I disagree with the above statement. But I don’t support non-vanity microtransactions. If possible, I would love to see EVE free from MT at all.
However, I do know that non-vanity stuff could be introduced in a way that would have minimal impact on industry and economy. NeX can be compared to just another LP store where you pay with $ instead of LPs. Why no one is ragequitting over LP store? Because besides LP you need to trade in Tags (which encourages PVE interaction) or a Tech I item (ships, mods, which encourages manufacturing).
I do support playerbase’s concern about PLEX prices. Increasing the demand will increase the price, and that can’t be avoided. Fixing the exchange ratio between ISK and PLEX is possible by capping the maximum price with NPC buy orders, but this would create a huge ISK sink and in turn result in some serious deflation. So the forseeable effect of introducing non-vanity MT will force switching people who pay for gametime with ISK to a paid sub instead (or make them quit). But then again EVE was never meant to be free to play…
Now let’s look at it from RL economy point of view.
CCP would like to increase ARPU (to combat crisis, to increase salaries, to make new games, etc). Lets assume, that ARPU is 14,95 EUR (1.0x) per 1 account. Before Incarna, there was no PLEX sink in the game (except for PLEXes being accidently destroyed).
But why is ARPU around 1.0x? All additional payments made by people buying GTC and converting them to PLEX are eventually consumed by people who pay for playing with ISK. This is a 1 to 1 relation, so effectively everyone is paying the same amount and ARPU equals 1.0x.
Allowing players to undock with PLEXes was not only simpifying the code. It was the first time where a small PLEX sink was introduced. With another sink introduced (NeX), ARPU will increase above said 1.0x per account, and it doesn’t matter if this is vanity or non-vanity items.
If you disagree and see any flaws in my logic, please convince me otherwise in this thread.