Primary and Secondary Currency - Gold vs Silver (Platinum)

[Loriel]

Hello good people,

I've been digging around the past few days thinking about the issue of silver coinage.

Whenever I see it for sale it is usually at a horrendously expensive exchange rate versus gold.

The way I see it is that anyone who has silver has either bought it to collect it or earned it through PvP.

Either way it is a lot more valuable than gold, both for the elite aspect that it was won through PvP and because it is no longer available which makes it scarce.

I was speaking to a Pvper today who said he has 180k Silver now that is a lot, especially compared to the commonality of gold.

If someone can establish a fair exchange rate then people could start dealing in silver instead of gold at the high end which might reduce the need to be carrying round a hundreds of checks when dealing for the top items and also it gives kudos to the people who were here before the supply was discontinued.

It is effectively a step up from gold so that is the reason for my comparison to Platinum and also the Silver Dollar

I welcome your thoughts about this.

 

[Lord Frodo]

Hello good people,

I've been digging around the past few days thinking about the issue of silver coinage.

Whenever I see it for sale it is usually at a horrendously expensive exchange rate versus gold.

The way I see it is that anyone who has silver has either bought it to collect it or earned it through PvP.

Either way it is a lot more valuable than gold, both for the elite aspect that it was won through PvP and because it is no longer available which makes it scarce.

I was speaking to a Pvper today who said he has 180k Silver now that is a lot, especially compared to the commonality of gold.

If someone can establish a fair exchange rate then people could start dealing in silver instead of gold at the high end which might reduce the need to be carrying round a hundreds of checks when dealing for the top items and also it gives kudos to the people who were here before the supply was discontinued.

It is effectively a step up from gold so that is the reason for my comparison to Platinum and also the Silver Dollar

I welcome your thoughts about this.

NO because it will be another thing to dupe and drive the economy out of control and this will not be needed when gold becomes a figure and checks are no longer needed.

 

[Peekay]

Physical Silver ingame is useless now. It's nothing more than a novelty currency that cannot even be obtained anymore, as it was farmed by person participating in factions and by killing other faction players or monsters associated with factions.

Furthermore with the previous prices of artifacts in the original faction system, 180k silver really wasn't anything at all. Given that some arties would cost upwards of 20-50k if you weren't a high rank. It wasn't uncommon for a person to spend 100k getting their arties.

I don't believe that there needs to be an inbetween in regards to gold vs a bulk gold representation, furthermore not a physical one that will be prone to being duped in place of when currency changes go live and gold will no longer retain physical form upon entering your bank. (According to the video released by Broadsword in anticipation of this new expansion)

 

[Loriel]

Ok that is helpful mate because it establishes some kind estimation on what silver is actually worth based on what it gave you access to in the past in the faction system.

However those arties you talk about being 20-50k aren't quite equivalent to the top end on the market now no ?

So what are we talking about here, hypothetically 20-50k is equivalent to 20-50m today ?

I agree with you that the currency changes that should be included with the next expansion should solve most of the problems in terms of actually handling and trading with your hard earned.

However this solution is really there for people who laboured hard for years on the faction system and were left with seemingly useless silver coins as a reward.

What I am really suggesting is that as these coins are already being bought and sold at a premium to gold anyway, fix the price across the board at a level that is commensurate with an agreed value and use them in exchanges.

The chap I spoke to with 180k seemed like he would be happy to use it as a premium rate currency.

 

[cazador]

Well of course he would. If the exchange rate was 100 silver per 1m for instance, he has a leg up. It would cost you 1m for 100 silver. He however would already have the equivalent of 1.8bil at that conversion. I'd like the currency swap as well.


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[Loriel]

Ok but I think what we are suggesting here is more like 1 silver = 1000gp

 

[Loriel]

News flash... Silver coins can be commodity deeded to act like checks, I have just seen 60,000 Silver deed on sale in ATL for 7m gp but there is literally only one deed available.

It weighs a fair bit less than gold too, 1000 silver is 7 stones.

 

[Scribbles]

I have about 1m in silver... Id be happy to sell it. but its going to cost you since its now "rare"

 

[Loriel]

Well it was rare even when it was still procurable through fighting in the faction pvp system have a look at this.

http://www.uoguide.com/Silver

 

[Loriel]

I am buying it up and I look at as I would a share price, pay a premium essentially for the goodwill that the brand generates, in this case it is a rare currency that only pvpers/collectors who have spent a few years playing at minimum should have.

Looking at the chart, 60000 Silver would have meant you had to rack up 1500 player kills in pvp to have earned that amount.

 

[Loriel]

I have about 1m in silver... Id be happy to sell it. but its going to cost you since its now "rare"

My point is that for people who have silver they can trade it for goods between themselves.

What you are suggesting is that you would much rather have gold than goods in exchange for it but now we have an acceptable exchange rate for it you might as well just trade it in a bit at a time for the goods you want.

 

[Old Vet Back Again]

I have 1.3m on Siege. What would be my conversion rate?

 

[Merus]

I am buying it up and I look at as I would a share price, pay a premium essentially for the goodwill that the brand generates, in this case it is a rare currency that only pvpers/collectors who have spent a few years playing at minimum should have.

Looking at the chart, 60000 Silver would have meant you had to rack up 1500 player kills in pvp to have earned that amount.

Or one or two days of afk farming in the deamon room...

 

[Merus]

Well it was rare even when it was still procurable through fighting in the faction pvp system have a look at this.

http://www.uoguide.com/Silver

"Rare" is pretty relative in UO. No longer obtainable does not really mean rare... And rare does not really mean valuable. Across UO there are quite literally millions of silver coins out there.

 

[Loriel]

Yes millions compared to the hundreds of billions of gold that is lying around.

 

[Captn Norrington]

I can say from personal experience, it was not hard to get 180k silver back when factions was around....not hard at all. I'm not even a pvper and I had multiple millions of silver laying around that I used to sell to pvpers. I got all of it simply from having my character join the true brit faction and then hunt demons in the demon room. I did not do it afk either, just sitting there hunting demons for a few days a month to train my character's skills got a ton of silver. I can't even imagine how many tens of millions in silver someone who afk farmed that demon room for weeks straight would have.

 

[Old Vet Back Again]

At the going rate of; 60k silver = 7m atl gold and, 8m atl = 1m siege gold I am willing to let my 1.3m silver go for 1.2b. Why do I have a feeling I will not get anywhere near that price?

 

[Loriel]

People are still not quite getting it.

The real factor here is not the liquidity value to get more gold... that's quite the opposite of the point.

The point is it replaces gold entirely in trades as the main store of value.

You are not going to get people buying it with gold because gold is so inflated now that when you are trading between friends most people don't even bother to use it, I am talking about people who already have silver to exchange for items etc.

The point of silver was that it was faction currency... trading between members of the same faction and NPCs to strengthen one person's faction or another, instead of using gold which is potentially infinite, use silver as it is much scarcer and now finite as it is no longer possible to increase the silver supply.

If you want to you can try to trade it to buy more worthless gold to stack in your castles hundreds upon hundreds of notes etc. but me personally, when dealing with guild mates, good friends etc I would prefer to give them something rarer as an exchange of value.

 

[Loriel]

That also means to say that I would take silver as payment as well.

 

[Old Vet Back Again]

You can buy all of my silver. Please feel free

 

[Loriel]

No you don't get it mate... still not really over that line... I will try to explain more clearly.

I'll give you an example, say you are in a guild and your aim is to be a better guild etc and therefore you don't want to sell high end stuff to other guilds for whatever sum of gold because they could have billions really it doesn't matter you just don't want them to outdo you in pvp or whatever the competition is really.

For example you have a mega pvp weapon that you managed to snag with looting rights on X boss ahead of your mates. You don't wanna ask for gold for it because they almost have a much right to it as you do and you cant sell it off randomly in case someone in another rival guild turns up with it.

So what do you... you use another system usually of exchange but half the time everyone in their own guild is secretive of what they have because they want to sell it themselves if possible without alerting their guild members to the fact.

Well the alternative to that is have a guild/pvp/faction currency which we just so happen to have and trade with your fellows on that basis.

Set an equivalence price... sure 1.2m silver could be worth the same as buying an item on the open market for 1.2bn gold but if you do sell it on the open market you leave yourself open to the risks I talked about.

I've seen Old Vet before on another post where he is selling something high end and he says he will not deal with the following people etc etc etc then goes onto say he will however deal with these people.

Well the point is that even if he is unwilling to trade at any price with those people for whatever reason, how does he not know that the people he listed as willing to deal with, are not in cahoots with those he is not, or even are actually those people themselves under a differenr username.

That is like being in a guild even if he is not and the people he is unwilling to deal with are a rival guild. Actually I don't deal with some of those same people and probably for the same reasons as him but I also keep an eye out for trade patterns to identify multiple account users.

For people you do actually like and care to deal with trade with them in silver as a more trustworthy way of trading. You know you like them, you trust them and what they are going to do with an item and you know that if they choose to trade with you in silver that they trust you too.

It is like a platinum credit card for the people with the best credibility in the game.

 

[Loriel]

In a way it also sort of transcends surface guilds pvp rivalries etc too because you know you are dealing with your good mates if you deal in silver.

The point is if someone already has 1.2m silver they are not going to go and buy another 1.2m silver just so they can trade more with their mates but someone who has a lot of gold and no silver might want to buy into the gang so to speak and offer the gold equivalent.

 

[Loriel]

The final aspect of that contract is that people with no silver or less silver than they need will only buy into it if they know it is a viable currency of exchange for the items they want.

At this point it is about opening up shop by accepting silver as payment and once people start to use it between themselves then it takes on its real value.

I hope that explains things clearly.

 

[Ryzk]

The value of money lies in that it is worth something. IE I can go spend gold right now at a vendor and buy enough cloth to cover all of Britannia.(why I would do that who knows) Silver having 0 purchasing power, and not really being rare, lacks that capacity. Ever seen those "Silver Crowns" They are rare, and no-one will touch them. There are coins on vendors that haven't moved since the vendor has been placed. Not that they don't have value they are Rares after all. The issue isn't really in the fact we have to use checks right now. And I don't disagree we don't need a new system for purchasing from other players and storing our money. But your suggestion of using a coinage no one have ANY idea of who has what for, where we have players with millions vs players with 100k-200k vs players with 0, It would be an INSANE idea just to go out and give it an inordinate value over gold to create a new monetary system. Imagine this, your neighbor collects bottle caps, your friend drinks a lot of pop, you might have a collectors soda bottle on display, Tomorrow the government decides bottles are outlawed, and only cans exist, next week they decide that a bottle-cap is worth 10m. It is a worthless item, shouldn't be worth more then a penny, but its 10m. Your neighbor is rich. your friend is set. you are poor. The entire economy has shifted to those who had collected an item that was no previous value, no current use, and no one has access to gain. No "contract" will make your neighbor give you bottle-caps, your friend share his etc. If we started with a fresh currency where we could go to the bank and exchange it at a constant rate this would have a chance otherwise not in a million years.

All that being said, ill sell you my 200k silver if your desperate to get this started Don't blame the seller if it doesn't go your way though.

Also Is this not a null issue? Did they not mention that they are trying to combine account gold as a figure? IE not an object anymore but a more modern mmo style thing listed at the bottom of your bank or your bag? I thought that was mentioned as something coming...

 

[Loriel]

Well that is exactly my point, the bank in your example is effectively a compact between players to agree to trade items for silver at a fixed rate, that being 1 silver to every 1000 gold.

It relies on the fact that you trust the other player on both sides to accept such trades in future at the same rate and anyone buying silver for this purpose would also have to trust that compact.

It is not a new system it is the same system just utilising something that is undervalued for its purpose in the game.

Your analogy of bottle caps breaks down because actually the value of silver was that it was indeed a currency that had purchasing power before it was discontinued whereas bottle caps have never had that same purpose.

Fair play you have tried to make the analogy fit the scenario but what we are actually looking at here is a store of credit with a history of real shared value rather the a part of the packaging from a beverage item.

 

[Christina Kardos]

I dont see the point of this discussion. I would never accept silver over gold.

Loriel you somehow manage to write texts of wall that make no sense to me. Let me ask again since I did not catch your answer:

What is the point of all this? Devs have already announced gold checks will be removed and gold will be just a number at the bottom of our screen.

 

[Loriel]

It is called a financial product.

I am not saying gold has no value what I am saying is that the value of gold is massively diluted.

That is the main issue I am addressing.

 

[Loriel]

It also allows you to differentiate between people you trust and people you do not.

 

[Loriel]

In this scenario Christina you would be accounted perhaps a major retailer selling premium goods and people with silver are essentially people who have credit cards and have built some form of credit in this case within the faction system when it was around.

If you have a visa or mastercard it works the same way as this, you build a credit limit as people accept that you will, in the future maintain the same level of financial integrity as you do at the moment of transaction.

When you are responsible for a credit card you have to ensure that you maintain a level of earnings so that if you use it you can pay what you use back.

Maintaining a level of earnings revolves around the trust level you have in the market place.

So Christina your credit rating is excellent, at least to the extent that you sell goods, I have never actually seen you buy anything from anyone else however so if you were to accept silver as payment people wouldn't expect to see a returning of a favour by you buying something from them in the future.

 

[Loriel]

Ok I will explain it again another way for people.

Say I were to sell something and accept silver in payment then the next day I wanted to buy something from that same person and pay in silver, if that next day they suddenly decide they don't want to accept silver then it proves they cannot be trusted in future trades.

In this way you are essentially utilising trust as the store of value.

Payment protection works the same way.

People do this all the time it is just now we can re-assign a counter to it.

A guild mate asks you a favour... sure give me 50 silver we call it evens etc.

The opposite of this is price discrimination, when an opponent sets the price so high that it is beyond reasonable to pay it but then you still do because you have no other apparent choice in the matter.

Essentially that is the reason that gold is inflated to the level it is because everyone sees one another as a competitor, rather than an ally.

More often than not if you have an ally they usually just let you have what you wanted for free in return for a favour down the line, however in this case use silver to track the value of that favour.

 

[Loriel]

I think most people get what I am on about but one more way to look at it is this...

Trading in silver is essentially like giving someone a vote of confidence... to say yes I would trust you to the extent that if you sold me an item that I wasn't satisfied with for a particular price then I know you would give me a refund on it if I asked.

 

[Dantes]

I get what you're going on about. But there's no way I'd take silver - which is just a novelty item - over gold. I also don't think this is the correct forum for all this, unless somehow you can twist that you're trying to sell us this idea.

 

[Marisa Kirisame]

Well, good idea to make it "elite trusted currency", but it's hard to organise. Silver can be used to craft faction traps, hehe. I don't really see the point of having such trusted currency right now - there's little way to assure a refund at all because people sell their stuff at the price they want to sell it, no less. They're satisfied or they won't sell it, so they can simply ignore your whining for a refund. No one is going to call them untrusted sellers - the deal's a deal, you agreed on the price at first, and you got what you asked for. Silver isn't going to help that.

And I haven't seen any platinum anywhere in Sosaria, why'd you mention that?

 

[Smoot]

I get what you're going on about. But there's no way I'd take silver - which is just a novelty item - over gold. I also don't think this is the correct forum for all this, unless somehow you can twist that you're trying to sell us this idea.

it was posted in UO hall but a mod moved it. not really sure why to be honest.

i agree, it could be fun to trade among friends in silver, but not realistic for general purposes. there are people who have millions in silver, i buy 60k deeds when i see them for around 1-2 mil per 60k just for a rarity but never plan on using them for anything other than decoing a treasure room.

 

[Loriel]

I will say no more about this because I can't talk about it heheh.

 

[Merlin]

We don't need a second currency. Thank you come again.

 

[Legendary Rick]

I agree with Merlin there is no need for a second currency and everyone is forget a huge part of silver that still makes it only a novelty item to have, you cannot use it inn game anymore to get anything, gold can be used to buy stuff of Npcs, player vendors and to get you whatever you might need, silver has basically become an items like the old fel and tram stones that you used to travel inn between fel and tram when they came out, it has essentially become a semi-rare. When you were able to farm silver you did not need to be a badass pvper to have alot of silver, i know ppl who afk farmed it at silver serpents and made like 60k/hr or so when it still had a use, and there is no reason people who have over a million saved should be able to easily get a Billion gold for it, cause for probably still more then 50% + of the people inn this game a Billion gold is not easy to get, unless you purchase it for real $. Silver as second currency - BAD IDEA !

 

[Legendary Rick]

99% of deals inn this game don't have refunds, this is not Home Depot were if u have a receipt you can get a refund on your item, when a deal is made inn the game its made. People know what they are buying and 99.5% of the people who buy something will never ask for a refund, especially when you are dealing with armor/weapons or jewls cause they are so specific to ea template.

 

[ZozmaLS]

I want a refund of the last 10 minutes of my life that was just wasted reading all this nonsense