And if AUR items are produced by players what if there isn't enough supply to meet demand? Would that mean players paying real money can't buy the gear? Or what about if demand outpaces supply? Do you pay the manufacturer before the sale or after? If it's before that just becomes a free money fountain.

But by being paid by an NPC corp for the minerals, ISK is consequently pumped into the economy and that can cause problems. If you have too much ISK in the economy, the value of the currency lowers and items become more expensive. If you have too little ISK in the economy, the value of the currency increases while the selling price of the items decreases. You have to find a perfect balance between the two. This is where player-to-player transactions help out by keeping the currency circulating as long as possible before it is destroyed while also mitigating new ISK from being generated out of nowhere.

But If CCP has a market of items that they sell for ISK (without mining) aren't they just destroying that ISK? It's not like CCP is buying up gear and hoarding it. CCP can help regulate market forces by selling gear themselves and keep ISK quantities at sustainable levels preventing inflation, right? The Corp production market can then complete with CCP by producing goods (hopefully similar gear but varied in color/design/etc) and trying to sell them for lower than what CCP offers. The Secondary Market can be used for players getting some value out of gear they dont want or need and helps prevent Corps/CCP from selling crummy gear at inflated prices.

But If CCP has a market of items that they sell for ISK (without mining) aren't they just destroying that ISK? It's not like CCP is buying up gear and hoarding it. CCP can help regulate market forces by selling gear themselves and keep ISK quantities at sustainable levels preventing inflation, right? The Corp production market can then complete with CCP by producing goods (hopefully similar gear but varied in color/design/etc) and trying to sell them for lower than what CCP offers. The Secondary Market can be used for players getting some value out of gear they dont want or need and helps prevent Corps/CCP from selling crummy gear at inflated prices.

What about a simple crafting system. A NPC corp wants to sell an aur item, let's say a complex damage mod, to produce an aur mod the corp would have to buy a player made complex mod and a CPU upgrade mod using monies from taxes. These two items would be bought at the going rate combined and then you have an aur mod.

There would be minerals needed from miners, production from manufacturing, tax money spent, player made items destroyed and aur items created. The RL money would pay for the production of the product and everything else would be in game. This could also add micro transactions to the game. Get the modules needed to make an aur item, pay 50 aur and the aur item is yours. ISk could be used to do the "upgrade" and then it would not be p2w.

I would like to see a type of crafting/upgrade system for lower tier gear on the PSVITA. Spend some SP on a crafting skill and then buy the gear you want to upgrade. The VITA could have some mini games that upgrades an item if you meet the criteria and destroys them if you fail.

Example: I want to upgrade a standard AR to an advanced AR. At level one gunsmithing I would get one advanced AR from a run of 10 if I completed the task. Level three would produce three advanced and level five would produce 5. Failure would destroy all 10.

What about a simple crafting system. A NPC corp wants to sell an aur item, let's say a complex damage mod, to produce an aur mod the corp would have to buy a player made complex mod and a CPU upgrade mod using monies from taxes. These two items would be bought at the going rate combined and then you have an aur mod.

There would be minerals needed from miners, production from manufacturing, tax money spent, player made items destroyed and aur items created. The RL money would pay for the production of the product and everything else would be in game. This could also add micro transactions to the game. Get the modules needed to make an aur item, pay 50 aur and the aur item is yours. ISk could be used to do the "upgrade" and then it would not be p2w.

I would like to see a type of crafting/upgrade system for lower tier gear on the PSVITA. Spend some SP on a crafting skill and then buy the gear you want to upgrade. The VITA could have some mini games that upgrades an item if you meet the criteria and destroys them if you fail.

Example: I want to upgrade a standard AR to an advanced AR. At level one gunsmithing I would get one advanced AR from a run of 10 if I completed the task. Level three would produce three advanced and level five would produce 5. Failure would destroy all 10.

Go the other route and have just have the merc supply the items and then pay aur to upgrade them.

The static price would only be in aur. The merc buys the damage mod and CPU upgrade and then pays an aur fee to produce the final product. The prices of the modules could change and the aur service charge per item produced would stay the same. The merc then owns the module and can sell it if they want to for ISK.

Still won't work. Because the cost of the basic materials will change along with the ISK value of the created AUR item but the AUR cost remains the same then you could have some 30 AUR items that sell for 100,000 ISK and some 30 AUR items that sell for 500,000 ISK. Or 70 AUR items that sell for 2,000 ISK. You'd constantly have massive surpluses and shortages.

Eve Online's PLEX is already like that. You pay $15 for a PLEX that you can buy directly from CCP and sell it for ISK on the market. The ISK price will depend on the available supply of PLEX in the secondary player market. AUR is after all representing real-world currency.

So far, the PLEX system has been successful. You can even buy Fanfest tickets with it, donate it for causes, or pay your subscription with it.

This way, players will be given two options that in no way undercut the miners or manufacturers. This means the core of the market is safe and benefits everyone including CCP.

@The Robot Devil

So let me get this straight. Please correct me if I misunderstood you. Let me see if I can reiterate what you said in simple steps.

1. Player A wants to get an AUR Complex Damage Mod.

2. Player A goes to primary NPC market to buy one.

3. NPC corp asks player to pay 15 AUR along with 'X' amount of certain materials such as an Enhanced Complex Damage Mod (ISK variant produced by player B) and an Enhanced CPU Upgrade Mod (ISK variant produced by player C).

4. Player A goes to the secondary player market and buys said required items from players B and C.

5. Player A takes the purchased items to NPC corp and submits the materials for production.

6. Depending on player A's standings and invention skills, there is a chance that production of said AUR item will fail or succeed. <------See note

7. If failed, all that will be lost is the materials. If successful, player A will be given the option to pay AUR for the item.

8. If bought, player A can choose to either use the item or sell it in the secondary market for ISK at a rate determined by player-driven market forces thus eliminating the rumors of P2W.

Is this what you meant?

NOTE: I added #6 because it is based on the concept of invention in Eve Online where players who invent things have certain chances of success or failure depending on their standings with the NPC factory and their invention skills. Additionally, Eve Online players can significantly increase their chances for success by investing in their own private production facility. In the case of Dust, surface infrastructures in districts.

Most ideas here to balance aurum item price with ISK prices only makes the aurum process more complex, most likely not the intention CCP had. Their vision seems to be that aurum items should save time, so extra conversions or requirements do not help making it more accessible. They don't even need to balance the prices actually, if low aurum prices would make you spend your money instead.

For dust mercs it does not really matter if items are build from materials or not, since it is not possible to do any production (yet) anyway. It only means for industrials that they have a competitor that is out of their league, one that can control the markets. For CCP it means another conversion-link to manage between money, aurum and ISK (besides the plex-rate in eve) once the markets are merging.

As far as the fear of market manipulations, those will happen, and is a viable tactic in nul-sec warfare, bit more difficult in more secure space due to the size of the markets. Aurum items will also help here in providing a reliable supply (probably in empire space only), and so do all the npc items for now, untill CCP feel secure enough to remove some of them gradually over time as industrials pick up (similar process that happened in space).

Last note, as was said on the live-stream as well, aurum should only buy you time (or cosmetics). Meaning all aurum item (besides boosters) must have an isk counterpart for it with the same statistics (except skill requirement), if you do spot an anomaly do report it so it can be fixed.

My problem with the aur modules is that they come from no where. I understand that right now the market is not player driven but when it is will the air price fluctuate with market forces? Let's say the market is live and I am in a system that only has aur complex mods and they are infinite, this would be p2w because the only option is RL money. If the aur mods where based off of regular mods then there would only be be aur mods if regular ISK mods of the same grade where up for sale.

The short version- aur mods have to be produced from non aur mods or there will be a time that the only mods available are aur and that means pay to play.

fixed