The benefits aren't to AC, they are to the players. The players don't want large socialist corps, it hurts the economies and is to successful, PLEX makes this very hard to do...

The newer players are afraid they wont be able to compete and PLEX will redistribute in game wealth.

The older players feel they have no reason to amass any more wealth, being able to play for free.. is a good reason.

I don't really want to go back and forth on this, if you don't agree, fine. But there is no drawback to implementing it and I doubt you'll successfully disprove my points.

kthnxbye,
GLiMPSE™

the issue i have with perpetuum is that its to expensive for me on the long run.

i have to pay at least two accounts to alternate between two different ingame activities: combat and industry. No, Attribute removal didn't solve this, as you still need TONS of EP to do either of it with at least a bit meaning.

18€ for two agents... in NC-soft game i have 8 chars for 12-13€. which one costs less?

PLEX is a system which would somehow overcome this, but would backdrop to the DEVs if a discouraged majority of players would start to use their PLEX time instead of trading it and still paying subscriptions, resulting in ZERO income for the DEVs during such a period.

IMHO what the DEV team needs is more members... really. Mancs, this is nothing against you, but one/two guys working on missions is just to slow. 6 month for three of 6 tiers of mission is not a pace for something a new player can do in 1 week and then gets bored of doing the same mission over and over, where the only two random factors are 1. the artifact location and 2. the chance to drop the desired mission item.

Melchior working overtime on 3D meshes alone...

As long as someone is buying plex, there's income. Buying and stocking up is no different than what most players have already done, which is buy 6 to 12 month subs. Which means that AC got the $'s for it, but that makes cash flow tight now.

The flip side that we're not really looking at is, what's the current in-game market for plex?

All my accounts are subbed for the next 10 months, so unless I want to just give AC money now for no particular reason, they're going to need to wait 9 months to see more $'s from me. On the other hand, with the new frieghter bots coming, I could use some NIC. But here's the snag. How much NIC am I willing to trade 9$ for, and who has enough NIC to buy it?

Eve's plex is in the billions, but Perp's economy isn't that advanced. Meaning, if I put 1 month sub up for 1 billion NIC, there are only a few players that would be willing to buy it at that price. If I was the only one, that would be OK, but lets say there are 20 other players wanting to sell 1 mo subs. If I end up selling that sub for 200m, that would discourage someone like me from buying a second one (like Alex says, making a couple 100m nic isn't that hard), but new players would find 100m a very helpful boost. I would probably even be willing to BUY plex at 100m.

This may cause some temporary inflation, but the NIC isn't being generated out of thin air, its NIC already in wallets, that's be redistributed.

The comment about communistic corps is valid too. There is now reasons for the individuals in those corps to have NIC for themselves, or for the corp to earn NIC to buy plex for its membership if it wants to really support the communistic model.

I would caution though, that the pure NIC sources (like plasma) would need to be revisted, since that COULD generate inflation as the selling price of plex would go up as players are willing to pay more, meaning more NIC in the market, and players willing to pay higher prices. Which leads to the only real downside, is that just after something like this is initiated, new players that DON'T buy plex would find the market pricing well out of their range for PVP gear. But on the plus side, it makes the market stronger for players that want to buy/sell on the market (and room for new players to sell items with less markup).

Paying for SSEX

+1

Plex is a win for nobody except the guy with the highest limit on his VISA and the RMT'ers.

Look at the other game and how the DRF came into all those Supers.... Plex for isk. Bought supers from NC. NC RMT'd all the iskies.... It all started through the Plex system.

RMT bot accounts in Eve-- It is cheaper for them to Plex those accounts then it is for them to actually pay for them. Plex maximizes RMT profit plus you can't track 10000 accounts subbed via Plex like you can if they subbed with a credit card.

CCP tried to use Plex to curb buying ISK not to make it easier for people to maintain subs. Plex was a piss poor reaction to the RMT problem Eve already had. The decision to add Plex to that game came and bit them in the arse when the RMT'ers used it against them.

CCP rolled out the MT store as a way to create a Plex sink because of the massive stockpiles that were sitting in hangers as well as sucker some folks into buying $1000 jeans. CCP saw a ton of profit from Plex however all those Plex were sitting in hangers while they had spent all the profits designing 2 other games. CCP claimed those Plex as profits when the original GTC were sold. How many $$$$$$ were just sitting in hangers while CCP didn't see more profit yet still had the costs associated with the game?

Plex may seem like a good thing initially but there are way too many pitfalls associated with it down the line.

For ease of argument just go to the old eve forums and search the old Plex threads(better yet use Chribba's eve files instead it is better...).. Every argument is there.For and against.

@Scylla

There are certainly pitfalls with SSEX (yeah, its here to stay now Grem). But P2W is still limited by the availability of items on the market, and that at some point more NIC simply won't help. I think we've all heard the eve story of the russian guy that bought 100k in RMT subs (or some high value like that) and then bought a lot of in game ships to become a powerhouse. But for most players, a 1-time extra 100m is enough to get them going in the game for an additional $9 isn't going too elitist, and they'll take that NIC to pvp, making more pvp for everyone. The occasional player may sell $100 worth and get enough NIC to PVP without having to grind for a month, but that sounds exactly like what many players want; to just log in and play.

I do think though, that AC needs to think the whole system through, from RMT to game to applying the code to an account. Make it easy enough to buy/sell, but not so easy to trade outside of the game. Meaning I shouldn't be able to buy 100 SSEX's in game for NIC, then sell them on my website for real $'s.

Whats the point of a plex type system for younger players, to buy stuff?
When older players will only sell within corp.
The market is dead, nothing to buy

PIE mothballed because of a lack of customers (and at least 3 other alpha producers competitors for those few clients). If there was NIC to be made, we'd be there supplying it.

Advertise, advertise, advertise...

I run a business.  You can have the best product in the world, but if you don't advertise you wont sell any product.

OMG yes i never get why the devs stopped doing this. you have to spend some money to make it as they say.

True Pros make a Podcast to influence the Devs minds, 
The rest of you guys are Hacks

PS. I got my Highways & stopped playing b4 they came in & have never used them! ...... Irony much ?

aye good point but really advertising for the game shouldn't have stopped like it has. back when it fist came out i remember seeing ads around the traps.

True Pros make a Podcast to influence the Devs minds, 
The rest of you guys are Hacks

PS. I got my Highways & stopped playing b4 they came in & have never used them! ...... Irony much ?

It's nigh impossible to recover from the hand that AC is looking at right now, imo.  Doesn't matter if the accusations are true; players are talking about the cheaters that supposedly got away scot-free with breaking the EULA.  Pile that on top of AC's small team putting out content very slowly and we have the results you see today.  60-85 in general chat and maybe 150 logged in at most.

For crying out loud, I play UO servers that cost me nothing and have more content/sandbox tools than perp does.  Not to mention less (alleged) cheater favoritism.  The future?  Either a hail mary patch or a plug pulling.