Price of Plex - Market intervention Required from CCP

[Greyspear]

@Kezrai_Charzai

This is exactly the part that is wrong, however. Although of course you can define ‘financial success’ as ‘only someone who paid RL dollars to the company’, and pretend that resolves the issue.

I don’t have the issue. I’m well capable of making the distinction and I am being fair to those who give their money to CCP.

Let’s turn this around and talk about failure instead of success and see what your point of view is there. Who contributes to the failure of a company when it gets swamped with botters and cheaters?

According to your logic is it every player, but we both know that in the end will you want to blame solely the company. You will not want to take the blame yourself nor will you be fair enough to say that it was the botters. Isn’t that so?

[Kezrai_Charzai]

@Greyspear

Let’s turn this around and talk about failure instead of success and see what your point of view is there. Who contributes to the failure of a company when it gets swamped with botters and cheaters?

Are you seriously dense or something? What does botters and cheaters have to do with subs or free play?

First of all, botting and cheating is clearly, and absolutely, on the game designers for setting up game mechanics and play environment in a way that allows botting/cheating. CCP could get rid of 90% of all bots, and quite a lot of the mostly-AFK-farming, in 2 months if they wanted to. They don’t want to.

What does botting/cheating have to do with subs/F2P? Do you think somehow people who sub won’t cheat or run bots? Do you think free players are cheaters? Do you think botting, cheating, farming and RMT didn’t run rampant in EVE for years before Alpha was introduced?

All players contribute to the success of a game by creating the environment of the game. They are an integral part of that. If you think that somehow all players contribute to botting, or cheating (how do you even ‘cheat’ in a sandbox game?) then please lay out your explanation for this.

Also, you just pulled this ‘failure of a game when it gets swamped with botters and cheaters’ thing out of thin air. Are you contending that EVE is failing for that reason? Are you pointing at other games that went F2P and then somehow ‘failed because of botters and cheaters’? That didn’t exist before F2P?

I have no idea why you guys keep pulling these weird side-issues out of the air to respond to objective, demonstrable, measurable industry trends. I can only assume you feel deeply threatened by competition with free Alpha accounts, and are grasping at straws to find some reason to reject them.

[Greyspear]

@Kezrai_Charzai

Are you seriously dense or something? What does botters and cheaters have to do with subs or free play?

I’ve just explained it. Maybe read again. It’s about making a contribution and one can contribute to a company’s success just as much as one can contribute to their failure. I fear that some of you have an insufficient understanding of what it means to contribute and thus are happily crediting yourself when you find it suits you and reject it when it doesn’t.

[Kezrai_Charzai]

@Greyspear

I’ve just explained it. Maybe read again. It’s about making a contribution and one can contribute to a company’s success just as much as one can contribute to their failure. I fear that some of you have an insufficient understanding of what it means to contribute and thus are happily crediting yourself when you find it suits you and reject it when it doesn’t.

Dude, you explained nothing. I explained how extra player activity contributes to a game, what they do, how social connections affect the game environment and player retention.

All you did was say “but botters and cheaters! Failure! Everyone contributes!”. Nothing to link sub/free play to botters or cheaters. Nothing to say how botters and cheaters cause failure. Nothing to say how all players contribute to botting and cheating, resulting in game failure.

You just pulled a made up issue, with no connection to the actual topic, out of the air, and then said “There, see? I explained it all”. Which is basically what all you sub-only guys end up doing.

“I pay a sub, therefore only subs are good, therefore all other models are bad, and I don’t care about facts because I don’t want to believe them anyway. Oh, and here’s a made-up thing to prove my point.” It’s ridiculous.

[Greyspear]

@Kezrai_Charzai

Dude, you explained nothing.

I’ll try again. When you haven’t paid a single penny to CCP then you haven’t contributed to their financial success. If you had paid them money then their financial success would be even bigger.

[Anderson_Geten]

@Kezrai_Charzai

CCP could get rid of 90% of all bots, and quite a lot of the mostly-AFK-farming, in 2 months if they wanted to. They don’t want to.

Are you dense ? They could in 1s by closing eve servers.
I wonder why they can’t do that one solution ! Only a genius could know this !
Your point is, since they don’t close the servers, it means they are responsible in the bots and are taking actions to have more of them ?

I have no idea what you two are arguing about. I however noticed that you make a lot of exaggerations, incorrect comparisons, and what’s worse relentless aggression so IMO you are wrong. But I have no idea about what.

[Kezrai_Charzai]

@Greyspear

I’ll try again. When you haven’t paid a single penny to CCP then you haven’t contributed to their financial success. If you had paid them money then their financial success would be even bigger.

So, if I’m a streamer, who shows a lot of people an entertaining and creative thing they can do in EVE, and 80 of my viewers download EVE and try it out, and 12 of those stay to play, and 4 of them buy subs for the game… but I’m an Alpha; then I haven’t contributed to CCPs financial success?

But of course, you are now simply back to the thing I already pointed out:

@Kezrai_Charzai

Although of course you can define ‘financial success’ as ‘only someone who paid RL dollars to the company’, and pretend that resolves the issue.

Because hey, if you’ve got nothing valid to say, might as well go in circles and just say it all again right?

[Greyspear]

@Kezrai_Charzai

So, if I’m a streamer, who shows a lot of people an entertaining and creative thing they can do in EVE, and 80 of my viewers download EVE and try it out, and 12 of those stay to play, and 4 of them buy subs for the game… but I’m an Alpha; then I haven’t contributed to CCPs financial success?

No, you haven’t, but the 4 new customers will. What you did is to contribute to the game’s popularity as well as to it’s content. This is not the same as to have contributed to the company’s financial success.

[Bjorn_Tyrson]

@Greyspear

No. They don’t contribute a single penny to CCP. By believing they would do so do you diminish the contribution by the paying customers.

Except that they DO contribute.

okay, Corporate accounting 101 lesson for you here, (one of these days I just need to make a copy-pasta for this, since I know i’ve done this lesson before, possibly even in this very thread)

okay, first off, we need to distinguish between income, and revenue. Income is literally any money that the company takes in, for any reason whatsoever. This however does not mean its a profit for the company, at least not yet, and often as not can end up being reported as a liability on the companies balance sheet rather than an asset. its actually a fairly useless metric in the grand scheme of things, except for some analytical purposes, but does very little for the bottom line.
Revenue meanwhile, is money that a company has actually earned, through providing goods or services, this IS the number that matters. and crucially exists entirely independently of income, since a company can generate revenue without receiving any money, which is what accounts receivable is. and they can receive money for a good or service, but until it gets provided, not be able to count it as revenue.

that second part is the important one when it comes to plex. When you purchase plex from ccp, you are not actually purchasing anything “real” you are purchasing, effectively, an IOU that can be traded in for a good or service in future. that 20$ you just spent on plex, doesn’t count as revenue yet, its just income, and will get put into a seperate account, usually called “differed revenue” or something along those lines. which is effectively an escrow account, and has to be (by law) reported as a liability on their balance sheets and financial statements.

Until that plex actually gets used for something, be that a skin, or game time, or anything else from the NES. that money you gave them will sit there, useless and (mostly) untouchable by the company. doesn’t matter WHO redeems it, simply that it does.
and that is precisely why the person who actually pays cash for the plex, is not actually the one contributing to ccp’s income. you gave them money sure, but its effectively useless until someone redeems that plex. and THAT is the person who actually triggers the money to move from that liabilities account, to their revenue account, and its only at that point that it will contribute to ccp’s financial success.

Companies don’t actually care WHO pays the money, their customer is the one receiving the service from them. your dad could have paid your car insurance for the past 10 years, but you are still the customer, since its you who is receiving the service, and you who are generating the revenue.
just because you paid for the plex that someone else used for game time, doesn’t suddenly make you the customer, they are the one who received 1 month of game time for it, they are the ones who generated the revenue, you are simply the person picking up the tab.

[Anderson_Geten]

@Bjorn_Tyrson

that 20$ you just spent on plex, doesn’t count as revenue yet, its just income,

No. According to your own definition it is money that the company has earned. CCP is not bound to anything just because you bought plex.

@Bjorn_Tyrson

just because you paid for the plex that someone else used for game time, doesn’t suddenly make you the customer,

yes. It exactly makes me the customer of the plex. Whether I use it or sell it for isk does not matter - I’m still the customer.

@Bjorn_Tyrson

Until that plex actually gets used for something, be that a skin, or game time, or anything else from the NES. that money you gave them will sit there, useless and (mostly) untouchable by the company. doesn’t matter WHO redeems it, simply that it does.

This makes no sense. Items that are sold in the market(or just, can be packaged and grouped in your inventory) are not uniquely identified.
What it means is that CCP does not track the plex activity. They don’t know when you actually sell or use your plex.

[Bjorn_Tyrson]

@Anderson_Geten

No. According to your own definition it is money that the company has earned. CCP is not bound to anything just because you bought plex.

no it doesn’t, because “what is plex worth” plex on its own is useless. if ccp took away the ability to trade it in for anything, it would have absolutely zero value on its own. that means its only value is to be redeemed for something.
its like a gift card, that gift card may say its “20 dollars” you may have paid 20 dollars for it. but its only worth that much so long as you can trade it in for goods and services worth that much. so its the goods or services that have the value, not the item itself. if the store closes, its just a piece of plastic.

@Anderson_Geten

This makes no sense. Items that are sold in the market(or just, can be packaged and grouped in your inventory) are not uniquely identified.
What it means is that CCP does not track the plex activity. They don’t know when you actually sell or use your plex.

your right, they don’t individually track them, but they DO track how many plex have been sold for cash, and how many get redeemed.
so whenever you buy it for cash, the money goes into that “deferred revenue” account, (or whatever they call it internally) the one that counts as a liability. when someone spends x amount of plex on a skin or game time or whatever, then the cash value of that plex can be transferred from deferred revenue, to their actual revenue account. which again, is why you buying plex with cash, doesn’t actually matter, because it all gets added to this big pool of money that they can’t actually touch until the service that was paid for gets provided.
Which, as I showed above, is NOT the plex itself, but what the plex can be traded in for.

[Eveconomist]

@Teckos_Pech

Uhhhmmmm no. ISK is liquid, SP are not. They must be extracted first which comes at a cost, then sold, which comes at a cost…so they are not liquid, they are actually illiquid assets.

Your post is saturated with ad hominen attacks. Aspire to be better.

Sticking to the issue at hand, your claim that only because there is a transaction cost, SP is then not liquid, entirely discards the ease and speed of the transaction. Real estate is not liquid, as it has both a high transaction cost and can take months to sell; SP units can be sold in 1 minute with the transaction cost paid largely by the buyer, it’s extremely liquid for the sellers.

Liquidity is relative, SP is indeed less liquid than ISK, but it is vastly more liquid than it was prior to extractors. If you want to believe it is illiquid, go right ahead, the fact remains that SP is now both fungible and far more liquid than when character trading was the only way to trade SP. Character trading was more akin to the real estate business.

@Teckos_Pech

It is new SP that takes time. So not a problem. Now if you dropped $20 and just got 30 days of SP or say 1.5 million SP that would be creating SP out of thin air. Creating in game resources out of thin air is a sure fire way to ruin the game. It would be impossible to balance.

Whose time and how much of it? I takes a player one minute to PLEX and then extract the SP from an alt account. SP is being already created out of thin air, and what’s more, all of the SP ever created can be fungibly resold, which it could not prior - THAT is creating SP out of thin air. PLEX, SKINs, and Extractors all get created out of thin air. It doesn’t matter that they do, because there is a real world cost keeping their supply in check, and CCP gets paid and the lights stay on.

@Teckos_Pech

This is what you are essentially advocating. That CCP basically create a fiat currency in SP.

They already have, it’s called PLEX. PLEX is an SP currency and it’s a fiat hard pegged to a dollar value, it readily inflates in ISK terms but not RM terms.

@Teckos_Pech

PLEX are a Giffen Good?

Obviously not, but you don’t believe PLEX RM buyers become satiated and PLEX has diminishing marginal utility?

@Teckos_Pech

Even though the in game CPI is showing at most mild inflation…

I obviously meant inflation of the PLEX ISK price due to productivity gains - not the price of goods in Eve, those may rise mildly as CCP gets the bot problem under control.

@Teckos_Pech

Players could just buy SP at a fixed rate and are limited only by their own RL income/wealth

And they can’t now on the Jita market?

Overall, you are vastly overestimating the value of a month of accrual of the infinitely scalable and passive digital production of SP. Players currently are selling extracted SP at a mild loss, the market itself is telling you that that a month of accrual is not only worthless, but indeed players are willing to pay to order to spend time producing SP because it is profitable for them! Omega time is itself a form of capital, much like a trucking company owning another truck.

Furthermore, the portion of SP “destroyed” occurs when injectors are consumed, not produced. That SP is produced by PLEX consumption. Selling an injector for a PLEX price with “destruction” built in, achieves precisely the same “destructive” outcome without loaning a fleet of free trucks to all the drivers.

[Greyspear]

@Bjorn_Tyrson

Except that they DO contribute.

So how much did the streamer in the example pay to CCP? Is it 4 subs, and if so, how much did the 4 new customers contribute? The 4 new customers cannot possibly have contributed 4 subs, because the streamer is claiming to have made the contribution. So how does this work in your logic?

Perhaps try to explain it by using a botter and how a botter might be contributing to CCP’s financial success without paying for a subscription but using PLEX instead.

[Anderson_Geten]

@Bjorn_Tyrson

that means its only value is to be redeemed for something.

It’s a digital item. It has literally ZERO value. Because the service it is worth has zero cost.

[Cypherous]

@Greyspear

No. They don’t contribute a single penny to CCP. By believing they would do so do you diminish the contribution by the paying customers. You cannot do this, because it isn’t fair to them. It is entirely the paying customers and them alone who contribute to CCP’s financial profit.

Either you didn’t read what i wrote or you really refuse to accept facts, just because they do not directly spend money does not mean they DO NOT contribute to the money CCP makes, i’m not sure how simple i can make this but i shall assume you’re 5 and go from there

Player A wants to play the pew pew space game

Player A is sad because he has no pennies

Player A Does have lots of space monies

Player B has lots of pennies so buys the pretty PLEX from the CCP

Player B trades Player A the pretty PLEX for the cool space monies

Player A has indirectly resulted in CCP make lots of pennies because Player B would not have paid for the pretty PLEX if he wasn’t able to get space monies for it

Was that simple enough for you to understand and comprehend?

Because if i have to dumb that down any further i think i’ll end up giving myself a brain aneurysm

DBZ TFS Abridged: Vegeta's Aneurysm

@Greyspear

Rather is your belief another form of self-entitlement where people believe that as a sole receiver of a good would then also be responsible for its production, or be entitled to receive the product, or to have helped in making it. It’s however a wrong belief and at best does it underline the weak-mindedness of those in need of receiving the product as they are incapable of making a contribution.

So i retract my earlier statement where i implied you didn’t read what i wrote, its definitely the second

@Greyspear

Let’s not forget that those who PLEX their game need to be grateful for those who do sell PLEX into the game and that those who sell PLEX into the game do pay more than they actually would need to in order to play it. So lets not start with posing here as a contributor when you’re not.

And those people, as i explained above, would not have anyone to sell those PLEX to without the alphas using them to buy omega time, its literally a circle, even you should be able to understand how wrong you are

[Greyspear]

@Cypherous

just because they do not directly spend money does not mean they DO NOT contribute to the money CCP makes

You simply cannot take credit for other people’s money. How would it feel if you made a purchase in a shop and some beggar, who sits in front of the shop, claims to have contributed to the shop’s finances, because he didn’t spit on you and didn’t scare you off? Of course you’d think the beggar is an idiot.

Give credit to whom credit is due. Just don’t credit yourself when you know exactly that you didn’t make the contribution.

[Cypherous]

@Greyspear

@Cypherous

just because they do not directly spend money does not mean they DO NOT contribute to the money CCP makes

You simply cannot take credit for other people’s money. How would it feel if you made a purchase in a shop and some beggar, who sits in front of the shop, claims to have contributed to the shop’s finances, because he didn’t spit on you and didn’t scare you off? Of course you’d think the beggar is an idiot.

Give credit to whom credit is due. Just don’t credit yourself when you know exactly that you didn’t make the contribution

Yeah at this point you’re either extremely deluded or a troll, either way talking to you is pretty pointless when you don’t understand simple things like this, you have fun living in that fantasy world

[Elena_Laskova]

@Greyspear

@Cypherous

just because they do not directly spend money does not mean they DO NOT contribute to the money CCP makes

You simply cannot take credit for other people’s money. How would it feel if you made a purchase in a shop and some beggar, who sits in front of the shop, claims to have contributed to the shop’s finances, because he didn’t spit on you and didn’t scare you off? Of course you’d think the beggar is an idiot.

Give credit to whom credit is due. Just don’t credit yourself when you know exactly that you didn’t make the contribution.

Greyspear

He’s lost in the fog.

Vets have been evolving a collective fantasy, and reinforcing each other’s belief in it, for so long, many of them have no idea what’s actually going on. It’s a general MMO-gamer weakness of course, but EVE is exceptional in this respect.

The streamer example: it’s obviously part of the marketing process (advertising). How could anyone confuse an advertiser with a paying customer? Unless, perhaps, they were living in a dream.

CCP sells fun for cash.

• The cash comes from ISK-poor subscribers, and small-scale PLEX-for-cash buyers and “whales”, who want ISK without grinding for it. All the freeloaders better hope the PLEX-for-ISK sellers are enjoying themselves
• Like e.g. Google (and all MMOs) some of the “product” comes from participants (other players). The freeloaders provide materials, and if CCP had handled it perfectly they’d contribute interesting content for other players. In principle they would be “paid” in fun.

It’s difficult to figure out if the system is currently working well. The freeloaders don’t seem to be doing a good job “manufacturing” fun for the paying customers.

There are negative indicators: bots; people unhappy with a lack of PvP in lowSec and nullSec, everyone seems unhappy with highSec PvP; many highSec PvEers (who seem to be gaining in power) are looking for a different system altogether (a revolution, and full independence from PvPers).

Unfortunately the “EVE narrative” is still confusing a lot of players - for example about the basics of the business model

It’s natural that the players who imagine they are the elite of EVE don’t like the thought that they are actually freeloaders whose role is to entertain others. It wouldn’t normally matter too much, but it seems they’re not doing their job at the moment.

Their collective fantasy is on its way to becoming a problem.

[Teckos_Pech]

@Anderson_Geten

No they are not. There is a difference between being correct within an error margin and being wrong.

Now you sound complete incoherent. You just got done telling us about how everyone’s model is wrong and now you spew this.

I think you are just a knee jerk contrarian…not a good thing.

@Anderson_Geten

I always find it funny that people always say THEIR model is correct.

None is.
The example model I gave before is not ( too many assumptions).

The truth is, no model is correct IRL either.

Hahahaha…

@Anderson_Geten

again. Your post is useless as ever.

I was laughing at hour hypocrisy.

@Eveconomist

Sticking to the issue at hand, your claim that only because there is a transaction cost, SP is then not liquid, entirely discards the ease and speed of the transaction. Real estate is not liquid, as it has both a high transaction cost and can take months to sell; SP units can be sold in 1 minute with the transaction cost paid largely by the buyer, it’s extremely liquid for the sellers.

It is not liquid because it must be:

1. First extracted (at a cost)
2. Sold–i.e. converted to ISK (at a cost).

It isn’t so much the costs as that you can simply spend SP like you can ISK. It is illiquid. Your posts suggests you do not understand the difference.

@Eveconomist

Whose time and how much of it?

The players time and however much time they need for various skills, etc.

@Eveconomist

I takes a player one minute to PLEX and then extract the SP from an alt account

This is simple ■■■■■■■■. It takes a player with modest implants about 30 days to train say 1.5 million SP or enough to have 3 full injectors. Now it might take you a minute to extract all those SP, but it will take you 30 days to get the 1.5 million. Or at least 10 days to get one injector.

@Eveconomist

SP is being already created out of thin air…

Nonsense. This is quite simply a lie.

@Eveconomist

…and what’s more, all of the SP ever created can be fungibly resold, which it could not prior…

Also a lie. SP used to be sold and bundled with characters. It was less efficient. And now while SP can be sold, once a player injects SP beyond 5 million SP they start destroying SP.

@Eveconomist

They already have, it’s called PLEX.

You need to read up more on currencies.

@Eveconomist

Obviously not, but you don’t believe PLEX RM buyers become satiated and PLEX has diminishing marginal utility?

No, at least not at a market level. A player may become satiated at some point (a point that varies form player-to-player, but that does not mean there is a market satiation point). And since there is low inflation holding ISK is not that expensive.

@Eveconomist

And they can’t now on the Jita market?

Up to a point. All those SP have to be created and the price will start to go up as they consume the lower priced injectors and move up the supply stack.

@Eveconomist

Overall, you are vastly overestimating the value of a month of accrual of the infinitely scalable and passive digital production of SP.

Infinite…now we all know you are speaking complete nonsense.

@Eveconomist

Players currently are selling extracted SP at a mild loss, the market itself is telling you that that a month of accrual is not only worthless, but indeed players are willing to pay to order to spend time producing SP because it is profitable for them! Omega time is itself a form of capital, much like a trucking company owning another truck.

More nonsense. I sell SP, but I don’t buy PLEX. I farm SP off a couple of alts for the ISK so I can fund other activities in game without the grind. Am I “losing ISK”? No.

@Eveconomist

Furthermore, the portion of SP “destroyed” occurs when injectors are consumed, not produced.

So what? An injector sitting in someone’s hangar from now till the end of time is SP that is useless…it might as well be destroyed.

@Eveconomist

That SP is produced by PLEX consumption.

I produce SP and do not consume PLEX. So you are at best partially right.

@Eveconomist

Selling an injector for a PLEX price with “destruction” built in, achieves precisely the same “destructive” outcome without loaning a fleet of free trucks to all the drivers.

ISK is not a fleet of trucks and even if it were, so what. A character can only fly one ship at a time. Even if I have 10 such ships chances are I’ll be more willing to engage in PvP and doing fun things for myself and others. And if I don’t buy 10 ships but hold ISK and buy ships as I need them…same thing.

You have to be one of the most consistently wrong posters on these forums. Your ignorance and inability to engage in even basic economic reasoning is breathtaking. Well done.

[Elena_Laskova]

Teckos

Eveconomist definitely (100%) knows what “liquid” means in this context:

Market liquidity

You may be be thinking of this definition (not appropriate to this discussion):
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accounting_liquidity –

We don’t seem to agree on much, but you’ve made some interesting and useful posts. On the assumption that you’re perhaps at the edge of the fog rather than lost in it, I have a request:

Please assume that Eveconomist is what the name suggests. Where there’s a possibility of ambiguity over technical terminology, ask for clarification.