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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's Quarterly Economic Newsletter focuses on impact of anti-RMT operation
One of the strengths of the sandbox game EVE Online is its player-driven economy, which developer CCP Games monitors through a small team of researchers headed up by Lead Economist Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson (aka CCP Dr.EyjoG). They observe all manner of player interactions and sift through a tremendous amount of data to track how EVE Online's economy changes over time. Their findings are presented to the playerbase (or to anyone curious about virtual economies) in the form of Quarterly Economic Newsletters (QEN). CCP released the 3rd Quarter 2009 report this week, which gives us a look at player demographics and the most popular ships flown by those players. (It's interesting to note that the most popular ship in the game is now the Hulk, a mining vessel which has usurped the Raven battleship as EVE's most flown ship, while Black Ops battleships are EVE's least flown ships.) This latest QEN also gives various price indices and Market Snapshots, which chart the volumes of a number of popular items traded on the open market. CCP also shows the impact "Operation: Unholy Rage" -- their anti-RMT initiative -- has had on EVE Online's economy with over 18,000 (paying) accounts banned to date. Dr.EyjoG writes, "Unholy Rage taught us a great deal about RMT operations in EVE. We now have a much clearer picture of the extent of operations and the tools and methods they use."
EVE quarterly economic newsletter highlights various facets of player activity
With all the info about the DUST 514 console MMO set in the EVE Online universe, and player-run banks in the game mirroring the financial meltdowns we read about in real world headlines, we didn't have much time to look over something that's quite unique to the game. EVE's developer CCP Games releases "Quarterly Economic Newsletters" (QEN) which show the various ways in which player actions affect the game universe, given its player-driven economy. The QEN for the second quarter of 2009 has been released and gives us a snapshot of player activity in EVE's single-shard world. When you PvP in EVE, someone's going to win while other ships are obliterated. Someone manufactured the ship, modules, and ammunition you used to take down your opponents, likewise the ships and modules you destroyed were also created by other player characters somewhere in the New Eden galaxy -- players who have mined and refined, bought and sold materials needed to build the various items put to use by EVE's pilots every day.
Massively speaks with EVE Online devs about Council of Stellar Management
The Council of Stellar Management in the sci-fi game EVE Online is a fairly unique concept in the massively multiplayer online game industry. As an MMO matures and the number of subscribers increases by thousands of new players every year, representing very different playstyles and outlooks on how the game is evolving, there are few companies out there that would ask the players themselves to advise on how best to move forward. But this is exactly what CCP Games is doing with EVE.Following their GDC 2009 presentation on virtual democracies, Massively had a chance to speak with Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson, CCP's lead economist, (also know as Dr. EyjoG) and Pétur Jóhannes Óskarsson, a researcher at CCP who is in the unique position of pursuing a Master's degree in Philosophy while facilitating a system where political philosophies can play out virtually.
EVE Online developers speak about player-elected councils
The sci-fi game EVE Online is unique among the massively multiplayer online games on the market in that it has a form of player governance, which allows for a new channel of communication between the subscribers and developers -- a council of representatives of the playerbase. Players are not selected by CCP Games, the creators of EVE Online, they're actually elected by the game's subscribers themselves. Those elected form the Council of Stellar Management (CSM), delegates who represent the interests of the players and deal directly with CCP Games. It's a bold idea and certainly one that many MMO developers would shy away from, particularly in that the CSM has input into the game's development pipeline. CCP Games felt what they're doing would be of interest to other people in the industry, and gave a presentation at GDC 2009. The session was titled "The Council of Stellar Management: EVE Online Bridges Worlds for a Society". Two speakers from CCP Games presented: Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson, EVE's lead economist, (also known as Dr. EyjoG) and Pétur Jóhannes Óskarsson, a researcher at CCP whose work has been integral to making the CSM a reality.
Massively interviews EVE's Lead Economist part 2
The starbase exploit has been some big news lately. How does it impact your ability to assess the state of EVE's economy, and are there assumptions you've made in the past that you need to reassess now?It's a good thing that you mentioned the starbase exploit because we are in the final stages of creating a very thorough dev blog on that, which will hopefully be published very soon. [Note: this interview was conducted just prior to the release of the investigation's findings.]There are certain things with the POS exploit that made it very difficult to detect. You basically needed to be able to go to that particular starbase and look at it, look at the setup and so on. It was difficult for us to detect it otherwise, except from the code once we knew what we were looking for.From a market perspective the EVE economy has become so big that in order for you to impact the market you will really have to have large quantities. And as will be shown in this dev blog that will be published, the scale of the exploit really didn't start until late 2008... to the large industrial scale so that it started to impact the market.
Massively interviews EVE Online Lead Economist Dr. EyjoG
The sci-fi game EVE Online is unique amongst the other massively multiplayer online titles on the market. One major aspect of the game is that its far future setting of New Eden functions as one server, where players can build up empires -- or topple those of their rivals -- across more than 5000 solar systems. Beyond its scale, what distinguishes EVE Online from other games is that it has a player-driven virtual economy, the backbone of the game. EVE's economy has been a major draw for players interested in market and crafting sophistication generally unseen in an online game. EVE's creators, CCP Games, have fostered a setting where players can do what they want in the 'sandbox', a setting where the tools are in place for players to use as they see fit. Nearly every ship, module, and item used by a player in the game was produced by another player in New Eden at some point. Fight for military dominance and control vast regions of space, or corner the market as part of an industrial conglomerate -- it's all possible in EVE. In fact, the game's warfare and industry are very much intertwined, making EVE's virtual economy a dynamic one. Monitoring and researching this economy is important to CCP Games, and to further that goal, they've hired real world economist Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson (aka CCP EyjoG). Massively recently caught up with Dr. EyjoG, who told us about his rather unique position at CCP Games, and what he's learned about virtual economies along the way.
CCP Games on the extent and impact of EVE's starbase exploit
Massively has been watching the issue of a significant starbase exploit in EVE Online, through which some players reaped vast financial rewards, as it went from rumor to confirmation from the developers themselves. Unlike your average run-of-the-mill exploit in most massively multiplayer online games, the exploit in question has had a significant impact on EVE's virtual economy -- the backbone of the game itself. All players in EVE interact in one vast galaxy, and their actions in the sandbox can create ripples felt by their fellow players, which has certainly been the case in this past week.EVE Online's developer CCP Games has opted to hold off on responding to most press inquiries for comment on the issue, having issued a statement on the matter and then focusing on the investigation and a weekend meeting with EVE's player-elected community representatives, the Council of Stellar Management (CSM). The minutes from that meeting are now available, and several of EVE's developers took part in the discussion: namely CCP's Lead Economist Dr. EyjoG (Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson) and CCP Arkanon -- who heads up the company's Internal Affairs division, which investigates the CCP Games staff themselves, hopefully ensuring that no CCP employee can abuse their influence over the game. Read on for Massively's highlights of the state of affairs in EVE Online, in the wake of the starbase exploit.
CCP Games introducing new economic measure in EVE
CCP Games generally takes a hands-off approach to EVE Online's economy, letting the collective actions of players determine what happens. But at times there are bottlenecks in terms of supply. CCP Greyscale cites the example of how the limited number of T2 blueprint originals (BPOs) decreased availability of items while driving up prices. CCP stepped in by introducing 'invention', where players can attempt to create higher-end items via R&D, eliminating the issue of supply and normalizing prices. CCP Greyscale's latest dev blog is called "Alchemy" and looks at the newest issue they've identified with EVE's economy, the inflated price of rare moon minerals. Greyscale says, "In particular, two rare moon minerals - dysprosium and (to a lesser extent) promethium - are becoming ever-more expensive as increased demand puts pressure on a limited supply. This is likely to become an increasingly large issue as time goes on, with prices for these minerals continuing to rise due to demand, and the increased price being passed on to the consumer of the final product." As we've mentioned in the past, these rare minerals in New Eden are something that the largest, most powerful alliances have sought to control and thus has been one of the drivers of conflict in lawless 0.0 space.
CCP Games lead economist on social structures in EVE Online
Phil Elliott from Gamesindustry.biz recently conducted an interview with CCP Games Lead Economist Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson (known as CCP Dr. EyjoG) titled "Star Bucks." While the interview discussed the importance of social structures in EVE Online given the game's single-shard nature and of course the game's economics, he was asked questions about gameplay and some of the core foundations of the game -- namely the freedom to act and the consequences that result (or the perceived lack of consequences). Dr. EyjoG was asked about the concept of trust in the sandbox game, how some players feel there's not enough reciprocity in terms of consequences for one's actions in EVE. "Should we provide more security, more traceability -- that would help it out, but it's definitely a game design and balance question. For us we see the universe as it is, we don't see that need... at this point at least," Dr. EyjoG responded. The interview also hinted at some of the as-yet unrealized possibilities in the game such as player-requests to tie sovereignty in with rules that govern those regions of controlled territory and what the game might be like years down the line.
Quarterly Economic Newsletter for EVE Online released
EVE Online is unique among MMOs in that its economy is so complex and dynamic that CCP Games hired an economist, Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson, to keep track of how the market evolves. One would imagine this is no easy task, with an overall trade value of all EVE markets ranging between 2 and 2.5 trillion isk per day. Lead Economist CCP Dr. EyjoG released a Quarterly Economic Newsletter (QEN) for EVE Online today, which is 18 pages full of data which should keep EVE's market and industry-oriented players happy (and hopefully make up for the delayed QEN, which Dr. EyjoG addresses in his announcement). The Q1 2008 QEN kicks off with an editorial, and here are some brief highlights of what follows: Demographics (number of accounts, most and least populated regions) Price Level Changes (Mineral prices, Primary Producer Price Index, Secondary Producer Price Index, and Consumer Price Index) Mining ship production and losses (with the venerable "Hulk" exhumer losses accounting for a staggering 6 trillion isk in destroyed property in Q1 2008) Market Snapshots Five years of EVE Market history If you're interested in reading the Q1 2008 economic newsletter, you'll find the download link to the PDF in Dr. EyjoG's dev blog. A discussion of his findings is already underway on the EVE forums.
