PLEX comes from CCP, they literally print it. They also determine how much is in rotation.
Like Gerard said a few posts back, they added more PLEX sinks, demand goes up, and economy 101 takes over by pushing the (isk) price up. And because of its importance (game time especially) it eventually drives a part of the inflation because “accounts need plexing” etc etc etc
Indeed, and that is how i pay for the game on 3 of my 4 accounts. I know some people dont do it that way which is fine, you do you, i choose to do it that way. All it will realistically do is make me decide to Alpha one or more of those Omega accounts, and I dot really do much with Alphas so essentially they will be dead accounts,I wont biomass them but just leave them if plex prices drop to a reasonable level. (or my ISK earning capability goes up).
Guys plexing an account was 800m in 2009/2010. Its 3b now. Buying a T1 battleship was at max 100m now its 300-500m. We can pretend all we want that the economy hasn’t gone down the drain but it doesn’t take much to simply compare the prices over the years. Everything has gone up. Seeing everything through rose tented glasses because you love the game isn’t gonna help fix it.
Yeah its been broken awhile, but people keep buying and selling.
Blame industrialists for this race to the bottom the past 2 decades.
That $15 a month buys even more spaceship than it used to. Hot take here, but the prices under scarcity did not get even close to being representative.
Extractors yes, injectors no. Those SP needed to be sunk a lot harder without all this circulation BS, stop garbage like a day old toon flying an avatar.
Because its true?
Really? With thunder child ratters cranking out a few bill an hour?
Think about how many hours of in game activity it takes to make 3 billion for different professions. Outside of the ‘hyper optimised’ paths, the average dirt farmer in empire space will have to mine veldspar for over 100 hours to PLEX their account. Incusions still pay out what they did 10 years ago and faction warfare is nowhere near the ISK/hr of its heyday.
Its literally a magnitude easier to ‘pay’ for eve by doing an extra couple hours of overtime every month than trying any other activity.
Good. They should.
The point at which barges and an exhumers are expensive enough to get coverage with a defensive fleet as is done with a rorqual, close to being ‘balanced’ than the present game state by far.
People who are able to defend their space and defend their people will mine in whatever they want.
Injectors at least were skill points that were earned at some point, these ‘career packs’ that come with SP form ‘thin air’ are far worse.
People do every day, though not as many as we’d like eh?
Some people are still in a venture as a Skiff is just asking to get ganked, at least the second the retriever and the mac next to it die.
There was a post some CCP dude make about the policy being not to care how much PLEX costs, but how quickly the cost was changing. I am assuming this is some kind of guard rail to prevent a situation where someone bought up all the PLEX and listed it for 10 as much.
Hopefully not but people are dumb.
Maybe a little bit longer ago but yeah.
True, though the trick is for it to break fast enough, or badly enough, that critical mass of people walk away, as happened during the summer of rage or more recently, blackout.
I don’t know, is it true?
Hopefully you can spot the broken logic chain here - you’re claiming that “injection of Plex” both devalued Plex, and yet somehow also caused ‘Plexflation’, an increase of Plex prices (“the crazy price of Plex”).
If CCP was “injecting” Plex into the economy, that would increase the supply, which would push Plex prices down.
Plex prices go up either due to large-scale manipulation and hoarding (as we saw back in around 2019 iirc, the first time Plex rapidly spiked up to about 5 million); or more commonly, due to simple supply vs. demand of both ISK and Plex.
As it stands, there’s a lot of excess ISK in EVE, and multiboxers and botters are farming it steadily. Various CCP changes slowed the supply of ISK for a few years, but since early 2023 it’s been growing rapidly again. So there’s lots more ISK in the system, with fewer overall players.
On the Plex side, from what I can tell, there are fewer players primarily funding their gameplay by buying ISK and selling it for Plex. That’s your “Plex by VISA” scenario, which is actually contrary to the current situation. If many people were funding their gameplay by VISA Plexing, then Plex supply would increase and the price would trend down.
The actual situation is that fewer players are funding their play time by Plex sales. There’s less Plex in the system and more ISK. That gives you inflated Plex prices, not “play by VISA”.
Yes, other items in the game are also more expensive, this is partly due to more ISK farming, and partly due to ill-advised economy, industry and mining changes by CCP in an effort to force players to play longer. However that’s mostly a separate issue from the Plex economy.
You don’t seem to grasp how it actually works. People ‘PLEXing’ their accounts are not actually adding anything to CCPs coffers at all by doing so. They are effectively turning grind time into PLEX and ‘paying’ for their accounts that way. But as there is actually no such thing as a free lunch…someone is actually paying for it all, and that is the people do DO actually pay for their accounts or who buy PLEX. You know…people like me.
So whilst the ‘cost’ of PLEX for the grinders goes up and makes their freebie life more expensive, in fact the increased price of PLEX actually means that people buying PLEX ( with Visa etc ) get more ISK when the conversion is done…and are actually better off !
Thus, the more the price of PLEX goes up, the more ISK I will get for £50 worth of PLEX. What’s bad about that ?
Why would I care that freeloaders are worse off ? Aren’t you the very guys always whining that people are multiboxing too much ? Why would you then complain that people can’t afford to do so for free ?
lol. Just lol
There are only two variants…that are the opposite of each other…
People grind for ISK and then buy PLEX with it, and use that PLEX to pay for account. They don’t need to use the PLEX to buy ( convert back into ) ISK because they already have ISK and the conversion would cost them more of those ISK.
People who already have paid accounts buy PLEX and convert those to ISK to pay for ingame ISK. This is the ‘PLEX by Visa’ option. But these people are not paying for their actual accounts with PLEX…as a subscription is cheaper.
I’m not clear under what circumstances anyone would be doing both 1 and 2 on the same account.
It would be interesting to know how much ingame PLEX there really is at a point in time. I assume some gets hoarded by those who consider it the gold standard - and they’re not wrong -, for later use to get ISK, and not so much for buying game time. Or to know what the percentage of PLEXed accounts is. Of course those are company secrets that we can only have fantasies about.
EvE’s economy is not a closed system. It never was, even without plex, of course (limitless resources, you know). But one would expect an “as good as closed system” to come to an equilibrium established by simply the number of active accounts creating and destroying stuff from a limitless source. The fact that it does not, has - in my limited opinion - two main reasons of outside influence: multiboxing and PLEX. If PLEX couldn’t be used for its main attraction, buying game time, it would be fairly unimportant. Now it spreads its influence across all players, regardless of them ever touching plex or not.
The misunderstanding is my fault, my statement here was poorly worded:
You’re seeing “funding their play time” as meaning subbing their account (which is reasonable). I meant “acquiring the ISK they need to continue their regular play routine without a ton of ISK grinding”. I should have chosen the wording more accurately.
Yes, situation 1., where players grind ISK, use it buy Plex, and use the Plex to sub their account, is in my opinion, becoming more common. Especially with multiboxers, which are also becoming more common. This creates both more ISK farmers (more ISK in the system, which continues to circulate after creation), and more Plex demand - both of which increase Plex prices.
Situation 2., where a player, say in Nullsec, needs something like 6 billion ISK a month to fund his ongoing operations, and used the conversion of Plex purchased from CCP for ISK from players, is becoming more limited. Not only because there are fewer players doing this, but also because as Plex prices increase, “VISA” players actually need to convert less Plex in order to achieve their ISK goals.
It’s better from CCP’s viewpoint to have lower ISK prices for Plex because then wallet warriors need to buy more Plex to fund their playstyle. CCP isn’t the one pushing for high Plex prices - that’s all on players and the supply/demand/hoard/speculation cycle.
good luck with this logic traps …
no point clarifying it any more than i have if you think differant… fantastic… i am delighted for you.
you even highlight the most important issues with PLEX but you got it all back to front… but who am i to say im just a idiot with a broadband connection and no idea what way is up.
no point me trying to explain it… according to you two economy is fine PLEX is fine everythings fine.
so yeah … good luck.
Who said the economy is fine ? It’s anything but fine. Players have to engage longer to get the same result, not ISK, but a fitted ship to take out and lose again. 300M for a t1 bs hull is bs. In other words, gameplay, which some may vaguely remember as fun, is greatly affected by it !!!
The economy got worse at increased pace during the scarcity/redistribution releases, and by introducing more plex sinks.
God we are so cooked…
3bil for plex?! 
I hate inflation.
i feel the need to point out that PLEX started as an anti-RMT measure.
as an anti-RMT measure, it’s been a roaring success. why buy ISK from some shady site when you can get PLEX from CCP and not risk your accounts getting banned?
at least with PLEX, the $$$ go to CCP, not the aforementioned shady site parasites.
Exactly, but other than that they don’t really have any options so in reality they can only influence half of the equation. Thing is that many people have this “vague” idea that CCP somehow controls it all and could “easily fix this situation”, you see this in many replies filled with ignorance and selfishness.
Well no, there’s no point you trying to explain it because you’re clearly both wrong and self-contradicting. You’re just following the usual simplistic non-logic chain that goes like this:
“I want Plex → Plex expensive → therefore CCP manipulating Plex market → therefore CCP bad → but wait, PA owns CCP now! → therefore PA = bad cheesy money-grubbers → therefore EVE doom”
This comes up every few months, and the people tossing it out rarely think of the actual cycle of CCP selling Plex vs. how, why and when players actually choose to buy, sell, trade and use Plex. Or what the implications of supply/demand and high ISK prices have on the Plex market.
@Gloria_Exercitus , as a seller of Plex, is happy at high prices. From an individual short-term point of view, that’s a good thing, so it’s fine for them.
For me, as someone who enjoys reviewing “game design” type issues, this situation is bad. It’s just not bad for the reasons you imagine or the things you’re complaining about.
The current situation amounts to fewer players who care enough about their EVE experience to want to invest cash to streamline their gameplay. It amounts to more players ISK grinding and multiboxing in order to Plex their Omega time rather than send cash to CCP.
This is a feedback loop that does not bode well for EVE long-term (on the Plex/CCP income side), because it emphasizes conservative grindy farming playstyles over adventurous ISK-negative playstyles, and fewer Plex sold by CCP. And the other parts of the economy (industrial/player economy) don’t look good either (from my point of view), because most systems have become longer, more grindy, more finicky, requiring larger supply chains and higher prices than before.
So I agree that the situation is not positive and is trending worse currently. I just don’t agree with your take on what’s driving it.
plex was introduced in 2008. rmt has been around for longer and, judging from rookie channel rmt spam alone, still here. Perhaps not such a roaring success although it may have mitigated it. The question is if ccp would take plex out of the equation if other anti-RMT measures proved far superior 
But conversely, the lower the PLEX price is, the more people can afford to pay for their accounts via ‘PLEXing’ through grind. That adds nothing to the CCP coffers, and basically all the people who do this are being subsidised by the players who are paying for their accounts. And if that gets low enough, more people stop paying and use PLEXing instead. It’s a fine balance, that CCP are obviously aware of and know where the balance is ‘right’.
i just want to add this for a basic foundation of understanding of where my post comes from…