Price of Plex - Market intervention Required from CCP

Yes, of course, When I say " CCP business" I mean in the short term.

In the short term botting makes the PLEX price higher, so , I suppose, more people buy isk.

what if botting disappears ? will this make PLEX price much lower?

The relationship between ISK/PLEX exchange rate has to be complex.

Botting drives demand for PLEX. But it generates raw materials that are converted into ISK that are used to pay for PLEX. This can continue for a long time, and is locally stable around a range of ISK/PLEX exchange rates (if botting is profitable, it will continue).

But there’s a “tipping point” where bottiing doesn’t pay for the PLEX it needs. A little after that point is reached, a period of market chaos is possible (and quite likely).

BTW: the whole PLEX market is potentially unstable too. If the “whales” reduce the amount they spend by enough, the carousel stops.

I mean, what if botting is technically and abruptly eradicated ?

Autocrator

I don’t have numbers, but my impression is that there’s a lot of profitable botting. If it’s a significant proportion of the total PLEX consumption, and all botting disappeared , PLEX demand falls, ISK per PLEX falls.

As far as I know, the other PLEX consumers are high-income players who don’t bot. Their demand for PLEX wouldn’t change much.

And now look here or here.
Panic on the market. Price goes up, supply goes down but now at alarming rates…

PLEX is out of control. Looks like I will be moth balling at least half of my accounts at the end of the month at this rate. I am not a multi boxer, but use several accounts in different areas to have fun. Guess my summer break is coming a little early this year. :disappointed:

How complex can it be if there’s only 20-30 K accounts online at any given time? There’s only so many players willing to buy PLEX to sell for ISK, and every time someone joins the ranks of the “space rich” he has no more reason to buy those PLEX for real cash. Sure, in theory he’d get his shiny ship cheaper if he bought it for PLEX he paid real money for, but his account already carries enough ISK to run the USA for a few weeks…

Orren

It’s not a normal market.

  • PLEX cost zero to manufacture
  • Purchase of PLEX for RL money are buying a luxury watch. There’s no disadvantage to them to stop buying PLEX
  • PLEX consumption is limited to the players who generate enough ISK to buy PLEX. Botters and ISK-rich honest players. It’s not inconvenient for them to stop playing for a while, or step back to one or two accounts

A couple of months ago, without looking at past or current ISK/PLEX exchange rates, I pointed out it’s a weird market, and that it could become chaotic (slightly differently worded IIRC). Quite entertaining that the ISK/PLEX exchange rate unexpectedly started changing fast soon after.

After my post a surprisingly large number of dimwits did the “EVE Forum thing” and started explaining that I was crazy, lying, ill-informed etc, along with the useful content-free spite /lol. So I won’t be writing a more complete explanation any time, in case one of the dimwits gets some benefit from the information.

On the other hand, for enough ISK (two player-months per RL hour, payable in ISK) I could be persuaded to do more.

“Interesting” how you bemoan people being mean to you (*sniff) yet have no issues with insulting others. Can dish it out but can’t take it.

Seeing as how you refused(?) to understand how plexing/subs/CCP getting money from that works players and CCP won’t be needing your “expert” advice.

You didn’t read the post at that link I provided you did you?

Don’t let your rage control your mouth.

I’m not enraged at all. You vastly overestimate your effect on others and your importance.

I have - unlike you - actually invested a lot of my hobby time in this game and contributed to making the delightful weaving of pilot experiences that creates New Eden.

I have also been reading and participating in these forums since the runup to the wizard hat incident csm election and have seen many like you come and go.

You are not “all that”, sorry.

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With PLEX prices reaching such heights, its harder than ever for a high sec miner to survive. What better time to purchase a mining permit, and enjoy a little peace?

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Which hasn’t happened, although others like you have predicted this would happen from the moment plex was introduced.

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25% off PLEX 30-day sale. Problem solved! :slight_smile:

Its a bit more complex because Skill Point farms exist - that means that they use more Plex (for extractors) to make ISK to buy even more Plex to fund their accounts. So its “consume plex to consume plex” system and THAT is driving prices up.

I don’t think they can count…or it isn’t clear what they are counting. 200,000 PLEX?

Other than the opportunity cost.

Yes, it was all you.

For this to have an effect on PLEX prices they’d have to be consuming ever increasing levels of PLEX. But that isn’t the case. An SP farm will have a hard upper limit.

This right here gets ignored WAY to often. everyone has their limits on what they are able/willing to manage.
and while SP farming is relatively effort free, that doesn’t mean its ZERO effort. the margins are razor thin, and can fluctuate quite dramatically. I run a fairly modest farm, of about 30 characters, and while I do have enough isk stockpiled that I can usually run them on 2 month cycles, it wasn’t always that way, and needing to extract every month to pay for the next months subs is a surprising amount of work and time. If you have the isk to do longer cycles, and do full extractions all in one shot its easier, but can still quite easily take up a full day or longer to get everything moved.
sure, there are people who run 100’s of SP farms, but having first hand experience, it would take a very special kind of personality, with very deep pockets (either IG or OOG) to actually run a setup like that.

as for the cost, and the margins. In december/early jan, you where making 400-500m per character, so pretty damn good isk. at current prices, SP farms are operating at a loss, 320m loss for the first char, with secondary characters only turning an 87m profit (due to the slightly reduced price of MPTC’s compared to omega) which means, even with all 3 characters on an account being farmed, you are still at a deficit of 144m per month.

Now this will probably change in a few months time, be that because of a sale pushing prices down, or because some SP farms start closing up shop reducing the demand for plex, and the supply for injectors widening the spread, or simply as injector prices catch up (they tend to lag behind plex price changes by 3-5 weeks, and prices have spiked rather dramatically in the past month)

with only 30 characters, my operating costs are around 62b per month on omega time/mptc’s alone. thankfully i’ve got enough of a nest egg to let me coast for a little bit without needing to resub them or sell anything off just yet, so I can afford to wait till the margins improve, but not everyone has that kinda isk. and if you don’t, then you are very much at the whims of the market.

now, an ideal setup, is one where you would wait for summer when plex prices are generally at their lowest for the year, buy a years worth of plex for each character. then wait for injector prices to hit their peak (usually around this time when plex prices are also high) sell off your injectors, and repeat. but to do that you would need 16.32b per main, and 15.83b per MPTC character (based on last summers low point). or, 31b isk per full account. which is, for most people at least a rather hefty long term investment. especially as you start scaling things up.

(and for people wondering exactly how much isk that actually translates into profit wise. assuming someone not only had the 31b isk to sub that account and the alts for the year, but also had an additional 42.4b isk to pre-purchase all the extractors they would need when prices where low. and then sold a years worth of injectors at their peak. they would have made, after all expenses *not including tax. a whopping 51b for the year from that accounts. which seems like a lot, but thats only 4.25b per month… not actually a hell of a lot of isk considering how much they needed to tie up in order to do it. and much of that profit is likely to get eaten into even more next summer when, while the prices will probably be at their annual lows, will certainly be higher than last years. and remember, this is under “optimal” circumstances. where even if you where a trillionaire and willing to sink 1t isk into a long term investment, you would only be able to run 13 accounts. which tells me, that 99.99% of SP farms are NOT run under such optimal conditions, which means the actual margins being made are even smaller. and the workload that much higher.)

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LOL!! Idiot.

SP farming characters can also mine in rorq or do some PI or even VNI rat en masse. The fact remains - It is a passive income that consumes PLEX to make it easier to purchase more PLEX.