General Discussion

While attending the recent EVE Fan Fest, News Manager Keith Cross attended a talk by Dr. "Eyjo" Guðmundsson, EVE Economist. In this article, Keith gives us a quick update on the living, breathing EVE economy

While at Fanfest I had the opportunity to sit in on a presentation by Dr. Eyjólfur "Eyjo" Guðmundsson, EVE’s resident economist, where he spoke of the work that he’s been doing and some of the information that he has gathered for EVE’s first Quarterly Economic Newsletter. He revealed that the focus of the first QEM would be on the demographics of the EVE universe, the macroeconomics of EVE where he takes at EVE’s monetary system and money supply, and price levels and changes where he looks at inflation/deflation with some interesting conclusions.

Demographics

Dr. Eyjo stared by showing us a graph indicating the average number of skill points among characters of each faction and the distribution of those points in each skill category across each faction. The graph showed that skill points are fairly evenly distributed between the factions with each faction in the 8 to 9 million average skill point range. The graph also showed that skills were fairly evenly distributed among each skill category, but there were noticeable differences in the weapon skills chosen for characters of different races. The weapon skill distribution indicates that players are choosing these skills based on the racial bonuses for their faction, which reinforces the strengths and weakness of each race. The next graph ignored race and faction, focusing simply on showing how many players have how many skill points. The results were interesting, showing that the grand majority of characters have less that 1,000,000 skill points, and the player with the most has a whopping 91 million skill points. We were told that this character has been around since beta.

Read the whole thing here.

EVE is pretty much the only game out there where you can PVP with the economy.

Before all you hardcore "OMFG he's a carebear" types get all upset, I'm serious. If you've ever watched someone bring in a metric sh!t ton of goods into a market you've spent the better part of 3 months developing, it hurts just as much as getting ganked in your fully rigged raven with officer loot.

Getting into price wars can be rather exciting. Soon it becomes a game of "whose gonna blink first." Or, my favorite, in a tribute to J.D. Rockerfeller, bring in your own goods and sell at a loss for a month or two, until you drive everyone else out. (Or even better, buy up there crap at the low prices this results in, then re-seed the market with whatever prices you want )

Now, mind you, I also PVP in the normal sense, (well, semi normal, i run a t2 sniper boat (250km max range ftw)), and that is exciting in it's own right.

EVE is one of the few games out there that the PVP'ers NEED the carebears plugging away in the belts, and NEED the economy, in order to continue with there rampant rages of destruction across the galaxy. Likewise, all us carebears/production types also NEED the PVP'ers. It's a beautiful thing.

What I find interesging is the following quote:

[quote]We were also treated to a recent snapshot of the population distribution across the universe to see where players were spending their time. At the time the snapshot was taken, 78% of the population was in high security space, 13% were in low sec space, and only 9% were located in 0.0 space. This came as a bit of a surprise as Dr. Eyjo and many from the gathered crowd expected the number of players in 0.0 to be higher. Of course this was just a snapshot, and a single point on a graph is by no means indicative of a trend. With this in mind, Dr. Eyjo promised more snapshots in the future so we can get a better view of this emerging picture of EVE’s population.[/quote]

Most of the day to day trading that comes from the economy in Eve comes from .5 and above, where the people are. CCP still tries like hell to drive everyone out to 0.0 space. After 4 years of pushing, and failing, and then having reports like this, that you would think that they would get the hint and stop trying to cram 0.0 down everyones throats. We need more reports like this that prove that CCP is full of crap when they say most of the people are in 0.0 space.

As for what Atoh said, I agree 100%. There was a good CCP quote on that from Nathan Richards. He said that some of the most serious PVP battles were fought in Empire in 1.0 systems in the market. I could not agree more!

Best things to happen to the market to date was the intruduction of the contract system and the continued updating that they did to it. As they make more changes to it and make it better you will continue to see the economy flourish. Now if they just had that system in beta like they were supposed to, think of where the economyh would be today!

I know of no other MMO like this that needs an Economist in it. The market is a trully cool feature in eve. I just cant wait till the black market is up and running.

I'm surprised the average skill point number is 1 million, I thought it was much higher.

I have 15 million SP, and I feel like a newbie; there are so many areas that are new to me.

Originally posted by Jack_Target

I'm surprised the average skill point number is 1 million, I thought it was much higher.

I have 15 million SP, and I feel like a newbie; there are so many areas that are new to me.

Over all the QEN is very solid report that is written to be well understood by players not the Economist in the next cubical. While some of the graphs are not perfect they are suitable till we can start figuring viable ways to eliminate some extraneous information.

Originally posted by Maurauder

What I find interesging is the following quote:

[quote]We were also treated to a recent snapshot of the population distribution across the universe to see where players were spending their time. At the time the snapshot was taken, 78% of the population was in high security space, 13% were in low sec space, and only 9% were located in 0.0 space. This came as a bit of a surprise as Dr. Eyjo and many from the gathered crowd expected the number of players in 0.0 to be higher. Of course this was just a snapshot, and a single point on a graph is by no means indicative of a trend. With this in mind, Dr. Eyjo promised more snapshots in the future so we can get a better view of this emerging picture of EVE’s population.[/quote]

Most of the day to day trading that comes from the economy in Eve comes from .5 and above, where the people are. CCP still tries like hell to drive everyone out to 0.0 space. After 4 years of pushing, and failing, and then having reports like this, that you would think that they would get the hint and stop trying to cram 0.0 down everyones throats. We need more reports like this that prove that CCP is full of crap when they say most of the people are in 0.0 space.

As for what Atoh said, I agree 100%. There was a good CCP quote on that from Nathan Richards. He said that some of the most serious PVP battles were fought in Empire in 1.0 systems in the market. I could not agree more!

Best things to happen to the market to date was the intruduction of the contract system and the continued updating that they did to it. As they make more changes to it and make it better you will continue to see the economy flourish. Now if they just had that system in beta like they were supposed to, think of where the economyh would be today!

keep in mind many people in 0.0 have alts in empire, and make regular visits to empire to sell and buy things.

Yea about 5 of my corp mates has a industry alt for supply reasons for when we are spending time in 0.0 hauling goods mainly with the Mothership or carriers.

The distribution of people within Eve is an interesting phenomena. These percentages do include certain number of alts for pricing and buying purposes or for hi-sec researching etc. But remember that low skill alts are used in low and nulsec as well for scouting, intel and industry purposes as well.

The point is that people on the Eve-O fourms have always pointed the finger at the hi-sec folk and called them whiners. Said that most people play in 0.0 and lowsec. Up until now the loudness of the finger pointers has really had an effect on the developmen