The Joy Of Plex - Market Discussions (2024)

It's not an isk sink, in the sinks and faucets sense, because the isk remains within the economy. It just gets relocated from one player's wallet to another.

So perhaps not an isk sink directly but more an isk saniflow hahaha

Isk saniflow tm you heard it here first.

Also Wales are going to smash England in the rugby this Saturday \o/

As stated, Mineral/Ore prices are the best to show overall inflation.
Further more, because Ores and Minerals are normal products they show it the best.

It all boils down to this ; There is more isk in game, people are buying more things.
This pushes prices up.
Some products are inferior, so the more income you have, the less you spend on them.
Some products are normal, so the more income you have, the more you spend on them.

Some product prices are dominated by outside events, such as wars, NPC availability, small to large market manipulations, speculations etc.

for example, anything bought with LP needs to be checked differently, as it's ISK part is contant, what's changing is the value of LP's.
You're saying that there's more isk in game, yet you refuse you call it inflation.

Catalysts are a funny item to look at in general, Because they were produced by NPC's(Given by the tutorials), yet their demand keeps the prices up enough to make a 50% price increase in essence.

In short, The most elastic supply in eve is in my opinion ore, followed by P.I , with moon materials probably last.
that helps to further explain prices.

Oh and while you're at it, Go look at your current store and compare prices from last year(real life), you'll notice some prices went up, some prices went down, Will you still argue that there's no such thing as inflation in your country?

p.s
it all starts with inflation, the actual reasons for various prices to be where they at may or may not have to include more factors.

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You should stop posting.

This topic has grabbed my attention for sure.

Coming from other MMO's with the traditional 7.99 per month payment I was shocked by the intial price for Eve, so started looking around at all the different ways I could lower the price.

I do however believe that the model has been set now, they have decided to follow a unique path which very few other MMO's have, the ability to self fund your game time by playing the game, the spin side of the coin is that lazy rich people can buy whatever they want ingame by selling you your game time.

Lets first look at why CCP implemented PLEX

1. Its a way of dealing with ISK Selling. Every MMO I know has problems with gold farmers and the like, but Eve gives a legal way around this for players. Starting up in Eve, why not buy 1 billion worth of isk to start you off.

2. Its a way of stopping other items from becoming artificially expensive. As more and more players earn more and more ingame currency, prices rise because of it. Where once 10 million isk would of been seen as a lot of money, it actually isnt that much anymore. PLEX allows for ISK to leave the game, which is a good thing, without it most commodities would increase substantially year on year.

3. Their fan base in terms of actual numbers is very low but dedicated. So rather than 500,000 people having 1 account they have 200,000 who have 2-3 accounts. Plex is seen as a way of subsidising these secondary accounts until they become profitable in their own right.

Now, I think CCP agrees with a lot of the expressions in this thread. If a Megacorp with trillions of isk decided to bankroll a mass buyup of Plexes the consequences to CCP would be quite large. Although yes, once a PLEX is ingame it has already been purchased, a player losing the ability to Plex is 2nd or 3rd account will lead to him only playing on 1 account, so the overall demand for Plexes diminish, but in real terms CCP loses a player.

I agree with many of the market forces which have been discussed in this thread, but PLEXES are similar to a basic commoditiy, can you put a price on a glass of water, or air? If all of the water distrubutors decided tomorrow they were going to quadruple the price of water, there wouldnt be a fat lot we could do about it, because the good is essential, it isnt necessarily something that we can move away from, and therefore the price or more the control of the price needs to be centrally managed by CCP and not by the Free Market, as basically we are all naturally greedy and only have our own interests.

This is atleast what I read between the lines of the minutes of the CSM, CCP are worried that if someone makes a move on the PLEX market the impact could be catastrophic.

[EDIT]Just to clarify the reason I touched on the overall cost in real terms of eve per month in comparison to other available MMO's is what causes PLEX to become essential in the first place. If CCP lowered the monthly cost to subscribe to comparible to other games, i dont think as many people would leave the game if it came to it, thats only from my perspective however.

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I refer the honorable gentlemen to my previous statement...

Tripe.

If all the water suppliers in a free market decided to raise the price of water without there being an underlying increase in the cost of water to them, then that would leave room for a new supplier to move in and undercut them. That's what the "free" in free market is all about.

What you describe in your example is not a free market at all, but a privately owned monopoly (or cartel), and what you describe as being an improvement on that is a state owned monopoly. From the point of view of a free market advocate, you are simply arguing the comparative merits of two different consistencies of turd.

What I am suggesting is that many countries look to heavy regulations and control of commodities which are essential, various watchdogs are in place to ensure that the market is competitive and that companies arent artificially increasing prices for their own benefit, like the monopolies commision etc,

Petrol companies are often found to be colluding with each other to make the market not as competitive as it should be, as a consumer you have very little you can do. Now your suggestion that someone could come in and start to undercut the competition sounds great on paper, but never works out that way in practice.

Comparison to be drawn with Eve, I am still not convinced that PLEX is best in a free market, as it allows for too much exploitation for potential gain.

In my opinion what needs to happen is CCP allow for the buying of PLEXES for real money, these have a set price in real terms and in game terms. Sales are regulated by CCP, and the prices reviewed on a yearly basis dependant on market fluctuations.

Thing is, PLEX is a strange market.
While demand does indeed diminish if price highens, and short-term offer highens if price rises, the long-term implications of high prices on supply aren't normal.
Mainly, whoever buys PLEX is either buying them for a set amount of ISK or a set amount of PLEX.
The one who still sink about the same cash in PLEXs every month/whatever won't highen supply due to higher prices.
The ones who actually need to fund something with PLEXs, will supply less if price is higher.

So, it's not a textbook example of supply-and-demand ruthlessness. There's more merits to low prices than standard economics pratice would give credit for.

Mainly, if 10k subs are lost, they're lost, period. It doesn't matter if they are PLEXs or normal subs.
If 10k PLEX-ers are lost, two things can happen:
PLEX supply goes down. Money lost for CCP.
PLEX supply is stable/higher (due to lower prices), PLEX accumulate. CCP has, effectively, a debt, or future revenue lost, if you want.
So, no. High enough PLEX prices to cause lost subs (switchs from PLEX to normal subs and back are substantially irrelevant) is bad to CCP's business.

Nonsense.

Firstly, petrol isn't water. So my response to your water analogy should not be expected to deal with petrol.

In my country water falls from the sky, runs in rivers and collects in lakes. This makes it viable for a person to take up supplying water in competition with an established cartel, even if by primitive means. Black market supply would also be viable as has been frequently demonstrated.

Petrol is a tougher proposition, as it isn't so easily obtained by simple and legal means. Black market supply of petrol is however an established business which routinely undercuts the established providers by a significant margin and gains a larger market share whenever legal suppliers increase their prices.

So the truth is that my suggestion frequently, if not always, works out that way in practice.

Water may fall from the sky in your country, but it doesnt in all countries. Hence why people die of dehydration. Even where there is a clear demand for a product, no one is willing to supply for whatever reason and therefore a market cannot exist. The reason why I mentioned water was because it is seen by many as being a necessity of life, similarly how PLEX are a necessity of many for their digital avatars.

Last time I checked black market Petrol procurement is against the law, mainlybecause it bypasses the taxes of said country, and thats generally the reason why its cheaper in the first place, and would equate in eve terms to someone buying isk for real life money bypassing PLEX altogther. Perhaps if PLEX prices continue to rise uncontrolled via the free market, more people will be tempted to purchase isk illiegally to then pay for their PLEX.

All I'm suggesting is preventing PLEX from being an item people can Buy and Sell at a profit, it should be controlled by CCP who by looking at market forces, inflation, subscription amounts etc, can then decide the subsequent price that PLEX should be exchanged for. Similarly how a Bank Of England set the overal Interest Rate as a way of combating Inflation, CCP could increase or decrease the conversion rate of £/$ to Isk.

Now that I've had 3 hours of sleep I might be a little less psychotic.

That's an interesting perspective. Exactly how would you weigh it? Are you going to look at only a few items or attempt to use several items to estimate changes across the entire LP spectrum on average?

Every "- basic", "- standard", and "- improved" implant is cheaper now. Most around 20% or so.

Every navy issue battleship is cheaper in Jita right now than a year ago while most pirate battleships are more expensive.
Caldari navy traumas are a good 20% cheaper
Despite the recent hybrid buff, small medium and large caldari navy antimatter are all cheaper.
Every navy frigate has had huge drops in prices, in the neighborhood of 25% each (hookbill, firetail, slicer, comet)
Republic fleet EMP L, M, and S are all cheaper.

Have you actually looked at LP items that are available on the market? How can you draw from what's there that the current prices are not just higher, but higher due to inflation? Is your argument that people have more isk and can afford to purchase more items from the LP store? I would think significant isk inflation would make LPs more valuable, not less.

All this, and I thought Prices are supposed to peak on average during winter and bottom out during the summer.

My argument wasn't that inflation doesn't exist. I felt like mocking you for listing the price of veldspar, tritanium, and several things built with tritanium as an illustration that prices are going up everywhere.

My argument, if I'm bothered enough to make one, is that it's idiotic to assume specific price hikes exist because of inflation without acknowledging, caring, or accounting for the effects of all of the falling prices.

Janty, maybe you are not getting the message. Your analogies are terrible.

Your discriptions of real world cases are flawed, oversimplied or just plain false. They do not serve to illustrate any truth in the real word or any matching cases in the EVE world. All they do is demonstrate that your lack of understanding of the market is not just limited to EVE but to real life too.

How does this drivel help anyone's understanding of the PLEX situation?

PLEX is important to many players, sure. Isn't that concept simple enough as it is? Why use daft analogies to discuss it?

So you are telling me that high PLEX price in ISK is going to drive people to RMT instead of exchanging PLEX for huge amounts of ISK? This makes sense to you?

...or they could just pay for a subscription instead. Isn't that more likely?

As to the LP it is intresting how to rate it, I'm only assuming that the more people run missions, the more LP exists in-game while demand for LP items is somewhat rigid(big assumption).
Specific items that have specific demands(like navy ships during wars i'm guessing) can go up even with more LP on the market).

Maybe i should've refined my point, which was, and still is
1)Mineral prices are up almost uniformly.
2)Most items being produced went up, Unless they are still in stock with old prices.
3)People generaly have more isk mainly due to incursions.

It is important to compare items that are consumed people with similar income.
For example, the navy battleships are purchased in bulk(as in; the bulk of the demand) by people that have a large amount of isk.
most of the minerals are also bought mainly by pilots with alot of isk, yet the items used from them are bought by everyone.

To check the effect of inflation you should check one item(or a set of items) used by the majorety of the population in the economy in question.
That exists in real life as the price indices, weight averages of items given importance by how much they're consumed.
These things take some time to go through the entire market range to take effect.
But if we can say that T1 production is now more expensive, T1 items are more expensive, That will translate eventually to T2 items being more expensive. but first the current stock of T2 items needs to be used up.

as to the petrol example given before, there is a real world collaboration to limit the export of oil to maintain it's price. some of the supplying countries rely almost completely on oil for income, and thus it is in their intrest to keep prices somewhat steady.
They also have a responsability to keep reserves for the world-wide energy demands.

in other words, if the price for oil was low enough, most chances are that we would go through all the reserves in a matter of years.