking around august or september. This is from people wanting to enjoy the weather and spending more time in meat space, so people who might otherwise sub their account switch over to plex for a few months since they arenāt playing as actively. as well as fewer people buying plex from ccp to sell for ISK.
ghost training has gone away, this has resulted in a large number of ghost farms being re-activated and extracted, putting a massive drain on the plex stockpiles.
lack of any substantial wars for a very long time, this is in large part due to the horribly broken sov and citadel mechanics as they currently exist. large scale wars cause alliances to liquidate plex stockpiles, which drives the price down. long periods of peace allows alliances to stockpile larger and larger amounts of plex, pulling those out of the economy.
massively overpowered rorquals, followed by rorqual nerfs, combined with carrier and super ratting. injectors have allowed āflavor of the monthā chasers to extract and inject to their optimal money generating method of choice. and we have seen some fairly drastic changes in that meta. this has sucked a lot of plex from the economy for extractors. the isk generation from carrier ratting has also had a massive impact on inflation, with plex being where it is most visible.
The alliance tournament (this is something I havenāt seen mentioned yet). in past years, the alliance tournament would cause a momentary but noticeable drop in plex prices, as teams would shell out for ships and expensive officer mods for their flagships.
However with skill injectors, instead of driving the price down, more people are likely to spend extra to squeeze out those extra lvl 5 skills to give them an edge. this drives increased demand, which results in more extractors being used and even more plex leaving an already stretched market.
splitting of plex allowing smaller traders to enter the market, individually their impact might be miniscule, but just 100 people buying up 100 plex per month each adds up fast.
there are probably even more factors that iām not thinking of right at the moment, but the point is that the increasing plex prices cannot be pinned on any one source, it is a combination of factors that have all lead to the price spiking. I canāt forsee enough of these things changing any time soon and it would not surprise me at all if we see prices hit 2bil by september before they begin to fall again leading into christmas. in fact the only surprising thing about this years trends is probably how stable plex prices remained all through the spring. the gradual climb that we normally see starting in about feb-march instead didnāt happen until june-july when things skyrocketed.
its summer, plex prices always go up during the summer, this is nothing new and is a trend that can be seen reliably year after year. generally peaking around august or september. This is from people wanting to enjoy the weather and spending more time in meat space, so people who might otherwise sub their account switch over to plex for a few months since they arenāt playing as actively. as well as fewer people buying plex from ccp to sell for ISK.
Erm, no?
PLEX always went down during summer because of less acitivty (= less PLEX needed for subs).
I always bought my gametime during summer because of this. Last year i bought oldPLEX (30 days) for less than 900 mill. Now i have to pay ~1,700 mill.
The price of 30 days has almost doubled in just 1 year.
In the PLEX threads, people always say āPLEX prices have always gone up, dont worry, the economy is fineā.
While it is true that PLEX price has aways gone up, the increase was much much slower in the past. PLEX was introduced in 2008. I heard it cost 300 mill back then. 8 years later (summer 2016) it cost 900 mill. 600mill increase in 8 years.
1 year later ā¦ 1,700 mill. A 800 mill increase. Thats more than in the last 8 years combined.
My 2 cents. Split PLEX in 2 types: gold and silver. Gold PLEX can be sold on the market. When bought it transforms into silver PLEX. Silver PLEX cannot be traded / contracted, but it retains all other functions.
Alpha clone is not just a ālittle limittedā. Itās when your 200 mil SP character that can fly anything with max efficiency suddenly become 5 mil character that can fly just a few ships with less than 50% efficiency. Alpha clones are a total joke both in pvp and pve.
Not to mention, that you wonāt be able to use more than 1 account anymore.
Iām sorry, but all it takes for your missing 195 mil skillpoints and several billion ISK worth of bling ships to become re-activated is $15 / month ($11 with discounts). Show me another MMO where the end-game tiered purples and the raid access isnāt locked behind the subscription or behind various microtransaction unlocks/permits that only last a week and end up costing more piecemeal than the subscription itself.
well it looks like SOMEONE thought the plex prices where just right, since about 4k dollars worth got put up in jita this morning.
I donāt know if this is an alliance liquidating stockpiles, or someone decided to dump some of their credit card into the game. but 123000 nuplex hitting the market is bound to put some downwards pressure on the prices, at least for a little while.
Iām sorry but if you live in a rich country and can afford 20EU per month per account, it doesnāt mean everyone can. Ever heard about Eastern Europe and Asian countries where peopleās monthly income is less than 100 EU?
Still it isnāt the point. Alpha clone EVE is nearly not playable and is not an option.
Well, with that high ISK per PLEX cost itās a good time to sell PLEXesā¦ Obviously.
In the end market will find the optimal price, but meanwhile quite a lot of omega clones will become inactive.
TERA. The only endgame-relevant thing the subscription gives there is double dungeon entrances per day, which only speeds up the gathering of endgame gear materials.
Anyone on the planet, on that kind of income, should not be playing the most expensive game they can findā¦unless they can earn enough isk every month to plex it, and with some left over to enjoy as well.
I[m sorry if that is your situation, but no one makes people in low income countries play western games with western pricing. That is a personal choice, itās like if I (a working class person) decided to develop a habit of eating Russian Kaviar ($7000 per kilogram) despite not being able to afford it then telling everyone that āsomeone needs to do something about Black Sea Kaviar prices because no everyone can afford it!!ā.
This is why EVERY plex or sub cost complaint thread is utter ā ā ā ā ā ā ā ā , for the vast majrotiy of EVE players EVE Onlineās cost averages out to PENNIES A DAY. These rich North Americans and Western Europeans make these threads complaining about an awesome video game that costs (at most) $180 per year per account while living in countries where the average yearly personal expenditures for alcohol and tobacco range from $500 to $1800 per year.
