Verity Sovereign
Sovereign Fleet Tax Shelter
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Posted - 2014.05.03 17:28:00 -
[1] - Quote
Lets look at all the actions CCP is taking, and how it relates to inflation:
#1) Special ship skins for plex- increases PLEX demand, drives price up. Plex being the most common benchmark of inflation, ISK per plex will increase - although pretty minor and not really worth complaining about.
#2) Manufacturing cost increase - will temporarily increase prices as the manufacturing cost is passed on to the consumer, but acts as an ISK sink, so in the long run will help keep inflation down.
#3) Increase jump fuel costs by 50%, essentially driving the supply of jump fuel down by 33%. Less supply, same amount of currency = inflation
As JFs are the premier way of moving a lot of items, the cost of pretty much everything will increase accordingly.
Marginally/ indirectly, the effects we may see: large fleets to still move as often for strategic reasons, but smaller groups (which are looking to make profits on the high meta drops and such) to move less often. The result may be a slight decrease in deadspace/officer module supply... but I suspect a much bigger effect will be that if they don't move systems as often, they will be destroyed more often, driving up the cost of everything (increased ship destructon rate = higher prices)
#4) Changes to POS requirements/incentives- should lead to more POSs being anchored, will reduce the ISK sink effect of point 2, and supply vs demand for ice will drop, currency stays the same - effect: ISK sink reduced, less resources available for the same amount of currency = inflation
#5) Reprocessing changes: Lower mineral supply, less resources per unit currency = higher prices/inflation.
This is a straight up nerf to the salvaging profession. High sec carebears (as if people cared about them) will stop being a mineral faucet, and will become even more of an ISK faucet.
Normally, as inflation proceeds, the ISK/hour from looting a mission becomes more favorable relative to blitzing a mission. However, this recent change will result in a large decrease to the ISK/hour of salvaging: expect more mission blitzing with no salvaging to pour ISK out of the faucet, and less mineral supply. Inflation will thus proceed faster, but it may still be quite a while until it becomes worth the time to salvage again.
Lastly: such high inflation results in high plex prices, which will have the imediate effect of driving down the number of players online, although not income for CCP.
The number of paying players would initially be the same, the number of plexing players will decline.
However... a shrinking player base (paying or not) is not good for the long term health of the game. |