What Is Isk Sink???

[Johnny thorir]

So many stupid trolls, When alliance spends great amount of isk on something its called isk sink.

[poaw]

Sov, LP store (doesn't match mission/incursion payouts though), expired insurance, corp/alliance upkeep fees, market/contracting fees, CSPA charges, smuggling fines, isk held by banned accounts, wardecs.

That's all I can think of right now.

So many stupid trolls, When alliance spends great amount of isk on something its called isk sink.

It's isn't, anymore than calling your penis a lobster makes it so.

[Matos]

Can anyone identify actual isk sinks aside from Clones, Skillbooks and service charges from Station services? How the hell are items still so low in price if the economy is pouring isk in at such a phenomenal rate. When the game had hard capped limits on prices for ships there was the excuse that "players know how much a Vagabond costs." However that point is largely gone and prices stabilized or eve gone down on items.

LP Store (Huge), BPO's (Also big), Market/Contract fees. And then there are players unsubbing/getting banned with ISK in their wallet. (

poaw beat me to it

[Don Peyote]

Plus Leetcheese getting caught botting

[Faife]

EVE is in a weird state where it's hedging against inflation through the insurance-minerals exchange of ships, and through users constantly desubbing and new ones joining and splitting the pool of isk

considering the fountain that are missions/rats, i'm genuinely surprised the game isn't way way more fucked than it is

[Comrade Comrade]

Too keep everyone from getting confused (and rightly so) whenever CCP talks about ISK Sinks and Faucets they're talking about the pool of isk available to all players, or as TGR says the "global pool" (basically if it's isk in a player accessible wallet, be it corp or personal, or the temporary contract "wallet" or market "wallet"). Not you personal wallet, or the pool between 2 people, or an alliance, or whatever else your talking about. ISK Sinks take isk away from the pool and faucets give to the pool.

Things that are NOT isk faucets.

Mining = It has value, but it does not add isk to the game
Drone NPCs (the non-bounty ones ie most of them)
Research Agents
Building Shit
Selling shit to other players on market/contracts
Plexs
Corp Taxes

Stuff that are isk faucets:

ISK Mission Rewards
NPC Bounties
Insurance Payouts

Stuff that is an isk sink:

Transaction Taxes (that end up in NPC wallet)
Sov Fees
Initial Insurance fees (though most of the time the insurance pays out and it's far higher so insurance overall is a faucet)
Skillbooks (and other NPC supplied market items)
LP Store (when you pay isk to the NPCs)
Convo fees (if you have em).
etc.

Course there's tons of isk sinks and faucets, and plenty of neutral stuff as well :P

EVE is in a weird state where it's hedging against inflation through the insurance-minerals exchange of ships, and through users constantly desubbing and new ones joining and splitting the pool of isk

considering the fountain that are missions/rats, i'm genuinely surprised the game isn't way way more fucked than it is

It's really not, EVE goes through massive inflation. The weird part about it is that the basic things (ships, regular t1 stuff, t2 stuff) is all staying the same or getting cheaper because of how easily accessible it is. It is only the rarer things that feel the real bite of inflation (and plexs).

[poaw]

I think it's the ultra-capitalist nature of the game holding the worst parts of inflation in check.

A few individuals are holding such a large percentage of the liquid ISK in the game that by not circulating it they are actually helping stave off inflation. I just realized how Twilight Zone that is with it being the opposite of how the economy works in RL. Can someone with an actual education tell me if I'm right or wrong?

[tgr]

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Comrade Comrade again.

[Tsubutai]

Can anyone identify actual isk sinks aside from Clones, Skillbooks and service charges from Station services? How the hell are items still so low in price if the economy is pouring isk in at such a phenomenal rate. When the game had hard capped limits on prices for ships there was the excuse that "players know how much a Vagabond costs." However that point is largely gone and prices stabilized or eve gone down on items.

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard...1431&page=3#67

ISK sinks and faucets over a 24 hour period seven months ago, per CCP Chronotis:

Faucets
* Bounty Prizes 876,039,478,466
* Agent Mission Reward 68,923,141,163
* Agent Mission Time Bonus 63,450,447,585
* Insurance Payouts 111,942,877,603

Sinks
* Sales Tax 6,227,911,218
* Brokers fee 6,733,818,276
* PI Construction Costs 7,575,185,000
* PI Import Tax 290,289,843
* PI Export Tax 3,355,153,925
* Insurance Cost 43,021,823,156
* Clone Activation 20,197,210,000
* Sovereignty Bill 59,332,000,000
* LP Store 135,343,150,000

[Duder123]

I think it's the ultra-capitalist nature of the game holding the worst parts of inflation in check.

A few individuals are holding such a large percentage of the liquid ISK in the game that by not circulating it they are actually helping stave off inflation. I just realized how Twilight Zone that is with it being the opposite of how the economy works in RL. Can someone with an actual education tell me if I'm right or wrong?

Yeah but there is more subscribers now and a lot of isk was spread around from sanctum in every 0.0 system.

[The quick and the dead]

I think the person quoted in the OP was referring to the fact that a ship has ISK value when it's destroyed because it could have been resold. But he's confused because that it isn't actually an ISK sink, it's more like the opportunity cost of flying the ship. I'm terrible at economics though vOv

[brac773]

person "a" generates 15b for ship to buy
person "b" generates 15b for ship to build
30b isk worth of isk/items
they trade isk for ship
30b isk still in existence
person "a" loses 15b isk ship
30b isk worth of isk/items is now only 15b isk worth of isk.

isk sink.

Honestly that 15b isk is a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of isk being generated out of nothing. In 1.5 hours I ran 10 incursion VGs with 10 people, that payed out a total of 1 bil isk, 100mil each. That was just 1 fleet. Probably multiply that by 20 or more at any given time. And that's just the incursions.

[Comrade Comrade]

Can anyone identify actual isk sinks aside from Clones, Skillbooks and service charges from Station services? How the hell are items still so low in price if the economy is pouring isk in at such a phenomenal rate. When the game had hard capped limits on prices for ships there was the excuse that "players know how much a Vagabond costs." However that point is largely gone and prices stabilized or eve gone down on items.

There's quite a few. Those are the smaller of sinks actually.

The largest (most likely as I don't have actual data) is the sov fees.

There's a ton of small ones though.

Convo fees
Contract fees
Market Fees (NPC)
Other NPC supplied goods (bpos etc)
Corp creation fees.
Offices/Factories/Labs in NPC owned stations
Insurance fees (but in the end the payout is much larger and most of the time it gets paid out so overall it becomes a faucet).

and I have someone yelling at me to do some work so I'm gonna have to leave it at that, but there's plenty, but small ones.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Comrade Comrade again.

I feel your love all the same.

[poaw]

Yeah but there is more subscribers now and a lot of isk was spread around from sanctum in every 0.0 system.

Even if it's initially spread out it will still funnel into a few people's hands. It's even more pronounced in EVE because the "employees" are more akin to indentured servants so there is never a reason for the ISK to move back to the bottom of the pyramid.

[FC Break]

Isn't insurance as a whole an isk sink? I have no facts to support this, but I would assume that more ship insurance contracts expire than are paid out. I know every time I insure a ship, it usually comes with a mail or two telling me some have expired.

[MopozY The Puppetmaster [banned]]

When titans first came out I said they were too cheap. I said they needed to by priced 5x to 10x more. They were far better than motherships and nearly not as much as an isk sink back then. Back then goons said its too hard to get titans, now they say the opposite vocally. lol.

Now that they aren't aoe its not as big of a deal. Tough supercarrier/titan price is a bit too cheap still, so it makes dreads/carriers obsolete. If anything the only thing that might need to be balanced is cost of the ships, not their uses, thats good. But you can't change cost after they have been made, thats unfair advantage.

[tgr]

Hi nmeh.

[Comrade Comrade]

There always is a staggering amount of isk going into the game, they would have to do some very large changes to fix that, and it's not that they can just remove isk faucets easy. Say you take one of the largest (if not the largest), NPC bounties. You remove them, now this is never gonna fly since there's almost no reward ratting so you would have to replace it with something. Then you help slow down inflation but then you get a devauling of something. Say that is larger loot drops or more salvage or whatever. So isk inflation is slowed, but now that loot decreases in value because of an increase in supply, and it's likely to be melted down so minerals will decrease in value.

So there's some cool ideas like "fixing" insurance payouts by replacing the isk payout with a hull delivered to where you want or something similar but then that just crashs the ship building market. You have to walk a very fine line to keep inflation in check, especially as you can't just keep everything "the same." If there was no inflation then overall isk per person would be less because more new people come every day and inflation also has some benefits, as does deflation. And it's a tough as hell job, so far CCP haven't exactly done super awesome at it but it's kept healthy enough for a long time and that's very telling, so give em a golf clap.

Now don't mistake this post as a "good job mr ccp economy guy!" cause that Dr. dickfuck they hired is a moron and the stuff he does has far wider ranging consequences than just isk value.

When titans first came out I said they were too cheap. I said they needed to by priced 5x to 10x more. They were far better than motherships and nearly not as much as an isk sink back then. Everyone thought I was dumb. Back then goons said its too hard to get titans, now they say the opposite vocally. lol.

Now that they aren't aoe its not as big of a deal. Tough supercarrier/titan price is a bit too cheap still, so it makes dreads/carriers obsolete. If anything the only thing that might need to be balanced is cost of the ships, not their uses, thats good. But you can't change cost after they have been made, thats unfair advantage.

At that time they could have done with a little price increase but it wasn't really that bad. Making that much isk was very difficult, it just hasn't scaled at all. Back then you were considered rich if you had a couple bil in your wallet, now your just not a scrub. It hasn't become any harder to make them or any more costly, yet mining, production (no JFs, GL moving that stuff) and everything else associated with producing a Titan has become far far easier/cheaper. So it's scalability, not that the price then was bad, if you make it 200b or whatever nowadays whose to say in 5-6 years thatll be just as easy to get as getting a titan is now.

edit: And you have JBs and all sorts of other things to make making a titan easier to, so people can do it solo instead of it being a "team" effort.

[Viribus]

For the dribblers who still don't understand how sinks/faucets work, I, at great personal effort, whipped up this handy infographic using Microsoft-brand image manipulation sofware:

[Unifix]

Can anyone identify actual isk sinks aside from Clones, Skillbooks and service charges from Station services? How the hell are items still so low in price if the economy is pouring isk in at such a phenomenal rate. When the game had hard capped limits on prices for ships there was the excuse that "players know how much a Vagabond costs." However that point is largely gone and prices stabilized or eve gone down on items.

LP store, market tax, contract Tax,Sov bills,office bills,alliance creation, npc seeded items(bpos). /facepalm

Edit:beaten to it

[Razzor]

For the dribblers who still don't understand how sinks/faucets work, I, at great personal effort, whipped up this handy infographic using Microsoft-brand image manipulation sofware:

faggots use fancy bar graphs, men use paint. +rep

[Razzor]

v0v

[Vinata]

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard...1431&page=3#67

ISK sinks and faucets over a 24 hour period seven months ago, per CCP Chronotis:

Faucets
* Bounty Prizes 876,039,478,466
* Agent Mission Reward 68,923,141,163
* Agent Mission Time Bonus 63,450,447,585
* Insurance Payouts 111,942,877,603

Sinks
* Sales Tax 6,227,911,218
* Brokers fee 6,733,818,276
* PI Construction Costs 7,575,185,000
* PI Import Tax 290,289,843
* PI Export Tax 3,355,153,925
* Insurance Cost 43,021,823,156
* Clone Activation 20,197,210,000
* Sovereignty Bill 59,332,000,000
* LP Store 135,343,150,000

We're talking about an additional 800b isk every 24 hours? That doesn't seem right.

[Nimshar]

We're talking about an additional 800b isk every 24 hours? That doesn't seem right.

The insurance cost against insurance payout seems to correlate pretty well (assuming similar number of ships die as are insured, mostly t1), but yeah that does seem pretty absurd.

[griznatch]

Can anyone identify actual isk sinks aside from Clones, Skillbooks and service charges from Station services? How the hell are items still so low in price if the economy is pouring isk in at such a phenomenal rate. When the game had hard capped limits on prices for ships there was the excuse that "players know how much a Vagabond costs." However that point is largely gone and prices stabilized or eve gone down on items.

Sov bills, war decs*, corp ad fees, alliance creation fees, smuggling fines, locator agents

just off the top of my head

* ad0pt sinks billions a week, and im sure there are many like us that do too

[Don Peyote]

So what happens when your ISK faucets do this?



Reposted from r/wtf
http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments...soviet_russia/

[poaw]

Just remembered NPC office fees too.

But 800bn a day into the economy would fit the bill of giving their economist an ulcer, and force them to justify and shoehorn in adhoc nerfs to the faucets. Even to the point of slipping in some as "undocumented features" (specifically when anoms started taking 6 - 10 minutes to respawn once cleared instead of 1 or 2).

[Tsubutai]

We're talking about an additional 800b isk every 24 hours? That doesn't seem right.

The most recent QEN had a graph showing that around 28 trillion ISK was paid out in bounties in December 2010, so it seems to be true. The biggest sinks were skillbooks, the LP store, broker fees, transaction taxes, and blueprint research costs.

In Q4, 2010, EVE‘s subscriber count grew by 9%, which translated into an increase in money supply.
The money supply rose by 11% in Q4 2010 and there is now a combined 445 trillion ISK on all
accounts within EVE. That represents the sum total of ISK in the game, on both active and inactive
accounts. To get a better understanding of the current money supply, we also calculate the total
money supply of players currently playing EVE, omitting lapsed subscriptions. Approximately 258
trillion ISK are on active paying accounts and 33 trillion on player corporation accounts, increasing
the total on active paying accounts and player corporation accounts by around 35 trillion in the
quarter.

In this segment we will focus on transactions between NPCs and players. The main cause for the increase
in money supply is that the bounty prizes increased by 8.1 trillion ISK in Q4 compared to Q3,
or from 67.6 trillion to 75.7 trillion. In addition players have increasingly been selling items to NPCs
such as insignias, overseer´s personal effects and sleeper loot, as well as other commodities such
as tobacco and garbage. In Q4 around 19 trillion ISK flowed into EVE from NPCs buying the aforementioned
commodities. The agent mission rewards increased by 3.7%, up to 5.7 trillion, in Q4.

To counter this there are sinks that cause money to flow out of EVE, such as players paying taxes
and buying goods and services from NPCs. The top 3 sinks increased as well in Q4, with the LP
store, blueprints and skills being the largest of all. The skills sink increased by 34% in Q4 alone.
That increase was mainly due to the learning skills being removed in December. The removal of the
learning skills resulted in players buying more skill books. For example, players spent 820 billion
more ISK on the Capital Ships skill than in the previous month, accounting for 14% of the total skill
sink in Q4. The increase in the blueprint sink in November was mainly due to the launch of the
Noctis in late November.

[Kevin]

We're talking about an additional 800b isk every 24 hours? That doesn't seem right.

If you figure only 50k unique accounts per day logging in and generating isk, thats only 16 mil a day.

Plenty of those would be making a lot more per day, but as an average that doesn't seem too extreme.

[Holak]

I think it's the ultra-capitalist nature of the game holding the worst parts of inflation in check.

A few individuals are holding such a large percentage of the liquid ISK in the game that by not circulating it they are actually helping stave off inflation. I just realized how Twilight Zone that is with it being the opposite of how the economy works in RL. Can someone with an actual education tell me if I'm right or wrong?

The short answer: yes, you're right. You really don't want the long answer.

[UnknownPoster]

Isk Sink: [Adjective]

Used in describing the dumping of ISK into a worthless cause.

So many stupid trolls, When alliance spends great amount of isk on something its called isk sink.

So this explains your -7.00 rep/post. Well done

[Warrules]

I'm gonna attempt to explain this, and prob get neg repped for it but oh well xD

Basic Algebra
A+B=C
A is how much liquid isk person one has
B is how much liquid isk person two has
C is how much liquid isk person one and person two has.

Person A gathers 15 billion isk to buy a super carrier. So A=15
Person B is broke but mines enough minerals for a super carrier and puts it up for sale. So B=0 (since his wallet has 0 liquid isk in it)
15+0=15

If you add both of their liquid isk amounts together you get 15.

Now Person A buys a super carrier from Person B for 15b liquid isk. So A=0 and B=15 now.
0+15=15
There is no new isk introduced to the game, Person B has the isk now and Person A has the super carrier.

Person A decides to test out his new super carrier even though he has no liquid isk and dies in a fire. Person B goes on vacation in RL and cant log into his game while for a few weeks.

Person A still has 0 liquid isk so A=0. Person B still has 15b liquid isk so B=15.
0+15=15 still so no isk was lost when the super carrier blew up.. There for it is not a global isk sink..

Yes person A is now broke, but person B was broke at the start of it. Now person B has 15b isk and person A is in the same spot person B was at the very start. No isk was destroyed (since person B didn't pay CCP for the minerals, he mined them) just the minerals (and time) person B mined were destroyed. Thus, losing a ship is not a GLOBAL isk sink. All the money that was in the game before is still there, just some one else is holding on to it..

Another example

You have 200m in your wallet.. You find a Tengu sitting in a pos and you figure out the password. You steal said Tengu but die to a gate camp in the next system. You still have 200m in your wallet.. You did not lose ANY isk, so no isk sink.

I wont even touch on the insurance part as most people are having problems understanding that the isk isn't disappearing much less that isk is appearing out of no where when a ship blows up... o.O

Hope that explanation helped..

[Arkady Sadik]

As far as ISK sinks go, some people already mentioned this - but the relevant ISK for inflation / market prices is the ISK in circulation, not the actual ISK in existence. Someone (let's call him Mr. Lau for no real reasons) with 15 trillion ISK in his wallet who does not do anything with it is in effect an ISK sink of 15 trillion ISK - it's "out of the market". It makes the (in-game) economist happy if they unsubscribe, too. The problem with this kind of "ISK sink" is that they can become an "ISK faucet" of enormous proportions really quickly.

I guess this is actually the main reason why the EVE economy hasn't collapsed yet. A lot of ISK is "hoarded" on a few accounts and not actively used there.

[Karneo]

We need Isk Sink modules for ships. They'd go really well with my isk tanked officer fitted lvl 4 running carebear nightmare

[Karneo]

As a serious addition to this thread.

Bugger having insurance pay out as a function of just ship value.

They need to do 2 things.

Uninsured Ships pay out at zero. U didn't insure it so u don't get a payout.

Work the insurance as a more "profitable" enterprise. How can any insurance company survive if 111b was payed out on revenue of 44b in a day ????

An another thing.... what ever happen to the idea of the stock market i heard they wanted to put into eve a long time ago. While thats not an Isk sink or faucet it is a mover of isk and an incentive to get large amounts of capital back into the market plus some great new ways to run ponzi schemes

[LLlAMnYP]

I suppose, introducing planetary interaction fucked up the pos-fuel isk sink then (though lots of fun was had when the forward-looking guys hoarded PI commodities while they were still on the NPC market)/

[Shiftclick]

Tgr, you're a hero for this thread. Proves how dumb some people who play this game really are.

[tgr]

Yes, and no. It's all a matter of perspective, some people might not have thought beyond their isk leaving them. I know of at least one which I've managed to educate because of this, and I won't call them dumb as long as they understand after having it explained to them.

MrGauky, however, doesn't seem to have been one of them.

[MrGauky]

Yes, and no. It's all a matter of perspective, some people might not have thought beyond their isk leaving them. I know of at least one which I've managed to educate because of this, and I won't call them dumb as long as they understand after having it explained to them.

MrGauky, however, doesn't seem to have been one of them.

Actually to be fair, I am educated and I understand why I was wrong.

The way I was thinking of it, is that when someone spends time getting the minerals and building a ship, which then gets blown up, that person could have spent the same amount of time doing something which doesnt just get blown up (e.g. ratting). Thus less isk is the game than would have otherwise been.

That this isn't an actual 'isk sink' though is obvious to me now, but not sure why a whole thread was needed for a pointless covo

[tgr]

Fair enough. As for the "whole thread", blame hratli smirks for that I think. I certainly didn't ask for it.

[Dutchie]

Ship spinning is the ultimate isk sink. Think of how much isk there would be more in the game if all the hours spent ship spinning had been spent running missions or ratting bounty NPC's.

[Mfume]

The short answer: yes, you're right. You really don't want the long answer.

I want the long answer. I'm really bad with market so it's actually really interesting to hear different theories and stuff.

[Brooks Puuntai]

Neat a sink/faucet discussion.

Sadly I was a couple hours late and Comrade already summed it up . So where does this discussion go from here?

[Karas Otoha]

Isk Sinks include but not limited to sov bills, clones, war decs, and skill book as stated anything that removes isk from the game

[Horus]

i wish to add my contribute on this discussion

[Matos]

Putting wallets in a negative Balance after they got caught Botting/RMTing would be another sink

[Don Peyote]

Putting wallets in a negative Balance after they got caught Botting/RMTing would be another sink

Already beat you to it

Plus Leetcheese getting caught botting

[Dwergi]

Game needs more ISK sinks. One thing they should definitely do is remove NPC buy orders on everything. The good tags (required for LP store items) will still see circulation, the bad tags (like almost all faction spawn tags) are already worth almost nothing and that won't change. It won't do a lot, but it's the direction EVE is going anyway, so it's consistent.

I think ratting should probably just earn you mostly LP with the "opposing" faction. Rat Guristas, earn Caldari LP; rat Angels, earn Minmatar. It'll crash the LP store, but doing it this way allows you to tweak the ISK payout component dynamically to balance money supply while not making your player base angry. Having variable ratting ISK payouts would be another way for CCP to control the money supply in addition to the dynamic adjustment of insurance payouts - plus, if you scaled it based on how many people were ratting some faction, you'd create incentives to go elsewhere for your ratting. How overpopulated would the north have been if Guristas BS capped out at 200k per?

[Comrade Comrade]

i wish to add my contribute on this discussion

You should explain why arguing on the internet is retarded. Why is it any worse then arguing over say the phone? It is a legitmate and easily accessible means of communication and henceforth a fantastic place to argue. Coupled with the anonymity it also allows you to voice your opinion with (usually) no real repercussions. Of course that's a double edged sword and has many negative aspects, such as that very picture. No one would bring that up and insult mentally handicapped people in a conversation.

[tgr]

You should explain why arguing on the internet is retarded. Why is it any worse then arguing over say the phone? It is a legitmate and easily accessible means of communication and henceforth a fantastic place to argue. Coupled with the anonymity it also allows you to voice your opinion with (usually) no real repercussions. Of course that's a double edged sword and has many negative aspects, such as that very picture. No one would bring that up and insult mentally handicapped people in a conversation.

You need to read between the lines. What he's saying is, "I'm dumb and I want to be infracted for using an image macro."