Afternoon all profit seeking pod pilots,

We have noticed in the past few weeks increased discussion on our forums with regards to what is going on in the EVE economy these days. The fact is that a whole lot is going on GÇô and it is about to become a even more interesting when the changes described in this DevBlog earlier in April will take place.

Crucible turned out to be a really successful expansion from the standpoint of the EVE economy. Figure 1 shows the monthly Gross User Product (GUP) in EVE from October 2010 until March 2012.

http://content.eveonline.com/community/devblog/2012/Escalationf1.png

Figure 1: This figure shows the total value created by players in EVE Online (Gross User Product - GUP). Total GUP, in nominal terms, is shown on the left axis and GUP per capita is shown on the right axis. The GUP takes a jump with the launch of Crucible at the end of November 2011.

Per capita GUP jumped by 28% between November and December 2011 and has just continued to increase since then. This is attributed to increased production (Tier 3 battlecruiser anyone?) but also simply from increased activity in general due to both older players returning to the game and new players joining the pack. Now as any economist knows, good times and good partying always comes at a cost ;-) and in this case it is increased inflation in EVE due to increased aggregate demand. Of course there is also the issue of balancing ISK sinks and faucets which you can learn more about here, so we will not dwell on that part in this short devblog.

The impact of Crucible and the announced changes that are upcoming in Escalation has been somewhat different than we have seen in the past. In 2010 and 2011 inflation has been driven by price changes in more advanced items in-game, such as Tech 3 ships, Tech 2 items and moon material. With Crucible things turned around and we saw the largest price increases in basic minerals and Tech 1 items.

It started with changes in Mexallon due to increased demand for the production of the new Tier 3 battlecruisers. Figure 2 shows clearly the jump in Mexallon between November and December in 2011.

http://content.eveonline.com/community/devblog/2012/Escalationf2.png

Figure 2: Price index for all base minerals in EVE. March 2011 set at 100. Mexallon starts to increase in December due to the new Tier 3 battlecruisers which need mexallon in large quantities. Tritanium starts to increase between December and January due to increased overall demand in the EVE economy and all minerals show an increase in price in March due to speculations on the upcoming changes in Escalation.

Another interesting change at that time is the increase in price of Tritanium, which has since continued. This is attributed both to increased demand for production of Tech 1 items and due to speculations with hoarding ongoing in some areas of the universe. Speculations seems to become the primary factor in March when we see a jump in Zydrine and Morphite prices. It seems like the announced changes to the Drone regions as well as the removal of Tech 1 loot is doing exactly what we expected, creating some market uncertainities which will be interesting to see how the free market in EVE will adjust to. Some might call it a market mayhem GÇô a true Escalation to the Inferno!

http://content.eveonline.com/community/devblog/2012/Escalationf3.png

Figure 3: Monthly price changes in Tech 1 ships from January 2010 to March 2012. Current price increases are similar to the Incursion price increase in early 2011. The upcoming changes in Escalation will impact the mineral market significantly and those price changes will impact the price of Tech 1 ships since they are directly correlated.

Figure 3 shows the changes in prices for Tech 1 ships. As the figure clearly shows then price started to increase quite significantly at the end of 2011 and have simply continuned to increase since then. The price increase is simililar to price increases we saw around the Incursion expansion

These changes are sharp but they are well understood and basically as expected due to the changes that are happening in EVE. We do not know the future, but we do know that there are some interesting times ahead for anyone willing to risk it and try to outsmart the market.

Good (market) hunting!

Dr. EyjoG

FIX HUGE IMAGES PLEASE!

I like how you also didnt mention the fact that there has been a civil war in the Drone Regions for the past 4 months .... Im sorry but yet again the devs take credit for stuff they accidently happened on .. Yes almost 99% of the mineral prices for low ends is a result of the civil war, which is a good indicator of what is going to happen when alloys are removed from the drone regions except it will be worse after patch. The civil war is also a reason behind the rise in high end min prices.. becuase basically you have several regions where the players living there are not able to get out and mine the hidden sov belts...which is the only thing that has truly hurt the high end market.. As more people start to repopulate the drone regions now that the civil war is over.. high end prices are gonna start dropping .... And after the patch as people accustomed to living a certain lifestyle in EVE start needing to jump trit out to 0.0 , you are gonna see huge demands for trit without a adequate supply.. therefore trit is going to continue to rise..... Lets see if CCP is patting themselves on the back in 2 months when trit is 12+ ISK a unit and battleships are running 400mil+

Stupid changes.

1. t-1 stuff will become super expensive.
2. Because of this less pvp will occur.
3. Less pvp, less ships lost, less ships made.

I like how you also didnt mention the fact that there has been a civil war in the Drone Regions for the past 4 months .... Im sorry but yet again the devs take credit for stuff they accidently happened on .. Yes almost 99% of the mineral prices for low ends is a result of the civil war, which is a good indicator of what is going to happen when alloys are removed from the drone regions except it will be worse after patch. The civil war is also a reason behind the rise in high end min prices.. becuase basically you have several regions where the players living there are not able to get out and mine the hidden sov belts...which is the only thing that has truly hurt the high end market.. As more people start to repopulate the drone regions now that the civil war is over.. high end prices are gonna start dropping .... And after the patch as people accustomed to living a certain lifestyle in EVE start needing to jump trit out to 0.0 , you are gonna see huge demands for trit without a adequate supply.. therefore trit is going to continue to rise..... Lets see if CCP is patting themselves on the back in 2 months when trit is 12+ ISK a unit and battleships are running 400mil+

Looks like CCP may repeat the fiasco of last summer, in a new way.

Eve is a complex system, why adjust so many factors at once? To reach a new equilibrium screwed up in a different way?

Instead I see people going for cheaper ships, except the ones who also mine or play the market with success. Enjoy your rifter

Theory 1: "Mineral speculation in anticipation of drone alloy removal is driving a rise in prices for goods from which minerals are a primary component."
Theory 2: "Herp Derp Aggregate Demand!"

Distinguish between these two theories by comparing the price changes of a good which is very affected by mineral prices, such as T1 ships, with a good that is not primarily affected by mineral prices, such as learning implants or deadspace/non-lp store faction items.

The only economist on earth with access to the greatest economic experiment generator ever created, with the ability to collect completely accurate information on every step of production, and guy still just aggregates everything and phones it in. A real economist with this kind of access to Eve would have earned a nobel prize by now.

FIX HUGE IMAGES PLEASE!

HAG5 will kick that up slightly, but most of the coming effect will be a market adjustment as the drone minerals go away.

What is up with the PNG files on this devblog...completely smashes Google chrome...

Theory 1: "Mineral speculation in anticipation of drone alloy removal is driving a rise in prices for goods from which minerals are a primary component."
Theory 2: "Herp Derp Aggregate Demand!"

Distinguish between these two theories by comparing the price changes of a good which is very affected by mineral prices, such as T1 ships, with a good that is not primarily affected by mineral prices, such as learning implants or deadspace/non-lp store faction items.

The only economist on earth with access to the greatest economic experiment generator ever created, with the ability to collect completely accurate information on every step of production, and guy still just aggregates everything and phones it in. A real economist with this kind of access to Eve would have earned a nobel prize by now.

*sigh* whats with all the CCP hate. Higher Mineral Prices means Mining becomes more lucrative and attractive ...

. Most of above mentioned minerals were coming from drone regions. There were no miners that could compete with carebaers from drone regions. .

Please don't use 3 super high-rez images in one post... it makes scrolling painful

Good bye Drakes for 34 Mil, Hello Drake for 100 -120 Mil...

...which might happen short-term, but would not be sustainable.

Ultimately, what we need is another tier of mining ship. As the population grows, it consumes more minerals. While it's true that the population growth includes growth in the miner population, it would seem that it's not enough to offset the increase in mineral usage.

For a bit of comparison, let's look at the current mining ships. This is done with EFT, at all skills V, without ganglink support. (The coming addition of CPU rigs will affect the lower ships slightly

Tier 1: Burst, w/ 2 miner 2's: 375 m3/mi
Tier 2: Scythe, w/ 3 miner 2's and 1 MU2: 613 m3/min (+63% increase)
Tier 3: Covetor, w/ 3 SM2's and 1 MU2: 1146 m3/min (+87%)
Tier 4: Hulk, w/ 3 SM2's and 2 MU2's: 1436 m3/min (+25%)

With full implant and ganglink support, these numbers can be increased by about 87%)

While total mineral production will go up based on the number of miners, mining remains one of the least liked activities (see FF 2012 economy video). The current group of miners will not be able to provide the required minerals at the rate that is needed; and in the EVE world, you can't count on higher ore values to increase the number of miners as much as needed. While in the real world, higher ore demand would translate to higher wages for miners, which would increase interest, in EVE it's possible (and probably more likely) that high ore demand (and the higher ship/module prices that result) will result in people leaving the game).

TL;DR
We need a fifth tier of mining ships, probably with an average (without implants or links) mining rate of at least 2200 m3/min or so (~53% increase).

PS
Highsec ore compression would be nice too, but I'm not holding my breath. (You could make the BPO's take 20 minutes per block and give rorq's a -95% time bonus).

Edit: For some reason, it ate my punctuation

You don't need a new mining ship, what you do need is for the Procurer to be brought up to useful levels (you know, the barge that everyone says "don't bother with"). Then you can bump the retty up slightly, bump the covetor up slightly and bump the hulk up slightly.

The procurer suffers primarily from only having 1 high slot instead of matching up with the 2 slots that the retty has.

The covetor, retty, hulk set mostly suffer from way too little PG, slightly too little CPU and a lack of low-mid slots (all of them could use 1-2 more mids and 1-2 more lows).

Not needing a new hull design means you don't get stuck in the art department bottleneck, which would push your "new" ship back about 15-20 months.

The problem with this, is that all the medslots in the world don't increase your mining rate. They might make it easier to survive gankfests but that just saves your ship; if your in the middle of Hulkageddon, you're not going to be mining anyway. More low slots could (if you add more MU's) but they increase CPU needs so much that you'd need to up CPU by more than a little.

And the reason no one uses the Procurer is because the Retriever mines twice as much and can be achieved within a couple of days of achieving the Procurer. The exhumers avoided this by giving different bonuses to the three ships. However, my original point still stands; we need another tier of mining ship (T3 miners? ) which mine more per ship than the current highest tier. The same number of people need to be able to mine more than they are now.

(Or at least new mining modules; you don't necessarily need new hulls, new modules would work. Hey, maybe midslot modules which give a bonus to mining certain ores?)

Add new features as isksinks like buying remaps from NPCs !!!

... interesting commentary on CCP's self-serving economist-speak....

I think at the heart of the matter though is PLEX. This doesn't take a rocket scientist. CCP is in the business of selling PLEX. At 100K PLEX sold per month on the market in the few last months, up from a mere trickle, CCP is now pulling in well over $1M per month selling PLEX. Does CCP want PLEX to cost 500M ISK? No, it reduces demand because you get so much more ISK. People buy PLEX with their real life money to turn into ISK. CCP is committed to reducing inflation to increase PLEX demand.

What going on with mineral prices?

CCP Removed a major supply of Minerals (Drones). Replaced it with yet another big fat faucet of isk.

Fail.