Q1 2020 Economy Review

[CCP_Convict]

Every quarter an economy review is published by the EVE Economic Council. Normally this is only circulated internally at CCP and we deliver economy updates to you in other ways but we thought it would be cool to share an overview of the data from this most recent one since it’ll give you some insights into the health of the economy, some of the methods we use to monitor it and demonstrates our data-driven approach to analysis.

Check out this quarter’s economy review in the dev blog.

Unfortunately we won’t be able to continue providing these on an ongoing basis since it’s quite a lengthy process to get this prepared for public consumption.

At least for now though we hope you enjoy this bonus look at some economic data from EVE. Plus - graphs!

[MB_ThePhotographer]

No snarky comments? No saying thanks to the Dev’s for sharing? Or even hearing from them at all!!!

You people are slipping.

@CCP_Convict Thanks for the post!

[Anthony_FatTony_Amico]

Really Cool Blog Loved the Information and especially about the stuff about more friendships being made and connections to other people.

[Geo_Eclipse_Oksaras]

really cool info… thanks for providing CCP.

[brice_kinney]

Thanks for the economy review, very interesting.

[MB_ThePhotographer]

I swear what I miss most about the old days was the interaction from the Dev’s. You had to have a sense of humor and contact with them to survive that from both sides of the coin.

Edit;

[Xeux]

I think the devs have a different attitude about interacting with players nowadays.

[Random_Olgidar]

While I’m glad that the economy is improving, I would like to see some numbers to support this statement because cause doesn’t always equal effect and it feels like it was just added as an afterthought. I’d also be interested to see how many of these new players are joining corps living in wormhole space.

you are more likely to run into someone in a wormhole due to more players in-game

[MB_ThePhotographer]

Very sad, but very true. What a shame, it WAS fun though!

[Destiny_Corrupted]

/me rips off own top hat and punches a hole through the lid

[DeMichael_Crimson]

@MB_ThePhotographer

No snarky comments? No saying thanks to the Dev’s for sharing? Or even hearing from them at all!!!

You people are slipping.

They rarely ever respond so why waste time doing any of that?

[Arrendis]

So, @CCP_Convict, I have a few questions regarding the presentation of this data…

Anti-Botting efforts are removing massive amounts of ill-gotten ISK from the economy and making it harder to bot. This seems to correlate with lower PLEX prices, which makes sense since massive bot farms are no longer constantly driving up PLEX prices with their cheap ISK.

Now, you do give numbers on the price drop in PLEX:

Players are now getting more PLEX for their ISK. PLEX prices, in parallel with anti-botting efforts, have now been dropping since Q2 2019 from a height of 4,487 billion ISK on 17 May 2019 to 2,455 billion ISK on 17 May 2020. So in a year, PLEX prices have dropped 43.5%.

Are you sure this isn’t a result of a reduction in demand? Looking at the price history, the decline begins roughly alongside the beginning of the Blackout, when we know¹ that the number of people spending time logged in dropped. We also know that as mineral scarcity was introduced, the number of accounts logged mining went down—real people, mind you, not bots, not input broadcasters. In some cases, the drop was small, but in others, the number of active accounts per player dropped by a few dozen². So, I’m curious as to how you guys are determining that the increase in the price of certain ores and minerals is the cause of the rising value of ISK, rather than a diminished demand for PLEX³.

Part of the reason that I question this is that PLEX, not ISK, is the actual hard currency of EVE, by virtue of its valuation in real-world currency. Everything else floats in relation to PLEX, so fluctuations in relative values of minerals, ships, or even ISK, can suffer outsized influence from the PLEX market, but those fluctuations are less likely to actually impact the in-game value of PLEX. PLEX comes into existence for $$ (or pounds, or Euros, etc), and sells for whatever the market will bear. A scenario where “the amount of active ISK per character in the game” is increasing, but the value of that ISK against the hard currency of EVE is skyrocketing seems… unlikely. Inflation, not deflation, would seem the expected course there.

Which brings me to my next question…

At the same time money supply (the amount of active ISK per character in the game) has been increasing.

As you can see from the Money Supply graph:

The ‘Character’ line is currently sitting at 1,064T ISK. If this is ‘the amount of active ISK per character in the game’, that seems highly suspect. Over 1 Quadrillion ISK per character? I think you mean that’s the total amount of ISK in character (not Corporation or Alliance) wallets, no? To determine the amount per character, we’d need to know how many characters are being counted.

---

^{1. We know this because of the concurrent user count tracking that was done at the time, including eve-offline, as well as things like the Active ISK, and Production v Destruction charts in the MER—the impacts and breakdown of which Rhivre helpfully supplied in her write-up on the July 2019 MER.}

^{2. Whether or not that drop in the number of multiboxers is a good thing or a bad thing for the game, is certainly a point that can be argued in either direction—and the evidence of the Blackout and the frustration of hunters certainly illustrates the difficulty in settling that discussion—but it’s irrelevant in assessing issues of whether or not demand for PLEX dropped. Fewer omega miners == less demand for PLEX.}

^{3. Unfortunately, the publicly-accessible information on market volume isn’t really helpful in this case. PLEX traders in all of the major trade hubs often sell to themselves as a way to establish a particular citadel or station as ‘active’ in the PLEX market, which artificially inflates volume traded, and makes that information unreliable.}

[Emka_Ottiett]

““CCP sends out quarterly surveys where players are asked””
It’s made to look as if ALL players were asked, but a quick look at my own mailbox says otherwise. It’s more like some select few were asked. How many surveys are sent out? And to what category of players? Last time i saw a survey mail from ccp was the “EVE Holiday Events Survey” in january.

““Anti-Botting efforts””
Bots are still there and it feels pointless to send in bot reports as ccp is too lazy to check. Still, i do bot-report the most obvious ones just for the sake of it, as maybe, maybe for the first time ever will ccp perhaps read the report.
One bot lost its hulk in a nearby system and the pod then kept going back&forth between station and belt, attempting to mine without a ship. Loads of people in local reported this notorious bot over the years, and ccp clearly ignored every report sent in. The same bot kept going for 9 years!! Now, i haven’t seen this bot since august 2019, but i doubt very much ccp finally banned it, more likely the bot moved elsewhere or the owner got bored of eve and left the game.

[Induce_Deadline]

It’s great the economy is being fixed, but it took the destruction of my playstyle to help achieve it (null sec miner / industrialist) but i can live with that. I’ll resub my accounts one day once scarcity has done its job.

Pleased for those in high sec and low sec that seem to be getting most of the content, but many of us in null are unsubbing due to content drought, there is no ore, ice or moon mining and ratting is boring as hell. Any plans to bring something like trig invasions to null?

[Gitzo_Gutface]

Completely agree, nullsec doesnt make sense at the moment, why risk trillions in infrastructure when you can make the same isk in hisec with almost no risk running incursions and abyssals. But with no pvp generating losses. The balance is off, and I for one would love some nullsec love and income buffs, I now have capital ships I completely regret working towards for years. Rorqs are almost pointless, carriers have sucked for ages, and supers… i cant even. CCPls make nullsec have things to aspire to and their corresponding rewards. In the last 6 months the profitability of in-space activities in null has dropped, and as such the amount of targets too, its boring. Personally I have set up a hisec corp for making isk (abyssals) to support my null pvp, and although its “optimal” it is just another example of ships not being in interactable space, which really sucks.

[Zhalyd_Lyehin]

CCP seems to be really proud of their Get Out Of Jail card called Needlejacks that makes catching even the biggest targets a chore. So much for “Nullifcation is an issue”. Needlejacks have turned catching entire fleets of not nullified ships into a lottery.

Now that CCP pat itself on the back for getting botting in check, it is time to downsize the security department again, right? Right? … One can only hope that they do not fall for that folly this time. CCP also seems to be very proud of “having fixed botting” in mining after they introduced it themselves with the Rorqual changes. However, instead of fixing the ridiculous Rorquals, they made mining more frustrating for everyone.

Corp invitations on 1 January were 1,145 (7 day moving average) and 1,451 on 31 March - a 26.7% increase

I wonder what that increase is really about. My bet is on the influx of Chinese botters and some Koreans and not exactly a sustainable development.

[Hug_Motsu]

@CCP_Convict Dear CCP…
when are all the pictures going to open in a new window?

[Hug_Motsu]

@Arrendis

Are you sure this isn’t a result of a reduction in demand? Looking at the price history, the decline begins roughly alongside the beginning of the Blackout, when we know 1 that the number of people spending time logged in dropped.

lol… ofcourse its the result of reduced demand… anyone thinking otherwise lives in a bubble.
thats what happns when you have enormous ddos attacks, and then a industrial and a resistance nerf

… it’s quite obvious that the dev team in ccp wants to bring down isk/hr and so they have done.
if the same playerbase was still around, then plex price would have increased, but they have dropped… due to people droping the game, not even the “dont take extended breaks from the game cus all your station asset will be looted”-patch could fix that.

[Horza_Tareem]

it’s obviously a matter of you being able to read a graph properly, including its title.

[Nana_Skalski]

Just imagine what would addition of avatar gameplay add, sort of thing that Star Citizen develops, or Elite Dangerous, or No Man’s Sky. All those new players numbers would be soaring up. Of course if it would be made with actual gameplay, and not only a room u cant leave or invite anyone to.