dr-eyjo
Latest
EVE Fanfest 2014: Economy talk highlights PLEX prices and reveals titan production statistics
When we asked our readers to to pick the EVE Fanfest panel they most wanted to hear about, the most popular choice by a comfortable margin was Economy: Into the Second Decade. So today I popped in to hear what CCP's Lead Economist Dr Eyjo had to say on the year's biggest economic events and plans for the future. The talk started with the usual comparison of ISK sinks vs. ISK faucets, showing the various ways that ISK enters and leaves the game. Too much entering could cause rapid inflation, while not enough could cause economic collapse. A net value of around 20-25 trillion ISK is reportedly injected into the game each month, a level that Dr Eyjo insists isn't enough to cause any inflationary problems in the economy. The big focus of this year's economics talk was the destruction of around $270,000 US worth of Titan class supercapital ships in the recent Bloodbath of B-R5RB. Also on the table for discussion was the recent rapid increase in price of the 30 Day Pilot's License Extension (PLEX), an item that can be bought on the market for ISK and exchanged for game time. This can effectively make EVE free-to-play, but prices are now at over 700 million ISK and are starting to become prohibitive for some players. Read on for a detailed breakdown of CCP's entire economics talk from Fanfest 2014, including surprising stats on how many titans are built each quarter.
EVE Online dev blog hints at new economic datastream
The latest EVE Online dev blog isn't for the faint of heart, or perhaps more accurately, it's not for those who feel suddenly drowsy when confronted with charts, graphs, and economic technobabble. The piece is penned by Dr. Eyjolfur Gudmundsson, CCP's resident economist and an expert on all things related to New Eden's ever-changing marketplace. To make a long story short, CCP is getting ready to take the wraps off a new datastream that will "give EVE players access to historical time series on items sold in the main EVE market hubs." What does that mean? In a nutshell, "more data, more knowledge, more power to the pod pilots of New Eden." The final presentation format for the data dump has yet to be decided, but the initial test run is available in your choice of files types (CSV or SQL). You can read more specifics at the official EVE website.
CCP releases EVE Quarterly Economic Newsletter
It's time for another in-depth look at New Eden's thriving economy, and as you'd expect in a game built around interminable conflict, business is booming. CCP's resident economist, Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson, is back with the latest EVE Online Quarterly Economic Newsletter (QEN), and while it's a bit on the old news side for those lucky enough to attend last month's Fanfest where it was initially presented, the trends, observations, and raw data are still relevant for the rest of us. In a nutshell, keep killing your friends and neighbors, as the constant bloodletting is integral to New Eden's economic well-being. "Warfare and the EVE Online economy thrive on each other. Without warfare there is very little consumption in EVE Online and without a strong economy (and lots of personal wealth) wars can't be won," Guðmundsson explains.
New EVE Quarterly Economic Newsletter discusses PvP
Four times per year, CCP's lead economist Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson publishes the EVE Online Quarterly Economic Newsletter (QEN). Each report provides a snapshot of the in-game economy, with graphs showing market trends over the previous quarter and some speculation on the reasons for them. The third quarter 2010 QEN has just been released, and it contains some interesting information. This report has a special focus on PvP and death, starting off with statistics on ship kills by race and deaths as a function of skillpoints. Dr Eyjo suggests that players tend to progress from high security space, through low security space and eventually on to nullsec PvP. He goes on to suggest his data shows that an average player needs two years worth of skillpoints to be competitive in nullsec PvP. The QEN shows the effect of recent nullsec wars, with a mass exodus of players from the eastern regions of nullsec to those in the south and west. Following up on the previous report's look at EVE's ISK sinks and faucets, this quarter's report indicates that the total amount of ISK in the game has been rising steadily over the past year. Most of this can be attributed to a 16% rise in total bounties paid out on NPC ships. Dr Eyjo believes this rising trend began with Dominion as system upgrades made ratting more profitable in nullsec. The ISK sinks designed to counteract the massive influx of liquid ISK bounties provide are not adequately tackling the issue, with the top five ISK sinks combined taking only 31% of bounty income out of the game. The rest of the report contains the usual snapshots of various market items in addition to a special statistics segment on ship deaths and killing blows.
EVE Evolved: ISK sinks and faucets
In EVE Online's player-run economy, the flow of ISK is a vital concept. While there are many ways to make ISK in EVE, most of them only move it around from one player to another. When you mine ore and sell it on the market, for example, the mining process doesn't introduce any new ISK to the game. Only a few game mechanics can be called ISK faucets, as the game mechanics actually create ISK from thin air. Similarly, the ISK sink mechanics destroy ISK or remove it from the game in some manner. To the individual player, the difference between something being an ISK faucet or not is largely immaterial. When you sell something on the market for a few million ISK, or get the insurance payout on a lost ship, it doesn't really matter to you where that ISK came from. Where the concept really matters is in discussions on inflation and how the game chooses to reward us in PvE. Are ISK bounties and rewards always a good idea, or could their over-use eventually lead to runaway inflation? In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the various ways in which ISK flows in and out of EVE Online, and why we should care about inflation.
