NanoDot

I didn't "miss the point", I just see the bigger picture. As far as we know, in DU money only serves to provide commercial liquidity... and a 100% risk-free way to store wealth. Having access to a nice pile of money has some advantages though, it makes you more agile in the market AND reduces your risk (resource stocks can be stolen or destroyed, money cannot). Therefore money will always be highly desirable. Resources in DU are only limited in a given area, the supply is limitless in reality, because the amount of systems in the galaxy is "infinite". Resources HAVE to be infinite whatever happens, because if the resources REALLY run out, DU immediately stops working as a game. A single group can only temporarily monopolise a resource in DU, players will just go and find that resource in a new system and make a killing supplying it to desperate customers. As for selling DAC to get an early advantage, you say players will be stupid to do that, I say they'll be stupid NOT to do it. It will be interesting to see who's theory prevails !

In truth, we have no idea what the effect of PLEX is on EVE's warfare, because we don't know where the cash redistributed via PLEX is going. It may serve to prop-up some marginal empires for years, or perhaps tip the scales in a close battle, but we'll never really know. Perhaps the cash is spread around so broadly that it has no nett effect on anything. There's so much active ISK in the EVE economy by now that I doubt PLEX sales move any significant % of it around. PLEX arrived in EVE around 5 years after launch iirc. By then, power bases were already well-established, so changing the balance of power purely by spending on PLEX would probably have been prohibitively expensive by then (as it would be now). But in DU, the DAC will be a part of game play from day 1, so it's influence will undoubtedly be a factor in establishing the initial power bases. Any org that supplements their ingame activities with DAC sales will have more market clout than an org that doesn't. Will it be a significant advantage ? Who knows, but it will undeniably be an advantage. PLEX and DAC are a "force multiplier", not a replacement for ingame activity. It's a means to increase your wealth in addition to the increase you will have due to normal game play. It gives you an edge, not an "I win" button. How well you use that edge is what counts. There are countless examples of games nowadays where some players spend thousands of dollars per month to gain advantages for themselves or their guilds/clans. It's a fact of modern online gaming. I can't see any reason why DU would be exempt from the phenomenon.

Provided the player in the PLEX-financed 2 billion isk ship isn't also highly skilled, in which case you're toast. But that's not something we want to think about, is it, because it spoils the fairytale... Only n00bs and the clueless will sell DAC for ingame money, so there's nothing to worry about ! Who cares ? A skilled player will turn that early cashflow advantage into a significant ingame power base. The fact that they could have earned ten times more Quanta by selling their DAC 3 months after launch is irrelevant, it's just a cost of business. By then, their ingame power will in all likelihood more than compensate for the perceived loss in RL terms. Besides, nothing stops them from selling more DAC at the higher exchange rate... other than their RL disposable income. The competition is not over who has more money in their RL wallets after X months, it's over who has more power in the game after X months. Selling DAC is a way to transfer wealth from other players to yourself without involving any ingame effort. You don't have to perform services for them, or rob them, or scam them, or outwit them with clever market deals. You just simply buy their Quanta from them indirectly with RL cash. No PVP required... I don't object to PLEX/DAC, but I have no illusions as to what they represent.

Yes, I agree that it's very "convenient" to be able to increase your ingame purchasing power by spending some RL cash ! How else could you gain a little extra "edge" over other players in the market auctions, for instance ? "These are not the advantages you're looking for..." PLEX/DAC work because some players feel that saving the monthly sub fee is more important than being wealthy ingame. The PLEX/DAC sellers see it the other way around, of course. The buyers and sellers just have different priorities, which means both groups believe they're getting "the better end of the bargain". As long as both sides are happy with the outcome, all is well.

I'm sure the limited play time schedule is to reduce the costs involved. To host a few thousand players in DU, NQ will have to rent a block of cloud servers, which costs money. So once the initial pre-alpha test on the 30th is done, NQ can look at the cost/benefit analysis and decide what amount of weekly play time is economical.

Paying RL money for ingame advantage is a standard feature in most modern MMO's. In reality, it has always been a feature in MMO's, it just used to be "illegal" previously (i.e. buying "gold" from third-party gold-sellers or buying rare weapons on EBay). Things like PLEX and DAC are relatively benign, because it spreads the "advantage" around a bit, so it's easier to justify. Player A buys DAC from player B with ingame money. Player A saves themselves some RL expenditure on the monthly sub, while player B gains a chunk of game cash to increase their purchasing power ingame. Player A is happy to give player B an advantage in game play, because player A gets to play for "free", which is more important to them than being financially powerful in the game world. Let's face it, nobody would buy PLEX and DAC for RL money if there wasn't an advantage to be gained !

With no collisions between constructs, ships will just "bounce" off each other, like they do in EVE. That will probably lead to cheesy tactics like in EVE where a small, fast ship is used to "bump" a large vessel that's aligning for a warp jump, thereby interrupting the big ship's preparation for warp jumping. Players always find ways to "game the system".

How do you pay mercs to guard a mining operation ? Basic mining skills are probably going to be the easiest thing to train, so the mercs would have to decide if they want to mine themselves or watch someone else mining. They will know the "opportunity cost" involved, so what rates would they charge ? Will hiring guards be a realistic economically viable option for anyone other than the big operators ? I'd imagine most orgs will run mining ops on a socialist basis, where everyone involved gets an equal cut of the proceeds, after the org has taken it's share. Org members providing security for those ops do it "for the good of the org", rather than for pure personal gain.

Perhaps the wipe before beta will give us a chance at a "dress rehearsal" for launch day. It will be interesting to see how fast all the resources get vacuumed-up near the starter area.

Paying for advantage is an inseparable part of mainstream online gaming, and it's not going away. I've stopped worrying about it. I play the game to the best of my ability, and if I don't enjoy it, I stop.

Having "great looking" water is not the issue, Archeage does an excellent job in that regard, for instance. But in Archeage you cannot deform the terrain, and you can't randomly build structures underwater. To make the water in DU behave "believably", it needs to be able to flow. If you dig a tunnel that emerges into the bottom of a lake, the tunnel should be flooded and the lake surface should drop accordingly. Digging a channel that opens-up into a body of water should fill that channel with water, while draining away the main body, etc. Terrain voxels are static, and they already lead to some strange outcomes, such as the potential to have "floating mountains" when the base voxels are excavated. I'd imagine it would be very difficult to assign dynamic properties to the massive amount of voxels in an ocean or lake, and to make those voxels obey the laws of fluid physics.

What will things look like in the first weeks after launch ? When we spawn in on launch day, there won't be any money in the game (unless we spawn-in with X Quanta in our pockets, which would have to be exploit-proof). So we'll rush off and start mining, then build a market terminal and start selling resources to the NQ buy-orders that will automatically appear. Once we made enough money this way, we can start placing our own buy orders for things we need but don't have. Some will build guns first, instead of market terminals, because killing other players and robbing them is more entertaining than mining... So, unless you're mining or employed by someone who's mining or you're robbing miners, what will YOU do in the first few weeks after launch ?

Yes, we share the same concern, I'm just focused on the direct market meddling aspect of the interventions. DU's proposed economic design is very simplistic AFAIK. There's only 1 faucet (mined resources), and 1 sink (materials lost when a construct is destroyed). The sink and faucet appear to be massively out of balance. Some of the mined resources will be converted to "money" (Quanta) to provide liquidity. The conversion process will create upward pressure on resource prices, because NQ's buy orders will remove resources from the game, whilst setting effective "floor prices" for those resources that they buy. In order to buy resources from other players, you'll have to outbid NQ's buy orders. However, outbidding NQ's buy order prices won't be easy initially, unless you've sold them enough resources to earn the Quanta needed to outbid them ! Quanta will always be highly desirable, because it's the ONLY 100% safe way of storing wealth, as well as making general trade less tedious and risky. The plan seems to be to cap the amount of Quanta in circulation by removing the fake buy orders at some arbitrary point. But a fixed money supply will start strangling trade, which means players will resort to barter, and "asset swaps" will become the dominant feature of the economy. Once the money supply is capped, the only way of becoming "richer" is by stockpiling resources. The resource faucet cannot be turned off, because building is a central pillar of game activity.

I love exploring, but I'll probably do very little of that in pre-alpha. I don't see the point, if everything will be wiped and regenerated (possibly differently) at the end of pre-alpha. The only benefit of leaving Alioth in pre-alpha will be sightseeing for the sake of it. My priority will be learning to use the building tools.

If the economy "ceases to function", it's not because the markets are broken, it's because the game's economic model is fundamentally borked. My assertion is correct, CCP does not constantly interfere in player markets by seeding fake buy and sell orders. Those articles confirm that. CCP interferes in game play only when there is a "broken" mechanic, which is sometimes an unfortunate side-effect of introducing new game features. But notice how they interfere: they change resource distributions, they adjust recipes, they change tax rates, etc. They DON"T simply try to cap market prices, they correct the imbalances that caused the market bubble. Fix the game and the market will fix itself. They adjust the tools and features, which is the correct way of addressing the problem. THAT's why EVE's economy works. I have no objection to NQ using similar methods to correct game imbalances. If it becomes apparent that DU's initial resource distributions are not a good match for actual game play, then adjust those distributions. Or change the element recipes. Pouring minerals into the system via fake sell orders is just cheesing it, because that's treating the symptoms, not curing the disease. If the problem is caused by a game imbalance, those fake buy and sell orders will become a permanent feature, forever limiting the player-driven market. My objection is only in relation to the fact that NQ have chosen to inject money into the game via direct and constant interference in the player market. It will be very crude and obvious interference, and I suspect it will be permanent.

1. There is only 1 truly "safe" zone that we know of, i.e. the area around the arkship on the starter planet Alioth. There's been talk of the possibility of other similar safe zones being discovered elsewhere in the galaxy, but that will in all likelihood not happen until we start travelling to other solar systems, which will only become practical several months to a year after launch. As for building your own safe zone, that will supposedly be partially possible by deploying a very expensive and power-hungry shield element on your claimed territory hex. It's intended for use by medium to large orgs., and the costs involved will likely scale accordingly. It's not a true safe zone though, the shield can be destroyed in combat, it will just take a lot of time and effort. It's also not clear when exactly this "shield bubble" element will be implemented in the game, it may not be there at launch yet. 2. You can certainly construct your own market. I've no doubt that half the player base will be doing exactly that. How you'll attract business to YOUR market is an open question. I'm sure many players will set zero tax rates on their market transactions, just to encourage people to ship their resources there for trade purposes. A busy market promotes itself. I'm not convinced that markets will initially generate significant income for the owners, due to intensive competition. Tbh, there will be hundreds of players trying to do exactly what you're planning. Those who can come up with truly innovative business plans are the ones who'll most likely succeed. So figure out something that will set you apart from the competition, and you're all set !

I may be totally wrong, but I think the decision to proceed with the very limited pre-alpha will give NQ the chance to nail down many of the technical challenges that they are not confident about at this point. They are clearly not happy with the current state of development progress, hence the further delay of "alpha proper". Having 2K players on the server doing random things will give a far better approximation of what the system can handle than running a few thousand scripted bots around in a field. Real players bring unpredictability to the system that cannot be fully simulated by bots. Once the limits of the architecture are established, it defines the scope of any features that will be added later, because it gives a much clearer picture of what's possible and/or what's simply not practical to attempt.

If one giant alliance starts crushing all opposition and dominating the game, should NQ step in and limit their power, so that things don't get too "destabilized" ? If market-PVP has to be regulated by NQ, then there's something seriously wrong with the economic design. Surely the ideal would be to improve the checks and balances, so that player actions and pure supply-and-demand can dictate things without constant interference by the devs. Will DU have "player-driven war", but a "developer-regulated economy" ? In EVE, resources are not distributed evenly. It's entirely possible for one powerful group to gain a significant monopoly on certain resources, because the locations of those resources are static. Yet EVE's economy has never failed or ceased to function. Quite the opposite, in fact, it has thrived. CCP does not constantly interfere in the markets to "regulate" prices by seeding fake buy and sell orders. Throughout EVE's history, there have been many instances of one or other resource spiking in price. Whenever that happens, the player base inevitably steps up to increase supply until the price spike smooths out again. It's part of the EVE meta. Monopolizing resources is theoretically impossible in DU, because the game world is theoretically infinite in size. Besides, the locations of mined resources will constantly change as deposits are depleted. One powerful group cannot set up camp on the gold deposit and deny it to the rest of the player base until they are driven off. If they try, someone will just go further and find a new deposit of that resource.

That's an interesting idea, but I'd like to see less interference in the market, not more. It's surprising how many people will vigorously defend FFA-PVP in combat, but will quite happily allow market-PVP to be regulated by the devs, lol Priorities, I guess... That's not aimed at you specifically, it's a view that's expressed by many in this thread and in your recycling thread too.

That is my concern too, specially seeing as that "influence" will consist of competing with players in the resource market. AFAIK, NQ will generate "fake" resource buy orders for resources. Those buy orders will effectively set the floor price for resources. They will also remove resources from the game, in exchange for Quanta. So NQ will be directly meddling in the "player-driven economy", because if you want to place a resource buy order, you'll have to beat NQ's price, regardless of supply and demand.

Hyperinflation only happens when the faucets and sinks are seriously unbalanced. CCP managed just fine all these years, EVE's CPI has remained almost flat since launch. Vigorous competition between player manufacturers, combined with a steady supply of minerals, and a nicely balanced set of faucets and sinks, has kept EVE's market remarkably stable, even though the total money supply has been steadily increasing for 14 years... Well, as long as you ignore the spiralling cost of PLEX, which everyone assures me has nothing to do with inflation...

Legit ? Mining is the ONLY way to make money in DU, lol And that's using the word "make" in it's purest sense, i.e. to create. Nothing else creates wealth AFAIK, unless there's some sort of alien artifacts that can be discovered and sold to the NQ bots...

A barter-based economy will be tedious as hell... And NQ will have to seed minerals in percentages that allow that to work, otherwise it will create new problems. Let's assume that minerals will be seeded in proportion to their use in manufacturing. The "rare" minerals will inevitably be needed for high-end elements, etc. That's how you control the availability of high-end components usually. If everyone now decides to use gold as "money", that introduces a huge additional constraint on manufacturing anything that needs gold. The volume of gold in the game world will not have been designed with that in mind, leading to all kinds of problems, like massive inflation of the value of gold (and anything that needs gold in manufacturing). NQ's plan to cap the amount of money in the game will simply slow down the accumulation of wealth (not stop it), whilst making general game play more tedious and frustrating. If money becomes tight, people will switch to a "gold standard" or some other resource-based currency, as you've already suggested. The amount of wealth in the game will continue to increase unabated. Resources are "finite" in any given area, but infinite in supply in the entire galaxy to all intents and purposes. They have to be, if the resources run out, the game stops working. The value of resources will just rise over time as it becomes more time-intensive to exploit them and cart them back to where they are needed.

Again, looking at the analysis of the September 2015 numbers in that EVE report, we see that skillbooks and the LP Store took 4 times more money out of the EVE economy than transaction taxes. The presence of NPC factions and corps in EVE allow for a wide range of both sinks and faucets to be easily deployed. The complete lack of NPC structures in DU will make it very tricky to introduce "plausable" money sinks and faucets, for instance. What possible use could the arkship AI have for money collected by transaction taxes ? Why would the AI charge players money to buy skill training ? OTOH, perhaps the plan is for DU to simply have no money sinks. If NQ plan to cap the money supply by withdrawing system-generated buy orders at some point, then money sinks would not be needed. They would be counter-productive, even. I don't believe that it's practical to freeze the money supply in DU, which is what will happen when the system-generated buy orders are switched off. Just like in any other MMO, people will leave DU over time, removing large chunks of money in the process. The bots will have to interfere constantly just to keep the money supply at a specific level. Which means that the bots will constantly be interfering in the player resource market. I honestly think that NQ's vision for the economy is DU's biggest weak point.

Are you suggesting that CCP have less of an understanding of their economy than you do ? Look at the monthly analysis for September 2015. The taxes collected from market transactions are about 15% of the income generated by mission payouts. EVE Bank would utterly unable to balance their budget with those numbers.