PLEX Report 12-12-2014

As regular readers here must know by now, I've been monitoring and dabbling in the PLEX market for a long time. The last few months and especially since the announcement of the forthcoming multiboxing policy changes coming on 01 Jan 2015 I've been watching it a bit closer than usual.

IMO everything we've seen so far since that announcement is entirely based on speculation, the real and lasting effects of the policy changes won't be seen until after Jan 1st when the new policy actually goes into effect. Then there will be chaos in the markets (not just PLEX) and it'll probably take at least a month or two before things settle down enough that we can predict future PLEX demand and pricing with much confidence.

When news of the forthcoming changes first went public (or even slightly before) there was a sudden sharp drop in the price of PLEX. Some panicked and dumped PLEX, others tried to buy it all up while the price was down. Since then the price recovered somewhat and seemed to be slowly rising up again. Margins tightened up, there wasn't much profit in buying and reselling PLEX.

Figuring that was just the start with plenty of action left in the PLEX market before this is done yet, I put up guard orders on PLEX in 21 regions, sat back and waited to see what would happen next. Then today several guard orders in the high 700 mil to low 800 mil range got filled.

For example on Jita...

I did some checking on EveMarketData and found the buy price had dropped back into the low 800s just about everywhere, even lower in some places.

Here's a graph of PLEX prices on Jita over the last 3 months. You can see the big drop after the announcement of the policy change, a small recovery after that, followed by the start of another drop.

I still say we're due for a lot more chaos in the markets before this all done. In the end this is going to affect everything from PLEX, to mining and minerals, industry and trade. Nobody knows for sure exactly what's going to happen. We'll have to wait for Jan 1st to see what happens and even longer to know how it's all going to shake out in the end.

This is not bad news for traders, quite the opposite in fact, it's great news! Times of change are when ISK making opportunities abound and the more chaos there is the greater the opportunities are. Those who expect and anticipate chaos, are ready and willing to take action when it happens, stand to make fortunes.

Unlocking The Power of JEveAssets

jEveAssets is a desktop tool that helps players manage their assets in EVE Online. It has a number of different ways to display data from assets, wallet, market orders, industry jobs, etc and even more ways to tweak and filter exactly what is displayed.

JEveAssets handles multiple characters on multiple accounts fine. Since it gets the data from API queries you have to setup API Keys for each account first (through CCP's account management page) and then configure the Key ID and Verification Code for each account before JEveAssets can query the keys.

The most basic way to change what JEveAssets shows you is with the "tools" menu which gives you a number of options to open different tabs that display the data in different ways. Most of that is pretty straightforward, just click the menu item and a tab opens.

Most players will probably find the Values, Tracker and ISK tabs most useful at first. Other tabs like Assets and Transactions can be incredibly useful but can be daunting to use properly in the beginning. Traders and Industrialists (or anyone with a lot of assets / transactions) will find it's very well worth learning to use these tabs well!

Many (but not all) tabs have data cells arranged in rows and columns (the aforementioned Assets and Transactions tabs for example). In these tabs you can drag column headers and move them around to rearrange the order the columns are displayed in. You can double-click a column header to select it and then single click it to sort the data). You can also right click on any cell to open a menu containing a number of powerful features.

Transactions tab with right-click menu open

If for example you click on the highlighted Eve-Marketdata menu item shown in the screenshot above, it will automatically open your browser and look up the selected item (PLEX in the example above) on the Eve MarketData website.

Probably the most powerful feature is Filters. Filters are the key to unlocking the full power of JEveAssets. Without filters the Assets and Transactions tabs would be practically useless for any half serious Trader or Industrialist. There's just way too much data to find what you're looking for quickly (far less make much sense of it all) without filtering. But with filters, these tabs are extremely powerful.

For example here's an un-filtered Transactions tab.

The screenshot only contains the first few lines of the list but the full, unfiltered list has nearly 5,000 entries. So let's make it more readable by filtering the list to only show a single item 30 Day Pilot's License Extension (PLEX)

Under the Name column (the item name) right-click on 30 Day Pilot's License Extension (PLEX) to open a menu like in the screenshot below.

Then click on Contains to add a filter like in the next screenshot

When the filter is added the list automatically refreshes to only show PLEX like so

The filtered list contains just 129 lines (vs nearly 5,000 unfiltered) and makes it much easier to see how my PLEX sales have been doing lately.

You can use filters to sort by any data cell not just the item name, you can filter by date, price, owner (character name), region, station, etc., you can use different filter methods like "contains", "does not contain", "equals", etc., and you can even use multiple filters too.

For example to further reduce the PLEX list above you could use 2 filters to only show items that are named 30 Day Pilot's License Extension (PLEX) AND are in a particular region. Which in the example I've been using throughout this article lists just a single PLEX and looks like this

Owner name removed to protect the innocent

Hopefully this will help some of you unlock the full power of JEveAssets and get better use out of it!

Hi Sec POCOs - Dead On Arrival

There are hi sec Player Owned Customs Offices coming in Rubicon but it's not quite as simple as it sounds. It seems the special snowflakes in low and null need advantages, or more particularly additional limitations and restrictions on hi sec POCOs to remain competitive.

"The NPC tax will continue for hi sec POCOs (as we want low sec POCOs to still be competitive). The tax rate stays the same, at 10% for export and 5% for import. This is then in addition to whatever tax the player owner sets." - CCP SoniClover

There is a new skill being introduced that'll reduce the NPC portion of the tax by up to half.

"We are introducing a new trainable skill, Customs Code Expertise, which will reduce the NPC portion of the tax rate, but 10% per level (so at level 5 the NPC export tax rate will be 5% rather than 10%). Again, this skill only affects the NPC portion of the tax, not the player owner tax." - CCP SoniClover

The exact numbers might work out a little different after the patch but what it boils down to is lower output and higher costs for hi sec PI than for PI anywhere else. Just how it is now. Nothing's really changed except of course someone will have to shoot down the Interbus Customs Office and replace it with his own... Which he'll have to pay for and which in turn can be shot down by someone else.

Sounds worthwhile. NOT!

I expect hi sec POCOS will fall into 2 types. Ones with no (or very low) player tax but restricted access (mainly restricted to the corp the owner belongs to) and ones with unrestricted access but higher player taxes. High enough to make the total tax (npc tax + player tax) at least as high as it is now even with the new skill fully trained.

Anyone who thinks the big null sec alliances (goons in particular) won't be sending fleets into hi sec regularly to blow up all Customs Offices (whether Interbus or player owned) they can find and replace them with their own high tax POCOs is dreaming.

Expect all the best planets near main trade hubs to be very quickly taken over by the big alliances. It won't be cost effective for the little guys to pay exorbitant war declaration fees trying to take them back from the big guys either.

I find it ironic how low and (especially) null sec players like to claim they're the elite, yet they always seem to need "special" treatment to give them unfair advantages over hi sec players.

No doubt the self proclaimed elite would rage but why not even things out? Stop pandering to the loud minority. Take away all the special snowflake treatment, all the "meta game" BS and let the players decide for themselves for a change.

Edit: Mabrick's take on this is really good. He brings up a number of valid points, like how tying attacking POCOs to war decs squeezes out the little guys (solo players and small corps) and hands hi sec PI over to the big PvP corps and alliances.

Make no mistake this is not a buff to hi sec PI. It's a blatant resource control giveaway for the big PvP corps and alliances.