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*POP* goes the GTC bubble

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WarlockX Amarr Free Trade Corp	Posted - 2009.01.27 17:22:00 - [31] No matter what plex prices will always go up. Because a) more ppl enter the game every day b) old players have more and more isk every day c) ppl would rather purchase isk through plexs then Chinese farmers and thus the plex market will try to stabilize around the same price. ----------------------------------------------- Free Trade Corp - Flash page "Nothing about Eve should be easy. Not even ganking." -Rhohan
Mithos Victus Aurelius Federation Apotheosis of Virtue	Posted - 2009.01.27 17:26:00 - [32] Originally by: nether void Good stuff as well Agreed, CCP makes out like a bandit either way, but it has it's limits. CCP stands to benefit most, and so do the players in some respects, if the prices remain fixed over time, and esp. if they do not tank. The last thing you'd want is rampant deflation where suddenly everyone with some pocket change can purchase GTCs and CCP is left holding a turd in their hand rather than paid subscriptions. Because it means people are spending half the time playing the game to pay for GTCs than they were before which means they work less pay less. Originally by: SencneS Just how did CCP manager to get screwed here... 30 GTCs purchased amoung 2 players. Player A gets 20 months worth of time at the cost of 6B. Player B gets 6B at the cost of 10 GTCs before the change. Player B still needs to buy time. So although you're somewhat correct, Player B has 6B in his pocket he also has ZERO minutes of play time. Player A makes out like a bandit I agree, but the loss is not on CCP. It's loss on Player B because he wanted 6B which is exactly what CCP wants to see happen. More PLEXs for less ISK. If PLEXs where 1B isk each, CCP would only get a half of a GTC out of me, because 1B lasts me quiet a while. However if I wanted 1B of ISK and they cost 250m each, I need 4 PLEX. This is WIN WIN for CCP regardless of how you look at it. See bolded part of my response above. And additionally: If a casual player would have paid two months for a subscription working up the ISK to pay for two more months free before now they pay one month for a subscription working up to pay for two months free. It's about time invested in the game, not whether or not 30x GTCs would have been bought either way. _______________________________________________ [...a lion lurking in the plain]
SencneS Amarr Rebellion Against big Irreversible Dinks	Posted - 2009.01.27 17:45:00 - [33] Originally by: Mithos Victus If a casual player would have paid two months for a subscription working up the ISK to pay for two more months free before now they pay one month for a subscription working up to pay for two months free. It's about time invested in the game, not whether or not 30x GTCs would have been bought either way. Look at it from a much much larger perspective. Lets assume everyone has an unlimited amount of ISK, and that everyone wants to buy time with that ISK instead of RL$. Problem with that is... There would be no sellers. Meaning there would be no one buying GTCs and CCP misses out. But they wouldn't miss out because people would buy time with RL$. You can't play the game just because you have ISK, you NEED time, you NEED to pay CCP somehow. Real world hypothetical view:- Lets assume there is a pretty even mix of people selling GTC's and people buying them. No matter how hard they work to make the ISK every player still needs to buy time. Which means that every player in EVE is representing say $18 per month regardless of how they purchased their time, be it, with ISK or with Money each player is worth $18 per month. It doesn't matter that a player can turn out the cost of a GTC within 10 minutes of playing time. Someone needs to buy that GTC. Get out of the game and look at it from a more external view, every player regardless of how they got their time, CCP is benefiting from them. The cheaper price of PLEXs means people need to grind less to get one, which means more people will play. The more people that play the higher amount of real money CCP get every month.
Astarte Nosferatu Abrivianius Manufacturing Corporation	Posted - 2009.01.27 17:52:00 - [34] Sigh, the cheaper the PLEX's, the more that will be bought. More PLEX's being bought means more GTC's are used to convert to PLEX's. The more GTC's being used to convert to PLEX's, means more GTC's are being bought. More GTC's being bought means more ISK (as in Icelandic kr=na) for CCP. If PLEX's are cheaper, ghost datacore farming becomes more profitable, and more accounts will be made. More accounts means more ISK for CCP. Economics 101
Mithos Victus Aurelius Federation Apotheosis of Virtue	Posted - 2009.01.27 17:54:00 - [35] Originally by: SencneS Look at it from a much much larger perspective. Lets assume everyone has an unlimited amount of ISK, and that everyone wants to buy time with that ISK instead of RL$. Problem with that is... There would be no sellers. Meaning there would be no one buying GTCs and CCP misses out. But they wouldn't miss out because people would buy time with RL$. You can't play the game just because you have ISK, you NEED time, you NEED to pay CCP somehow. Real world hypothetical view:- Lets assume there is a pretty even mix of people selling GTC's and people buying them. No matter how hard they work to make the ISK every player still needs to buy time. Which means that every player in EVE is representing say $18 per month regardless of how they purchased their time, be it, with ISK or with Money each player is worth $18 per month. It doesn't matter that a player can turn out the cost of a GTC within 10 minutes of playing time. Someone needs to buy that GTC. Get out of the game and look at it from a more external view, every player regardless of how they got their time, CCP is benefiting from them. The cheaper price of PLEXs means people need to grind less to get one, which means more people will play. The more people that play the higher amount of real money CCP get every month. I can agree to this, it is sensible and more to the point. However, a lot of conditions have to be met for this to all be true. One can only hope that these things do occur as more people playing EVE means more money to CCP which means more money invested into development. It is a nice scenario, and maybe it will be like that in the future, but I am not holding my breath. The best laid plans have a way of ... sputtering out lately in the MMO industry it seems. Too many open palms out waiting on handouts rather than playing the game because it is a game. The more sacrifices MMO developers must make to draw in those casual crowds, the worst it is for the rest of us IMO. I think at this point we can agree on two fundamentally different possibilities. On the one hand, CCP might be attempting to keep prices fixed and stable while trying to control the mechanic to both their own favor and ours. On the other hand, CCP might be attempting to draw in larger crowds ahead of the Apocrypha release in March to both their own favor and ours. Either way, we do win. But I tend to take the more... theory of decline and rebirth view on things as everything must come to an end and games do have theoretical shelf lives as developers can only push or look forwards, and you seem to take the more theory of progress and renewal view on things as everything is meant to be better than what came before it, and whether it ends or not in the foreseeable future is an unrelated issue. Fair enough. Good chat, glad we worked out the details.
Mithos Victus Aurelius Federation Apotheosis of Virtue	Posted - 2009.01.27 17:57:00 - [36] Originally by: Astarte Nosferatu Sigh, the cheaper the PLEX's, the more that will be bought. How does the person who purchases the PLEX with real $$$ that sells lower than it would have before stand to gain?
cosmoray Cosmoray Construction	Posted - 2009.01.27 17:59:00 - [37] Remember for every uber trader/industrialist in MD or solo players there are a 100 players with not much liquid cash. These 100 players pay the subscription every month. A lot of players in MD will play for free even at 1B per month The players who have not much cash (remember pay subscription), buy PLEXes to top up their accounts to have more fun. CCP wants them more accessible to these players so changes payment scheme (also avoids 3rd party costs for CCP). With the plexes worth less the 100 players can't buy as much STUFF. So they buy more plexes, etc... CCP are double dipping from subscription players. CCP are aware that they don't make money from a lot of the people on here. That is not the target audience, it is the little players who want to do something extra. If MD'ers find ways to stop the subsrciption payers from purchasing more PLEXes or stop middle income players from buying PLEXes then the market dries up. As less people can afford plexes CCP income goes down. In that situation CCP will change the market to gain more income. There is no other mechanism they are interested in. The first PLEX change was to make it easier to purchase instead of the forums, now it will be changed to increase revenue.
Mara Sci	Posted - 2009.01.27 18:21:00 - [38] Ok, I've read through this entire thread, and while I think people are trying to get this concept across, it doesn't seem entirely clear. It is to CCP's advantage to have PLEX prices lower and here's why. You need time in your account to play. How you acquire that time is meaningless. If there are 250,000 active accounts, it will take 250,000 30 day timecodes to keep all those people going. It doesn't matter if they buy it by PLEX/GTC/Real money (yes, there are small price differences depending on how long you buy for, but we'll get to that in a bit). The only way for CCP to bring in more money is for more players to enter the game and stay around. There will always be players who lack real-world cash. If they can work for 10 hours a month and earn enough ISK to stay in the game, they will likely do so and keep playing by buying a PLEX. If they have to work 40 hours in a month, they may decide it's not worth it and leave. That's one less 30 day code being bought and used to keep an account active. The goal is not to have more people pay one way or another; the goal is just have more people keep their accounts active. Furthermore, PLEXs/GTCs are the most expensive way to play. You pay more for a 60day GTC (RL money) than you do for a 60day sub. It is therefore in CCPs best interest to have as many people playing with GTCs as possible. True, the accountants love the subscription model because it gives them a much more accurate forecast as to how much money will come in over the next month (which is part of the reason they give you a discount), but the GTC still brings in more per 30day unit than any of the subscription options. Bottom line, cheaper PLEXs mean more people keep their accounts active and more people play with PLEXs which earn more money for CCP than subs. Whether this change they are making will have the effect of lowering the price or not remains to be seen. But their goal is to see it lowered overall.
SencneS Amarr Rebellion Against big Irreversible Dinks	Posted - 2009.01.27 18:21:00 - [39] Originally by: Mithos Victus The more sacrifices MMO developers must make to draw in those casual crowds, the worse it is for the rest of us IMO. Fair enough. Good chat, glad we worked out the details. Oh I do agree with the more CCP tries to cater to new players or "casual gamers" the worse off we are, especially industrialists. I do understand where you're coming from by the way, You fear cheaper time will eventually lead to the "Everyone had ISK to buy time but no one is selling time. They don't want to spend RL$ so they just go without and CCP loses everything in the end." It's a valid concern. You and I where looking at two different sides of the same coin. I have no doubt CCP views players as assets therefor considers them each a value representing how much they get per month. It's probably the easiest way to gage revenue and potential monthly revenue. The issue is eventually people will not want to play with RL$ and just want to buy GTC/PLEX. I'm hopeing the lower entry point for GTC/PLEX will allow new players who don't know any better in fueling the older players need to buy time with ISK. It really is a Catch22. The funny thing is I am willing to bet around the meeting table these exact arguments where put forth when CCP choose to put in the new feature. Amarr for Life
Mithos Victus Aurelius Federation Apotheosis of Virtue	Posted - 2009.01.27 18:24:00 - [40] Originally by: cosmoray Remember for every uber trader/industrialist in MD or solo players there are a 100 players with not much liquid cash. These 100 players pay the subscription every month. A lot of players in MD will play for free even at 1B per month The players who have not much cash (remember pay subscription), buy PLEXes to top up their accounts to have more fun. CCP wants them more accessible to these players so changes payment scheme (also avoids 3rd party costs for CCP). With the plexes worth less the 100 players can't buy as much STUFF. So they buy more plexes, etc... CCP are double dipping from subscription players. CCP are aware that they don't make money from a lot of the people on here. That is not the target audience, it is the little players who want to do something extra. If MD'ers find ways to stop the subsrciption payers from purchasing more PLEXes or stop middle income players from buying PLEXes then the market dries up. As less people can afford plexes CCP income goes down. In that situation CCP will change the market to gain more income. There is no other mechanism they are interested in. The first PLEX change was to make it easier to purchase instead of the forums, now it will be changed to increase revenue. Who is going to be purchasing PLEXs at substantially reduced prices though? The issue is that this relationship with CCP is not symbiotic. It is a one way street. $$$ goes in, but the only thing that comes out are intangibles (ISK). Devalue the PLEX, devalue the supply, devalue the $$$. Why spend $34.95 on a GTC that can only sell for 300mil when you can rat for a couple days in null and purchase one for yourself? But who are you going to buy it from? _______________________________________________ [...a lion lurking in the plain]
Mithos Victus Aurelius Federation Apotheosis of Virtue	Posted - 2009.01.27 18:29:00 - [41] Edited by: Mithos Victus on 27/01/2009 18:29:35 Originally by: SencneS Cool stuff Yep, exactly! Probably right, I hadn't looked at it from the viewpoint of no matter what CCP does eventually everyone will want to buy with ISK and not $$$. Brilliant. So, I think CCP will try to keep prices fixed but control the quantity. You think CCP will try to lower prices, and bring in as much $$$ as they can while it lasts. I think we are both probably right in some sense. I am certain that 600mil for 60 days is quite expensive compared to the what... 300mil it was just a year or so ago? So it could use a price reduction. But at the same time, so many people have accumulated such wealth ingame now, that 600mil is really a drop in the hat. I think a price relief is in order, but setting it to half or less, would be really bad IMO. So, let's see, a price reduction is good for everyone, but a price blowout is bad for everyone. I think that's fair enough. _______________________________________________ [...a lion lurking in the plain]
SencneS Amarr Rebellion Against big Irreversible Dinks	Posted - 2009.01.27 18:51:00 - [42] A corp mate had an interesting concept last month. He purchased a GTC with RL$. Converted them to PLEXES, sold one, use one. He sold it for close to 380mil, he then found one on contract about 30 jumps away for 325mil. He went all the way out there, picked it up. Resold it for 360mil. Found another for 330mil. He purchased that one, and used it. In the end he had 60days of time and 85mil if ISK. From CCP perspective his RL$ didn't change, the difference is he benefited from some lucky breaks on contract. I said to him, keep going, instead of using that last PLEX, I said resell it, get some more ISK at the time you need to use the PLEX just buy the cheapest you can find and use it. You might end up with 60 days and 600mil. He said "Not worth the trouble." I think that rings true for a lot of casual players. "Not worth the trouble" he was happy with his 85mil because he got something extra out of it. I would imagine others feel the same way. Amarr for Life
Raymon James Minmatar Tribal Liberation Force	Posted - 2009.01.27 18:54:00 - [43] only thing they ever asked me was to verify that I had placed the order when they called.
Raymon James Minmatar Tribal Liberation Force	Posted - 2009.01.27 19:20:00 - [44] look, two kinds of people buy ISK with cash. new players who want to set themselves up PvPers who cant be arsed to mine-rat-mission-explore for cash thoes people will keep buying GTC/plexes reguardless of the IG price because its not the Gold farmers and the card goes to someone who wants to keep playing the game. thoes who just want starting cash now just need to buy 1 card thoes who want a big bankroll will continue to buy as many as they can afford. the way I see it they may have actualy reduced the supply sightly since now noone needs to buy 2 plexes when they only need one?
Raymon James Minmatar Tribal Liberation Force	Posted - 2009.01.27 19:24:00 - [45] now, this may sound like a stupid question, but has anyone actualy bought one of the "30 day" plexes in game yet?
nether void Caldari Shrapnel Industries	Posted - 2009.01.27 19:31:00 - [46] Man, this thread blew up. I don't have time to read everything. Bottom line is, there's a cap on how many players are willing to buy in-game ISK with RL bucks. That doesn't change. Although you could argue that if they get less for each GTC, then they'll probably just fork over more RL bucks to get the same level of ISK. Also if you can encourage more people to play for in game ISK that might not have been able to play for RL cash, some of those people will probably convert to RL cash customers when their life gets more complex, and their time is worth more out of game than in-game. --------------------
Jason Edwards Internet Tough Guy	Posted - 2009.01.27 19:40:00 - [47] Originally by: LaVista Vista Originally by: Jason Edwards Originally by: Ricdics Good time for us to sell eh no it's a great time to hold on to them. Why? It would only make sense to keep them if prices were to go up rapidly. I don't exactly assume this will be the case whatsoever. ok i sold mine. You guys should sell now :)
Sikozu Prioris Serenity Engineering and Transport Company Wildly Inappropriate.	Posted - 2009.01.27 19:59:00 - [48] While I couldn't care less about the price changes of plex's but where exactly does one go to on the eve-online site to buy a plex. Doesn't seem to exist yet here on the site.
Alex555	Posted - 2009.01.27 20:03:00 - [49] what i really dont' understand why everyone has sudennly assumed that there are about to be some unexpected fluciotations of the price. i've read a ccp's note about plexes and about changes and havent found anything that would affect the price in any way. maybe i am reading the wrong lines but "CCP has not made any special exceptions for the PLEX items. They are treated as regular in-game items with regards to market orders and contracts..." maybe someone is trying to crash a market and uses new patch notes as a provocation
Raymon James Minmatar Tribal Liberation Force	Posted - 2009.01.27 20:20:00 - [50] Originally by: Sikozu Prioris While I couldn't care less about the price changes of plex's but where exactly does one go to on the eve-online site to buy a plex. Doesn't seem to exist yet here on the site. According to the patch notes thread it will be added in 2 weeks.
Raymon James Minmatar Tribal Liberation Force	Posted - 2009.01.27 20:24:00 - [51] Originally by: Alex555 what i really dont' understand why everyone has sudennly assumed that there are about to be some unexpected fluciotations of the price. i've read a ccp's note about plexes and about changes and havent found anything that would affect the price in any way. maybe i am reading the wrong lines but "CCP has not made any special exceptions for the PLEX items. They are treated as regular in-game items with regards to market orders and contracts..." maybe someone is trying to crash a market and uses new patch notes as a provocation Like I said elsewhere the only thing I see is that people who used to have to pay for 2 when they just wanted one will now just pay for 1. fewer plexes going into the market, but with the same demand mean prices will probably go up a bit.
Aliedora	Posted - 2009.01.27 20:55:00 - [52] plex are selling for 339 in Jita now. don't know if it's a genuine ffect of the bubble burst or maybe someone is manipulating the market, but I realize it's too late to sell mine now, so i'm wondering if I should simply hold on to them until prices rise again to 380+ level, no matter how long that takes.
Alex555	Posted - 2009.01.27 21:08:00 - [53] it depends at what level u have bought sometimes it is worth just to save what u have invested rather then suffer losses. but on the other hand - read carefully what ccp has put into patch notes. as i said before, i hadn't found anything that would lead to decrease in price. perhaps the phrase that ccp is planning to sell plexes has caused some panic on the market, but look at it from different perspective - they want to sell plexes, but any price they would charge would be considered as unfair, because there was no fair price before. but now there's a market of plexes with some history already and ccp can use market data to set market charge for a plex. but again i don't see how it will affect the market in any direction. what is the point for ccp to sell plexes? why people should sell/buy plexes from ccp if they can get cheaper (or sell more expensive) at the market? a lot of answers to be discovered...
Arestane	Posted - 2009.01.28 06:38:00 - [54] Originally by: Alex555 but any price they would charge would be considered as unfair, because there was no fair price before. If their PLEX price will be current GTC dollar price /2, how is that unfair?
Rex Lashar Amarr	Posted - 2009.01.28 16:42:00 - [55] Mithos needs to check this basic math. 20 GTCs purchased costs more real money than 10 GTCs purchased. In the second scenario, CCP is making more money. Who uses them, and what price they fetch in ISK is entirely irrelevant. CCP made a profit in the second scenario because its not guaranteed they'd get 10 extra resubs by the people who couldn't afford a GTC with ISK. I can tell you that I used to have 3-4 accounts and don't anymore because of GTC prices, and I'm probably not the only one.
Corp Quas Gallente Center for Advanced Studies	Posted - 2009.01.28 18:38:00 - [56] I stopped paying for gtc's when they hit 400m for 60 days. It is dumb of you all to pay over that too considering 90 day gtc's used to cost 350m. I have since Canceled 2 of my accounts and moved those characters to other accounts. GTC's will have to come WAY down before I start buying them again. There is no way I'm paying gouged prices for them.
Tasko Pal Heron Corporation	Posted - 2009.01.28 19:20:00 - [57] Originally by: Aliedora plex are selling for 339 in Jita now. don't know if it's a genuine ffect of the bubble burst or maybe someone is manipulating the market, but I realize it's too late to sell mine now, so i'm wondering if I should simply hold on to them until prices rise again to 380+ level, no matter how long that takes. If you're asking, you probably should do something with it other than let it sit there. As I see it, here's the fundamental question: if you had 339 mil isk now, how long would it take you to turn that into 380+ mil isk? Chances are good that it's no more than three months. It's not a good idea to hold on to short term speculation just because it didn't turn out well. Having said that, the fundamental dynamic of the system is still there. People still need to pay for their accounts and it remains that three properly trained alts with the appropriate capital assets can crank out a lot more than $340 mil a month with low effort. But that's something that has a long lead time.
Clair Bear Perkone	Posted - 2009.01.28 20:43:00 - [58] Edited by: Clair Bear on 28/01/2009 20:43:44 It's a gamble to be sure. If this feature does go into the game expect a massive price crash. Why? Because stolen credit card numbers can be used to launder RL money via GTC and ISK sale (I'll let you work out how). There's a reason Shattered Crystal contacts buyers. The Eve store would have to have security beefed up or bad things would happen. Which is why I think this feature won't be coming any time soon and there is still a chance we'll see another GTC peak. But not enough of a chance for me to get back into the market.
Dreamwalker	Posted - 2009.01.28 21:20:00 - [59] Originally by: Clair Bear If this feature does go into the game expect a massive price crash. Why? Because stolen credit card numbers can be used to launder RL money via GTC and ISK sale (I'll let you work out how). There's a reason Shattered Crystal contacts buyers. The Eve store would have to have security beefed up or bad things would happen. I didn't think of the stolen CC, is Eve stores based in Iceland or another country as CC laws are very different as you move from one country to another. If in Iceland how good are Iceland laws on CC fraud?
Hegbard	Posted - 2009.01.28 22:16:00 - [60] Originally by: Mithos Victus It does not take a math genius to see that in the hypothetical scenario above, CCP just got screwed out of twenty months worth of subscription fees. I'm sorry. But WTF are you smoking? Where do you think the money from GTCs goes?

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