[Twochain]

Originally Posted by Samoht [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Platinum is infinite. NPC merchants never run out. Mobs will always spawn with more. The only factor restricting the inflation of platinum is how quickly the community can kill the mobs or farm the trash gems to sell to vendor in order to make more platinum. In all actuality, this makes platinum pretty much worthless.

The items we buy with platinum are more rare. They are limited to the respawn timer of the source mob and the chance the mob spawns multiplied by the chance the item drops. Some items no longer drop. And then players remove items from circulation by either hoarding them or equipping them on their character with no intention of ever selling. This makes a lot of items priceless.

These two factors lead to inflation. There is no limit to the amount of platinum in the market, and while most items will be replaced as soon as they are sold, some items are sold never to be seen again. Items in the market are worth a lot more than plat, so the price goes up.

Another contributing factor is that the server is top heavy. Players have multiple characters they are seeking to gear, so the demand on good gear goes up. When the demand goes up, people fill the need by supplying more, but the supply cannot always keep up, and if the item no longer drops, then the price of the item will continue to increase with demand like the legacy items.

A good example of this is the price of fungi tunic. There are more characters on the server every day whether new players or existing players creating new characters, so there's a constant demand for fungi tunic. More and more platinum enters circulation every day, but there's only a small number of new fungi tunics every day. The price will go up as long as there are new players and new characters that need fungi tunics because the fungi tunic is worth more than the plat used to buy it. This will continue until everybody who wants a fungi tunic has one and there are fewer new characters or players entering the market than new fungi tunics so that the supply exceeds the demand.

Price for things like mana stone, prenerf fungi staff, circlet of shadows, elder beads will only ever go up until somebody either finds a forgotten cache of the items or until some outside factor like nerfing elder beads. There are no new ones entering the market, and most of the time when an existing one is claimed, it's permanent never to be resold.

Funnily enough, if Green dumps into Blue as has been the plan since before Green, Blue will be getting a HUGE cache of legacy items on the market. Beads/Manastone/Circlet of Shadow will probably never be as expensive on Blue as they are right now if that's the case. Prenerf fungi stick is probably a little different though... How many even dropped on green?