An increasing price of ice, due to reduced supply, or increased demand because of game mechanics, is not "inflation", much less "price inflation", which is the more common (though inaccurate) use of the term inflation.

How high the price could go, could be attributed to inflation however.

Enjoy the confusion.

Aren't inflation rates around where CCP wants them?

You know, I do not think that you like me, but I was thinking about all of this. Before ice emphasis turns into inflation it can take years. There are so many steps along the way. The idea is to think of immediate step and do that trade, but know the chain. As I said already, I think that the first step is racial ice price compression. After that it may be same thing with carbides or maybe even something else like sylramic fibers shortage. Or maybe actually tech 1 items requiring mins in high sec instead due to mineral shortage in high sec. And on and on. I do not know yet. I am busy with racial ice compression atm for the next 6 months.

This is the main reason (and one I did not tell in my posts above) why I am usually opposed to blind null sec buffs and improvements.
Because sov is badly designed and thus it's possible for one organization to take control and form a self cartel on a key resource.

(Edit: read it well, I am not blaming you, you are really playing the game by its rules. THOSE are flawed not you)

First it was R64 then Technetium now nitrogen isotopes. You guys (and those who came before you) are GREAT at having earned all that space and are GREAT at manipulating everything and everyone (CSM and who knows who else) into giving you preferred access to the best resources.

But is it good for EvE, when a lone organization can perform a positive feedback process where they become more and more powerful? Positive feedbacks are not bad just for class A hi-fi amplifiers, they are also detrimental to MMOs long term health.

Hi sec noobs are just that: a fragmented and thus powerless bunch of players who can't harm the game because they don't steer all as one, they aren't coordinated to focus and hit like an hammer. You can find the 27B Raven dude but he's irrelevant, which for a MMO is not so bad.

On the other side there are the mega corps like yours that not only get the (deserved) prize for winning the game but also get mechanics that further self-fuel and amplify your power making it harder and discouraging for new "conquerors" to join the game.

This is the "wealth and power divide" that forms the "established elite" that has brought so bad to many MMOs.

I don't like this helpless stuff. I am all in on cheaper ice isotopes and derivatives of this trade until the summer expansion hits. Goons cannot crash these prices but if they do they will crash prices of their own assets.

Trading is not personal. Bigger entities are not as nimble as smaller ones. So there is no reason to hate them or feel helpless. The thing to do is to front run them and that is what I intend to do. There should be supernormal profits in this endeavor and that is what I want to try.

As someone who has played the game a long time, read the forums regularly and watched the political landscape evolve I agree with VV. As VV states a couple posts up, the Goons do deserve credit for what they have done and are still doing but as VV has said is it healthy for the entire game to be manipulated by a select few individuals?

Broaden your perspective. It's not just about you or me, but about the game in the long term. Today you make a profit, tomorrow you get a permanently manipulated economy in the hands of 2-3 mega-overlords.

I'm flattered you think so highly of myself & my associates. Unfortunately for the dystopian future you seem to like to imagine to excuse away your helplessness, we're generally too lazy to "permanently manipulate" the economy.

I'm flattered you think so highly of myself & my associates. Unfortunately for the dystopian future you seem to like to imagine to excuse away your helplessness, we're generally too lazy to "permanently manipulate" the economy.

I would like to confirm our laziness. It is only things too hilarious in ISK or tears we don't pass up. Or just when we want to smug and be all Machiavellian. Happens more often than you would think.