On May 03 2013 10:06 Omigawa wrote: Suicide gank buff?
My take on it is that these tags will probably be "prohibitively" expensive since the usual method for gaining sec status is being nerfed (systems no longer have separate timers). That will artificially increase demand beyond the current existing demand for the mechanic.
I guess it all depends on how readily available these tags will be in implementation.
What caused CCP to intervene on the PLEX market? Did they ever say?
If it was due to all the T5 FW cashouts, I wonder how much of an impact KwarK had on the entire situation? Didn't he basically buy as much PLEX as he could, somewhere around 1,000?
On May 04 2013 07:12 Omigawa wrote: What caused CCP to intervene on the PLEX market? Did they ever say?
If it was due to all the T5 FW cashouts, I wonder how much of an impact KwarK had on the entire situation? Didn't he basically buy as much PLEX as he could, somewhere around 1,000?
I suppose that if plex price inflation goes way above the global inflation indice, CCP starts thinking that it's a bubble and a problem for EVE economy.
On May 04 2013 07:12 Omigawa wrote: What caused CCP to intervene on the PLEX market? Did they ever say?
If it was due to all the T5 FW cashouts, I wonder how much of an impact KwarK had on the entire situation? Didn't he basically buy as much PLEX as he could, somewhere around 1,000?
I suppose that if plex price inflation goes way above the global inflation indice, CCP starts thinking that it's a bubble and a problem for EVE economy.
I'm going to talk about both these posts in reverse order.
CCP wouldn't normally intervene on the market, even for PLEX. The cost of PLEX rises slowly but steadily with inflation (and some events can cause it to bump up or down temporally). If the cost of PLEX were to experience a sudden drop, it would stabilize very quickly because demand would increase. But if the cost of PLEX rises too quickly, it could create a catastrophic event chain.
Let's say that tomorrow, PLEX drops to 450m suddenly. This causes an increased demand since there are a whole bunch more people considering buying PLEX who would never buy it at 550m. You can imagine that this "problem" will fix itself hastily.
On the other hand, if PLEX were 650m tomorrow, demand would drop drastically. The problem with this scenario is that instead of seeking alternatives (i.e. buying GTC), people might simply stop playing the game. This isn't a problem in the short-term. The supply of PLEX would slowly devalue itself as sellers relist in order to get returns and things would go back to normal - except now you have lots of people who would probably otherwise be subbed doing something else with their money/time.
To give a really rough analogy, it would be like if the business taxes in a country were suddenly raised very high. Lots of businesses will move elsewhere, and the problem will eventually solve itself (assuming rational actors...), but the damage done to that specific country is hard to undo.
The price of PLEX rising is not in itself a problem. People have shown a considerable degree of reliability when it comes paying more and more for PLEX over time. The problem is if an economic "wall" is suddenly created beyond which some might refuse to go. A large amount of people don't think very rationally about this, but they wouldn't consider playing EVE unless they could do it for "free".
Now how could FW affect such a change in the PLEX market? Well, it has to be the effect of individuals. Large organizations in EVE are "wealthy" in that they have access to lots of assets at any given time, but they're poor in the sense that they live paycheck to paycheck. They mine their moons alright, but the money withers away into bureaucracy. Big alliances don't generally benefit from safes full of cash - to them that represents wasted potential. Probably most importantly, big alliances don't benefit from buying/hording PLEX - only individuals do. So even if they had the ISK sitting around, there's just no point.
But to someone doing FW, they can just keep spamming LP and exchanging it for ISK with no overhead, no bureaucracy, no permanent cost structure of any kind. The money just builds up in the wallet. There's no point in investing it because the returns you get from investing are worse than the returns you get from just spamming more LP. PLEX is the natural avenue for this wealth to move along.
If PLEX was a good that wasn't magically useless to organizations, it would be a very different beast.
Your assumption is that if PLEX hit 650 a bunch of people who wouldn't normally buy PLEX with real money won't then think "I can now get 30% more isk for my $" and buy them. That supply and demand only works one way. I don't see any evidence for that.
On May 04 2013 08:55 KwarK wrote: Your assumption is that if PLEX hit 650 a bunch of people who wouldn't normally buy PLEX with real money won't then think "I can now get 30% more isk for my $" and buy them. That supply and demand only works one way. I don't see any evidence for that.
This isn't an assumption I'm making.
We're trying to intuit the behavior of two different groups of people. One group (would-be GTC buyers) is made up of opportunists who don't normally buy GTC but will based on my deus ex sudden PLEX price hike. The other group (potential leavers) might seek to leave the economy altogether. There is some overlap in these groups and there are other related groups as well, but these two are the ones relevant to the point being discussed.
Obviously, any bump in the price of PLEX will stabilize in the long term (massive external events notwithstanding). If the sun were to suddenly disappear, we wouldn't know about it for over 8 minutes. In the same way that physical signals take time to propagate, the gears of economics turn at a finite pace. Reactions to economic outcomes are made in the immediate term (from present perception) but can have long-term effects.
Let's say that the PLEX price hike stays in place for a time 't', where it starts to "visibly" stabilize (i.e. people "read" that PLEX is settling down). There are three outcomes based on inferred behavior of the two above groups.
1. If 't' is really short, it means that the opportunists far "outnumbered" leavers in terms of economic action. Depending on exactly how short 't' was, only very few opportunists actually made the gains they were imagining. Maybe one guy logs in at the exact wrong moment after a shitty day at work and sees PLEX at 650m and decides to give up all worldly possessions and become a Buddhist. Some threads are made on the market forum about how smart particular people are and how stupid everyone else clearly is.
2. If 't' lasts a "medium" amount of time, it means that leavers and opportunists are in equal "amounts". There is a third important group here that is choosing to "wait out" the price hike when they otherwise would stabilize the price. Some amount of opportunists make good gains and some amount of leavers end up quitting the game (whether permanently or not).
3. If 't' lasts a long time, it means that leavers "outnumber" opportunists. In this case, what's happened is that the third neutral group mentioned above has been partially converted into leavers.
In all 3 cases, the plex price will stabilize almost no matter what happens. It's just a matter of time. But outcomes 2 and 3 are unfavorable for CCP in the long term since each body playing EVE represents a demand for GTC/PLEX. Many leavers would come back after PLEX prices have stabilized, but some of them might not (retention rate). This is a fundamental imbalance in the supply/demand consideration.
New players don't start playing EVE because of the price of X, but current players might potentially leave for it.
That game should be amazing, but I can say the same about many game concepts. World of Darkness should be amazing, if CCP can actually make it work. You guys think CCP can make it work?
The one positive aspect CCP has on their side as a developer is that they keep to their own set of ideas. You won't find them making WoWalikes or following trends.
If I had to bet, I'd bet they'll make a very interesting but flawed game. Whether or not that will be worth playing depends on the details. EVE is the same way but definitely worth playing as there is simply no game that comes close.
To be honest I can't even imagine how a game like that would work, looking at it through the framework of how EVE works.
I would expect there to be a skill queue like in EVE, because Dust has the same system. We know that CCP plans to implement a fully functioning, self sufficient, player driven economy in Dust, so I would expect that to be present as well. In the article CCP stated WoD would be single shard. Even with all of that in mind, I still can't really see how you could adapt the gameplay mechanics of EVE/Dust to an MMO where you roleplay as a vampire.
Maybe I just lack the imagination. I do look forward to hearing more about it though.
I think CCP has a great opportunity to make another game that really breaks the mold of todays gaming market. Seems everyone is following a script and the lack of creativity in the current AAA titles is killing me.
Almost all games now aren't even being released properly. Why make a full game before selling it when you can 'patch' it after release---See all recent EA games and D3.
Look forward to hearing more about the game as time goes on.
Absolutely loved this, I think it's great that we are being shown how private efforts to push the limits of science, math, and exploration can still be accomplished without the government. A much needed lesson in todays Big Brother dominated world. Also have to beam with pride at the origin of the founders of these efforts. Great ambition, I wish I had heard of this project sooner so I could have followed from the start. Wonder what the EvE fanfest attendees thought of the project. Some of them asked some good questions near the end.
Because, to be frank, noone here really cares about nullsec politics.
More to the point, it doesn't have any real effect on the game or even the political landscape. The end result is that groups A, B, C, and D now hate TEST and think they are the devil's spawn while groups E, F, G, H like them or are neutral to them or don't care.
Pretty boring shit. This is what passes for news in null land because the nullsec sovereignty mechanics are dreck.
Because, to be frank, noone here really cares about nullsec politics.
I'm a Tribe member. Haven't played in about 2 months since null-sec is the most boring shit ever. (should have listened to this thread!) Logged this week to export ~6-7bn in assets to HighSec before bailing.
Saw this tonight, and was hoping this might be a chance to shoot Test. But all that actually happened is that Test split from PL, which is a bigger deal, and left a bunch of random blues as well. They want to keep Raiden/Tribe/Init (the alliances directly around them...) blue.
Hope my courier JF contracts get accepted soon and I can just gtfo. Like all things null-sec, the (potential) narrative is more exciting than the actual gameplay.