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A Case Study of RMTs In EVE Online
Kheldon writes with an article at MMO Gamer which explores how well real money transactions work in online games, using EVE Online as a test case. Quoting:
"... My next problem came from trying to sell the [Game Time cards] through the 'Time Code Bazaar' on the forums. While I quickly found buyers, none of them actually went through with the deal. This is the inherent problem with developer sanctioned RMT. Unless true, unfettered, player-to-player transactions are allowed without developer 'regulation,' the market will inevitably be operating inefficiently. Consider gold-farmers for a moment. Setting aside the moral or legal aspects of the trade, and considering from a purely economic standpoint, gold-farmers are the RMT equivalent of large corporations. They operate on the concept of 'economies-of-scale,' which basically means that up to a certain point, the larger a company is, the cheaper they can produce that product. Of course, companies that can produce a product more cheaply can undercut the competition while maintaining the same profit margin; meaning they'll make more sales, giving them more overall profit, and supporting the corporate growth, which furthers the economy of scale. This is the market at its most pure."
there is an ingame item called a PLEX, which is listable on the market & redeemable for 30 days of play time.
Keep up, douche bag
RMT is essentially unfettered inflation. Its printing money.
The writer has not done his research well enough.
There are two ways of selling game time in EVE.
One is to use the forum and the game time code transfer system available on the character screen, which is what the writer did.
The other is to convert the GTC into ingame items called PLEX (Pilot License EXtension) which is then traded on the market like
any other ingame item. This is not only the preferred way, it is also more profitable to the seller; netting around 720 million
ISK per GTC compared to about 600 million on the forums.
The other thing is that while you could certainly buy ISK from farming operations it comes with a risk. CCP has been known to ban
not only ISK sellers but also buyers in transactions not using the condoned methods.
The reason behind there not being any easy way to convert ingame currency into real money is that this would open a whole can of
legal worms for CCP. Tax departments, money laundring etc. etc. Not something a games company would want to deal with.
I found a fast warez site: http://warez.it.kth.se
ISK sellers, however, provide much better exchange rates: one site sells at 25 million ISK per dollar, or better in bulk. Why would players want to wait for their time cards to be shipped (not to mention the international service fees charged by the bank due to CCP being an Icelandic company), and then be hit with a sub-premium exchange rate. For 35 bucks I can get 600 million ISK with a time card, or for 27 bucks I can get 1 billion ISK from a reseller. Of course, there are some sanctioned time card sellers that cut out the shipping process for a faster deal, but that doesnâ(TM)t mitigate the entire problem.
So, your argument is moot.
The other major problem is that there is no sanctioned way to convert the ISK back into real world dollars.
Most would argue that this is the exact mechanism which keeps the gold farmers out of the system, and maintains the stability of the economy. With no way to profit in the real world, there is no incentive for farmers to set up shop.
Ehmmm, not really. Let's do a case by case comparison with player A and player B.
Scenario 1:
Player A pays his subscription the regular way and spends the month earning 1 billion isk.
Player B pays his subscription the regular way and spends the month earning 200 million isk.
Scenario 2:
Player B pays his own subscription the regular way and buys a gametime card with real life money.
Player A, being very good at making isk, buys the gametime card from player B for a sum of ingame money.
End result of both scenarios is the same. CCP has received the real life money for 2 subscriptions, and the actual amount of isk(ingame money) has not changed. Ergo, no inflation has taken place.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
From a "purely economical" point of view, the best producer of in-game gold is the developer, since they can produce an infinite amount of gold (as well as any in-game item that gold can buy). They don't do it because that would ruin the game.
In a real world, a pure economic approach is feasible, because we (well, most of us materialistic bastards) agree that maximum production of goods and capital at peak efficiency is beneficial to society, e.g. the more everyone has, the better off we are. That means that in the real-world, accumulation of wealth is a positive-sum game.
This isn't the case in video games. Had the developers given everyone a zillion gold, it would ruin the game by destroying the fun of making and investing money. In other words, after a certain point, the more money EVERYONE has, the WORSE off everyone is, rather than better. The whole point of "fun" is to be able to earn more gold than your neighbor. In other words, the fun-factor is zero sum, or even-negative sum.
Therefore, gold farmers, by increasing the volumes of gold they produce and sell, give "fun" to those that buy the gold, AT THE DIRECT EXPENSE of all other players who did not buy the gold. Unless I'm an egoistical bastard, I wouldn't consider myself worse off if my neighbor won the lottery. In a MMORPG, however, the more others are better off than you, the worse your own position is. If that wasn't the case, there would be no need for an in-game economy to begin with, everyone would be just given everything they want for free (which the developers clearly can do from the technical standpoint, but don't do for clear gameplay reasons).
The bottom line is, that measuring the benefit of "gold farmers" from a purely economical point of view is complete and utter bullshit, because in-game economy has a completely different relationship to in-game enjoyment than a real-world economy has to real-life enjoyment.
Well, as a long time EVE player, I remember when trading cash for isks was forbidden by the EULA - and it still is, you can just work around it by selling game time codes for in game cash. ... well, fundamentally it's a forum, so not that great for trading - particularly items like GTCs which are functionally identical, with a different price tag - the delay on them means that it's easy enough for buyers to request a bunch of buys off a bunch of different people, and only accept the most favourable.
... disporportionate prices, as people pimp their shiny toy (if it's good for mission running, the price is inflated to the point where it becomes even less viable to use in PvP). But barring that, the isolationist mission runner doesn't actually have much impact on the rest of the game, so whatever.
... you have probably more 'small time' isk buyers and sellers, as people finance their account through mission running, but the tradeoff is, because they're doing so via GTCs, it means everyone who 'buys isks' also finance an extra player account, meaning more subscribers.
.... and more targets.
I have to say, the article seems to have missed one of the most effective ways of doing this - PLEXes (Pilot License Extensions) are tradable on the in game market - that's by far the most effective way of trading them these days. Head to Jita, list one for sale, and it'll probably have sold within the week - much less faff than using the forum, which
I'm still in two minds as to whether it's a good thing or not - I don't like the fact that RL cash can have influence on the game, any more than I'd be happy that a chess player could whip out a credit card and buy an extra queen.
On the other hand, I do like that people on lower incomes can actually play EVE for 'free' (300mil isks/month isn't particularly hard to raise), and I do like the fact that someone with less 'free' time, because of an intensive job, can shortcut the direct 'run missions' or 'mine' to generate isks.
I think the reason it actually works in EVE, is because of the nature of the game - if you fork out a few billion isks on a really pimp fitted ship, then you'll get a nice ship, sure. If you don't know what you're doing, it'll die shockingly fast. Even if you do know what you're doing, it'll maybe be a match for 2-3 equivalent class ships, but no more. And you'll then provide someone with a juicy killmail, and a nice big pile of loot.
For PvE usage... yeah, it does skew the economy somewhat, and have some items worth
And it serves as a control mechanism on 'actual' RMT - by letting people 'trade' via GTCs, the game developer and thus the game itself benefits. Before that, you still had 'isk sellers', that'd elicit a ban if you got caught. Now
RMT is essentially unfettered inflation. Its printing money.
By that logic, so is growing apples - so long as there is a market for it and your prices are competitive. The total money supply does not increase, so I think the analogy of 'printing money' doesn't quite fit.
Ehmmm, not really.
Player A is doing nothing but generating ISK. Without the market for ISK, he'd normally be spending it on deflating assets (i.e. ships, insurance, munitions). Instead, he's just earning, earning, earning.
Now, here comes player C. He sees what player A has done, and tries to get in on the act. Next month, they both earn 1.5 billion ISK. Player B is only interested in buying ISK from one of them. Since their choices are to sell, or not sell, how much more ISK will player B get for his RMT next month, and how much more unspent ISK will there be in the game world?
Perhaps you're unclear on the meaning of "inflationary"?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
So how is the fact that player A chooses to spend his time making isk in any way, shape or form related to the issue at hand, being RMT?
What you want to debate is isk sinks and isk faucets, which is a somewhat related subject part of game balancing, but hardly relevant to RMT.
Anyway, in your example you introduce a new source of demand(player C) without accounting for the fact that a new source of supply is bound to show up soon as well(player D perhaps?)
EVE truly does have a mostly free market and it regulates itself pretty damn well. Or are you just complaining that plexes are too expensive?
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
I have never played a game like EVE or WoW or any of these. They are complicated and involving. I have personally witnessed one man who had his middle-class lifestyle -- his house, wife and kids, job -- all lost because he couldn't stop playing games like these. I'm not going to suggest that everyone is vulnerable to such demise from gaming addiction but there are unquestionably some that are. But that's not the main reason I don't get involved in that stuff. It's not "fun" when it's a source of additional stress and frustration.
I play games. Make no mistake about it. I play them and I get locked in and I become like a dog who is busy eating so don't interrupt me when I am into it. But I also feel the difference between the importance of reality and "the here and now" of things.
When I see serious business, strife and even killing and suicides stem from these types of games, I have to wonder or even worry about what is really going on. If I were one of those anti-game crusaders, I would target these MMORPGs rather than "violent" games. I see a lot more tragedy associated with those types of games rather than those that are based on violent themes. But thankfully, these are "worlds" that are completely opt-in and there are certainly worse worlds to get hooked on -- drugs, sex, gambling -- more examples of "addictive" and obsessive activities that can lead to some serious life consequences. These things will always exist in humanity. Try to control them and they will go underground and form dangerous sub-cultures. Try to legalize and regulate them and you find yourself serving as referee in matters that are best for government not to be involved in.
It's a part of crazy-town that I am glad I don't live in.
Because you can hire third worlders to farm gold for 15 cents an hour, and thus there is an effectively infinite supply of player Cs.
People didn't pay $15 dollars a month to play at growing apples in the evenings.
You forget that without any kind of regulations, the big ones will talk to each other
and make secret agreements to keep prices high, while buying out (or killing/destroying competition).
Market autoregulation without any kind of rules is a myth, what you get is mafia and gang control.
Sometimes the real life busts in and makes us painfully aware that some people have more, much more disposable income than others.
EVE Online's RMT system is by and large a brilliant idea. People who are so inclined, can buy virtual wealth for real world money, and people who are good at the game can play for free. The developers benefit either case. The vastness of EVE's playerbase however means it includes some individuals who are far, far ahead of the average on the income curve.
In the latest "Great War of EVE", a small Russian alliance RED.Overlord (ROL), with connections to virtual money farming industry, grew hostile with their neighbors, the largest player alliance Goonswarm. A certain VERY well off member of ROL then bought at least 500 billion ingame ISK (~$10k+ worth) from the black market to buy its alliancemates five Titan class capital ships (strategic weapons in EVE which take a lot of effort and 2 months of real time to build). CCP got a whiff of the transaction and banned all the titan pilots and their associates.
Unfettered, ROL's "mysterious benefactor" turned to legal means, and publicly sold 1000 real-money-bought timecards to fund its ingame war effort - a cool $27,000 worth. That is an undeniable fact, with sale threads still visible on EVE's official forums.
A harder to prove, but with the above in mind not the least unlikely, were his solid real-money-bribes to the leaders of other EVE alliances for help in the war. It's rumored that Evil Thug, the leader of a powerful Against All Authorities alliance, received a cool $30,000 bribe to turn his ingame organization against their former friends at Goonswarm, and there are more reliable information that certain leaders of other neighboring alliances received solid five-figure dollar bribes to either turn coat, or at the minimum stay neutral, in this purely ingame conflict. Perhaps interestingly, not many agreed.
Real life bribes don't as such have a lot to do with ingame RMT, but that's because the effect of ingame currency only goes so far, and rallying real people one way or the other is the true means to win.
...and thats why EVE is so great. Only EVE could have war stories like that one.
You can't really bribe all of EVE to work for you as most of the players play to have fun (= blow stuff up). At best, you can bribe to influence who shoots who today - and you have no guarantee that it'll stay that way tomorrow. No matter how many titans and POSes you obtain via GTC-funded ISK, they can all go boom the next day if enough players decide that it will be so. There are so many factions (and more cropping up as soon as an opening presents itself) that, at best, you might stir the pot a bit (and lose your bribes).
Personally had I been an alliance leader, I would've taken the bribe (through suitably anonymous channels) and then showed my middle finger at the silly Russian trying to buy his way to victory in EVE. RED.Overlord is still, at best, a minor player in overall EVE Alliance politics.
I thought the specific issue at hand was the ISK inflation driven by RMT?
Yup, there we go.
Well, I'd probably get pretty angry and defensive too if I entered a economic debate without being familiar with the basic terms, or even able to remember what I'd just typed.
Why is player D "bound to show up" (ever, let alone soon)? RMT drives the creation of player C, either as a new player, or by switching an earn-and-spend player to an ISK generator. What's the demand that creates player D?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Why would CCP ever facilitate this guy's rmt wet dream?
Why would the EVE developers want you to be able get real dollars for your ISK?
They're not running a business to make *you* money. They rather have the real dollars going into their own pockets selling GTCs, and happily let the abandoned accounts with billions of ISK rot away in the bit bucket.
DUH!
I played EVE for nearly 2 years, WoW for the same and in total have been an avid video game fanatic for about 15 years.
It's virtually a given that cheats, exploits/hacks, and with the rise of MMOGs, RMT, will never ever be eliminated from the gaming world. In fact, the former two is what makes some games totally great (perma beserker mode in Doom, and DK mode in Goldeneye spring immediately to mind) and developers include these 'features' on purpose, often taking suggestions from the community at large.
In EVE, like all other MMOs, RMT is a big problem. Corporations and alliances farming materials purely for real world money-making, often hogging research and manufacturing slots aswell; although the cost of holding such slots increases expontially with time now I believe.
CCP (the developer) used to 'unofficially' allow trading of game time cards, sold in increments of 30 days unlimited play time, for in game currency, but as time when on and more people tricked by unscrupulous businessmen, it became clear that regulation was required in order to prevent the cut-throat ingame attitude spilling out into real world, real money, scamming. The current system involves buying a game time card and putting the code with a set price in 'escrow' for another player to purchase with ingame currency. The player checks his account page and accepts the trade, the game time is added to his account automatically and the seller gets the ingame ISK.
This system is win-win-win for everyone, with no moral issues to contend with (unless someone is so addicted they are using their food money to buy game time cards, of course), CCP gets paid for the game time card, the buyer gets to pay for an MMO by playing more, and the seller gets to bypass boring grinding.
I much prefer this system than the alternative.
Maybe some people see this as more than a game..
But they shouldn't.
A game will always be a game. For some people, games become life, so it isn't a game to them anymore. But I think we will agree that that is unhealthy behavior, and we can safely label it as wrong.
Yes, real world money is being traded and won and lost, but the same thing happens in gambling. And we view gambling as a sort of game. Some people get in too deep in gambling, and we certainly view this as unhealthy and wrong.
So then, when can a virtual world become more than a game? I would like to see this happen, because I like to believe in the vitality of video games in society. When I think about it, MMORPGs are already more than games. They have socializing as a core element of their design, and no one would call socializing a game. If an instant messaging client is released, it isn't called a game, but that is an element of MMOs.
So MMOs are games because in the end they should only be a diversion or hobby, but they aren't games because they include so much more than other sorts of games? How can it be both? (I'm sort of writing this as I go lol.) I think that any video game at its core is a game. But around that core game is what gives the game life, its society, its economy, and as we see with popular MMOs, its culture.
Wow this became much longer than I originally wanted it to be.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso
In addition to that, according to the Mittani, the Russians had planned to physically cut the power to another player's house during an assault.
http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/65475
What's the demand that creates player D?
Well you see, when a Mommy and Daddy love each other very much...
Only that in EVE no gear is sold by NPC. (Letting trade goods aside, which are just that: trade goods = can't be used for anything else). Oh, and skill books are sold by NPCs.
In EVE the whole economy is player driven. All items available on the market (with the above exceptions) are either produced by players or looted by players from missions (="quests" for you WoW guys). So, each ISK (="gold" for you WoW guys) spent on the market for items flow to another player.
As a long time and current player of EVE, I have no problem chiming in with a little MMO-Talk and give this article a definate "FAIL" rating.
As an individual pointed out above (and Im not going to re-type it) there is a way to securely purchase PLEX (which is a Game Time Card) directly from CCP, and then sell it on the open market in EVE.
For a time I even speculated on and traded in PLEX, and made a small profit of a couple hundred million by buying the PLEX at lower rates from anxious sellers and then listing it at a higher price to those wishing to buy it directly from the market with ISK (as opposed to buying it from CCP with a credit card).
The nifty thing about the approach that CCP has taken with PLEX is that its some what subject to the same market dynamics that govern the rest of the EVE economy (the only manner in which it is not is that CCP cannot [or does not?] directly regulate the number of players that purchase PLEX directly from CCP with a credit card in a given time period, and thus cannot/does not regulate supply). The amusing thing about it is, with dastardly middle men like myself around, Im more than happy to scoop up the surplus and create a market shortfall to increase my profit (insert evil smiley)
Unfettered, ROL's "mysterious benefactor" turned to legal means, and publicly sold 1000 real-money-bought timecards to fund its ingame war effort - a cool $27,000 worth. That is an undeniable fact, with sale threads still visible on EVE's official forums.
It sounds to me though like that's not nearly as big a problem as outright buying in-game funds for real money. Because you can only sell so many GTC for in-game money before the value starts to drop - unless you spread the sales out over a longer period of time. Either way you can't buy nearly as large a sum of in-game money instantly like you could if you could buy it directly with real money. If they guy really did list all 1,000 cards at once, I wouldn't be surprised to find that the last few dozen sold for barely 10% the amount the first few sold for.
No matter how it works out, it ends up being a win-win.
I think all MMOs should put in a system like that.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
You're underestimating the size of EVE-s economy. In the form of both plain timecode and PLEX trades, at least a thousand timecards change hands every day. Spread over a week, the effect on 1000 extra cards on the market is barely noticeable.
Clone reactivation is a real ISK sink, and probably a big one.
Implants are also ISK sinks to some extent, they cannot be made by players and they usually require ISK+LP to buy from LP stores (they also drop as loot, and those have no ISK sink function).
---- Sig. gone.
Rocket fuel. Blueprints. Most containers.
Rocket fuel is an NPC trade good (with trace amounts from missions), and is one of the more expensive components in advanced missiles.
I admit that's the only financially substantial counterexample I could come up with. So, it all traces back to insurance, asteroid miners, ice miners, moon-mining POS'es, and mission/rat loot. Add to that the GTC/PLEX system, and those are the sources of ISK in the game.
Sinks would be insurance payments, clones, market taxes, repairs (in station), production slots, lab slots, corporate offices, blueprint originals, and a few other assorted things.
It seems to me that the driving force behind prices is the lowly tritanium unit (and other minerals, of course). Being the 'supply' side of supply and demand, the single most significant factor in prices throughout the game is the output of miners. There have been times where collusion and profiteering were significant factors, and that can and does still happen on a local scale. New additions (via updates) lead to speculation and rapid price fluctuation. Within a few days, things settle down and we return to values appropriate to the current mineral output of the system.
In the years that I have been playing EVE, I have never seen a substantial difference in prices due to the implementation of or changes in the GTC/PLEX system. The sole exception would be the ISK cost of 30 days of game time, which has more than tripled. That does not rule out inflation, but if it is there it is being masked or mitigated by other market factors and in any case is not a significant factor in the current economy. Perhaps there is significant inflation with regard to the value of an ISK versus the value of a dollar (influenced by RMT outfits, which in turn drives up the cost of time codes), but the market is internally consistent.
-1 raving lunatic; +6 subGenius... Things even out...
The problem with the "RMT Creates runaway inflation" argument is that it does not take into account several things:
1) In the game, the economy is in a generally deflationary period which it has been in since game launch.
2) RMT's have been around for well over a year and not only has the general deflationary cycle NOT stopped, it has sped up, with prices dropping rapidly. Observe the cost of T2 parts and ships and compare against before RMT. Generally speaking, T2 is cheaper now.
3) Many many many many other factors drive the economic cycles in EvE, RMT is a vanishingly small one of them.
The thing that the "RMT = inflation" people seem to forget is that there is NO NEW ISK being added to the economy when RMT's are used. The ISK is simply moved from one player's wallet to another within the game. So since no new ISK is added to the general supply, no inflation can occur.
The argument, as made above, that RMT encourages people to just make piles of ISK is specious at best. Many Trader players play just simply for the joy of being "virtually" rich. That is, they make the ISK for the sake of making the ISK. RMT just allows them to play as they enjoy without having to pay out any of their own hard-earned real money to do it.
On top of that there are people who make ISK to collect items with. I know of a couple players who run as traders simply so they can buy at least one of every item in the game.
There are MANY others who run VERY profitable trader-alts to supply their primary fighter accounts. Many of these players do so well with the trader alts that they have ISK to burn.
And that really is the crux of the problem for the "RMT = inflation" argument. The vast majority of really wealthy players who buy RMT's WOULD HAVE MADE THE ISK ANYWAY. The RMT's are just another avenue to burn the ISK pile they have amassed. An avenue that helps along players that are not good at making ISK but have the real money to use on the game.
So no, RMT's have not and CANNOT cause in-game inflation. To try and argue they do is to show a complete lack of economics, the state of the eve economy, and general human behavior.
Now, Who wants to buy my PLEX?
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
RMT is essentially unfettered inflation. Its printing money.
By that logic, so is growing apples - so long as there is a market for it and your prices are competitive. The total money supply does not increase, so I think the analogy of 'printing money' doesn't quite fit.
Indeed it is, says the Us Supreme Court in 1948:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
Ugh. That last sentence should have been:
"To try and argue they do is to show a complete lack of UNDERSTANDING OF economics, the state of the eve economy, and general human behavior."
The sad part? I proofread it and STILL missed that until after hitting submit.
*sigh*
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
MMOs that allow and facilitate RMT are the future of online gaming, and CCP will have to adopt and embrace that business model eventually.
Before CCP could become a real force in any RMT MMO industry, they'd first need to clean-house substantially and become a less corrupt and more professional company overall.
For the sake of throwing numbers around, lets assume that player A buys the game card for 300m isk - I have no idea what the current exchange rate is, but that'll do for these purposes.
Player A is doing nothing but generating ISK. Without the market for ISK, he'd normally be spending it on deflating assets (i.e. ships, insurance, munitions). Instead, he's just earning, earning, earning.
Not quite.
Player B will spend the isk on deflating assets instead of A doing so. Also, if A only spends say 500m isk a month, previously there would have been a 500+200=700m isk spend on assets. Now, since we can assume B wants to spend an extra 300m, there will be a 500+500=1bn isk spend on assets. More spending on deflating assets as a result of the RMT not less.
Now, here comes player C. He sees what player A has done, and tries to get in on the act. Next month, they both earn 1.5 billion ISK. Player B is only interested in buying ISK from one of them. Since their choices are to sell, or not sell, how much more ISK will player B get for his RMT next month, and how much more unspent ISK will there be in the game world?
Perhaps you're unclear on the meaning of "inflationary"?
I agree that other players will enter the marketplace on either side, depending on whether they believe the price is high or low. C will enter if he's willing to sell 350m isk for a gamecard, and D will enter if he's willing to accept 250m isk for a gamecard. As players enter/leave the market, equilibrium is reached, but this is nothing to do with inflation.
Inflation is the rate of increase in prices. Generally it's caused by either increasing amount of money, or reducing supply of goods to spend it on (they amount to the same thing essentially). The availability of high end expensive items that players want drives them to spend time generating isk, and work out how to do this efficiently. It is this demand for isk that will drive the increase in isk supply.
Consider the following scenarios where player A needs 1bn isk to buy something nice.
(Note the game can't see and doesn't care whether A also gave C cash, goods or services outside of the game in exchange for the isk)
Now, in all three scenarios, the isk supply has increased by 1bn which will lead to a certain amount of inflation. Net effect in the game is identical in all three cases.
However, generally there is a difference caused by efficiency. Player A might spend four weeks generating the isk. Their friend B is a better player and plays for longer, and so generated the isk in only two weeks. Player C however, who is online 24/7 and works very efficiently, can do this in only 1 week. The effect now is that the money supply has increased faster, and thus inflation is higher, in the later scenarios (3 > 2 > 1).
Note that RMTs do not cause inflation. What causes the inflation is the speed of increase in the isk supply. As an example, if player B was in fact able to generate isk faster than the RMT farmer, then the highest inflation would be in scenario 2.
The way to control inflation is therefore for the developer to control how fast isk can be generated - ie keep an eye on any areas where the reward is greater than the risk and lead to rapid wealth generation. However, some inflation is good for an economy - but I'll leave that for another day.
So how is the fact that player A chooses to spend his time making isk in any way, shape or form related to the issue at hand, being RMT?
It's not. I'm not sure why you brought it up in the first place.
The reason there is inflation comes from the ability to go into the game, and simply make money out of thin air- there is nothing controlling how fast money is literally created in the game universe.
In case you are not clear, here is an example. Take a game like WoW, etc. At level one you strap on your (noob weapon) and wander over to the nearest (noob monster) and kill it, at which time you are probably awarded money and/or items that the game generated on the spot... the money never came from anywhere, the items did not exist already, they simply were created out of nothing.
Now that isn't such a bad system, since it would really suck (like 2nd Life) if you had to actually work in the game world like you do in real life to get anywhere. But the result is that, if unchecked, soon everybody will have more cash than they can spend on anything, thus rendering both the cash and the items to buy, completely worthless.
So to compensate, add the money-sink to the picture. Money sinks are devices intended to take that money out of the economy, which results in deflation. Upkeep costs, new gear, maintenance, paying for quests, passage, etc. are all mechanisms that simply take cash/items out of the game.
If balanced properly, this setup will work well... people can feel like they are earning, but have to spend enough of the profits to keep the money worth having.
Now here comes RMT into the picture. Suddenly you have a lot of people (ok, a lot of characters) who are simply earning money, but never spending it. This alone wouldn't matter if they just sat on it, but then they dump it back into general circulation. It really makes no difference if they SELL it to someone for real-world money, or simply give it away for free in-game, the result is the same.
So your arguments about who is doing what, buying/selling from who, are totally irrelevant. The economy will always inflate in a game that allows money & items to generate from nothing, and which does not force players to return that magically created cash back to the void whence it came. It will always be worse when people start RMT, because they will continue doing it, than other situations like when people simply quit playing.
It'd be rather nice if someone said what RMT was!
(I thought it was the in-game currency. Oddly enough, it's actually "Real Money Trading".)
If they guy really did list all 1,000 cards at once, I wouldn't be surprised to find that the last few dozen sold for barely 10% the amount the first few sold for.
I doubt it. There's always more demand for GTCs/PLEXs than there are sellers, and with the current economic problem in the real world, there's a lot more people with less cash and more time on their hands than before. Paying for game time in ISK is about 50% more expensive than it was a year ago.
Only that in EVE no gear is sold by NPC.
Have they then removed the ISK component of prices in the LP stores?
Not that I disagree with the basic premise that no isk is directly destroyed when a ship goes boom - but a ship going boom does enable a certain amount of ISK sink, if faction loot is involved.
you accidentally the whole sentance
I love how optimizing The Market requires the setting aside of Moral and Legal issues. (In this case, Gold Farming.) I get that market efficiency is generally a good thing with lower prices, better pay, etc as a result. However, as a member of the "money isn't everything" school of thought, I'd love to see business in general remind themselves that they are human beings first and corporate serfs second. Yes, it may be hugely profitable, but if its not moral and legal you probably shouldn't be doing it, should you? (I'm emphasizing moral here, because I'm pretty confidant that major corporations have a vast amount of competent legal advice)
No, it's till there.
Insurance is only a sink, if you don't collect the payout. Faction loot is irrelevant for ISK sink. One player looted it from NPCs, another one bought it from him. So the ISKs have just changed hands.
As someone above pointed out, there are a couple more items with "real use" sold by NPCs than I originally mentioned. But compared to the amount of ISK involved in player to player trading, that is relative small. That's why you could play EVE either as "Internet Spaceships" or equally well as economy simulation.
They did sell at a respectable price, but it did depress down the ISK value of game time a lot.
Recently, the ISK value of 30 day PLEX has gone up considerably. Not enough supply to cover the demand from players who would rather pay ISK than USD/EUR for their subscription.
Personally I just grabbed two PLEXes worth of isk (a bit over 800 million) simply because I thought the price had gone up to a level that gave me good enough value. When a two PLEXes netted only 600 million, it didn't interest me nearly as much.
Free market economics at work. Effectively a player with more time than real money ponied up more ISK, to a point where I decided that the deal was good enough for me to pay his subscription for 2 months.
Of course there are rumors that current PLEX price hike is partially due to coordinated "pumping" of the price - someone is stockpiling a lot of PLEXes with ingame ISK, trying to drive up the price. Personally I can't see it working as if he dumps his large stock back on the market, the price will again go down (well, people stop buying until it does).
It is interesting to watch for sure :)
i'll be a coward, but you obviously played the game for a grand total of 2 seconds if you think that the GTC system for Trading and buying doesn't work, so your EVE game Report is False.
The Market thrives.