qeltar

But he was talking about the GE. Well, making it so hardly anyone can trade will keep it stable. :) If you think it's bad now, just wait until the next major update. The GE is going to cause lots of people to get ripped off, and smart merchants to get rich. Everything is dropping in price. I just bought 100 prayer pot (4)'s for 7k each -- no joke.

It's very simple. Jagex has implemented price controls, so buyers are not free to offer below a certain price. As soon as all the buyers who want to buy at Jagex's minimum have their orders filled, nobody else can sell until either more buyers willing to overpay show up, or Jagex lowers the minimums.

Everyone wants tree seeds if they like the price. The GE doesn't allow that natural price to be set. That's why they don't sell, not because they are unwanted.

Do you really think I haven't tried that? :) Only a tiny percentage of people use the RS forums. Only a small percentage of those read the Food forum. And in that forum, 99% of the posts are about lobsters, sharks and monkfish. You've missed my point. It's not about pie shells, it's about the fact that the GE could have been a new opportunity for buyers and sellers to communicate needs and wants, but that chance has been wasted by poor implementation and overly-controlling policy.

It's the argument that's been TRIED but it always fails. Where has that scenario ever played out except in a handful of temporary circumstances? Most modern Western countries have an essentially free market with reasonable controls. They do not have the government telling everyone that they can only buy or sell items within +/-5% of the "official price". Or can you name one that does? :) Why was it naive, when Jagex has spent the last six years bleating the mantra that "players set prices"? Or was it naive to think they wouldn't cripple their own feature? :)

IMO, Jagex is, if anything, too lax. People abuse others, break rules, use autotypers and continue to be allowed to play. The last thing the game needs is for things to get even looser than they are now.

What, and miss your clever repartee? :P

I just spent some time trying to buy and sell about 30 different items that I was interested in. Of those, only 2 resulted in transactions -- and 1 of the 2 is because I didn't care about the item and dumped it. Will this get better in time? Sure. Will it ever really work well? I don't think so. Jagex claims that they did "extensive research" to come up with its prices. This is simply not believable. As just one example, rune boots.. they started out at what, 180k? Rune boots haven't been 180k since GWD came out in what, August? They are either lying or their "researchers" are flatly incompetent. But there's another aspect that has been lost in this whole shuffle, a real wasted opportunity that I didn't even bring up in my article: the creation of NEW markets will never happen with this system. What do I mean? I'll give you an example. I'm a fairly high level player and I like to make pies. But I HATE making pie shells. I would be very happy to pay someone 1k a piece to make pie shells for me. If the Grand Excruciation actually worked like a real market, I could put in a buy order for pie shells at 1k each. Someone might then notice the buy order and say "wow, that's good money for a level 20 doing nothing but adding water to flour" and they'd make the shells and sell them to me. But right now pie shells are 23 gp each. And there's no way for me to communicate to the masses of possible pie shell makers that I'm willing to pay 50x that for them. There are countless other examples. Whole new industries could have been created, ways of making money and sharing resources and saving time. Instead we get a crippled system that adjusts so slowly as to be nearly useless, run by "researchers" that have proven that they are out of touch with how the game is played and don't really understand what drives prices except for the most common items.

Exactly. And it is this obvious disconnect between what Jagex claims is its motivation and simple logic that leads people to disbelieve what they say. The company is not being honest. I am fully in support of Jagex stopping the huge high-stakes gambling that was going on at the DA. I am NOT in support of them destroying reasonable staking and then lying about why they did it.

Yes, and that's why it is overrated. ;) If you analyze the numbers, in a straight one-on-one duel without food, potions or prayer, the Sara GS will beat the Armadyl GS more often than the other way around, because it gives bigger % bonuses of HP.

Yeah. Seriously. The market can't be over-saturated with both items AND money -- doesn't make sense. And the bulk of the wealth is not with a small percentage, even if a small percentage has a lot of money. They'd be where they should be. All that is going to happen now is that there will be a slow, painful ride down in prices. They did okay in that most are not ridiculously wrong. But because the trading range is too narrow (5%?) this magnifies even small errors. And that's why most items just sit on the exchange without selling.

Aren't they? In another thread you have been very critical of Jagex for getting the initial pricing on some items off market prices. Now, you are being critical of them for trying to adjust the prices to be closer to market prices. If you are going to be so critical about what a lot of people (me included) think is a great update, at least be consistent. If you read my article, then you'd understand my objection is with Jagex's attempt to be the Central Authority of All Runescape Prices. So I am being entirely consistent. The system itself here is the problem. The market should be allowed to set prices, not half-baked guesses and partial corrections.

The prices will drop until they are attractive to buyers, and then they will stabilize. That would have happened immediately except that the price controls are making it happen in "slow motion". I think it's also fair to point out that many items have had higher prices than they really should have because there was no way to sell them. Prices on less common items were rarely sold and then only when somebody needed one, so they were willing to pay more. Now that people are "cleaning out their banks" many items will drop in price until they reach a more reasonable level.

Yesterday I tried to sell a shield left half. The "market price" was 700k. When's the last time that was true? I went back today. It's still 700k. Nice system.

Based on what we've seen in the last two weeks, here's how it will work. 1. They will put limits on trading that they feel are okay for "most players". 2. A whole bunch of players, especially veterans and high-levels, will find that the way they have always played has been ruined and will complain. 3. Jagex will ignore them, saying it is "for the good of the game". If you don't believe that, just look at the duel arena. ;) This is a valid question, and one that has an easy answer. Efficient markets are based on timely and accurate information. As long as you provide people with that information, they work well, even for people who are new to the market. In reality, the idea of the GE (not the stupid price controls, the market itself) is no different than a stock market. Now, suppose you've never bought stock before and you want to buy 100 shares of Intel. What do you do? Simple. You go online and look at a past history of the price of Intel stock. Then you check the current market ticker and see what Intel stock is trading for. You then decide to either buy at the current selling price, or put in an order for a price you feel more comfortable buying at, if the price goes down to that level. The exact same thing could (and SHOULD) have been done here. If you want to buy, say, an Armadyl godsword, you type in the name of the item in a browsing feature, and it shows you the past transactions, along with current offers to buy or sell. You decide what you want to do based on that information. And Jagex could put in REASONABLE controls so this wouldn't be abused... just like real stock markets have those controls. But they don't say "Intel price today is $80 so you can only buy or sell it from $76 to $84".

I don't? :) I go to the Grand Excruciation and want to sell an item for a price that I think is fair. And the system tells me nope, I must sell for Jagex's pre-set price. That's price controls, period. I could have sold every one of them in minutes either in World 2 or on the forums. No exceptions. If I want to sell something, I want to sell it in a reasonable period of time. I had items sitting for sale for over 12 hours at the lowest possible prices and they didn't budge. There are only 6 slots, and if they are filled I can't do anything, so that's why time matters. In contrast, I have infinite "slots" in World 2 or on the forums. The GE was *supposed* to be something that made buying and selling easier, not a royal pain in the behind. But Jagex considers market control more important than a functional exchange. :lol: Because it is NOT a free market. Free markets let buyers and sellers choose their own prices NOW, not in a day or a week or a month or after some Communist Party Chief at Jagex decides to adjust the price. A functional market depends on the ability to buy and sell based on CURRENT market conditions -- not with prices adjusting by 5% a day, which means many items will take weeks to adjust in price, only to see the price they were adjusting to change and the whole thing start over again. I don't know what game YOU are playing, but there were countless examples provided yesterday that show very clearly that Jagex DID make up many of the numbers. When's the last time you saw someone sell a dragon shield left half for 700k? You missed the point entirely, which is that supply and demand of finished goods and components can change quickly. A system with hard price controls cannot adapt to this and that means shortages and other problems. Everyone brings up this boogeyman -- the only problem is that we have years of history that show it is false. Until it decided to become "Economy Control Central" yesterday, Jagex constantly beat into our heads "the players control prices" and also SPECIFICALLY said that it is not against the rules to try to buy or sell for whatever price one wants to choose. So... why weren't willow logs selling for 2k or magic logs 20k on the forums? Simple: nobody would buy them. And the same would be true here. If they wanted to prevent really gross excesses, they could have put REASONABLE limits on prices. 5% is not reasonable. It was necessary for Jagex to continue its program of taking control of the economy, ruining what had been one of the most interesting parts of the game. And that's all it was needed for.

With the market price guides currently available on fansites, I think they should have been a lot more accurate to begin with. We shouldn't be waiting for the prices of commonly bought and sold items to "stabilize" ..they already were stable before the GE Exactly. There was never any need to "stabilize" anything. This is just a control grab, nothing more.

There are many, many items whose prices vary by more than 5% a day. Some vary by more than that even within a single day. Do you think they will sit around manually adjusting them? Strict price controls destroy markets. It's been tried many times and it never works. The fact that they are only adjusting automatically by 5% means that some items will take WEEKS until they end up where they should be.. only by then their values will change again and it will take weeks more for anyone to bother trading them.

Aren't they?

Ah the joys of a planned economy. :roll:

.. the problems persist. The 3k cap was not raised. Jagex put out a half-hearted update to tournaments, which still have dozens of problems, ranging from empty worlds with no tournaments running to an idiotic tie-breaker system.

We have two completely different directions we approached this update from. You were hoping for a free trading system. I was just hoping they wouldn't remove 1 to 1 trading with this update. I'm understandably happy it didn't happen, at least not yet. For you, disappointment. For me, relief. Not saying it's perfect, but it could have been far worse. 1 to 1 trade limits are coming. They will wait until the GE stabilizes and we finish their beta testing for them, and then they'll do it. It won't be removed entirely, but the days of being able to trade large volumes or $ values directly are coming to an end, probably soon. Yes, that's just speculation, but Jagex's recent pattern of changes involving ham-handed control grabs strongly suggests it, IMO.

If they are smart enough to do this in the future, why weren't they smart enough to widen the ridiculous trading range today, when there are effectively hundreds of items that are trading that normally do not? I'm skeptical.

I tried to make clear in the article that this is not a complete analysis of the GE. And I also do say that I think it will likely improve as prices adjust. It is more focused on my disappointment that Jagex created what could have been the ultimate tool for finally having a free, unhindered market in RuneScape, and then deliberately ruined it with ridiculously narrow trading ranges that make the majority of transactions impossible.

As long as they are within 5% of Jagex's made-up numbers. Gotcha. ;) "Normal prices". Okay. How about a wild pie? How about a wild pie after a BTS announcing a new slayer monster? How about a wild pie for someone who needs one for a quest? You're being controlled.