Platinum has little to no value.

1) Most vets have the rewards they want / need for "daily living". So mostly newbies are forced to pay the current 7.5k/each to acquire blessed RB's and Ethys they need.
2) Over 80k, measurable, platinum growth in 2017. 60k+ of that is 1 group.
3) I single handedly caused a 25% decrease in platinum value when I unloaded 10k plat in a week.
4) The small group that farmed 60,000 platinum in 6 months can't unload it without causing a similar crash so they hoard it and make trades with platinum and other platinum rewards to conceal the true value. Trading a currency which wont hold its value for items that will hold value.
5) When I caused the crash I devalued their 60k+ plat by more than 200 million gold.
6) I started my plat dump at the end of November and it really took off at the beginning of Decemeber (12/8) when the price was reduced to 8.5k/per and 10k was unloaded. Look what happened on the platinum chart during that period. Over 25k+ platinum was used from December 12 to March 4th. By far the biggest legit drop of platinum in the shard's history (non-chart related bug which there are a few). Coincidence? Nah, trading in that plat for rewards to easily sell for slightly less then plat value or for trades. Possibly a few rich noobies seeing an opportunity to get "cheap plat" from the teet.
7) Let's assume the 6 champion spawns and Harrower take 1 hour/each to complete (which they don't, they can be done much much faster) and not even factoring in plat / gold from each champ...

4 guys @ 7 hours = 1000 platinum.
1000 platinum * 7500 per = 7.5m.
7.5m / 7 hours ~ 1.07m/per hour
~1.07/4 = 267,857 gp / for each guy per hour... (and that's the new 7.5k per rate @ 10k it was 357k/hour)

I wouldn't pay more then 150k/ hour of someone's time using that logic. Fuck them and its too easy to get plat. Platinum @ 150k/hour would equal 4.2k/each. Maybe 200k which would make plat @ 5.6k/each.

Y'all are feeding 'em for a currency that won't hold value once everyone has their rb's and ethys.

I re-read this a couple of times and I think I know what you mean.

Let me see if I got this right:

1) Some of the shard's power gamers have been doing tons of champs and thus farming the vast majority of the shard's platinum.

2) They and their alt accounts conspire to present a false narrative about its value. I still don't understand how they're supposedly doing this.

3) The result is that new players and others not members of this Plat Train/iDerp crew (I get the idea the two are friendly and share some members but are not identical) buy platinum, presumably from the players and alts mentioned in (2).

4) So OP is saying don't pay a lot for platinum, and predicting that a concerted community effort to lower demand will result in platinum falling to a more natural price of around 5-6k or less (I know it was much cheaper when I first started in May 2015. Maybe 7k?).

I wouldn't be shocked if OP's ideas are right, however most people don't really play the long game in UO. People will usually buy enough plat for whatever item it is that they want as long as the price bears some similarity to that featured in other posts. Because they don't want to wait for their ethy or blessed book or lockdown expansions or whatever.

And, if, say, the staff is concerned about the falling price of platinum, for whatever reason (I can imagine a few), they could just make platinum the currency required to purchase a moat (or add any number of other actual uses for platinum). Then use the copper coins just for the add-ons or for changing the skin on the moat from, say, water to swamp or lava.

The big difference though, between platinum and copper, is that one can't buy platinum for real world money.

Hence I do not predict efforts will actually be made to save platinum from its current decline. Regardless of who is farming most of the platinum.
It could be made possible to buy copper coins with platinum of course. That would also probably raise the value of platinum.

Just thinking of some possibilities is all..

If people want an ethy or a runebook they're probably just going to buy it, even if they're getting ripped off.

@One loves threads like this!


edit: well crap

Plat is definitely overrated. It's unfortunate.

I enjoy seeing blessed runebooks and the ethys at high prices. I still don't even own either since they are so expensive. But I totally agree that people are probably superficially propping the market up to keep runebooks at 2M and ethys at 4M for other trades. If someone spent all that plat, their value would also instantly drop.

I've been here almost a year and have amassed maybe a 4M net worth if I sold all my assets.

The rich are so rich, some of the prices are really out of scale to the common player like myself.

The thing is the prices don't go up in the plat store. In the real world, the prices in the plat store would go up too.

Not even sure what point I am trying to make. Just babbling. But yes, I agree with you.

Sorry, just to be clear, are you selling plat at 7.5, 4.2 or 5.6?

Also can you clarify what you accept H coin at.

Thanks
NerK.

@One
It is simple supply and demand. When quantity increases and demand decreases the equilibrium price will decrease (the product will become cheaper). I have a very vivid recollection of staff pointing out the ridiculous price point of Platinum in the past. They were in awe at the player-base's 'stupidity' to buy it at such high prices. Opposed to holiday rewards, platinum rewards do not change. There is no set time limit involved. 5 years into the server and most people are content with what they have for platinum rewards. The majority of the people that I offloaded platinum to were new forum accounts.

Case Study
A quick search of the trade post for "buying platinum" results in these very few posts:

1st page
1) 2013 acct looking for 211 @8k [feb 2018]
2) 2018 acct buying unspecified amount of plat at 8k [feb 13]
3) 2017 acct buying unknown amount of plat [jan 9 2018]
4) 2017 acct buying platinum at 7.5k [dec 27 2017]
5) 2014 acct (Ron Jeremy) wanting to buy 500 plat at 9k per [nov 30 2017] (unknown if successful)

2nd page
6. 2017 acct buying 122 plat @ 10k [june 2017]
7. 2017 acct buying 100 plat @ 10k [june 2017]
8. 2017 acct buying 50 plat @ 10k [june 2017]
9. 2015 acct (ezra scarlet) buying unspecified amount @ 10k [may 2017]

So what you have is 9 people publicly acknowledging the "standard" buy price of plat over the span of 10 months (go ahead and dig up the purchase orders for ethereal and rb's and compare the gold value people were offering for those items compared to the platinum price point during that time). Best case scenario those people that were buying unspecified amounts bought 1k platinum (I don't even see it that high). So the total theoretical sum in the case study is 4,983 platinum bought (which probably isn't close to the real number rather its a much higher number than what was actually demanded).

In that 10 month period platinum soared from 182,800 hitting a high point of 254,000 and ultimately dwindling down to 233,300 an increase of 50,500. The major cause of this was that group but that is not important as much as the data. The key points we can take away from this case study is that there is no significant demand for platinum that will deplete the reserves, one man dumping a "small" amount of the total marketable platinum in a week can decrease the price 25% and keep it holding steady at +-500gp for months, a small group can farm 12x the demand of plat in 6 months than can be demanded in 10 months, and the value of platinum is a faith based currency (the assumption that the price will not deviate because its historically always gone up which has been shown to be false by my dump).

If platinum truly had a value at 10k it would of shot back up to 10k a few weeks after my dump. My belief is that once another person comes along and dumps platinum the price will continue to drop.
-------------------------

I would also assume that large amounts of platinum were converted into ethereals, runebooks, and other rewards to help facilitate trade at the 7.5 +-500gp price point that I had established without causing further collapse. You cannot track ethereals because once a player mounts them they are no longer tracked by the system. But starting at that Dec 12, 2018 mark, when platinum reserves began the historically largest dip, the amount of un-mounted ethereal nightmares shot up from 34 to 58 (Jan, 12, 2018, a historically high amount of ethereal nightmares).

What you will see is snarky responses to this thread from people like Nerk (not sure if that was really snarky or if he needs me to dumb it down for him) that have highly invested in the platinum market and want to keep their high trading positions (the ability to trade you a runebook for your unique 1of3 special hued sandals that WILL increase in value over time). Looking back *tin foil hat time* you can find people like @Simoneau Trade doing a little pump and dump of the platinum market from December 2014 (buying at 6.8k) to December 2015 (buying at 7.6k). Maybe ST wasn't doing that but I felt like that was their intent during that time period.

Rich people will reject my opinion. If the poor were smart they would demand platinum at a reasonable price point that would still allow platinum farmers (champers) to make a decent profit. I suggested this price point to be around the 4.2k - 5.6k range. Start demanding to buy runebooks at 1.25m and ethereals at 2.5m. REGARDLESS, platinum prices will continue to drop due to decreased demand as the server continues forward. Inflation will not have an impact on platinum prices because the only people that will want to buy platinum will be new players with small piggy banks.

Keep all of this in mind when you decide to sell your rares. What will hold value, platinum or your rares?

(I am not an economics professor. This is just my logic that I am sharing. Maybe I am wrong let me know.)

@NerK
For you buddy.
Plat at 10k
HC at 6k

You can argue this two ways (they're raising and they're lowering prices), but it kind of comes full circle regardless. You have to factor in something else to the equations - gold isn't a constant on the server.

Their large stock of currency is held because if they dump stock it'll depress pricing due to abundance of product. Whilst they can trade items between themselves for plat at a higher price, they're essentially prevented from selling plat in any real quantity to the rest of the population as it would put downward pressure on pricing due to increased abundance (as you experienced when you put 10k into the economy).

UOR is different to say the IRL diamond market (another artificially scarce product) in that the population itself can create the product, which means the current market is a kind of balance between 'real' pricing (i.e pricing without champ spawn input) and 'actual' (what we have now). The additional platinum in the market they produce likely actually depresses prices because of the increase in overall supply. Whilst this additional supply is controlled, its likely above the rate it would be if these players just generated platinum without champing, thus there's more platinum in total, thus the price is lower due to over-abundance (when compared to 'real' levels)

Yes the current rate for platinum is higher than the overall held stock of platinum would suggest, however its about what is available in the market. What's available in the market is in excess of what would be produced 'normally', hence the price of platinum is likely lower than what it would otherwise be. You have to remember that gold is generated at large amounts on the server and isn't consumed to any great extent, so it's likely the production of gold, rather than the production of platinum, that is having the largest effect on maintaining higher overall platinum prices.


Patek

@Erlkonig, I'm a newbie and only did a few champs with a guild, but are you sure it's possible to complete all champs + Harrower with 4 people in 7 hours?
Seems like a ridiculous underestimate to me (2x at least, more likely 3x...). Besides, it requires group scheduling + ability to fight off (some risk involved), so I would not translate it to gold/person/hour as directly as you did.

I do agree, however, that plat has little value for vets as they already have all they need from the plat store. Demand for plat is almost entirely formed by newbies and relies heavily on new account registrations. I'm not sure if this is a big deal or not, but admins definitely have an ability to increase plat value by adding store items or allowing conversion from plat to copper.

In my short time here, my only current issue with plat is that the only way for me to amass any amount of it is to continuously bot three chars. So in my first two months, I've probably farmed up about 500k or so, and the 80-100k of that which has been the 8-10 platinum that I've looted from monsters has been great, but when compared to the the amount of effort I have to put into hunting platinum, vs. the amount of platinum I get for afk'ing a character all month long, well, it is quite aggrivating to feel like I HAVE to have 3 characters logged in at ALL times on this server. -- Otherwise, I'm loosing out on around a million gold in plat a month.

As a newb, knowing that the market is so inflated by an AFK currency kind of grinds my gears. It also seems to be rather contradictive of the no AFK-resource gathering rule. Beyond that, it seems ripe for abuse. Myself as an example, I'm in a household of three brothers, all playing this game. I could be mining the current system on my own three accounts for a gold value of between 720k and 1.2mil a month (I don't know which number is accurate) ... And every time I walk away from this game to rejoin the real world, I say to myself... 'Sky... The Valhallans' could be AFK gathering between 2.1 and 3.6 mil a month if you didn't mind bumping that electric bill from $150-200 a month.' ...and if you if you ever encounter nine ringwraiths standing in front of Brit Bank, well... I guess you'll know that I've rearranged my living room and posted new house rules about 'THOU SHALT BE LOGGED INTO UO UNTIL THIRD DAWN.' And something else about 'Only the fires of Telamordor can stop us.'

Sorry, got carried away there...

@Erlkonig, alright, you've earned another "No" vote on the Tin Foil Hat question, in so much that I would be (and was before this thread as well) extremely hesitant to invest in large amounts of platinum given the static nature of platinum rewards. Furthermore we already know that group operates as a cartel. They're devious enough to do it, though just because they can doesn't mean they necessarily have. My vote for now is "more likely than not, but not totally proven."

So I guess the solution for your average Britannian "Knight in the Street" who wants another runebook, ethy, house upgrade or (potentially in the future) moat would be to post a thread seeking to buy platinum at or around 7,500 per?

Let me try to decode the logic here...

TRANSLATION: A small group of players is generating all the platinum and then hoarding it to artificially prop up its value.

TRANSLATION: I myself am (or was) in possession of an enormous amount of platinum, which I was apparently hoarding, but I am of course blameless in all of this! In fact, not only am I blameless, I provided a valuable service by selling an enormous amount of platinum at inflated prices... for the good of the newbies!

TRANSLATION: It's incredibly easy to generate platinum. You can do each champion spawn in "much less" than one hour. That is despite the fact that no one actually runs champions (except that small group of devious platinum hoarders, of which I am not a member despite the massive quantities of platinum that I possess(ed)!!)

@Twister
Read these:
http://uorforum.com/threads/is-it-good.16649/
http://uorforum.com/threads/request-for-comment-champion-system.11994/page-6

tldr; 7-9 hours, an experienced group can do it in less... The actual Harrower spawn took us 30min on average.

How I felt about the changes:


@Skydancer
I once did the math on the electric bill using average comp consumption and cost per k/w. Was like an additional $30. Youll also find my comments about people using welfare plat getting a ruenbook once every 6 months while I could get one in a week playing 1 hour a day in those links I posted for twister.

@One
The solution is to not buy plat at 7-8, Buy it at 5-6. Basically it is setting a salary for people that champ. Honestly champing is soo easy people shouldn't be making more than 100k/hour off of it. I would think 3-4k per plat is the sweet spot. You can afk the majority of a champ spawn, come back tier 3-4 depending on the type finish it up and kill the boss. Champ spawns also proceed faster at higher tiers in my experience.

Platinum is not some rare and mystical item that is hard to come by. Form a group and go kill shit. Get enough tamers and nobody will fuck with you. Get enough people and nobody will fuck with you. At the least not by killing you. They will have to a) try and steal the skull by farming the champ alongside your group or b) using a very lucky thief or c) try and pk your group but that shouldn't happen due to sheer numbers.

@Fin
Snarky rich guy number 2?

I didn't say they generated ALL of the platinum. They generated an excessive amount that far exceeds demand. Nobody paid attention to the increase and the ease of generating platinum. They sure as shit couldn't offload it in the "raw form" without taking a hit when demand was significantly less than production. I guarantee many people sold shit (houses, rares, etc) for platinum and platinum rewards to the group. And those people conducting those trades will be the ones QQing when plat continues to drop. The only thing that gives platinum its value is the faith placed in its value by the people conducting trades item for plat trades. They don't need any more ethereals and runebooks so they accept it because they think they can use it in a future trade. What happens when another dump occurs? Every person that conducted a trade in 2017 and held onto their platinum long enough for the drop lost 25% of its value. They cant sell it for 10k. They will have to settle for 7.5 +-500 at the moment maybe less. This whole thing is about that. The smart people, imho, wont continue to invest in plat.

Look at those posts I linked for Twister. I've had an abundance of platinum for quite some time. Back to back to back to back Harrowers uncontested. Yea I sold my platinum because I was paying attention to where it was heading. One way or another it would of started the descent. QQ, I was smart about it. I honestly didnt think it was going to collapse at that point but I sure as fuck got nervous about it and continued to sell. I could of stopped and held back a little but fuck it. Wealth in the present is more valuable than in the future. Some more basic economic shit for you to dwell on. I never said it was for the good of anyone.

I never said nobody else ran champs.

@Erlkonig A lot of what I do on this forum, other than annoy people, is speak up for the casual player.

I've literally, in almost three years here, never even seen a champion. I don't generally form or even join groups. And for the most part I don't plan to aside from the three level 7s I have saved up (which I haven't even done yet because I don't have the time and I play off-peak hours).

So for me and a number of players like me, considering most of us are in our thirties or so, buying platinum or waiting for an extremely long time while welfare plat builds up is really the only way to acquire some pretty useful items.

This is worth considering. I would go so far as to say most of us do not power game like you or PwN do.

SO how do you combat currency manipulation?


If you (you meaning everyone out there) refused to pay more than its worth (arbitrary number), then don't.


I see at least two problems...

Static Plat rewards have dampened the frenzy for plat, so like any item, when its hot, its expensive, when its not, it gets cheap.

Gold is just as easy to acquire today as it was 5 years ago, but there is more population, and more "established" folks who focus on raking in the gold.

This is not a true supply and demand economic model. Unlike the real world, you don't actually "need" anything to survive in UOR. Its all about pretty pixels, generating gold and bragging rights. No toon has died in UOR from being poor.

The price of an item is determined by 2 things, what a buyer is willing to pay and what a seller is willing to accept. When both sides are legitimate, you come to market value of the item. When they are not, its called currency manipulation.

Finally, its easy to sit back and say and item is worth X, but if you had that item would YOU sell it for that amount?

Isn't currency manipulation just another way in which UO economy resembles the real world?
'member bitcoin?

I've always thought the high of 10k plat was artificial. People who didn't know anything about plat saw everyone else selling it at 10k, or seeing the bot says it goes for a high of 10k, so they think "I should sell mine at 10k too" and people who will say "Plat is worth 10k". If you think about it, Holiday coins should actually be on par with plat if not a little more. Yes its easy to farm but the amount of rewards grows and different types of rewards grow while platinum rewards have largely stayed the same with no new additions for a couple of years.

Something else I've noticed.... people automatically demand 2.5mil per runebook, and 5 mil per ethy (4.8 for the red headed stepchildren of ethys: llamas and even lower for ostards). It was that way when plat was 10k per and it still is. You'd think with plat being roughly 7.5 - 8k again, those prices would come down again as well, but people will sell these things at the prices they see everyone else buying/selling them for even though technically you shouldn't have to pay so much for them if plat has gone down in value.

I like how certain members of "a group" are so frustrated with someone pointing out the obvious they dont even have time to change to their ult forum accounts and rush over here foaming at the mouth.

Hi @Orange , nice to see you're out of rehab.

I guess we could all flap our lips.. or look at actual numbers?

Let me know if i need to "dumb this down".




But fuck all that - I'm with the masses!
BUYING PLAT! Paying @ 4.2k!

<3

Hi @NerK just because theres alot of gold doesnt make the demand for plat and higher. k thanks.

PS: glad to see you have the guts to at least say it on your main account without jumping on your super secret iderp seller account. Go ahead now and say you dont have one then ill explain to everyone how CPU found out and laughed at you.