The_Stihl

Suppose you take a thousand respectable scientists of similar ability, give them all the same specific research field, scatter them to every corner of the globe with absolutely no contact (directly or indirectly) with one another, and give them a year to come up with something. Even assuming that every last one of them comes to a conclusion, how many conclusions do you think you will see that are: 1) Unique, 2) Useful, and 3) Accurate? A handful, perhaps. So Jagex and Blizzard came to a similar conclusion regarding in-game trading. What's so special about that? Just how many truly unique ways are there to go about in-game trading (without reducing the system to an even bigger pain in the arse), anyway? :-k

Mmm... yes and no. If there ever comes a point where the GE rate gets nonsensical, Solidus is right - people will stop using it. We're seeing that right now, actually. The base values out of the gate were all set by Jagex, and while many are on the mark, there are a few that seem.... out there. Prayer potion (3)'s with a mid-market rate of 7.6k is an example - since you can't sell them below ~7.2k each, while players still trade them on the forums in the 6.5k - 7k each range, it may take some time for the G.E. to actually see prayer pot sales. I've got mine at the lowest legit offer, I'll let you know if they sell. :P Haha. No, the "first" was probably fatigue. I still hear the odd person complain about it, and it's long gone to anyone who doesn't still have an active RSC account. Hell, it could be long gone to them too, for all I know. This kind of BS is a pretty standard Jagex tactic, from my perspective. They claimed the pure ess update was there to deter macroing... and the next day, not only were there essence macroes mining away, but there were loads of people talking on the TIF about how nonsensical a solution it was. Heck, the only net result regarding cheaters was that the odd macroer signed up for membership so his bot account could mine the more valuable pure essence. Backwards much? Not that they'd bother to undo the change... I'm guessing it's PR/propaganda. If they can't beat the cheaters, they can at least release a few band-aid solutions and claim the cheaters are beat. Either that, or Andrew has finally gone cuckoo for cocoa-puffs, which I've been anticipating for some time.

Yes, actually, but "useful" is largely subjective, depending on the end one wishes to achieve. Considering that there are 5-6 people in this thread alone claiming to have had spinach roll collections, I'm going to have to question that claim. If you have any solid data relevant to this matter, please bring it forth for examination. Sure, if you're extremely gullible and socially inept. The rest of us are thinking, "Is it worth risking my money with a person who's acting so suspicious?". Great, except that this prevents scamming like the shop update prevents autoing. You have to realize that it's only a matter of time before scammers find other items to use in their scams. It's happened before - remember when people were selling a worthless leaf-blade spear in place of a guthan's spear? Jagex made the leaf-blade spear untradeable, and some scammers started using ahrim's staves instead. If you take what you are told at face value, you will inevitably get burned, and sadly, that's just a fact of life. Scammers are the scum of the earth, but perhaps it's best to learn a hard lesson over 20k worth of mahogany logs rather than over your credit card number. Besides, the ol' universe is doing a mighty fine job of building that "better idiot" - and I'll be damned if anything within Jagex's power is going to put an end to that.

By your reckoning, stamps, baseball cards, coins, commemorative plates, figurines, albums, video games, and virtually every other commonly collected item on the face of the planet does not qualify for a "collection". Rather interesting, wouldn't you say? Oh yes, using statistics regarding music is dumb, but it's perfectly acceptable to make up random numbers in an attempt to give credibility to a flimsy argument. At least two other people in this rant alone have admitted to having a spinach roll collection, so consider extrapolating that out over the rest of the community while you're busy playing with make-believe statistics. Sure, because your goals and preferences are more important than anyone else's. Errrrrr.... stfu that is so annoying.... go do something like play hockey? Or, y'know, get laid. There's always that. ...You do realize that RuneScape in entirety is no more or less a "pointless task" than collecting any random item, right? Now, if every MMO known to man were to be shut down under this exact justification, would you honestly be satisfied? The least you could do is avoid accusing people of being selfish when you have that questionably sarcastic remark in your signature. There's a tried and true rule where I come from, and it goes like this: "There is no cure for idiocy". Making certain items untradeable will only result in scammers using other items - Arena books or snelms, for example. Ergo, this is nothing but a band-aid solution.

Compliance. Realize, however, that textbox editing is particularly elementary. I could alter the examine info to read, "spontaneously combusting blingwad" with little difficulty.

It didn't impress me. The tone was strictly informal (people do this, people think that, blah, blah, blah...) and nearly rant-like: "What is it with nostalgia?" almost sounded like, "What is it with noobs these days?". A few notable errors:

Hiya, I've just finished doing the Digsite quest, and I noticed the image for broken armour isn't the same as in the corresponding item database file. I'm guessing it was updated with one of the more recent "graphical improvements". I don't have anything fancy, but I can provide a render at least: Also, the examine info now says, "No use to me in this state...". General stores won't take them, and they appear to have put on some weight as well: 1 = 7 kg 2 = 15 kg 3 = 23 kg 4 = 30 kg 5 = 38 kg 6 = 46 kg Do that thing you do! :wink: Thanks, ~Stihl

There's really nothing unreasonable about this. As I understand it, "free for all wildy" is only available if you're a PK-Anywhere player, in which case you obviously have options. It may be an incredibly dangerous area, but you only have yourself to blame for crossing the ditch. Gee, doesn't that sound familiar? :wink: If he happens to cross the ditch... yeah, that's what it sounds like. Although, to level with you, I don't find myself talking to the Zamorak mage or Duke Horatio often enough to make such a mistake. Personally, I'd like to see such a thing put into place. I think I'd want the wilderness for PK-wildy only players to be a little more dangerous (ie: the area that is currently level 1 would be level 6, 10 would be 15, etc.) just to prevent abyssal crafting and the like from becoming overly... safe. Other than that, sure, support all the way.

Hahaha. Do I detect a hint of contempt, Prof? :wink: Ah well. It's not likely I'll be able to convince you of anything, so I suppose it's not worth getting bent out of shape over. I'll still answer to others' concerns (if any) though.

That sounds right, come to think of it. I ranged some hillies about a week ago, but I didn't kill more than 40-50, so I just chalked up the lack of seeds to bad luck... Oh, and I've just been to the cave crawlers in the slayer dungeon, and I started getting potato seeds right away. So perhaps I'm not inflicted after all. :-k Hopefully it doesn't come down to checking monsters one at a time to see if they're still dropping seeds.... but it's starting to look that way to me.

Mmm... Perhaps it's a language barrier, but I'm not really following you, Prof.

See now, this is the kind of nonsense that drove me to leave the TIF in the first place. I say two words and people cry about abuse. No, I said point blank that degraded bars would be used to make equipment as usual. Normal bars, degraded bars, or any combination thereof would yield the same equipment - only you'd be looking at a pittance in terms of xp for any degraded bars used. You can complain that it's a bit less realistic, but between you and me, I'd prefer an update that's a little out there and actually sees use to one that is firmly tethered to reality, and serves only to collect dust. :-s

That seems reasonable. [hide=Rockslug L29 drop tally] 112x Earth runes (5) 84x Iron ore 62x Coal 49x Dwarven stout 45x -nil- 36x Hammer 28x Tin ore 14x Copper ore 14x Chaos runes (2) 12x Earth runes (42) 11x Iron bar 9x Bronze bar 6x -failure- (used salt prematurely) 4x Mithril ore 3x Uncut sapphire 3x Uncut emerald 2x Uncut ruby 2x Chaos talisman 2x Uncut emerald & Iron ore 1x Chaos talisman & Tin ore 1x Mystic gloves (white/gold) *500/500 salt accounted for.[/hide] I believe there's enough instances here for luck to be negligible. The only other possible explanation coming to mind would be a quest-related anomaly, which there are admittedly a few of. I've heard of no ailment with such symptoms (negated seed drops), but I wouldn't put it past the Gowers to do something like that. I'll try out some cave crawlers when I get the chance, and see if something determinant comes out of that. Thanks, ~Stihl

Not even those, no. So unless wearing a ring of wealth negates seed drops...... I'm actually half curious if other slayer monsters have suffered a similar fate. I haven't the time right now, but I think I'll camp out at the rockslugs for a while later tonight or early tomorrow. Thanks, ~Stihl

Hiya, *waves at GW* I've been camped at the Cockatrices in Slayer dungeon for a while in hopes of obtaining the elusive Cockatrice head. From the xp I've gained, I should be comfortably into the 300+ kill threshold, and I've yet to see any of the seed drops as listed on the appropriate Bestiary page. Perhaps cabbage seeds have become rarer than I remembered, but I'm inclined to think the Cockatrice's seed drops have been scrubbed. No head yet, so I'll update when I'm finished with these scaly beasties. Thanks, ~Stihl ==Update== Hi again, I'm registering in at 280.6 kills since I first posted (apparently I lost some xp to poison damage). I've got my cockatrice head now, as well as two pairs of mystic boots, so I suppose I'm done. The above remains accurate - I didn't see any seed drops from the Cockatrices. Any case, I'll leave it to you folks, I'm off to land me a trophy swordfish! :wink: Thanks, ~Stihl

It seems to me that every time you melt down a piece of metal, you run the risk of introducing impurities and such. Ergo, perhaps as an alternative to making the equipment to bars ratio painful, smelting a piece of equipment could produce degraded bars, which can be used to make equipment as usual, but yield only a small fraction of the xp you'd get from a normal bar of that variety. Just a thought, because to be honest, if it's going to take me four bars worth of equipment to get a steel bar back, I'm just going to alch those drops and go back to what I was doing. :wink:

I don't care for the effect cheaters in general have on the economy, simply for the effect it has on newcomers. No legit player starts their RuneScape account with riches to spare, and that means merchanting is out of the question. For that reason, autoing tends to allow the rich to stay rich, and discourage the poor from being anything but poor, and that's not doing the community any favours. Not to say that I'm jumping on y'all with this communistic ideal that everyone should share everything, but you can hardly say that a player is just a lazy beggar after (s)he goes out and consciously mines five thousand coal ores to reach the big one mill. This, of course, may become more universally tangible depending on the degree of damage the "Great Exchange" does to merchanting in general.

Where it's at right now seems pretty reasonable. There are still a few cases of grievance, but overall, I'm pretty much satisfied - which you'd think surprising if I spoke with you over the phone. [bleep]in' eh! :wink: Gearing up the censor is something that's been done a few times, and to be honest, it's a joke from start to finish. In particular, there have been cases where the censor has blocked out "fletching", "bob the cat", "that's" and "O RLY" - which as you can imagine (or recall, as the case may be) made for quite the annoyance. Player ingenuity with regard to censor evasion is really quite amazing - I dare say it ranks up there with cockroaches and twinkies in terms of hardiness. Censor the base words, and leave the more creative variations to abuse reports - it'll be a lot less headache for everyone, I promise.

At the end of the day, it's the same old thing. I'm not really interested in debating the effect on "trust trading" - you have to be quite naive to assume everyone you meet is trustworthy in the first place. Probably even naive enough to believe the chump scammer when he says, "Oh I've already got my 30k xp today, would you just trade me directly instead please?". Basically, it's gone from looking for a 99 smither with rune kites in his bank, to looking for a 99 smither who will take a stroll with you down to the nearest anvil. There's no significant change here, IMHO. All in all, I give it a C-. It's not going to take bank organization out of the stone ages, and it's not going to put an end to macroes, but at least it's not another Sheep Herder.