Analysis: The heavy inflation of rivens due to platinum economy and lack of disposition monitoring - leading to unsustainable prices and possible countermeasures

[Omega]

Rivens, some hate it and some love it.  If you're one of the fortunate ones to amass an impressive collection, then you're on the side the wholeheartedly supports the riven system.  For the majority of average/casual players, most will see rivens and the associated prices others charging for it to be a complete joke.

"WHY ARE YOU SELLING A RIVEN FOR OVER 5K PLAT?"
"WTF that riven is worth over $300 USD"
"is this a joke?"

These are some of the typical comments you may come across when someone posts up a "god-tier" riven for sale for a very high price. 
Is a riven ever worth a high amount of platinum?  Who knows.  Any riven's true value is the price someone is willing to pay the price for.
Rivens are a player-driven market, and the overall trend I've been seeing is that the prices for rivens have been steadily increasing over time.
I believe there are a variety of contributing factors that are driving the price trends for rivens upwards, and this is definitely a problem in the long run as the current riven system if left alone will lead to unsustainable pricing increases.  This is NOT another rant thread regarding the prices of rivens - this is identifying the issue with suggestions on what can be done to alleviate the problem.

As a player who has dealt with numerous rivens and someone who is well versed in the riven market, I have identified some trends over time.  I started dealing with rivens during the summer of 2017 and oh boy it was a difficult time to learn the market.  For most players who are starting to look into the riven markets, you guys are blessed with 3rd party resources such as wftrader/riven.market to assist in identifying price trends for various stats for certain weapons.  Last year, all we had were forums/facebook groups/reddit/discord/trade chat in order to advertise and sell rivens. It was harder to gauge prices back then so things were priced a lot more reasonably from player to player.

Last year, the so-called "god tier" rivens were typically priced between 500-3000 platinum in most cases on average.  One could easily pick up a 3 stat Opticor with a combination of stats such as damage, multishot, critical chance, critical damage and a harmless negative for between 2000-3000 platinum during those times.  Due to rising popularity of the Opticor due to various Youtubers, the Opticor became meta and everyone starting seeking rivens for them.  It was definitely expensive during those times, but compared to now 2000-3000 platinum probably won't land you something that impressive.

Half a year later, closing in on the end of 2017 the prices for those rivens have jumped up to 10k.  During this time we see the rise of 20k Kohm rivens with 120% status chance, damage, multishot, and a harmless negative and 10k max range Scoliac rivens.  Artax rivens were going for under 5k platinum.

Here we are, starting Fall of 2018 and we are seeing riven prices hit upwards of 50k platinum for meta Rubico rivens.  Asking prices for the 20k Kohm rivens months back have gone up to 35k platinum.  Vectis rivens which used to sell for under 2k platinum from last year with a -magazine capacity have gone up for 40k asking prices.  Artax rivens have been seen above 20k platinum.

How extreme will the riven market be next year and the many years following it?  At what point does charging 4300 platinum not give players the advantage they are seeking?

 

When people see the ridiculously high prices from rivens with the perfect ideal stats, this causes a trickle down effect on the rest of the riven economy.  People with half decent rolls will automatically assume their rivens are worth thousands of platinum when truthfully they shouldn't be priced the way they are.  For instance, a decent Rubico riven with just damage and critical chance with no negative is now priced around 2000-3000 platinum in the various markets.  Even an unrolled one is going for 1000 platinum or more, whereas rivens for the non-meta weapons are going for as low as 15p.

The current state of the riven market is totally unsustainable, and it's largely due to the fact that there has been little to monitor the riven system in general.  When was the last time we have had a riven disposition change?  We also have a problem with how much platinum is entering the game.  With the release of Plains of Eidolon and soon to be released Fortuna, there will be a huge influx of new players joining the game and a good proportion of them will be purchasing platinum which will then be available to trade in the economy.  The PC side is notorious for the huge 75% platinum discounts, and everytime someone charges for discounted platinum the value of all other platinum in the game drops and this is one of the contributing factors I believe to be causing the unsustainable growth to riven pricing.  Unlike buying slots in the marketplace which is a fixed cost, riven pricing is not fixed and is subject to increase/decrease based on player sentiments.  However, with so much platinum entering the economy every single day it's not hard to see that people are asking more and more for their rivens.  This is justified, as more platinum enters the economy there is more platinum which can be spent by players which pushes the prices higher and higher.  Rivens are regarded as one of the "end-games" for Warframe and as such people are willing to pay virtually as much platinum as they can to max/min their loadouts.

 

The two major issues we have are:

1) too much platinum entering the economy

2) lack of riven disposition oversight in order to balance out the system

 

Let's start with problem 1.  How do we address too much platinum entering the economy (PC in particular)?  Unlike the PC side of Warframe, the console side pricing is generally more stable due to less platinum available in that economy.  Players are unable to purchase tradeable platinum with a 75% off coupon code.  This means less platinum in the overall economy but that is generally okay as the economy itself is more stable.  Riven prices for consoles hardly go above 2000 platinum for the best rolls for the best weapons.  The console side does get discount coupons for marketplace items which is acceptable because it does not impact the player economy much.  In my opinion, the discount coupons for platinum purchases on the PC side of Warframe should be removed and replaced with same system the console users have in order to stabilize the influx of platinum entering the economy.  I personally don't think it's right for daily tribute RNG to kick in which allows someone to purchase 4k platinum for $50 rather than $200.  One of the reasons why we won't have crossplay is imagine the trading situation between platforms - PC users have a huge advantage with platinum vs console users. At this time we currently have no comparable "platinum sinks" other than rivens so unless something else is available which provides some form of incentive people have no avenue of spending their platinum. At most you'll end up spending 5-6k for all the slots and forma necessary. 

 

Problem 2 is the biggest one - lack of riven disposition oversight in order to balance out the system.  HELLO DE have you guys not seen the implications of leaving riven dispositions untouched for meta weapons?  WHY do we have the riven system in place if you guys are unable to monitor the system and ensure that the rivens provide the most benefits to the weapons that are the most unpopular/underutilized?  Yeah it's cool to release Prime weapons every so months but why do you guys fail to reset the dispositions to a base value or giving the weapons an absolute neutral disposition?  Why are we letting weapons nobody uses anymore such as the Hirudo/Tonkor/Simulor left at the absolute bottom of the riven disposition table and not raising them back up?  Your boi Tiberon still has one of the highest dispositions in the game at 1.5 after the prime release and it's one of the most popular weapons in the game.  The weapon has been released for many months and the dispositions have remained untouched.  Tiberon rivens have shot up to over 10k on the riven market due to popularity, the fact that it's meta, and the riven disposition is still insanely high.  Gram Prime is about to be released but I seriously doubt there will be any changes to it's insane 1.44 disposition even though the Gram will end up outclassing almost every melee weapon in the game.  Most Prime weapons are given significant stat increases over the vanilla variants and become very popular even weeks after their releases but their riven dispositions remain untouched.  The old school weapons such as Simulor, Tonkor, Venka, Soma have such low riven dispositions and compared to some of the newly released weapons they have definitely been outclassed so having their dispositions bumped up would be ideal.

In a perfect world, the best rolls for each weapon should be valued relatively the same.  The best weapons and the most popular ones used by the playerbase should be given the lowest dispositions as intended.  Tell me again why a PRIME weapon needs a high riven disposition to begin with - they should be SO GOOD that rivens dispositions should be low enough that they are unnecessary.  This should also apply for the strongest non-Prime weapons, they should have significantly lower riven dispositions.  The weapons that become outclassed, and remain unpopular, such as the Tonkor/Simulor/Venka should have the disposition values increased.  The absolute junkiest/trash tier weapons such as Seer/Kraken/Hind should have an even higher disposition above 1.5 as unless the riven values are astronomical they can't be saved.  If possible, monthly updates on riven disposition values would be greatly appreciated.  

"oh the riven system is too complicated, all rivens are unique, the database is huge, the process takes time, we can't change it easily, blah blah" - DE
- Instead of assigning every riven as a unique mod, why not just remove all the random percentage values and give certain stats an assigned flat value (i.e. instead of a damage range from 88.3% - 104.2% give all the rivens of that weapon with a damage value in between or at the max value instead)
- take out all the variations for the riven names, we don't need rivens with Visican and Satiata to mean exactly the same thing.  This is even more messy with 3 stat rivens with like 6 variations in the naming scheme which means the same thing stat wise.
- streamline the database storage of rivens, and this means a riven slot capacity could be possibly removed

Once the database is easier to work with, changing riven dispositions should be a lot more streamlined.  Have the kills performed by each weapon across the entire playerbase recorded and have that to be the basis of the riven disposition changes.  The maximum riven disposition values should also be eliminated.  The lowest riven disposition should be 0.5 and highest should be 0.01 times the number of weapons available in the game.  This would mean the riven disposition values can be well over 3.0 which is reserved the weapons absolutely nobody uses.

If this change to riven dispositions was implemented, think of everything as being on a teeter totter.  No two weapons would have the same disposition and they would be positioned relative to how many kills the entire player-base has gotten with them.  Tiberon Prime near the bottom?  The value of those rivens would greatly depreciate from now.  The Hind still sucks with its current high disposition and not many players use it even with a riven, so let's continue to buff the riven values higher and higher (imagine it being at a riven disposition of 3.0 or higher) - would this convince more players to utilize the weapon?  It's a balancing act so if the Hind becomes popular, the riven disposition will once again drop and another underutilized weapon will take its place.  My hypothesis is that the rivens for meta weapons with the lowest dispositions would still be as valuable as the rivens for the highest disposition with a dynamic riven disposition changing system.

If there is a widespread disposition change, I'm sure many players would be upset if they paid thousands for a 5/5 disposition riven and it gets nerfed hard.  My suggestion is to have those stats grandfathered to the owner's account and when the riven gets traded the values will change to reflect the current disposition.

Oh one more bonus problem is real-money-transactions.  A lot black-market platinum enters the economy and unsuspecting players can be lured to purchase 4000 platinum for $20.  DE why can't you hire someone to manually review platinum trades for over 1000 which also mitigates the risks of these transactions actually occurring?  The losses prevented from these types of trades can EASILY cover the cost of hiring someone to review these things.

 

What do you guys think of this quick analysis?  What other ways do you guys think the current platinum and riven situation can be handled?

 

 

TLDR: 
- too much platinum entering the economy
- lack of riven disposition oversight
- lack of monitoring to RMT trades

Edited September 25, 2018 by Omega

[-QUILL_PETER-]

Analysis was not quick, and had no TL;DR.

0/10

[Me.KayOh]

I want you to think about this phrase.

 

"Too much platinum entering the economy."

 

Think very long and very hard about that phrase.

[Omega]

3 minutes ago, -QUILL_PETER- said:

Analysis was not quick, and had no TL;DR.

0/10

Sorry, TLDR just added.  Was still editing.

 

3 minutes ago, Me.Church said:

I want you to think about this phrase.

 

"Too much platinum entering the economy."

 

Think very long and very hard about that phrase.

How about you tell me about what you mean by that instead?

[LSG501]

Realistically, imo, most of the issue is down to the fact that DE based the original disposition on popularity as well as performance, instead of just being performance orientated.

While I'm not stupid enough to pay stupid money for a riven I still wouldn't be happy if the only good rivens I have get a nerf in disposition and as such their performance drops with it.  This is the issue DE faces, due to poor original choices in all honesty, if they nerf the 'meta rivens' too, so can you imagine someone who's paid several thousand for a riven being happy if their 5/5 disposition gets nerfed to a 1/5 disposition etc. 

But then the cynic in me says maybe the reason for certain dispositions isn't so much about improving weapons but is really about selling platinum via the stupidly high prices that some are achieving..

 

10 minutes ago, Omega said:

"oh the riven system is too complicated, all rivens are unique, the database is huge, the process takes time, we can't change it easily, blah blah" - DE

- Instead of assigning every riven as a unique mod, why not just remove all the random percentage values and give certain stats an assigned flat value (i.e. instead of a damage range from 88.3% - 104.2% give all the rivens of that weapon with a damage value in between or at the max value instead)
- take out all the variations for the riven names, we don't need rivens with Visican and Satiata to mean exactly the same thing.  This is even more messy with 3 stat rivens with like 6 variations in the naming scheme which means the same thing stat wise.
- streamline the database storage of rivens, and this means a riven slot capacity could be possibly removed

 

The bit above has always got me too, why make it so storage intensive, why not have each 'name variation' (ie visicron etc) as a fixed value rather than variable to limit the amount of storage needed. 

[SquinkyJunior]

I like this a lot. I only just started in the forums a month or so ago, but I've been playing since mid 2017, and I've also noticed the trends you mentioned. I think that with what you've outlined here, the whole instability issue could easily be fixed. I especially like the riven naming idea. 10/10

[Yatazanami]

band-aid turned into band-aids

[Omega]

11 minutes ago, LSG501 said:

While I'm not stupid enough to pay stupid money for a riven I still wouldn't be happy if the only good rivens I have get a nerf in disposition and as such their performance drops with it.  This is the issue DE faces, due to poor original choices in all honesty, if they nerf the 'meta rivens' too, so can you imagine someone who's paid several thousand for a riven being happy if their 5/5 disposition gets nerfed to a 1/5 disposition etc. 

 

Valid points!  I have my fair share of high disposition stuff that I would hate to get nerfed.  I added another point to the analysis:

"If there is a widespread disposition change, I'm sure many players would be upset if they paid thousands for a 5/5 disposition riven and it gets nerfed hard.  My suggestion is to have those stats grandfathered to the owner's account and when the riven gets traded the values will change to reflect the current disposition."

[Yatazanami]

i was told Tiberon prime was a honest mistake, but when i saw Gram prime stats it become very clear, it was on purpose, so in other word 

DE is profiting out of this broken mess .

[Lazarow]

Speaking of riven disposition lately DE seem to have made primed weps with good disposition like tiberon and pyrana and now gram is coming in a few days, when weapons like these get primed people collect as much of these rivens as they can and thats a way to scatter the plat from player to player. But with these weapons looking good its only a money grab for them as when the plat is spread from player to player it is more likely to be spent than when it stays in one players inventory and I think there are not as good weapons out there. Honestly more than half of the weapons I went with I just did it for mastery and 90% of the rivens I get from unveiling are worth nothing thanks to the dispoition and effectivness of the weapon. Hope fully melee 3.0 will make some fixes to some weapons but even with this its only just melee

[Chronometria]

If Gram prime comparable to the galatine and yet has 5 point riven disposition - it will be so obscenely overpowered that I cant see DE ignoring that. It would make every single melee weapon in the game obsolete.

[ShortCat]

47 minutes ago, Omega said:

How about you tell me about what you mean by that instead?

The poor design philosophy behind Riven system has its cause in the nonexistent development time spent on the system itself, but on a creation of a digital items with inflated value. All the issues you described in your post were pointed out in DevWorkshop 2 years ago. It is not a rocket science: after 1 year with Warframe, you should be able to extrapolate - DE will let the system rot and won't maintain its dynamic; 18 years of life experience should tell you - players will spend all the plat on inflated 010s.

Your post sums everything nicely, and I agree with 99% of it, however nothing here is new. 1% I do not agree with is the "grandfather Rivens" part. That move would erase any last drop of credability Rivens still have and would drive me away from this game.

[-AoN-CanoLathra-]

No matter what is done, Rivens will always add to in-game inflation, and eventually crash the system.

Right now, the extreme prices are based more on speculation/futures than on actual value, which leads us to the same problems that occurred here in the US in 1929 and 2008.

However, even without that, rivens would still eventually destroy the economy, because they don't follow basic economic principles.

Why? Because good Rivens are extremely useful (and therefore valuable), but also extremely rare. This lead to higher and higher prices. Normally, when this happens with a product in the real world, a new source is created/discovered, so as to bring supply closer to demand and even out the curve.

This doesn't work for rivens, because (aside from some Kuva cost tweaks) the rarity of good rivens hasn't changed since their inception. The number of players farming rivens may have increased, but by doing so they increase the market size as well, so it has a zero-sum effect on the market as a whole.

The only way to prevent the eventual collapse of the Riven market, and the Warframe platinum market as a whole, is to reduce the rarity of good rivens.

You can see this in places like the New York housing market. There is still high demand for more housing, but between lack of space and high regulations and taxes, no one is willing to build more housing, so the price just continues to increase.

Now, if we had even the most minor ways to influence Riven RNG, much of this would go away. Players wouldn't feel that their only option is to buy a riven from other players, and good rivens would become more plentiful in general. Even if it was extremely unfair (I.E. you pay 10k Kuva to prevent one stat from being rolled on this riven as a positive or negative, and the next stat is 15k,20k, etc.) it would at least have some small stabilizing effect on the economy.

TL;DR: Good Rivens have a supply far too low for their demand, and will crash the Warframe economy if they don't become more common.

[-AoN-CanoLathra-]

I will say this about your proposed play for disposition changes: It would work for most weapons, but some (like the Kohm) are far to volatile for this to work.

Why? Because below 100% status chance the Kohm is an ammo-hungry waste of time, but above 100% status chance it is a godly beast.

This means that, under your system, every time the balances were pushed out again the kohm would toggle back and forth from no usage to very high usage. This is not really sustainable, and would lead to an equally unbalanced and volatile trading market for Kohm rivens. Now, that might be better than the current scenario, but it would hardly be a good idea.

Unfortunately, the Kohm, and similar weapons that have a single stat that makes them either great or horrible, make a blanket solution for rivens almost impossible.

[(PSN)xtharbadx]

I really doubt it that the 75% coupons would take such a big role in increasing the amount of plat in the game, considering how rare the are.

If there's anything that is capable of artificially increase the in game plat, that would be the Riven market itself.

[Xolgys]

vor 58 Minuten schrieb Yatazanami:

i was told Tiberon prime was a honest mistake, but when i saw Gram prime stats it become very clear, it was on purpose, so in other word 

DE is profiting out of this broken mess .

leaked gram prime stats were palceholders....the base variant deals high impact dmg so we can assume it will also keep that primary dmg type. the leaked stats were slash heavy which i couldnt imagine DE doing since it would be galatine prime 2.0 then, literally.

vor 1 Stunde schrieb Omega:

Rivens, some hate it and some love it.  If you're one of the fortunate ones to amass an impressive collection, then you're on the side the wholeheartedly supports the riven system.  For the majority of average/casual players, most will see rivens and the associated prices others charging for it to be a complete joke.

[...]

there have been changes in dispo with a prime release, tiberon prime is in fact very strong but strangely enough its rarely seen ingame, at least i rarely see it actually. its also not the best in its class, even with a god riven comparing killtime/ ammo needed to kill a lv 125 heavy gunner fully armored on its own its not amongst the most silly candidates. sicarus prime is not either, just as a side note. actually the ones being best there arent even hyped so theres the fact that those deserve 4-5/5 due to the popularity-rule. point being: the dispo is high, sure and i cant understand why soma prime still has a 1/5 with its poor performance in comparison right now but the weapons which do perform best arent hyped anyway so people dont notice it that much i guess or they have a fair disposition, like atomos or ignis wraith.

if any disposition needs a change its not 5/5 -> 1/5, maybe 5/5 -> 3/5 maximum imo and arguably this only affects dps. now...how much does plain dps do later in the game ? on its own ? nothing, right. u need synergy or good status chance which a weapon can have by default, aside from some shotguns doing better with some on a riven. anyone who runs against some high lvl enemies will surely know/realise that its not +/- 20k dps which decide if u can kill fast or not. for the star chart any weapon with 30k dps is totally enough as long as it has some status chance for the sortie levels but even then it can work with meh status chance still. in that regard it doesnt matter if u get 110k dps or 90k dps due to a riven, its total overkill for the starchart anyway and we 1st need content which actually requires dps of that sort and the appropriate modding.

so, why would u bother balancing 5/5 -> 4/5 ? whats the point ? u only piss off people who literally payed thousands of plat and in the end it doesnt matter for starchart at all or later in the game its not that important either vs the strongest faction/armor.

 

i agree on the price issue, but this problem is not DE's fault but rather people actually paying it...if noone paid then they could ask for 5k as much as they wanted, they would sit on it forever....

Edited September 23, 2018 by Xydeth

[Xhobract]

Edit: The following is not in the defense of the current system, as I've noticed after rereading it might seem to some people. Just some things I've noticed after beeing involved in trading them for a while.

The observation I've made lately with Gram and Rubico riven prices on the rise is that people have no freaking idea how to price them or just want to completely rip of a whale.

As an example there were multiple avid riven traders advertising their "godlike" Rubico rivens between 20-30k the last few days. Sure... godlike, only has -100% Impact damage as a negative. Hoping that people don't realize the vast majority of Rubico's damage comes from said Impact they try to scam people and make you feel like you NEED this riven. It's super expensive right? It HAS to be good. You'd have to mod against that and by that point you'd be better of with any other vaguely decent riven instead.

On the other hand we have people that coincidentally have a riven for said weapon and try to ride the hype selling them unrolled or with absolute trash rolls for 1.5k+ or so. I myself sold 5 Gram rivens the last four days and obviously compared my stats and prices to the other people in trade chat. Even with me having better stats and lower prices it still took quite some to sell them. Now looking into the chat again I recognize quite a few people who are still trying to sell the same rivens for the same absurd prices as they were days before. No price adjustments no nothing. They just try to highroll.

Just because you see increasingly more absurd prices in trade chat doesn't mean they all sell. It's easier to notice them before people gradually lower those prices and dismiss the ones that actually sell for way lower. Just in the last day average Gram riven prices fell from a little over 1300 plat below 1200 again now that the people who have plenty of plat to spent already got theirs and the sellers realize nobody buys anymore for their ridiculous prices.

Edited September 23, 2018 by Xhobract

[Kuez]

Spoiler

Ahh... It's good to be a proud reader of the entire "article". 

So the statement, that the rivens are worth what people are willing to pay for - I agree 100% with.
Let me ask then - what is the problem? Why can't you (not you specifically @Omega) just act like a true capitalist and show these people a middle finger (maybe not literally) when they ask such an outrageous price?
There's nothing stopping you from buying a cheaper one, buying resource booster and putting in the work to be able, to roll a "god roll" yourself.

2 hours ago, Omega said:

The PC side is notorious for the huge 75% platinum discounts, and everytime someone charges for discounted platinum the value of all other platinum in the game drops and this is one of the contributing factors I believe to be causing the unsustainable growth to riven pricing.

How about - stop buying not discounted platinum. That should be the base.
1000 platinum isn't worth ~50$ - it's worth ~12.5$ - that's it.

2 hours ago, Omega said:

Rivens are regarded as one of the "end-games" for Warframe and as such people are willing to pay virtually as much platinum as they can to max/min their loadouts.

...and funnily enough, you can take Dagger with Covert Lethality and (usually) be just as effective... Maybe with less convenience. Let's be honest - these people are lunatics, but hey, let them spend their money/ time on whatever they desire - it's their money/ time.

2 hours ago, Omega said:

1) too much platinum entering the economy

I feel like @Me.Church had some objections about this statement.
I also look at it sideways. I've seen your arguments, why this is bad, however thanks to that, DE is profiting. Thankfully and hopefully, this is and will be a good think.

2 hours ago, Omega said:

In my opinion, the discount coupons for platinum purchases on the PC side of Warframe should be removed and replaced with same system the console users have in order to stabilize the influx of platinum entering the economy.

Seriously, don't take it personally but...

Spoiler

...it's impossible.

These discounts are the only reason, I've spent as much, as I have on this game.
...I don't know where you are from pal, but I'm from Poland. Let's assume you're from USA - you'd pay 12.5$ for 1000 platinum. Here in Poland we'd pay an equivalent of your ~44$ (WITH 75% DISCOUNT).
How is that? We might earn similar amounts in numbers, but these numbers are in different currencies - quite obvious, isn't it? Technically we pay ~3.5 times as much as an American would. I am generalizing more or less.
I'd say that DE should implement 75% discounts on consoles, however it's a bit too late - unless they give every person on consoles 4 times the plat, they bought, while subtracting what they've spent.
 

2 hours ago, Omega said:

In a perfect world, the best rolls for each weapon should be valued relatively the same.

True, true... So...

2 hours ago, Omega said:

The Hind still sucks with its current high disposition and not many players use it even with a riven, so let's continue to buff the riven values higher and higher (imagine it being at a riven disposition of 3.0 or higher) - would this convince more players to utilize the weapon?  It's a balancing act so if the Hind becomes popular, the riven disposition will once again drop and another underutilized weapon will take its place.

...maybe let's not buff and nerf the rivens in an everlasting circle, but instead let's make every-freaking-single riven the same (with interchangeable stats, of course) and then buff and nerf the weapons.

2 hours ago, Omega said:

The maximum riven disposition values should also be eliminated.

That's one of the reasons why rivens are so expansive - their high disposition. (Repeating myself) Let's prevent that by normalizing their stats and adjusting weapon stats instead.
In my opinion they (dispositions) should not exist, at all.

Warframe is an RNG based game, but rivens are using it in 3 ways: Acquisition, base stats, and values. Why not bring it down to just 2 factors? Acquisition and base stats.
It think that when it comes to usefulness, rivens could fall somewhere in between Rare and Legendary mods or be just a little better that Legendary ones.

Edited September 23, 2018 by Kuez

[(XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA]

1 hour ago, -QUILL_PETER- said:

Analysis was not quick, and had no TL;DR.

0/10

This.

1 hour ago, Me.Church said:

I want you to think about this phrase.

 

"Too much platinum entering the economy."

 

Think very long and very hard about that phrase.

This too.

 

Also, op forgets supply and demand is a thing. Another wall of text, and another assumption that this is somehow bad. Rivens are only worth what people are willing to pay for them.

I would never spend 50k dollars on a car but that doesnt mean expensive cars are "a joke".

Also, any broad sweeping change to the riven system is going to piss a lot of people off, people who spent a lot of time/money/plat for them and while "screw em" might be a good enough answer to that for some forum users, it isnt, and shouldn't be a good enough answer for de apparently.

 

[Volinus7]

For those who are tired of explaining the characteristics of rivens and trade chat in general... 

[Yatazanami]

48 minutes ago, Xydeth said:

leaked gram prime stats were palceholders....the base variant deals high impact dmg so we can assume it will also keep that primary dmg type. the leaked stats were slash heavy which i couldnt imagine DE doing since it would be galatine prime 2.0 then, literally.

damage already done 

heres a quick look at riven markets online :

 

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

many effort , plat , time and tears have been shed into this

to the point that a riven balance will be an outrage to these people and DE know about this all along 😞

Edited September 23, 2018 by Yatazanami

[Yatazanami]

34 minutes ago, (XB1)ECCHO SIERRA said:

I would never spend 50k dollars on a car but that doesnt mean expensive cars are "a joke".

 

except the 50k car is a final and guaranteed product 

now compare this to a product that was intended as a band-aids not to mention it can be taken and tweaked anytime against your will AND 

you can do nothing about it 😂 .

 

34 minutes ago, (XB1)ECCHO SIERRA said:

Also, any broad sweeping change to the riven system is going to piss a lot of people off, people who spent a lot of time/money/plat for them and while "screw em" might be a good enough answer to that for some forum users, it isnt, and shouldn't be a good enough answer for de apparently.

true developers dose the hard thing , even if it means to piss people off

DE in the other hand is stacking green fat benjies from this mess .

Edited September 23, 2018 by Yatazanami

[Xolgys]

vor 22 Minuten schrieb Yatazanami:

damage already done 

heres a quick look at riven markets online :

 

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many effort , plat , time and tears have been shed into this

to the point that a riven balance will be an outrage to these people and DE know about this all along 😞

i know the riven situation of gram but if ppl dont know that leaked stats should not be considered final and hype the living bamboozle out of it then thats hardly DE's fault aside from the new primes being in the ps4 codex. no matter what leaks surface it shouldnt ever be considered final so all that hype is the ppl's own fault in the end. dont swim with the hype and those prices do not matter at all.

also, do u think anyone pays 1.5k for cd/heat -cc for example ? ppl put a lot of prices on riven.market but i highly doubt most of them sell for that price.

[Kuez]

33 minutes ago, Yatazanami said:

except the 50k car is a final and guaranteed product

Especially nowadays, when cars are developed in such a way, so that you have to buy a new one as soon as possible. 

33 minutes ago, Yatazanami said:

now compare this to a product that was intended as a band-aids not to mention it can be taken and tweaked anytime against your will

I wouldn't call it a product. There aren't also any terms between us and DE, so yes - they can do whatever they want. We can swallow the hard-to-swallow pill or find a new game - it's a free market.

Spoiler

33 minutes ago, Yatazanami said:

you can do nothing about it

I'm just adding this little fact, which isn't related to the topic, but if war emerged, where you leave (God forbid), military can take your 50k car if they think, that it will be of use to them - and you also can't do anything about it.

Just a little comparison, you know. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Edited September 23, 2018 by Kuez

[SneakyErvin]

2 hours ago, Omega said:

If there is a widespread disposition change, I'm sure many players would be upset if they paid thousands for a 5/5 disposition riven and it gets nerfed hard.  My suggestion is to have those stats grandfathered to the owner's account and when the riven gets traded the values will change to reflect the current disposition.

Oh one more bonus problem is real-money-transactions.  A lot black-market platinum enters the economy and unsuspecting players can be lured to purchase 4000 platinum for $20.  DE why can't you hire someone to manually review platinum trades for over 1000 which also mitigates the risks of these transactions actually occurring?  The losses prevented from these types of trades can EASILY cover the cost of hiring someone to review these things.

I dont really see how either of these two paragraphs are of any concern to DE. They shouldnt need to hold the hands of stupid people. If someone charges headlong into the riven market without understanding that disposition might change down the line then that is on him. It is well known that changes may happen, not only because it has been said so regarding disposition, but because it is a well know fact in every online game that things change and you really own nothing. Sure there may be kids playing that just "must have that riven!", at which point it is the parents that are stupid and still not something DE should have to cater to or hold their hands.

And if you make use of black market third party platinum sites you deserve what you get. This also falls on the greedy people mentioned that demand absurd amounts of plat for their rivens. They know the risks of demanding high prices just as the black market platinum buyers knows the risks (well it isnt a risk, it is more close to a 100% fraud) of such dealings. Most of the people that sell their rivens for reasonable prices are rarely struck by the whole mess that is illegal plat, just as the most buyers of those rivens dont go to black market sites either.

DE actually doesnt lose anything on these trades. If the plat is legit DE has already gotten money, if the plat isnt legit it gets removed so no loss for DE. They dont magically produce plat on black market sites, they very likely use stolen CCs or simply do the charge back jigg.

In the end it is a player driven market and DE should not budge in and restrict it in any way. They can change the dispositions when needed or nerf/buff weapons, but that is where the line is drawn. It is also a market you can completely stear clear off, you dont need to buy rivens to get anywhere.