quitthegame

"These rules and ideas contradict the most important point of the wilderness: anything goes." "The PK world needs to realise that the wilderness isn't the Duel Arena with dragons. There are no rules." By repeatedly telling them what to do, you are attempting to say that there is/should be a rule against making their own rules. But, that contradicts the two quotes from your article above. I think that your analysis of why they come up with their rules is extremely biased and short-sighted. Yes, they are mainly about not running away/using super cheap items. But to say that it's merely because "they" want "your" items doesn't make sense, people gaming the system for their personal benefit would just continue running away/using cheap items. These honor rules were intended to make pking more exciting for all involved-- I would say they succeeded in that very well for a time and less well as the community grew to a size too large for these rules. Personally I would not derive any enjoyment from the world 18 pking scene, and am not a fan of their rules. But since it is the wilderness and anything goes, it would be insupportable hypocrisy to go any farther than that in condemnation of what they are doing, as it is all within the game rules.

If you're going to take a shot like that, I assume you've done the calculations to prove that slowing down your rc'ing by using an ess spot for a pray pot is made up for by the weight of dhide chest + pants? personally, it's more fun for me to rc in black dhide than to use your technique, no matter which way the calculation turns out. But since you're resorting to insults, you should do the calcs anyways

How was my original post in this thread anything like flaming? Even if it had been one, it's not like this thread is any better as a rant than as a debate. Obvious fact != rant and also != debate. Although now we're finally debating, about whether it's a debate. 4 thumbs down for that. If someone pk'd me while I was rcing i would drop glory and black dhide set, that's a 90k drop not a 2k drop. Not that I've ever been pk'd while rcing (60 rc)

If you want to make an argument to the contrary, please, be my guest. that's precisely my point...no one wants to make an argument to the contrary, so this thread should be deleted. I mean, your original post was just a rhetorical question, and your answer to your own question, so it's not like you even tried to foment a debate--although I would be more inclined to credit the lack of response to the self selected audience of this subforum than to your framing of the issue.

there's no debate in this thread, just 10 people agreeing on an obvious fact...

This week's times has got to be the most off the mark in many months. "This java-based game is not quite up to par with other online games such as WoW or GW, which take pc gaming to a whole new level." These two games are widely considered to be not revolutionary at all, and this sentence is presented without any evidence whatsoever. "RuneScape is simply an expanded version of a chat room. ItÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s human nature to want to communicate ideas with one another." RuneScape is a HORRIBLE chatroom. Every other word is censored. You can't type anything lengthy or it gets cut off. There are very few of the handy features that chat programs can offer, even WoW has much, much better chat functionality than RS. This claim is so ridiculous, it makes me wonder if the guest editor has even played these other games. If RS owed its popularity solely to its chatroom functions, it would have two players, the Gower brothers. "I donÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢t think I would play RS if it were not a multiplayer game. I mean, what would you do? Let's take a look at some other online RPGÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s. Games such as Gaia, Battleon, and Bots. You probably havenÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢t heard of any of these." I have heard of those, and they seem to be much more about the multiplayer aspect than RS is. I spend the vast majority of my RS time just working on my skills, solo. From what I've seen, that is true also for most of the famous high level skillers. For me, the best part of RS being a multiplayer game is the complicated economy that has arisen in it. While I do enjoy talking to my RS friends while I play, I know for sure that if RS gameplay was not enjoyable, we would use a more polished chat interface in a second-- e.g. , WoW. I played wow hardcore for nearly 2 years, I made WAY more friends in WoW than I have in RS, and its chat interface is about 25 times as good as RS's chat interface. Why did I come back to RS? RS's gameplay is much more engaging. WoW just comes down to combat against against enemies with poor AI, using only 1 or 2 skills, over and over forever. Or, if you choose to do the large raids scheme, then to that repetitive gameplay you can add in a decided similarity to teaching kindergarten without pay, 6 days a week. Wow's noncombat skills are a total joke. If a game with polished graphics, 23 skills like RS has, and a nice chat interface, came out tomorrow I would probably play it even if it cost 10x as much as RS. But it simply doesn't exist. RS3 anyone?

" Andrew Jagex Mod 29-Mar-2007 15:39:54 Last edited on 29-Mar-2007 15:39:59 by Andrew To answer all the above question and more, just ask yourself the very simply question "Am I lieing to others for my own personal gain?" If the answer is yes you shouldn't be doing it, if the answer is no, then you're ok. The actual rule is the bit right at the top of rule 2. Everything else is just clarification. " I'm going to go with Mod Andrew > Mod Zach.

I keep seeing quotes from Jagex saying "all forms of luring are now bannable." I believe this comes from some memo inside Jagex containing that phrase, but was only intended to apply to luring that involves lying to another player. So Giant Mole luring =possibly bannable(depends on whether you lie as part of the lure), wildy luring = possibly bannable, DK luring = totally fine. I don't believe that the mods who keep posting that phrase understand what DK luring actually is. This is an example of accidental equivocation due to the overloading of the word luring with two different meanings. The best way to resolve this would be for a new word to be adopted for the act of dragging a monster into someone with the intent of killing them, as the word lure applies much better to the other meaning. Most other MMOG's have a word or phrase for dragging monsters to kill people, in wow you say you trained mobs into someone, not lured mobs into them. RS already uses the word training so that's not a good choice. Since pvp isn't possible in DK lair, it seems like the phrase DK pkers would be a very simple choice. Of course if Jagex actually does mean to ban people for "dk luring", then it might as well be left with the current meaning. I don't believe that to be the case, and if it is, Rule 2 should definitely be reworded again to reflect that policy.

I am currently in desperate need of more barrow logs to research though, if anyone can contribute links, it'll be greatly appreciated. Hmm normal and binomial distribution must have different meanings in English then. That's probably true, Dutch is one of the very few languages which got his own words for math terms. I think you are confused because the normal distribution is often used to approximate the binomial distribution via the central limit theorem. That's the whole reason it's called the normal distribution in the first place... sums of independent identically distributed random variables with finite variance weakly converge to the normal distribution, and repeated processes in the real world tend to possess finite variance. From wikipedia.org: "The practical importance of the central limit theorem is that the normal distribution can be used as an approximation to some other distributions. * A binomial distribution with parameters n and p is approximately normal for large n and p not too close to 1 or 0 (some books recommend using this approximation only if np and n(1 ÃÆâÃâ¹Ã¢â¬Â âââ‰â¢ p) are both at least 5; in this case, a continuity correction should be applied)."

I'd say jagex aims for that the majority of the time, which is why a lot of their updates are regarded as unsatisfying and useless. It seems to be very easy to miss the mark with the compensation and have an update go totally ignored by players. You say they should mainly update skills that way... go do a percentage comparison of which updates are like that and which aren't, and check back with me ;) But consider, older updates become obsolete and archaic irregardless, as people get bored with them over time. That's why in the battle between mudflation and purity of original vision, mudflation always wins.

I assume you're talking about combat here. A volatile example, because it seems like combat is the skill that trains with the most increase in hourly xp over RSC, off the top of my head. Interestingly, even though combat has clearly been updated with the most benefits, there are still a huge number of people who believe that it is an ignored skill for the high level trainer, constantly bemoaning the lack of "high-level equipment" with requirements of 80 and 90 skills. Obviously, jagex can't satisfy everyone no matter what they do. Are you saying that Jagex shouldn't add any updates that give experience to skills? That seems to be your point here but I'm not sure you mean to make it. Obviously updates that give experience slower than old methods are going to be huge flops. Jagex has historically slowed mudflation by making their improvements to skill training better in some ways, worse in others. E.g, ape atoll course is slower xp than wildy until you get to 70 agility. Still, even partial improvements like this will always make xp faster overall. Mudflation is inevitable, the only way to respect the foundation of the game in the way you propound is to make change to existing skills either very small or nonexistant. I'm not sure you understand my position. I'm not saying mudflation is great, I'm saying people demand updates and mudflation is inevitable. You want jagex to limit it, I want jagex to limit it, jagex is trying to limit it, there's no disagreement here is there? Obviously if you don't have that much time to play you value updates and consistency differently from those that play more, but that's not really a fundamental difference, just a personal variance in utility.

I've played a lot of other mmo's. I prefer the balancing job in RS to any of the others. It's a bit odd, considering those other games cost 100x as much to produce. I suppose by eschewing traditional classes and keeping skills fairly separate, they made it a bit easier. Still, I can't really feel your criticism of jagex unless you can let me know what other companies they should be emulating. I'm totally not playing that card. If you personally don't sell your hats, you didn't get rich because of the inflation of rares, so that doesn't even apply to you, and I never claimed it did. If the card doesn't fit, you must acquit :P I guarantee you, that if I had a phat somehow I would use the gold to get xp faster, and that I would be far from the first to do so. There have been interviews in the tip.it times quoting famous players who've done just that. Anyways, though I'm totally not playing that card, if I were to play something like it, it wouldn't say "everyone's balanced out because you have hats and we don't", it would say that's it's completely imbalanced in favor of older players, who not only have massive wealth from rares but also have just been playing longer, and can now take better advantage of the current easy conditions than new players can. ~_~ I'm not complaining, I just think it's crazy that old players complain about new players having it easy. I mean, if they think it's so easy being a new player, they're free to delete their 126 account in favor of a fresh lvl 3, and live it up on easy street. Right? I guess I personally think new players have it tough, if they're trying to compete against 5 year veterans, which makes the game more fun for the new players. In the final analysis, no matter what had happened in the past 5 years in terms of new players and jagex's changes, people would still complain about RS's slow degradation, for it is ever true that nostalgia overwhelms reason in the contemplation of an MMO's past.

Yea esper, on second thought I meant to express a lack of sympathy for those who think new players have it easier, those who believe the game should be harder on an aesthetic basis have a solid argument.

I'm guessing the reason they add new ways of training that are easier than the old ways, is that when they add new ways of training that are worse than the old ways, all of you old timers complain about useless low level updates. When they don't add anything, the old timers complain that the game is stale and boring and needs updating. When they add new ways of training that are better in some respect, people complain that RS is getting too easy. I really have no sympathy for anyone who's gotten rich over the years through appreciation of the value of rares, and still complains about new players have it easier. I know I wish I'd started 5 years ago ~_~

Buying drugs is Dangerous mayb if the supermarket sold it people would be alot safer. Same argument... Yes it is. This argument is why Prohibition was ended despite lowering alcohol consumption by over half... it caused too much crime. Now it's available at the local supermarket. This situation is also fairly similar to that with pirated music. Another situation where the low transactional cost and difficulty of enforcement lead to a lot of problems when trying to enforce the priviliges of the legal owner. People are prone to oversimplify the problem into one of simple property rights. In doing so they misunderstand the origin of the current structure of property rights. Intangible things with low transactional cost and difficulty of enforcement are precisely those things which in the past we deemed property rights not to exist for. Who owns the air over your property? Who owns the water flowing through the creek on your farm? Who owns the deep ocean? Areas like water rights and deep ocean management are very complicated issues, because of the prior two complications. The problem with games and music is that 20 years ago, there wasn't a market in ingame currency, and it wasn't practical to copy music over the internet. So we established social patterns and customs that people have come to believe are inherently right, despite arising from a reality that has changed drastically. Changes in water rights, ocean utilization, happened much more gradually, but still, people have not adapted as fully in these areas as they should have--which is why we are facing extinction of most fish species in the next 50 years. Knowing that changes on the century level were still too fast for society to adapt to, it's no surprise that the much faster pace of change in the computerized world leaves societal mores in its dust. So, let's return to basics...why is it bad to have rules that are not well enforceable and attempt to assign strong rights to commodities with low transactional costs and weak scarcity, in any of these contexts? #1 It's inefficient to police things that are difficult to enforce, while other more enforceable violations are rampant. #2 Lack of enforcement makes breaking the rule so profitable that it rewards rulebreakers and demoralizes rule abiders. #3 Assigning strong rights to commodities with low transactional costs and weak scarcity often makes the economy less efficient. Innovation in technology usually takes the form of lowering transactional costs and improving efficiency--which lowers scarcity. This kind of rights creation is like legally mandating lower technology for all. So, where does this leave us in regards to current mmogs? The crucial point is that enforcement in these areas, can be viewed as a cost-benefits situation. I personally would favor a total ban on autoers and gold sellers, in a utopian setup where enforcement was easy. In a dystopia where enforcement were impossible, I would favor legalization of both. In the actual situation we're faced with, this analysis shows us that the important thing is not just to take a hard moral stand against cheaters and real world traders, but to make a hard practical effort to make the enforcement viable and a net benefit...i.e., put your money where your mouth is. I would say as a proviso that people are a lot more idealistic in their expectations for enforcement in games than they are in the real world, and given the relative controls available, perhaps rightly so. (edit) An important point which I forgot, is that one of the costs of enforcement is the case of those false positives who are wrongly banned. Let's consider the situation where 25% of people cheat, 10% of cheaters are banned, and .5% of noncheaters are wrongly banned. Is that worthwhile? I would say no. In that situation 15% of bans are unjust, and the percentage of cheaters banned is really too low to discourage it properly. The combination of rule breakers getting a big advantage, and those .5% of noncheaters getting wrongly banned, would make me view enforcement as a net negative.

Your post is full of unwarranted assumptions about jagex's methodology. If I had to make a guess about jagex's views of the high score list, based on the updates in the past year I'd say they think high level updates are aimed at anyone who is ranked on that list, at all. The proper median average would be the combat level where half of all players are below you, and half are above. In a strictly mathematical sense, that number is the median average of 126 and 71, it's also the mean average of 126 and 71, but it's not useful to average two numbers together. The point of averages is to average across the total population. Not to mention, only accounting for those players who are ranked, leaves out the majority of players. Here's an example of how your math is irrelevant: How can tip.it determine what the average person in the world has in wealth? The richest person on the Forbes 500 list has about 80 billion. The poorest is somewhere under 10 billion. Take the median of 80 billion and 10 billion, that's 45 billion. Anyone under 45 billion is horribly poor... pity them profusely. Last I saw, there were about 8.5 million total accounts. That means that anyone ranked in attack, is already in the top 12% of all accounts for that skill. How many of those accounts are actually active? Hard to say. But it's also hard to say how many of the ranked accounts are actually active. That's why the easiest way to figure out what Jagex means by "high level update" is to actually just look at the recent updates they called high level.

if you find it offensive that the editor (who isn't speaking officially for tip.it, as clearly stated) promotes a certain lifestyle over others, why are you creating posts titled "How much do YOU know about the Gospels? Take the quiz here!" on these very forums? Isn't that a bit hypocritical? The moral code bit is somewhat true but irrelevant. Your second point... I'm sorry to say but it's a bit nuts. Saying that people only have one life is pretty much a tautology. Here's an example. Let's say you're playing runescape, head down to barrows to do a few runs. You don't even finish one run, and you're interrupted by your friend coming into the room. You look up from the computer, and he tells you that there's another you at the front door. "It's your lucky day, now there are two of you, kirby" You would probably reply, "there can't be two of me, I'm the only me". This isn't a belief about the purpose of the universe, it's a tautologically true statement, since the definition of the word "me" and "you" don't allow for duplication. The situation is the same for having two lives... if I start talking to you about what happened in your other life, last year, there are two possibilities. Either you will be aware of what I'm talking about, and say that was part of your same life you have now, or you won't be aware, and you'll deny that it was you. The definition of a life doesn't allow for one person to have two of them, all your ramblings about the purpose of the universe aside. Well, I'm sure that's a defense for a much stronger interpretation of "one life" than the editor intended, but it's funnier this way.

Serephus, are you aware that your first two paragraphs are the polar opposite of your second two? You start with 3rd age is so rare that you'll never have one, and end with a grim picture where 3rd age becomes so common it obsoletes barrows... are you just trying to cover all your bases or what? p.s. isn't your comparison of left halves and 3rd age totally nuts? Aren't like 10000x more monsters that could drop left half killed each day than lvl 3 clues completed?

enough for what?? "too rare" "large enough", you are just translating his post into other words, but it still doesn't mean anything. Jagex's stated point was to make a really rare but not discontinued item right? So, I can't understand what you could possibly mean by "too rare"

I'm not sure what you mean. The better the bonuses, the more they would be worth, which would mean people would do more clues, which would mean they would be more common, not less. Or... do you mean by rare, low chance to drop per clue? But most of the rare items for clues are purely decorative, so again I don't follow your logic. As to your second point, if people aren't willing to spend tons of GP on them...then the price will drop. Where's the problem there?

I consider spells weapons. So which would you rather have in your arsenal if you could only choose one? Ice barrage or whip? Also Dharok (full) is the most destructive melee weapon in the game. It is possible to hit a 99 on players with it if you have 99 str and 99 hits. Yes, I consider the armor + great axe one weapon because it relies on all 4 parts to work. Are you familiar with the quote from Lincoln "One may call a tail a leg, but it doesn't make it so?" Anyways, while it is true that spells/Dharok are weapons in one sense, it's not the sense by the quoted poster, so you are just equivocating and picking a fight that really serves no purpose. So... stop.

Market price on investable items depends on investor expectations for the future. Investors are accustomed to new items being rare at first, and then quickly dropping in price as they enter the economy. If 3rd age items are entering the economy now at a slower rate than was expected, then investor expectations for the future rarity are adjusting upwards, and the price follows. I.e., if buyers had had a better understanding of the rarity of 3rd age drops upon release, then they probably would have followed a similar price curve as other new good items. They would have entered the game at a higher price, and then crashed. However, at those higher prices, people would be more willing to wait, so I believe the initial runup and succeeding crash would have been much less severe. That's very interesting. Perhaps more clues are done than are thought? Or perhaps people are just waiting for the inevitable crash, not realizing that crashes of new items are only inevitable if the item's rarity/usefullness are correctly predicted by the market? I find neither of these explanations implausible, but time will tell.

Yes, obviously the cap is not the strict high alch value but high alch + what ppl are willing to pay for magic xp, which actually seems to have risen a bit over the past few years from what I have seen. Yea, it's a soft cap, not a totally hard cap--but doesn't the fact that materials prices have remained fairly constant argue for the cap's efficacy? It may be a soft cap, but it's a soft cap with built in negative feedback. Mainly because high alching still isn't too expensive...but I think some amount of training in other ways does already occur. But over the last 3 years, the other changes to the game, barrows, ancient magics, etc, have probably had a stronger effect, so I don't think we can do anything to measure that. Still, if the cost per alch went up 100 per high alch, i think we'd see a very strong reduction in number of high alchs done. But aren't the most expensive rares the wearable ones? That argues to me that the Veblen effect is very strong for rares.

Yea I read that before and they seemed a little low, but it's not worth discussing really, as we've done quite enough nitpicking My theory as to the static nature of materials prices, is that the best way to make money through materials production is nat runes. The best way to auto money has usually been yews. Both of those are capped by high alch values. Therefore, they can't rise. Many other methods are also capped by high alch, but are slower. Sharks are easier to do while semi-afking than nat. runes, so they are capped to a ratio of nat rune money making capability. Farming for UI herbs, same story as sharks. I think that this is a very powerful anti-inflationary mechanism, anything fun to do that makes the same or more money as nat running gets so crowded that the profit drops very quickly. There's actually some nice negative feedback there, if inflation gets out of hand people will start training magic with faster and more expensive methods than high alch, which will put the brakes on inflation. Contrast this with the complete lack of inflation controls among the rich merchants. ..it makes it seem almost comical that the same currency is used for both commodities and rares imo. That makes sense. But, the fact that it makes sense, even to a skeptic like me, is what makes me believe that the prices could get so high that an 80-90% drop is possible. It is indeed quite circular, but it seems inescapably so. That crash situation is exactly what happens in the real world, but thinking about that inflation limiting mechanism earlier makes me wonder if that's what keeps RS from experiencing the boom-bust cycle, it's too easy to switch modes of production. Of course, what is the disadvantage of a quickly moving decentralized spot market, that is too fast and spread out to be cyclic? Exploitability by cartels. You pay the price somewhere lol.

I think what you define "great inherent value" with paintings is actually contextual value as well, just like it is with party hats. Well if I say inherent value, i'm intentionally only referring to inherent value, although the contextual value has a component that is closely linked to the inherent value, so I see why you don't want to separate them. So we are really close to agreement on that point. I believe the only (significant) inherent value of both a party hat and a painting is the way they look and is thus not different at all, which I tried to show with the hypothetical example I gave. Also, in both cases the inherent value of the items does not justify their price. But your example doesn't work, which I tried to explain earlier. I do agree in both cases there is significant contextual value, so that inherent value alone is not sufficient to explain the price. Part of my point also though, is that the part of the contextual value of the art closely linked to the inherent value is somewhat durable in a crash situation. Anyways, back to your first sentence here. Just because the inherent value of each is solely determined by the way they look, does nothing to prove that the inherent value is the same. Here's an example of my own. The only value of this post is the language property of the words I use. The only inherent value of Shakespeare's "hamlet" is the language properties of the words he uses. People assign more inherent value to Hamlet than they do to my posts--Just like people (on average) assign more inherent value to great art than they do to the art of party hats. An example of the noninherent value of hamlet would be using it as the basis of an essay to get into college. Like I said before, I'm not certain that rares are a bubble. I was just remarking on the irony, that the very words that some people are using in this thread, are the words that make it seem like a bubble. The number of investors in rares, and the type of language I see them use, makes me think that there's a good chance that the current situation is a bubble, but I wouldn't go so far as to say probably a bubble. Of course, if it is a bubble, than what to make of the graphs showing rares are linked to total money supply increase? Well, I have two possible hypotheses. One hypothesis is that money sinks are underrepresented in that graph, as they are so scattered across the different vendors(and players quitting/getting banned, perhaps even harder to measure) that it's hard to count them accurately. The other hypothesis is that pehaps inflation in RS is best measured like it is in real life, with a composite average of prices. since materials have stayed fairly constant in price, the inflation rate would then be much lower than the growth in rare prices. this would mean that materials have been steadily getting cheaper in inflation-adjusted money, and rares more expensive. there could always be some other unforeseen reason as well. No, I wouldn't. Very true, and I would predict more such changes are in the works. What's interesting here, is that everyone sees and understands why bubbles occur, but why do some take 2 months to run their course, while others take 10 years? the length of time we're talking about here for RS is so much longer than I would intuitively expect for an online environment, that it makes me think it's not a bubble. Even if it's not a bubble though, the relative deflation of materials prices vis-a-vis rares prices could precipitate a panic given further anti-rares action by Jagex, at which point some people would certainly claim that a bubble had been proven...