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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 cancels EVE's Quarterly Economic Newsletters
EVE Online is often lauded for its complex player-run economy, which functions so like a real world economy that CCP even hired its own lead economist Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson to analyse it. Dr Eyjo's findings are normally released four times per year in his Quarterly Economic Newsletter (QEN), detailing everything from subscription numbers and popular ships to price changes on the market. The economic report for the fourth quarter of 2010 was released back in April, but at the time players weren't aware that this would be the last QEN ever to be released. In a new devblog yesterday, CCP Recurve posted the four main price indices normally contained in the QEN along with a graph of their development since October 2003. In response to player questions in the comments thread, Dr Eyjo revealed that the QENs for 2011 would not be published as usual. Instead, players will be getting monthly price index devblogs and the economic reports will likely be released once per year. This comes as bad news for players who were looking forward to finding out the economic impact of April's controversial nullsec anomaly changes. It may also mean that details like subscription numbers, population distributions and ISK generation will only be made public a maximum of once every year and that a current snapshot of those metrics may never be released.
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.
Latest EVE Quarterly Economic Newsletter highlights Tyrannis insurance changes
EVE Online is a game with complex economic activity that often mirrors real-world economic systems. The similarity is so pronounced that CCP even hired its own Lead Economist, Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson, to examine the in-game markets in detail. Each quarter, the economist and his team of researchers publish the EVE Quarterly Economic Newsletter (QEN). The report provides a timeline of market indices and major economic changes over the past several months. This quarter's report focuses on the effect of the insurance changes that came with the Tyrannis expansion. It also has a special segment on ISK sinks and faucets, and their changes following the release of planetary interaction.
EVE Evolved: Insurance evolved
The EVE Evolved column hits its second anniversary in two days on April 27th. To celebrate, last week I gave readers the chance to win an expensive faction battleship of their choice worth around 500 million ISK. You submitted a horde of great ideas for future column posts, which I whittled down to a final list of 49 fantastic ideas that would really suit the column. It was really tough to find one topic amongst them all that I liked best and wanted to write up first. Congratulations go to Massively reader Nanoko for making my personal favourite suggestion. In addition to winning a faction battleship, Nanoko's winning idea forms the basis for this week's anniversary edition of the column on the upcoming insurance changes and the impact they'll have on EVE. Special mention goes to Massively reader Aimlis who came up with a similar idea. It was unfortunately a little too close to Nanoko's suggestion, which came first. Nanoko has been contacted to arrange receipt of the prize! At the end of March, CCP announced that the Tyrannis expansion would include a wave of changes to ship insurance. Currently, players receive insurance payouts for losing a ship based on the value of the minerals that went into its construction. The mineral values used in this calculation are as old as EVE Online itself and over the years have slowly dropped out of step with market prices. As a result, Tech 1 ships are almost free to lose under the current insurance scheme while Tech 2 and 3 losses are barely compensated for at all. Once Tyrannis hits, CCP will periodically adjust the mineral prices used in insurance calculations based on a weighted average of market prices across EVE. This has huge implications for PvP, the composition of fleets and the mineral market. In this speculative opinion piece, I examine the effect the insurance changes could have on everything from ships used in PvP to the mineral market.
E-ON Magazine issue 19 hits the shelves
In Autumn 2005, EVE Online became one of the only MMOs out there with its own dedicated print magazine. Under contract from CCP Games, MMM Publishing has worked tirelessly ever since to produce EVE's official magazine "E-ON." Four times per year, we're blessed with a dose of the latest and greatest things from New Eden in a comfortingly solid format. The magazine covers everything from strategy guides and ship fitting advice to sneak peaks at upcoming expansions, interviews with CCP staff and incredible fiction set in the EVE universe. E-ON differs from other game magazines in that they don't any make money from advertising. In an effort to keep the magazine all about EVE, they've taken the unusual but apparently successful route of publishing full-page adverts from in-game corporations and organisations. Advertisers buy space in the magazine with ISK, the in-game currency, and adverts must be for strictly in-game purposes. The ISK is then used to pay volunteer writers, who create most of the magazine's content and produce important things like guides from a true player's perspective. There's even a scheme in the works to reward advertisers with discount coupon codes for the magazine to gift their corpmates. Now nearing their fifth year of publishing, E-ON issue 19 has recently been released. As usual, this issue is absolutely packed full of everything we've come to expect from the mag. Skip past the cut for a run-down of what you can expect in issue 19 of E-ON Magazine.
EVE Online economist sees real world parallels
We've all heard the semi-derisive comments regarding EVE Online's steep learning curve and correspondingly dense game play. "It's a space screensaver," some have said. "EVE - the sci-fi spreadsheet" is another one of our favorites. While first impressions do count for something, beneath the game's nigh-impenetrable tritanium hull lurks a living, breathing economy that sets it apart from its genre competitors, a point driven home by BBC scribe Chris Vallance's interview with CCP economist Dr. Eyjolfur Gudmundsson. Prior to signing on as the Icelandic development firm's lead economist, Dr. Gudmundsson enjoyed a successful academic career, and the opportunity to study CCP's creation proved too tempting to ignore. "I said to myself I must do this. No economist has ever before been able to have such minuscule information about transactions, about the participants of that economy. I don't regret that. It's been one hell of a ride," he says. Treat yourself to the full article as well as a video interview by clicking here. [Thanks Lateris!]
