Oh you are 100% correct there. Sooooooo many people come in expecting to plex their accounts. Hell when I started a decade ago it was the same. And chasing that almighty plex was the primary cause of my first 3 burnouts.
When I say the norm is for people who plex their accounts to also pay for a sub on their main. I’m talking about the majority of players who regularly plex secondary, tertiary, or in my case decagonary (Or whatever the word for 10 would be)
The draw to plex your account is strong. But misguided. It can, and often will happen eventually. But it’s about setting realistic expectations.
Can you earn enough from explo or market or whatever in your first month to do it? Sure. But that’s the exception rather than the rule. And often when it is done. It’s by already experi3nced players on a new account not actual newbies.
Personally it took me 8 years (with several protracted breaks) before I could reliably plex a second account… now I have 13 and 28 characters with only my main on subscription. Some might do it faster. Some slower. But it’s important to remember that it takes time.
Used to be possible to PLEX and then some, even from just casually running HS DEDs perhaps 10hrs a week.
Its pretty remarkable really, how much the change in PLEX supply/demand over the years has affected what content in EVE is lucrative enough to PLEX off.
Certainly has increased the incentive to sub, but inversely, if you do sub, why run content anymore that wont afford you another PLEX.
It could be argued that increase in PLEX price has made many forms of content redundant, as insufficient to PLEX with in a month, unless you just enjoy doing that thing for whatever reason.
I think this glacial, but profound change is very understated and misunderstood, in terms of how it has changed player behavior ingame.
Even when compared to the big content launches/expansions, even Alpha/Omega, nothing has changed EVE as much as the simple, mundane increase in PLEX price has.