If CCP offered more ISK as a buyer than the current market does, the market would adjust to remain competitive.

The best idea I've heard for officer weapon/suit removal came from Jadek yesterday:
https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=219237&find=unread

So CCP will have to keep updating their buyback price to remain competitive? This is a pretty dangerous path to go down as it adds another force to the market that is guaranteed to move it up. For every person buying officer gear there's a person selling it and generating ISK off it. ISK is already meaningless to enough players, let's not add to that.

What if newbros have a higher drop rate of gear till they reach certain skill point levels and loyalty ranks then it drops sharply.

OR.

make it so selling officer gear to CCP for new bros simply worth more and for vets less. Bam isk for newbs.

Shaun, you're supporting my argument. Market prices for officer gear SHOULD go up. They're currently undervalued due to oversaturation. They WILL go up, due to the recent removal of a supply source. This isn't dangerous - it's both inevitable and good. And as I mentioned in my last post, the price will stabilize at the natural point where the market is unwilling to follow CCP upward in price. Did you read that post?

As for ISK - yes, it's less valuable to the ISK wealthy than to the ISK poor. This is the immutable nature of wealth. A dollar is more valuable to he that has only one than to he that has one million. As a player that's closer to the ISK floor than the ceiling, let me tell you - if officer weapon prices go up, I'll be happy. The drops I get from salvage will sell for more, and I'll be able to maybe start dipping my toes into the proto market, which right now is uncomfortably out of my price range for sustainable use. Any ISK inflation/saturation is unfortunate if not properly sunk (a big part of any sustainable MMO's economics has to do with controlling currency spigots and drains as a necessary ingredient to the artificiality of spontaneous asset generation), but in one sense it's ALREADY BEEN DONE through the proliferation of officer weapon generation, and I'm just speaking about converting from one inflation to the other, which is a desirable goal, and in another sense it's at least a progressive inflation, in that it harms the poor less than it harms the wealthy.

What if newbros have a higher drop rate of gear till they reach certain skill point levels and loyalty ranks then it drops sharply.

Then they could get isk off of it.

OR.

make it so selling officer gear to CCP for new bros simply worth more and for vets less. Bam isk for newbs.

Or CCP could just increase ISK payouts for playing matches and introduce an ISK payout for FW matches on top of the LP payout.

Gosh darn it I thought this was going to be a good discussion. We've already devolved to 'hurr durr can you even read?'

Yes. I read that you want the prices to go up. I don't think this is good for 2 reasons:
1. ISK is no longer an effective limiting factor. Too many people have gotten too rich off of too many broken mechanics. At the moment we don't have anything that really tests how much these people are willing to spend to get an advantage. Supply of officer weapons is far out-pacing demand and they're still selling at 200/300/500k a pop. So,
2. because we don't know how far the buyers are willing to go, there is a very real risk that this will just add yet another broken mechanic that puts far too much ISK into the hands of more established of players. And this is not just ISK changing hands either, it's coming direct from CCP so it's another ISK faucet. ISK faucets should NEVER be pegged to the player market.

I agree that having CCP buy the weapons back would technically pull them out of circulation, but the knock on effects of CCP having to compete with the player market would be disastrous. This is why Jadeks idea is so good, it pulls them out of circulation but it does it responsibly.

I think the crux of it is that we've both identified inflation as a problem caused by this system, but we don't agree on how severe that inflation will get.

Nail on the head with your last statement. How bad will ISKflation be? We can't peg it with a monetary value yet (because we don't know the ISK<->weapon value relationship as it stabilizes in context of the recent supply change), but we CAN supply it with a DEFINITE and CONTROLLABLE value: it is the percentage that CCP offers over market. 5% over market? For every sale, you've created 5% inflation (relative to that purchase price, not the market as a whole!).

Imagine the whole economy existed of 2 people. Person 1 has a weapon and 0 ISK, person 2 has 100 ISK and no weapon. Person 1 sells the weapon to person 2 for 100 ISK. Although the weapon has changed hands, there is still only 100 ISK in the economy. Person 2 can go out and get that weapon blown up or whatever, still only 100 ISK in the economy.

Now add a third person, CCP. Person 1 still has a weapon, person 2 still has 100 ISK. Person 1 wants to sell the weapon to person 2, but CCP steps in and says 'I'll buy it off you for 105 ISK with this money that never existed in the economy before.'

The weapon is gone, but that is inconsequential because there is now 205 ISK in the economy where there used to only be 100. It is not as simple as 'If CCP pays 5% extra that converts to 5% inflation' BECAUSE THEY'RE PAYING FOR IT WITH ISK THAT NEVER EXISTED

Can someone PLEASE help me out here?

Adding items to the game is not the same as adding currency

Here you're just plain wrong and that's where it where our discussion must end. If there's a liquid market between items and ISK, then the two are fungible and the format is irrelevant; value is value. If you can't understand this we can't proceed.

From wikipedia:
Fungibility refers only to the equivalence of each unit of a commodity with other units of the same commodity. Fungibility does not relate to the exchange of one commodity for another different commodity.

it doesn't even matter bryon. ccp will never add that much isk into dusts economy. you know they hire an actual economist in eve to keep a handle on the sources and sinks of isk? they're not going to listen to some random on the forums who think's its a good idea to add in a source of isk that they won't even be in control of.

OK fair enough. Can we just try to hash out one last thing? CCP having control over the price vs not having control. We'll assume they're paying player market + 5%

Day 1: The asking price for a Bons is 100K isk, CCP are required to offer 105K. They buy a few, but a bunch still remain.

Day 2: I see that the asking price for a Bons is 105K, but I really want some. So I offer 106K and buy a few

Day 3: Market price for a Bons is now 106K, so CCP are required to offer 111.3K ISK. They buy a few, but a bunch still remain.

Day 4: I really want some more Bons, so I offer 120K ISK and buy a few.

Day 5: Market price for a Bons is now 120K ISK. CCP are required to offer 126K ISK. They buy a few, but a bunch still remain.

Day 5 (CCP night time): Market traders have worked out that the price is never going to go down, so a price war breaks out overnight as people scramble to buy as many as possible. By the morning, market price has reached 1M ISK. None have been removed from circulation because it's been traders buying them all up.

Day 6: CCP must now offer 1.05M ISK.

Did CCP, at any point, have control over how much they were offering outside of the small % on top of the market price?

OK cool cool, you mention equilibrium but that relies on a point existing at which profits are no longer possible, but your system guarantees that CCP will ALWAYS be willing to pay 5% extra than anyone else. Because of this, anyone that owned one the day before is guaranteed profits on the next day. A savvy trader will know that if they just let their stocks trickle out day after day for the guaranteed increasingly higher price they'll have an almost infinite source of ISK. The higher the price gets the slower they can release them because CCP's new ISK will just keep on increasing. Between the forces of traders looking for a profit, and CCP guaranteeing that profit, what would stop the price rising?

Once market supply is at an appropriate spot (i.e. officer weapons are rare again), CCP pulls out of the market and lets laissez faire economics take hold again.
...the amount of evil is under CCP's direct control, in that they can directly control their price point above market (5%, 10%, whatever), in order to create a balanced, attractive, effective sink, after the success of which, they can pull back out, and, as I said, laissez faire economics can resume.
...Evaluating the inflation as a percentage also makes clear how trivially CCP can control their relationship to the plan. How much inflation is worth getting these weapons off the market (remembering that this inflation is, after all, progressive, benefiting the poor more than the rich (contrary to typical inflation))?
...Otherwise, you just evaluate and adjust. Is the current rate working? Should we increase/reduce our margin in order to meet our goals?
...CCP directly controls their buy offers on the market, and, thus, the inflationary effect of those buy offers, in terms of the only relevant metric there is: percentage of value.
...And at every juncture they had the ability to modify that amount downward in order to stem perceived inflation, or to modify it upward in order to increase their draw on suppliers.

Because of this, anyone that owned one the day before is guaranteed profits on the next day. A savvy trader will know that if they just let their stocks trickle out day after day for the guaranteed increasingly higher price they'll have an almost infinite source of ISK. The higher the price gets the slower they can release them because CCP's new ISK will just keep on increasing. Between the forces of traders looking for a profit, and CCP guaranteeing that profit, what would stop the price rising?

All of this is WAY too much work for CCP. Whenever you want to bring a proposal to them you have to think of it in terms of work and how much you can squeeze out if it.
It seems like a lot of work, CCP monitoring an arms market and injecting ISK into an already overflowing bathtub.
Keep CCP focused on developing and have the buyers battle each other.
Literally.
Vendor Officer gear for CP and let the raiding nightmare begin.
Create an incentive in the DK market that will inspire the PC community to grow and operate more frequently.
The benefits:
Weapons and Gear directly removed from the game via NPC trade in exchange for CP.
Isk redistribution / corp participation - Corp buys arms from community to boost CP. Corp members can vendor their stuff for CP Contributions. People will do this with stuff they don't want.
More action possible in Molden Heath with boosted CP gains power struggles more intense, more frequent. Not sure how to change PC in a way this could happen and be fun for ppl but they are not busy enough apparently if they are in pubs all the time.
Increased frequency of PC events destroys more ISK / Officer gear in battles. Keeps people in PC and hopefully too busy to be risking nice stuff in pubs.
Can be justified lorewise as a weapons procurement for retaliation vs Drifters or whatever and if they do that then they can shut the CP faucet on or off at any time.
Drawbacks:
Not sure if this would increase P2W scenario but i doubt ppl will spam AUR purchased keys for Officer weapons just for CP.
PC situation is awful with lag and ppl don't love to do it because it is a stressful environment sometimes so idea might not take off.
So idk, but it was said that we needed more angles to approach the problem. The one that has the best chance for success will require the least amount of work.

How about trading officer weapons for rank increase ? Or trading Officer weapons for LP (for the applicable faction of course)

Good idea man.

Much simpler.

Destiny has a similar thing going on with faction rep.

Yep and Destiny used it in a way that we also need to - getting items that were no longer appropriate/needed out of circulation!
I'm a big fan of Faction items, too. Less +power and more +specialization.

Rattati might have a problem with it though.

He has said that players will not be able to trade LP faction skins because such things should be earned and I agree.

If LP could be acquired from selling officer weapons then someone could potentially get those skins without ever having fought for the faction.

I don't think they'll go for it

Fair call. You know who doesn't care about loyalty and would totally like getting some OP weapons? PIRATES!

All of this is WAY too much work for CCP. Whenever you want to bring a proposal to them you have to think of it in terms of work and how much you can squeeze out if it.

It seems like a lot of work, CCP monitoring an arms market and injecting ISK into an already overflowing bathtub.

Keep CCP focused on developing and have the buyers battle each other.

Literally.

Vendor Officer gear for CP and let the raiding nightmare begin.

Create an incentive in the DK market that will inspire the PC community to grow and operate more frequently.

So idk, but it was said that we needed more angles to approach the problem. The one that has the best chance for success will require the least amount of work.

Fair call. You know who doesn't care about loyalty and would totally like getting some OP weapons? PIRATES!