jettrider

You and the author are assuming too much. How do you know how many RS players play funorb. I play funorb as much or slightly less than RS, and funorb is always a good place to relax from the constant stress of training in RS. Don't assume that because the majority of multiplayer games in funorb have few players so funorb is unpopular. Look in the lobby of arcanists or armies of gielinor. I play FunOrb more than RS now. Arcanists is the poster game but AoG is dwindling. There are only a few thousand active players compared to hundreds of thousands of active scapers. I think that a lot of people rag on funorb because 1) they've never tried it and 2) they think its development affects RuneScape.

In my opinion, the development diaries so far have been worthless. If you compare them to the Impetuous Impulses or Summoning ones, they have next to no interesting information in them.

Funorb has a team completely separate from RuneScape's development. Same deal with MechScape. And I bet the vast majority of people have never even tried funorb games. More on topic: I too have been quite disappointed with updates since 2005-2006, the quality has really gone down a lot, they've become more and more infrequent, and communication has been lowered (recent diaries have next to no information in them). These last two years in particular have been barren, with Mobilizing Armies delayed 5 months now and many glitches and bugs emerging. Did anyone forget this graph: They've got something even bigger than summoning on the way if I'm not mistaken.

(Got a 2004 account but this one is my RS name so I switched :() Congrats on the drop. I think you were right to coinshare. With 2 shields crashed, elixir being junk, and elysian with a lower and lower street price, I think coinshare is THE way to go. A bit unlucky it was divine though when it could have been any of the 4. Oh well, better to take 20m+ profit from a clan event than try to play the junk and xfer game.

I was talking about the game dropping more than the player was risking. If someone comes up and attacks you wearing nothing but an AGS, you will try to smite it because there is a chance of the player dropping 65m instead of nothing. The game doesn't recognize at that moment that the player could lose 65m. However, it only matters what happens when the player dies. In the old wilderness, people would PK skulled in a whip and rune armor. They expect to lose the rune armor and keep the whip. However, sometimes they lose the whip. That's what I meant here. It was always possible to get lucky and get items that the other player wasn't expecting or willing to lose, and therefore gain a better profit margin than expected. Who would want to PK getting only rune legs and glories every kill? Not I :P

Like others I don't agree with what TS_S wrote. First, it was always very possible for your opponent to drop more than the game would recognize. Why did so many players use smite if not to drop the opponent's protect item prayer and get a godsword or abyssal whip that the player wasn't planning to use? I heartily disagree with altering the system to not give a drop better than the items the person was carrying. This won't "fix" PKing to make it more balanced, it will force every kill to take money out of the game. As it is, you sometimes get more and sometimes get less. Jagex needs that randomness to remain in order to combat people using PvP worlds as a means of transferring wealth. Also, a quick note: players aren't "ridiculously" earning money. Drop potential is earned one of two ways: dying with money (the money becomes drop potential points) or being in a hot zone (or longer in a non hot zone). If you choose the dying with money approach, you can't be certain that you'll get a drop to make up for it. If you're choosing the hot zone method, you either have to use food or runes (which also costs money, though not as much) or you have to be on the look out for attacks. Either way, you're spending time which earns you profit later. Time should equal money, and while this isn't a traditional moneymaking method, it isn't handing out money for free either. Finally, on to the junk/unbuyable/unsellables problem (I consider unbuyables/unsellables to be the items that can NEVER be bought or sold on the GE, high end items only like partyhats, spirit shields, and 3rd age armor). The economy needs unbuyables to hold true wealth. The easiest fix to this is to add more memory to item stacks to allow for extra max cash, because 2147m is not hard to make with clandestine merchanting manipulations. Also, taking junk out of the game will not make the prices of these items correct. People simply won't sell the junk; a lot of junk is made purposely to be traded, not to be sold. Merchants won't sell junk even if they could (although Jagex is working on a quest that lets you recycle junk as a reward). If junk was somehow completely removed, people still wouldn't sell unbuyables on the GE; they would simply find some other way to trade them or wait for the GE to correct its pricing. Also, the GE can only correct unbuyables if the price change limits are loosened up; otherwise, people will always have enough time to dump one unbuyable and hoard another. To me, the article sounded like an average joe's look at the current problems and not an insightful examination of cause, effect, and solution.

There's just no good way to catch price manipulators from people who are not deceiving others while merchanting. I agree it may be annoying in the short term trying to buy bought out items, and I also dislike how easy it is to control the market on a few items, but I don't think they're an immediate threat.

It's certainly entertaining to see a bunch of kids who think they're clever, end up losing pretty much everything because of their own short sighted greed, then trying to put the blame on Jagex. Exhibit 1: People buying up broken pickaxes thinking they would be discontinued Exhibit 2: People buying up granite I won't usually argue for safeguards to prevent stupid people from losing money, but in this case I feel justified. It's basically gambling, everyone's in on it and you will either make a little profit or a huge loss. Another example, people though ashes were going to be used for the Phoenix familiar, they tripled in price, and became unsellable. Why should people waste money over something Jagex can prevent?

I fail to see why people losing money over speculation is a good thing. I played long before BTS and ever since they made it monthly, I've heavily disliked it. I love being surprised by any update and I don't want to know stuff before release.

Ah okay, since I didn't read over the middle pages of the thread I didn't get to that. In the first few months of BH there were huge clans roaming around still, and people were getting to know how the system works. More recently people have really started to set up a foolproof system for transferring. And it's not just RWT: people are using BH to transfer stuff between accounts, pay for items, etc. While fixing BH won't fix the GE, it's certainly a step towards reviving the minigame. It's supposed to be a game where you hunt for your target, hoping the person hunting you doesn't find you first. Only a few people play that way and they're all rushers, the rest just clump together in teams killing random people with zero danger. Well if they don't fix it soon, many items will have broken prices beyond repair. D claws are a prime example of a near disaster. They figured since people didn't use rune claws, which also have a special, no one would want dragon. Therefore they set the price at 200k or so. When they fixed lootshare to split dragon claws, they started trickling into the GE, raising the price to ~25-30m. When Jagex finally stepped in and boosted the price 10m, as well as doubled the drop rate for claws, the bubble was already too inflated, and they crashed a good 15m immediately. They at least need to fix the system, if not individual items.

There are many items that are both great to merchant and impossible to manipulate. If you try to merchant high-priced p2p items you are taking a much greater risk than you have to for inconsistent profit.

I'd like to respond to Madmanpur3 though I've only glanced over the thread and haven't really agreed with anyone in particular. RWT is coming back seeing how impossible it is to die in BH on a f2p world. And that brings all the negative effects that RWT had on RuneScape in the first place. Mainly credit card fraud. Some RWT companies would just use their customer's credit cards to buy more bots membership, and when the credit card was frozen and the transactions revoked, Jagex lost money. It's not just a scapegoat for problems. Ignoring your sarcasm, I'd like to point out that RWT was the only rule that had financial consequences for Jagex other than losing members normally. Last time I stepped inside Bounty Hunter. The GE already has many controls and since it is broken, it'll probably be fixed as a whole pretty soon. BH is by far the most pressing matter, especially now that the Tzhaar dragonstone method was nerfed.

Just a few things I'd like to say. 1) It's called equity. Even though you aren't using it, it's a potential resource. It's like buying a house. It DOES matter if the house price goes up or down, even if you don't plan on selling it. If you ever need the money, and find that your equity is worthless, then you're screwed. 2) I personally think that Clan Manipulation IS cheating. What defines cheating? Cheating in a video game is a process whereby a player of a video game creates an advantage beyond the bounds of normal gameplay, usually to make the game easier. (Wikipedia.org) Basically it's using something that you have that others do not in order to gain profit for yourself. What do manipulators have? Control over the market. They use that to profit THEMSELVES AND ONLY THEMSELVES. Then let's look at macroing. What do macroers have that others do not? Duh, macro programs. They use them to benefit THEMSELVES AND ONLY THEMSELVES. No new rule or extension is needed. Imo, it's already breaking a rule. Why should someone who can order people around be able to get huge amounts of money? Even look at the title...price MANIPULATION. Eg, FRAUD. 3) Jagex doesn't have many options at their disposal. What can they do? Too many people would rant if there were bannings, and anything under giving out bannings would just be ineffective. 1) Are you comparing a RuneScape item to a house? This is a game...I bought a Saradomin Godsword for 107m because the GE had a broken system for godswords at the time. It has now dropped to 40-50m...am I angry that it's dropped? No, because I'm not planning to sell it ever, I'll never be in a situation where I would absolutely NEED liquidated money with RuneScape's trade system. (Although I am slightly annoyed that others can buy it for way less :P ) 2) That's your opinion. I was discussing Jagex's opinion. And they don't call it manipulation, by the way - it's referred to as group merchanting or clan merchanting in any JMod post, it's the "politically correct" way to refer to it at Jagex Towers. They believe that with the current trade system, nothing bad can happen...eg they approve of junk trading and merchanting. 3) If Jagex were to simply lower the buying limits on medium to high priced items (mostly armor, weapons, etc) it would be harder to dry up the supply. And there is no reason for the current ridiculous limits except to allow merchanting. And I don't think the GE should cater to merchants. Merchanting will always be possible, but I make about the same amount of money logging in and changing my GE offers twice a day as I would get while grinding runecrafting or green dragons for about 3 hours. I don't think the GE should be the best source of income on an adventure game.

Well first, I think you should not worry about the value of your bank being on a rollercoaster. I never understood why people are so angry about weapons or armor dropping in price. Unless you were planning to sell it, it doesn't affect you. If it's for personal use, it doesn't affect your cashpile. However I agree that you should look at graphs so you can buy and sell monster drops/better armor at the right time. Jagex isn't doing anything because they don't believe clan merchanting is strictly against the rules. The only rulebreaking that happens in a typical group merchant deal is the leaders lying to the members about an item's new price. Also, since it's extremely hard to catch group merchants out of the many solo merchants who just look for good deals, it wouldn't be feasible to create a new rule or extend an existing one to cover group manipulation. Since clan merchanting doesn't affect long-term prices, I don't think it's a pressing issue. I would like to see a 'perfect' GE, where every item sells at minimum and buys at maximum, but that will never happen. I admit it's annoying if you need to buy or sell something fast but again, I never really understood why people don't just hang onto purchases. If you want to sell or buy something just bide your time and look at the graphs now and then. I think Jagex should put stricter limits on the GE. There's no reason why you need more than 1 of any barrow's armor piece every 4 hours, or why you would need to buy 100 rune items at the same time. Keep the raw materials fairly buyable, but put tight limits on middle/upper costing items.

I don't have the pet, but... It's not THE abyssal whip, as you see it has a destroy option. I imagine it degrades if you try to equip it. Pic:

A 600k drop is well within Dragon Claws' price range. Jagex intervened too late. The claws should have started out at 10-15m and they would never have made it over 25-30.

It is completely on topic, if you blame junk trading on the ultra rich. Duke Freedom guessed 4 years ago that there was 455 billion gp in RS. Think how many more people have joined, gotten 99 fletching and magic, alched stuff, etc etc. Think of Coinshare. Then you've got to understand that junk trading is done on all levels, actually most often on small rares and armor pieces by medium levels (90-120 combat) with a bunch of useless items. It is true that high levels and rich merchants are the main buyers of items such as spirit shields; this is simply because they have the most money sitting around and the most time to do stuff with it. It's a status symbol and a plaything that makes money, not a way of depriving the market of one of its items. People have been talking about items such as these for months. Jagex has refused to alter the GE system. What needs to happen is to identify "stagnant items" and then alter the prices for those items based on unfilled orders. The longer they refuse to step in and alter the system, the longer that people waste their time and sometimes break the rules in BH to bypass a broken system. The system simply doesn't work. Some items will always get stuck unless the following issues are addressed: [*:jsqynuhn]Stagnant items [*:jsqynuhn]Unreasonable price floors and ceilings [*:jsqynuhn]Unreasonable price links (eg Addy arrows(p+) in response to Addy arrows and weapon poison(p+)) Basically, Jagex needs to either make the GE work for any item, or create a shop or minigame that reimburses every item for its actual value (but this will only work if the stagnant items are fixed in the first place).

and i didn't say i wouldn't use the g.e. for them but i'm smart enough to watch price trends and see that they're on the rise So you expect others to take the massive hit in value while you sit back, watching your cash grow? Yes, I did read where you said the price was only moving because of coinshare and stupidity. That doesn't matter though, because the whole purpose of this topic is telling people to screw themselves out of money in order to fix the GE. The last page you have really made it clear that you personally are not willing to help this cause, and would wait for other people to fix the price while you sit back and reap the profit. There's simply no way around the fact that people want the GE fixed, but care about individual accounts more.

QFC: 74-75-999-58210249 Wait for Jagex to fix it the right way.

A bit overdoing it. I think a dungeon filled with assignable monsters would be a better addition (you may only enter on task, buy key with slayer points, etc etc). Also, you should be given a minute or so after task completion to pick up drops.

So I'm guessing you would level the skill by excavating the basic sites and dropping/banking the loot? If it takes you 20 seconds to excavate and clean and discard/store the loot, and 5 minutes each hour for banking, you would get 165 samples an hour. Averaging 200 exp per sample excavate + clean, that's 33k experience an hour. Not to mention those two sites will be extremely crowded. I can't see the rewards at higher levels justifying a 30k exp/hour skill, although it is a very steady moneymaker if you bring alchs. My only feedback would be to add a greater variety of rewards for SES and Private Excavation sites, and of course, add more of them. Another thing I might suggest are random excavation sites, maybe each area randomly spawns a new excavation site every now and then (a new Distraction/Diversion?) Also, I think the thread would be more interesting to read if you listed the spots in increasing, not decreasing, level order. I had a lot of fun reading it, great work. :thumbup:

All your reasons would work for a different update - Bogrog or Pikkupstix buying players' charms for set prices.

We need a level 87+ or 92+ monster that can't be killed off task.

Drop rates don't change suddenly because someone touchy hits a dry streak. The rates have always been about: 1/100 Godsword Shard 1/100-125 Saradomin Sword 1/300-350 Other drops (So Armadyl Helmet/Chest/Skirt have a combined drop rate of 3/300, or 1/100) 1/250-300 Hilt ROW only affects half keys and dragon shield/med/spear.

You use Crafting as an example to show that every skill has interrelating elements in Runescape? Sorry, but only a few skills can be placed on that same pedestal of diversity. Woodcutting and Agility are both skills but you don't see much variety in those... yet people train them all the time. That's why some skills need to be updated this year, and new releases need to be well done and useful. Woodcut and agility were implemented when the game was a lot less shallow than it is now. Wait a second. You completely omitted the fun aspect of the game in your argument. Besides, I don't think adding more efficient/profitable means is as infeasible as you make it seem. If it was possible with Hunter and Farming, skills that everyone assumed would be pointless, why can't it be possible for Sailing? Sailing for loot and fun isn't a new dimension to the game yet obtaining herbs is? New skills shouldn't be made specifically for fun but useless gameplay - that's what FunOrb and minigames are for. Why can't something be fun AND useful? It seems to me that making a new update fit in the game should be done before it is drafted to be fun. If every update is more efficient than some previous update, you'll have a huge map with everyone clustered in the best training spots. Every update has to be balanced some way, either in speed or cost, or both. Almost everything in RuneScape is based around killing and collecting, that's why Summoning, Construction, Farming, and RuneCraft were more interesting, do-it-yourself skills. Sailing could be like one of these depending on what twist the developers gave to it. But Sailing implies travel only, which isn't worthy of a skill - Piracy or Exploration seem like better leads for a skill. I apologize if I gave you the impression that I was totally condemning all sailing possibilities. However, because of the Pirate FunOrb game and repeated denial from Jagex that Sailing is in existence, I don't believe it's coming out soon. All moneymaking methods in RuneScape are balanced. Certain money earners, such as RuneCraft, Hunter, Fishing, buying from stores, etc, are steady earners. Others such as God Wars, Slayer, and merchanting are more or less random earners, bringing in fluctuating amounts of profit. Other factors such as requirements, enjoyability (which is an individual preference, very true), and difficulty decide what a person does. However for my comment on unbalancing things I looked deeper than that. Merchanting, Armadyl/Saradomin God Wars, and level 91 Runecrafting are more or less the best 3 ways to make money from each "category" of moneymaking methods. Sailing has to fall in either the steady earners, the profit based on effort, or the luck based methods. There is a very narrow range of effective profit for the skill. Either people will train the skill and use it for moneymaking or they'll completely ignore it. The goal with all skills is to find the happy medium where it is trained and used but doesn't detract from other game features.