Plex Wars

Running DED complexes in Cladari lowsec can be insanely profitable.

My associate's Tengu more than paid for itself with loot from just two 5/10 plexes: a B-Type Medium Shield Booster and a B-Type Invulnerability Field.

But with higher rewards comes higher risk and stronger competition. While in the Bleak Lands one can run dozens of plexes undisturbed, in Caldari space someone will probably finish a 4/10 before you are done probing it down.

Last night, my associate spotted a number of cosmic signatures on scan in Hakonen as well as two Tengus and a cloud of core scanner probes, a clear indication of exploration activity. As he scrambled to pinpoint the sites, I came into Hakonen myself in a covops frigate and decided to try scaring off competition with combat probes.

My associate resolved a 4/10 and started clearing it - a very easy task in a Tengu but we had to be on alert, switching back and forth between overview tabs to kill rats and check for probes or incoming ships. Unfortunately, the site only produced a shield trasnfer mod, not worth much.

I returned to probing and located a 6/10 in the same system, already being run by one of the Tengus I had seen earlier. The pilot welcomed me in local as my covops went in to check his progress, meaning he had a cloaked scout outside. I moved on and found him in the middle of clearing the second room out of four.

Well, if he refuses to be scared out of the plex, I will have to use force, I reckoned, moving two jumps into a system where I had a PVP Drake. The second gate, however, was camped so on my way back I had to take a different, longer route, making me a bit concerned about time.

The Tengu, however, was still not done and warped out leaving me with several NPCs in the third room and venting his frustration in local.

Competitor > I did leave you alone in the Scout Oupost
Competitor > To bad my other toon is to far away atm
Competitor > Good luck finishing the plex though

In most DED plexes, the last room does not really need to be cleared, you just grab the loot and warp off, so I brought my own Tengu pilot and proceeded to finish the complex. Unfortunately, I was rewarded with the same type of module as before, just of a better variety.

Oh well. I mailed my competitor, informing him of the poor haul. Turns out he had at least got something out of it.

Re:plex
From: Competitor
 Sent: 2012.12.18 00:15
To: Nursultan, 


I'm flying dangerous all the time.. hense the low sec :)

The plex did give a dread stasis thingy halfway though.

To bad you didn't get a nice drop.

Fly however you like and do shoot others :P

.-)

--------------------------------
plex
From: NursultanSent: 2012.12.17 22:07
To: Competitor,

the drop sucked
and i really hoped for a fight, shame your pvp char was away
gl, fly dangerous 0/

The Entitlement Complex

"NEW NPC AI completely changes complexes. It's almost impossible to run any of them, especially 10/10 or 8/10. Switching targets simply makes it impossible. I personally don't have 3b to get some high specialized marauder. I don't have time and patience to run missions in high sec making 20-30M/hour. I like to shoot and I don't like to do market stuff. My accounts cost 1.2b every month that i need to pay to keep my accounts alive. It was already on the border now, spending most of my free time in weekends running damn complexes so survive another month. But now it's over. I don't see any way how to make ISK anymore!

I will wait one month if CCP realizes they totally ****** it up. After that I don't see any other way than letting my accounts expire and wait what happens.

Very bad job CCP, you really need someone who understands this game from inside ! Thumbs down !"

 The quote above is very representative of what I often see on Eve forums: "Due to such and such change I can no longer PLEX all my accounts, hey CCP, you're losing a customer!"

Do these people realise that they are non-paying customers? CCP spend money on design, coding and infrastructure and get nothing in return from these guys, apart from their interactions with other players. Yes, these are also important in a MMORPG but they don't pay bills.

Looking at the PLEX/GTC price, which has doubled since I started playing in 2008, it seems that either many more people are buying them these days (more likely in my opinion) or fewer people are selling - both bad news for CCP finances.

CLARIFICATION: I know people paying with PLEX have their bill paid in RL money by someone else. What I believe is that the growing PLEX price (ignoring speculative spikes and drops) shows that for every PLEX generator, there are more and more PLEX users appearing. Which, in turn, means that average revenue per user goes down. Of course, only CCP know the breakdown between their variable and fixed costs and can tell whether gross or per-user revenue is more important to them. Again, only CCP know how elastic PLEX supply is with regards to ISK price.

When CCP tried to introduce alternative ways of boosting revenues, players revolted, so it is to be expected that they will at least try to reduce ISK generation.

No one has promised players they will be able to play for free AND spend very little time grinding the required ISK. Nuff said.