I'd like the idea of different empires having different currency, but they'd never do that.

Also in theory, wouldn't removing ISK also remove an EVE player's capacity to reward Dust players for their work? Sounds like we'd still be getting the short end of the stick.

well im all for removing isk from the game entirely and moving to a BPO system with a decent skill point investment to unlock them at least until the game is actually finished and they have delivered all the content they originally promised us.

I see where you're coming from OP.

If DUST were so separate from Eve Online, maybe this idea of yours would have been considered. But since DUST and Eve are not so separate from each other, the ISK system will have to stay. Besides, this will just distract CCP and divert unnecessary resources into something that favors a currency that Eve Online players don't even use or probably don't even care enough to know about it. Let's also not forget that there are now Eve and DUST players sharing corporations as well as faction loyalty points. We are just too connected at this point to consider changing currencies.

But I do agree that industry should play a key role in this. CCP announced back in Fanfest 2013 that DUST players will handle the harvesting of materials and then send those materials to Eve players where then they can be used to manufacture infantry gear. This alone will open up a whole new level of meta gaming and a whole new market for DUST players to thrive in. But knowing the complexity out that, it will take time.

Sure you could let materials from a planets serve as the exchange. The issue here is that in Eve those materials would have to be of so little value but remarkably rare. Rare to create a market and little value as to not flood Dust with too much Isk way too fast. Economics wouldn't allow this.

It doesn't matter at this point. ISK is here to stay and it's not going to be replaced by some currency that no one knows or even cares about.

But nobody cares about it because it's not something they use directly. It has no benefit to Eve players other than just being lore.

I see what you did there. I'm not falling for that trap.

If they remove isk from Dust_514, I'd take it as a sign that CCP is withdrawing their resources from Dust and intend to let it die.

Economy is supposed to be a big thing in this game... if it ever gets here...

this will completely wreck our upcoming player trading.


anyways, each faction does have their own currency in a way. its called loyalty points. and with them you can get gear better than the gear at the regular market. shocker, isnt it?

they still wont allow exchanging of currency between dust and eve because it would inflate plex prices and potentially decrease the active eve players

... is premised upon the idea that items in Eve and Dust have an objective value, unrelated to the time players spend to earn resources. Time spent by human beings playing each game is what drives the current exchange rate between Dust and Eve (which is about [Dust isk 1 to Eve isk 5] and [Eve isk 10 to Dust isk 1]). I presume that exchange rate is holding somewhat consistently because in aggregate, it is somewhere between 5x and 10x easier to earn an isk in Eve, compared to Dust.

The exchange rate is currently driven by the ease with which isk is earned in each game, but can potentially be driven by the effect each game can have on the other. We're not seeing much of that effect on the exchange rate yet, except in the most wildly speculative sense.

I've converted about 30B Eve isk and 5 or 6B Dust isk between the games, over the course of about 150 transactions. The unofficial exchange hasn't destroyed Dust. To the contrary, I think its fostered interest in Dust among Eve players, and interest in Eve among Dust players. CCP should build an official exchange that makes it easy for Dust players to take their saved Dust isk, convert it to Eve isk, buy a plex (sold to them by an Eve player who paid CCP RL money for that plex) and keep playing Eve after their free trial runs out. CCP should build an official exchange that makes it easy for Eve players to fund Dust corps while they fight on the ground in a way that help their efforts in Eve. PC should be more than a friendly-locked isk printing machine, particularly while Dust isk is so much more valuable than Eve isk.

A currency serves a purpose and arises organically even in the absence of an official medium of exchange. When you argue for a second currency, its characteristics should serve the intended purpose. A second currency that has the same problem of being less wealth producing for a player's time spent earning it, doesn't resolve the desperate earning potentials between Eve and Dust. The only lore solution is to deflate the value of Dust isk toward parity with Eve isk. You can't do that with a second currency; you can only do that by causing price inflation within Dust to catch up with Eve prices.

You want something like parity? Multiply every isk held by a Dust player or Corp, and every payout and price in Dust by x7.5. Bingo, price equality, and easy market integration. Lore can not overpower the actual economic incentive players experience.

Yea, I've been operating an isk exchange since last October. The isk exchange thread Customers give me isk in one game, and my alt pays their alt in the other game. They exchange their isk between games, through me. Luckily, no one has suggested the values you just offered. I don't get the joke. If the problem you're trying to solve is that Dust mercs aren't as cheap as you think they should be, try adjusting the lore to the economics of the game, instead of other way around.

An eve pilot might move his consciousness across space into another clone, as much as once a day. A Dust merc can wake up in a new clone and almost immediately perform, sometimes as often as 20 times in half an hour. Dust mercs are rarer than Eve pilots. Why would their equipment, particularly prototypes that can perform significantly better than their peers, be less expensive than the wildly more common space ships hauling garbage between space stations?

Multiplying the prices and payouts in Dust by 7.5 would make milia fits costs rise from about 5k to 37k; advanced fits costing 20k would rise to 150k; proto fits costing 150k would rise to over 1M; tanks costing 2M would rise to 15M. A proportional rise in payouts would leave no net effect on the time it would take to support someone's play style. I'm not saying that should happen. I'm saying that if that's where CCP's headed, it would make sense, if they want Dust and Eve isk to have roughly the same value.

You can't link the economies of both games, without taking the player's time in to account.

I don't understand your first edit. I'm not arguing for a particular outcome, I'm describing contingencies.

I'm not arguing against the current separate currencies. Currencies like Dust and Eve isk don't have an inherent value. Again, I think we're talking past one another, perhaps because you're carrying around this completely unnecessary idea of objective economic value. Things have value because we as individuals value them. You can aggregate those values, but they simply don't exist apart from subjective value judgments. If no one will pay a penny for that shuttle, it is worthless, no matter how much veld was consumed in producing it. If that Thales cost 1k worth of materials to produce, but I need it to win a PC battle that will result in locked-district income, I'd be perfectly reasonable to spend millions to get it.

I could easily have misread your post. I thought you were dissatisfied with the potential results of prices driven by supply and demand, if they resulted in Dust weapons costing more than some Eve frigates.

Re: the hand in hand approach, exactly. I don't see the downside to that approach that would deter CCP from pursuing it, specifically because a big part of the web of supplies and demands that determine prices and opportunity costs, is each players time, whether they play Dust or Eve.

i wouldnt get to use my sniper rifle if there were different currencies because i never fight for Caldari, or Amarr. and im sure im not the only one who uses weapons that arent made by their faction.