Has the value of prime frames gone down, or have people gotten cheap?

[kevoisvevo]

16 hours ago, vegetosayajin said:

People have gotten cheap, want fast plat.Free market tho. 

Nothing wrong with that

[tzadquiel]

as per our alliance discussion the other day - cheap primes indicate a good and still improving player retention. you don't buy what you already have. 

[Graavarg]

7 hours ago, Leyers_of_facade said:

Rivens aren't really the core problem here, it is supply and demand.

Well, if you turn that argument in the other direction, the "supply and demand" for plat will affect the prices of what is for sale (sort of basic inflation theory).

For the sake of argument, if DE suddenly removed all rivens from the game and returned all plat used to buy them, the prices of other stuff for sale would go up. This would be due to an "inflation effect" (the amount of money vs. the amount of things you can buy/own). If that is the case (and it is), having rivens in the game theoretically depresses the price of all other stuff. And the more focus there is on rivens, the more of the available plat will be used for (and locked down in) rivens, and the prices for all other stuff will drop.

To be specific, this doesn't in any way mean that rivens is a "problem". It is simply that the riven trade has a huge effect on the plat-based market and economy.

Prices vary and I might not remember it correctly, but the market value of all primed warframes (= buying a set consisting of all primed warframes) is somewhere around 3500 plat. Buying a set of all primed weapons is about the same amount. "God rivens" trade for that amount (and even higher), so basically this means that the market value of a single mod is equivalent (or higher) than all the primed warframes (or weapons) put together.

While this is perfectly understandable from an "open market"-view, it is also slightly insane, considering Warframe is a game, meant to be fun. There is absolutely no way anyone can get the same amount of playtime enjoyment from one riven as from learning and using all the primed warframes, but if you already have all the warframes and have a lot of plat the equation changes, and putting down 4k for a riven you want makes perfect sense (it might even be the only thing you currently enjoy in the game).

If the 4k for a "god riven" would go to a player still needing/wanting all the warframes, things would sort of work out. And in a way it does, but the effect is more of a trickle-down system. The Warframe open-market plat economy is skewed (or screwed) the same way the global market is skewed (screwed). The "lower caste" of players gather the resources (including veiled and unrolled rivens) and the "higher caste" players buy them cheaply and have the resources to turn them into an even more valuable commodity, and then selling them with profit. There is a multitude of IRL examples, for instance the global coffee trade (just to pick a random example). In the Warframe economy a veiled rifle riven is sold by a MR8 (playing the "sortie" lottery, acting as the "coffee farmer") for 50 plat, it then becomes an unrolled Fulmin riven sold for 250 plat by a MR14 (playing the "unveil rivens" lottery, acting as the "coffee wholesaler"), which then becomes a god-rolled Fulmin riven sold by a MR22 (playing the "kuva rolling" lottery, acting as the "luxury coffee shop/roastery") for 2k plat (Fulmin and prices just as examples).

There is no moral/ethical/philosophical right or wrong in this (though many would like to see it that way), it just is. But the end effect is that those wanting/needing to buy new warframes and/or weapons will not generally have the plat to do so (unless they buy it with real money), while those players with lots of money either prefer buying other stuff or already have all the warframes/weapons they want/need.

Of course, this is not the only thing affecting warframe/weapon set prices, they are also affected by popularity and by "rarity". And by the amount of buyers.

But the actual point is that rivens do affect the prices of all other commodities in the same marketplace.

Edited March 24, 2020 by Graavarg

[Flyshlee]

It's due to all the unvaultings. Primes are pretty easy to get nowadays, even the vaulted ones.

[AltairFerenc]

The relic system made an "easier farm" things got cheaper. People who don't care about unvaultings still get the relics and they get them when they are vaulted again so valuted prices got down too. Rivens came in and people are money centered and expect way too big prices and flod the trade chat so mostly people go to warframe.market where everyone tries to sell at high price but buy at low price so the sell price went down drasticly. 

And I'm saying this while literally it's impossible to sell anything that is not the lates prime/unvaulted prime for new players or a generally wanted riven.

[Circle_of_Psi]

5 minutes ago, AltairFerenc said:

The relic system made an "easier farm" things got cheaper. People who don't care about unvaultings still get the relics and they get them when they are vaulted again so valuted prices got down too. Rivens came in and people are money centered and expect way too big prices and flod the trade chat so mostly people go to warframe.market where everyone tries to sell at high price but buy at low price so the sell price went down drasticly. 

And I'm saying this while literally it's impossible to sell anything that is not the lates prime/unvaulted prime for new players or a generally wanted riven.

This

With my experience no one wants to buy the overpriced PA bundle, so everyone just sells it for cheep in the Market (100p at max) is what an simple £5 or £10, yet PA charges you almost £100 just to get their goodies