PLEX is very expensive right now thread

The market is actually an ISK sink (taxes).

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If you must have a second account to enjoy the game you still can without earning a PLEX for it each month. Assuming the second account can already do what you want it to do, just extract the SP each month and sell it and it will cover almost all of buying a PLEX. The alt wonā€™t progress, but it will do what it does today indefinitely for next to no cost.

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The second largest ISK sink in the game iirc.

I think the answer to that will involve the :diamonds: NPCs, and will take a while to show up. Pretty sure they are still doing tweaks to the blood sotiyo event and will start to add the new AI into other aspects in the future.

seems like it would work. and you canā€™t troll anoms without putting a carrier out in the open

Yeah, it was very obivious that with the changes of the plex / Aurum system the prices go crazy. Good work.

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DISCLAIMER: Iā€™m no expert, and the following is merely pure speculation on my part.

A hypothesis of sorts (it doesnā€™t even qualify as a ā€œtheoryā€, really) occurred to me recently: since PLEX was broken down into its smaller denomination, it has made PLEX trading accessible to ā€œsmallerā€ speculators. Before the change, each transaction was monolithic and thus involved considerable risk, and trading in blocks of multiple PLEXes was restricted to the serious wealth traders. Now, anyone with a little cash can play the market, setting up slight overbid buy orders, and once the PLEXes roll in re-listing at a higher sell-order price. This places much distributed upward pressure on the price, and makes for an environment where as soon as a good deal is available, it is snapped up by a trader and made dearer. Now, while this was happening before, I think that the greater accessibility has exacerbated this situation. And not only are ā€œsmallerā€ speculators now included, but larger-scale ones are able to do this even more aggressively than before.

Whether or not the ISK faucets are to blame, I donā€™t know, but it definitely sounds plausible to SOME extent - and I think that, if my hypothesis is correct, then itā€™s just compounding the problem. Just consider, what are the ā€œwhalesā€ with their carriers doing with their massive ISK income? Are they simply letting it sit, or spending it on new toys? Some surely are. But I submit that some are simply funding ever-growing PLEX market profiteering, and this leads to a self-feeding cycle. This seems, to me, a plausible explanation for the recent exponential inflation.

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Hang on just a second. Just throwing it out there in case nobody has. If CCP suddenly do something to reduce PLEX value right after a hyperinflation (like the current one), it would really help ā€œsinkā€ a lot of stored ISK out of the gameā€¦ :tinfoil:

Only a sink for those not making a profit. The sink is significant, but it only drives the market values ever higher to compensate against them.

The other day, I wondered why i had so much ā€œaurumā€ in the store.

I bought a lot of skins, until I couldnā€™t afford anymore.

A few days later, I went to add game-time, and to my horror realized where all my PLEX had gone.

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EVERY plex is bought using RL money.

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You joking right? :fearful:

Maybe send them a ticket so they wil reimburse the purchases and give you back all PLEX. Of course in exchange for the SKINs.

If that had been done down the pub everyone would cheer.

https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iwTUa_hUmFmA/v1/-1x-1.jpg

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Not technically true but we will run with it.
What I meant was that the isk value of Plex is too low, then no one will be willing to spend their hard earned RL money on it.
Lack of supply drives isk prices up to a point where people are happy to buy them with RL money again.

Most typical profits on the market are because other players had the isk and it isnā€™t coming from nothing so it is neither a sink or faucet, just a transaction between players. Where the isk for a bounty prize doesnā€™t exist until you kill the rat, it didnā€™t exist until you earned it so it came in via a faucet. Skill books are the biggest sink, they donā€™t exist until you buy them from an npc seeded station, and when you buy them your isk ceases to exist.

the market is a sink in almost all cases as most things bought and sold generates a sales tax and many transactions involve a brokerā€™s fee, in NPC stations that is an isk sink, in citadels it is a transfer between players.

There are some commodities that are npc traded that can be a faucet, mainly tags, blue loot from WH space, and overseerā€™s personal effects from running ded complexes. There are a few other random trade goods in there as well.


ps: notice the graph says nothing about trade profits

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Thatā€™s a convention about to change. The Agency is going to include PLEX as a reward for gameplay.

Depends on where the PLEX come from. Iā€™m certain they just redistribute confiscated PLEX from player accounts, as they did before with such rewards.

I just think itā€™s a good idea as a way to add a PLEX supply to market through gameplay. As long as there is a commitment to supply a PLEX faucet it might help with PLEX prices.

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ā€¦ would kill CCPā€™s business model.

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