Raider Zero
Minmatar
Federation
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Posted - 2006.08.16 19:44:00 -
[1]
Another major component of economy that is neither measurable nor mentioned, but is highly important is technology.
In RL, our world makes slow, steady technological progress, with a television being a good example. It was invented ~ 60 years ago, popular 50 years ago, color 40 years ago, cable enhanced it 25 years ago, satellite popular 10-12 years ago, now digital and plasma and all High Def. BUT it's still a television and cost over time for having television has de-creased.
In Eve, every major content patch fundamentally changes the items that are avaiable for purchase. It changes the style of use for the items as well, and the demand responds in kind. Right now, my Heavy Dimishing Nos is quite valuable and in demand. If Kali severely nerfs Nos, it will be junk. It's attributes and fit in the world of eve have fundamentally changed which does not happen in RL.
Similarly, there has been beyond exponential population growth in Eve. In RL this could have a myriad of detrimental economic effects.
I have lots of thoughts, but two basic points.
1. Given all the possibilities, I think it's safe to say that the CCP team have actually done an outstanding job of keeping the economy under control. To have 4-10% annual inflation is in line with RL inflation where hundreds of professional economists wrestle numbers to try to prevent inflation-to do so in the game without that support is awesome.
2. If you don't like that something is expensive, sit on your isk until either you can afford current price or the price of the item comes down to an acceptable level. The reason that things like HACs cost so much is that people will pay for them-the article clearly says so. If demand rises and supply doesn't, and the people who do the demanding have the means and motivation to buy something then price will climb too. The value of something is whatever is most recently sold for. If people don't like the HAC prices they have options of flying other ships or setting a buy order that they believe is reasonable and hoping that somebody sells at that price.
The reason that you see popular items like HACs grow in price by so much in Eve is that in Eve you enjoy the extra time that you put in to 'earn' a HAC. If, in RL, one had to work extremely hard to have a decent car, the cost of cars would come down b/c people would quit buying them since the opportunity cost is too high. When opportunity cost is whether or not to play a game more, then you get people who are frivolous with their money, in this case ISK.
I have one other question:
Are we ignoring that re-spawning asteroids are also magically created isk? Nobody seems to complain about that, and I assume that this was not a complaint in the early days of Eve either. Truth be told, they are every bit the artificial cash injection that bounties or insurance is because once mined they are pure isk.
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