Duke_Freedom

These 'solutions' to the rares 'problem' are getting worse with the day.. Not to think of how bad they must be now then, when you realise people have been searching for 'solutions' for years now. :roll: Prediction if your suggestion would be implemented: Hyper-inflation on rares; the counter effect of what most 'solutions' try to reach.

Pure currency exchange is worse IMO. The way it is now, it *isn't a distinguished money-drain (which we don't need a second currency for like I pointed out), but it's turning chaos runes into a currency (and draining chaos runes) - not much wrong with that. And there isn't anything wrong with people buying these chaos runes? *true: people do buy chaos runes for gp in stores, but at least chaos are the intermediate good and it's not just gp for different gp which you then use to buy an item with.

I don't see the use of multiple currencies at all if there would be fixed exchange rates between them, which would serve as a distinguished money drain. Most trades would take place between the NPC-buy and NPC-sell price anyway and, depending on the usefulness of the second currency, it's market price will approach either the NPC-buy or the NPC-sell price. If it approaches the NPC-buy price, the currency is unpopular and it will not drain anything at all (in fact, it will create GP). If it approaches the NPC-sell price, the currency apparently is popular and thus (as you said yourself already) will just be accepted as 'normal' currency, thus the 'worth' of 'currency' in game does not drop at all. The only way it really 'drains' then is because of expensive items in a shop which requires this second currency. However, we don't need a second currency to put expensive items in a shop - so the same result could be reached much easier... So my conclusion: It's pointless to introduce a new second currency which would work like you suggested for the reasons you named, because the currency is basically equal to the GP.

It's a miracle... Oh wait, I don't believe in miracles :lol:.

http://www.ultimatebet.com http://www.pacificpoker.com Both good sites for free poker...

I'm not sure what your problem is when other people want to discuss something out of interest without flames..? And this debate is not really about more free stuff for free-to-play like I already tried to say. I believe blackrazor only mentions that to let the (f2p)-RuneScape community see what their advantage of this suggestion could be - though maybe it would have been a bit smarter if he didn't put the emphasis on the updates for f2p so much. :?

OK I read all now (wow... I should ask payment for this :P). I'm sticking to my earlier opinion that the way it is now, I definately think you overvaluate the value of the add-income for Jagex and that I don't really see why ASP (as you like to call it :P) is 'suddenly' unbalanced, even though it has been unbalanced for years already. Also, I disagree with what you said somewhere during this thread that P2P is 'alienating' from ASP - P2P's base is still ASP and will always be. Oh and one last thing.. Maple trees aren't great for wc exp. As a lvl 93 wc'er I got from 89 to 93 on willows. ;) Although I do have to agree this point sounds strong (I remember that situation on runescapecommunity) - but my counter-arguement would be... They don't put in so many "you have to be on a member world to do this" if they don't earn a lot extra for it either, don't you think? Subscription, like you answered yourself when I asked why you never became members, is a nice way of tricking people into monthly payments. Although 1 monthly payment may not be large, a subscription of 3 years can buy you 5 new 'normal' games, which is exactly the power of MMORPGs... For other mmorpg's this effect is even much bigger, because they usually charge twice or triple times what Jagex charges. But whether they do or do not make much money from add-income versus subscription-income is irrelevant for the discussion that should be going on here really. So let's not continue discussing that; onto what this discussion really is about, although it is in fact somewhat related to subscriptions and the way MMORPGs work... Co-branding and / or other extended ways of "adds" could further enhance Jagex' add-income. Which is a very good point - it's a fact that (momentarily - this will become less important in the future, when people adapt more and more to payments via the internet) a large group of people are hesistant for paying online or just plainly for subscriptions or intangible stuff in general. So what has this to do with the possible positive effects of co-branding? With co-branding, the way blackrazor suggests it, people will be able to "buy" updates for the game while they are also buying something tangible that they can 'use'. This way, the group described in above paragraph, could be targetted after all, meaning that the co-branding may actually become a succes. From what I know, co-branding has not yet been tried out by any of the other (large) MMORPG's yet, so we don't really have any reference data. However some other MMORPG did do an 'extention' of the normal adds... Everquest's /pizza command - http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2 ... _stor.html Ok, try not to laugh now... I'm serious and, although it seems the feature has been removed from the game now and although it was ridiculed by a lot of people (I wonder why :lol:) Sony did have it implemented for a while - and I don't think that was just a joke. Various analists think that ingame-adds will, sadly, be utilized more in the future. Anyway, back to the topic of co-branding.. It does seem like it could be worth a try IMO, to see if it would end up as a succes or not. I'm not sure which of the two forms would be the best to choose from in the end, but if it's going to be a 'test' you would definately go for the community-bucket. From a managementability / overhead view I would prefer that one too - it prevents the problems that such advertisements could be temporary, that some update needs to be done for everyone or for noone at all, etc etc... However I think the co-branding will be more effective when it's not a community-thing but for individual use instead: that gives more incentive to buy the product to everyone. What I mean to say here, is that people will only participate actively in a community-update if it's hyped, and I'm not so sure you can get people hyped about such, relatively, small updates. But when people won't get anything at all it if they don't participate (buy the product), they'll be more likely to end up participating after all. IF the co-branding test would be a succes, then it could surely enhance Jagex add-incomes significantly... Add on to that the fact that it could help their game grow much faster too, which in return increases their subscription-incomes; effectively doubling the usefulness of such a co-branding for Jagex. So yes, I'm quite positive about the idea! :) Going one step further: Could a mmorpg rely on such incomes alone? You know the problem with add-income is that it is very related to the state of the economy. If things aren't going to well in the economy, the first thing companies are going to spend less money on is something they don't "neccesarily" need... And that's add-expendure. That being said, running an mmorpg that evolves solely around add-income seems a somewhat risky concept IMO. This obviously does not mean a company shouldn't try to improve it's profits by combining add-income with it's normal-business-income. ;)

Ok I read everything on first page, so excuse me if I say anything that has already been said earlier... They need F2P for the income: (I'm aware this was already written, but I just want to point out the estimates can be done by values all found on their own site: http://www.jagex.com/corporate/index.ws) RuneScape has about 2.8 million and about 20% of them are members (has always been around that figure: http://www.mmogchart.com/ if you want data on that). So we have 460K members * 5$ * 12 months = 28mil income from members. From Jagex own site we can see they have 125 employees. Now we take an estimate on their salaries (from their own figures it would be much lower), say $80,000 per employee.. Which makes a total of 10mil in salary costs. Add on to that 100 servers. Again we take a high side... 100 * $5000 a month * 12 months = 6mil server costs. This results in 12mil profit (before taxes and I'm sure there are several other overhead costs I forget / left out, but either way, they make huge profits - and they definately do not need F2P for that). You don't know how much they earn from adds: No I don't, but, again from their own site, I do know they don't make a single $ of people who don't buy products via the adds. I personally really doubt the income from adds is that high and that Jagex could exist solely from add-income though... To get the same 28mil figure as they get from subscription income, every person would have to generate $10 profit per year via the adds then. I personally know none people who ever bought something via the RuneScape adds, and considering RuneScapes average player age I really don't think the percentage of people buying anything via the adds is high. F2P is part of their business plan, it cannot be removed: Well, I totally agree that it would be desastreous if they removed F2P, though my reasoning would definately be for other reasons then add-income. Firstly, 80% of the population are F2P'ers. RuneScape would be pretty messed up if they were all removed. Not only that: P2P'ers would have to start gathering the materials they mostly let the F2P'ers get (coal, iron, etc). I'm convinced a lot of people would find the game less attractive when 80% of the players are suddenly gone. Secondly, their business plan is probably the reason for their succes. Let people play on a free version as long as they want: apparently 20% ends up subscribing and according to the income figures that generates plenty of cash. F2P 'needs' the improvements: I'm not sure why you argue RuneScape-F2P isn't balanced the way it is now. Yes it's dependant on P2P. That's no suprise though: it has been like that for years already and it greatly explains why the hourly profits for doing something in P2P are twice ore more of doing something for an hour in F2P. That F2P is dependant on P2P doesn't mean it's broken or not balanced though... It's incomplete: yes, but Jagex wants to trick people to members somehow, don't they? Everything you need on F2P can still be bought on the market. It's not like there's a huge lack of arrows in game or some other worrying issue like that. Besides that, anyone who has been on F2P for so long that they are asking for new things to do is clearly no possible future costumer and thus Jagex has little to no reason to satisfy this person's demands. Yes... Add-income. Like I said, I don't believe in that and besides that: add-income works differently then just "you looked at the add for 1000 hour" as I pointed out earlier in the post. This, however, does not necessarily mean it's absolutely unwise of Jagex to give F2P something, but the question is: is it useful or not? I personally really doubt it will have much positive effect, but I can't see it hurt either, as long as we're not adding significant *large parts. * = Therefore I do find it contraversional if you want to add a whole members skill... IMO that's untactful on Jagex side: I think the amount of extra skills members get is a very big reason why people want to become member. F2P vs P2P: Somewhat off topic, but as we can see in the first replies of this topic (and it's definately not something new: it has been like that for ages already) there is a somewhat... Hostile relation between F2P'ers and P2P'ers. Considering the amount of "F2P DESERVES SOMETHING BECAUSE WE ARE IMPORTANT FOR JAGEX TOO" posts I have seen on these boards I can partly understand that. Most F2P'ers don't ever insist on becomming P2P or buying some product via the adds anyway - so yes P2P probably does pay for a lot F2P'ers. However, despite that, rs is still the cheapest MMORPG around and P2P'ers get significant advantages, so they shouldn't complain much either. ;) Ofcourse I know your not like all the other "F2P NEEDS AN UPDATE" people ;) (hence - you barely play rs :P) and I do agree it's not totally unreasonable that F2P get's a little something every once in a while too.[/b]

There have been several people I discussed the possible consequences of POHS with, but in the end I told the same to all of them: 1) If carpentry is going to allow a relatively small group of players to make huge amounts of cash (not necessarily pure: remember the effects slayer) it will cause inflation, mainly translating into rising rare prices. 2) If carpentry is going to drain (a lot) of money, it could cause 'deflation', mainly translating into dropping rare prices. 3) If carpentry is going to be another farming-like skill with relatively small relation to the economy, it's not gonna change anything. Well *duh - that are all possible happenings* you may think now, just like my friends did :P, but hey... It's all speculating till we know how it works otherwise ;).

This whole game evolves around pointless clicking? Why do you expect money making to be different? In fact money making is the only thing you can without pointless clicking... Go merchant. They are not against it, they would just rather not see it happen :P.

Over the past 1.5 year all rares, with the exception of santa's, grew practically the same in price, that is including masks, easters, pumpkins, disks and half wines - all low end rares except santa's. Santa's nearly four-doubled more then other rares in the same time. I can do nothing else but see it as an overpricing of santa's right now or underpricing of santa's 1.5 year ago. Either way, all other rares tend to rise the same procentually over time.

So? They are higher then ever 90% of the time, because rares always go up in the long-term* ;). *providing no significant changes happen to the economy A known thing? New for me. Apart from santa's nothing really tends to 'crash' around x-mas time. If you want hard facts: yes phats started to drop at the start of december 2004 (at the 8th according to my data) and hit their rock bottom of approximately 10% lower at 23th of december, after which they started to rise again. I wouldn't really call that a 'crash' and besides that it had totally other reasons which had nothing to do with periodical fluctuation at all. If anything, I would give a warning about santa's. They do tend to drop significantly around x-mas times and IMO they have been priced too high for quite a while already.

Hm. I'm surprised tip.it, or at least the person who wrote that article, reacts so furious about Jagex' request to lay down on the quest guide while the quest just came out. I would have thought tip.it and Jagex had an ok cỏ̮̦̉peration on such matters, and that the tip.it admins would have no problem with honouring such a request in special cases. Yes, tip.it is in no way affiliated with Jagex and yes, their main goal is to serve their fans, not Jagex... But even then: cỏ̮̦̉peration of fan sites and game companies are usually good for both parties, the fan site community as well as the game company. It saves game companies a hella lot of work with good fan sites around and in return the game companies usually even promote such fan sites. Apparently I was wrong with that, and like blackrazor pointed out, it's pretty weird of a game company to 'ignore' it's largest fan site for over 4 years like that. I know I definately didn't expect such a hostile reaction on Jagex request though, but I guess it is in fact Jagex fault in the end. Over the past year I've only seeing them describe fan sites as "evil places with huge security holes that will steal your password" - I guess that closes the door for any communication between fan sites and Jagex in the first place. Hopefully Jagex will some time realise that the RuneScape fan sites are necessary to ensure the game's succes. Although I can understand their reasoning, which is something along the lines "we don't want to give part of our 'control' away to fan sites", I do think Jagex took the wrong road regarding community management for a long time already.

Talking about exaggerating ;)... Oh well I guess the article was ment a little sarcastic. It's probably more fun to read for the mods n admins too, because they (should? :P) know precisely who is who in the article.

86.. woohoo Skill total 1387 Best skill: The greatest of all... Firemaking level 99! :twisted:

Let me give an example that might clear it up for you. Let's say a blue phat costs ~70mil right now and that you can buy steel bars ~550gp ea. That means you could buy ~127K steel bars with your blue phat. However, if you would make all those steel bars into steel plates you would get 900gp per plate, or in other words, 180gp per steel bar back. This (intrinsic) value should be subtracted from the total value of the steel bar, because it has nothing to do with what people would be willing to pay for a steel bar if it didn't have 'mysterious high alch values'. So a steel bar would cost ~370gp then. The blue party hat doesn't have any mysterious high alch value, thus its price is still 70mil. Now dividing 70mil by 370gp ea, shows that you can buy ~189K steel bars with your blue phat. Your blue phat can buy nearly 50% more bars then it may seem in the first place, thus the worth / buying power of rares is actually a lot higher then it seems too. I disagree with this. If we take the example of strung yew longs (~550) + nat (~300) subtract their high alch value, we would get an "indirect" value of the strung yew long of ~80gp. If we take a bow string + yew log (~450 for both) and subtract high alch values of them (somewhere below ~100gp) that means you have to pay 350gp to buy a bow string and a yew log. Fletching them to a strung yew longbow would make you loose 270gp. But that's not true. Strung yew longs total price was 550, and the material total price was 450; fletching a bow string + yew log to a strung yew long actually makes 100gp. The conclusion we have to make is that yew logs and bow strings derive a high percentage of their value from the high alch value of the strung yew long. Regarding inflation, it is also interesting to know that in the time I estimated the total gp's ingame to three-double (from december 2004 to september this year), the total rares market four-doubled in value; this should somewhat back up the figures I gave too.

Yes, calculating the total item networth and trying to figure out what the relation of GP on real (or what EugenyG calls indirect) item value would be, is the next logical step. Sadly, it will be much tougher (impossible?) to (gu)estimate. I can't think of a reasonable way to back it up with statistics. Although I completely agree with your formula and the way networth estimates should be analysed, I do think intrinsic value (direct value) is a bit more complex then that. Yes, you subtract the intrinsic value (which is the high alch value of the good for finished goods) of finished goods (for example: strung yew long) and put that in the group of direct value and the rest in the group of indirect. But how about the yew log (and in a later stadium: unstrung yew long) and the bow string the strung yew long was made? Exactly, these items derive some of the intrinsic value of the finished good. Another interesting thing to think about is this (although it's not the case right now). There have been times when high alching finished goods was profitable (like in: you could buy a finished good+nature 100gp and alch it for 110gp). However, this also implies that the finished goods market value was negative! (100 - 110 = -10) Now if I were to make a really weird statement like I tend to do sometimes, then I would try to look for a real life "good" with a negative market value. Ironically, the only type of "good" with negative market value I can think of is chemical compost and trash. :lol: What we do can conclude is that rares are even more expensive as they may seem already. Because they have no intrinsic value, their full worth is made up by the real value, whereas the real value of other items may be anywhere from 10 - 90% of the value at which they are sold.

Yep, primadog basically said it all already.. I'm not looking at the total size of the economy, but just at the total of cash ingame. Seeing inflation is or should be nearly linear with cash creation (I'm sure people know the stories of governments "creating" money when they needed it, which in turn let to huge inflation), these numbers are very important, as we can clearly see that the inflation percentage based on "cash creation" is very high. The total value of the economy is something totally different. Rares are part of it though, because the total value of the rares market is way too large to say rares aren't a significant part of the economy. The total value of the economy definately is multiple times higher though. You can't honestly believe those two things take the same amount of time to make.

I got little more to say on the article then that the person who wrote it needs to learn the difference between "Item Worth" and "Pure Cash". Furthermore I would recommend the author to take some courses on economics, as his article makes little sense... How does 300 yew longs a day relate to 1 steel plate? How can he say that the rares market is not part of the economy while the value of that market is huge?

Hm, I think you are turning things around a bit by saying that though. Rares are priced high because there is so much gp in the economy. Furthermore, trying to estimate the GP in circulation by looking at the prices of rares is both risky and nearly 100% guesswork. You can't know for sure if the rares are currently overvalued or undervalued, you can't know how the total worth of the rares market relates to the total gp in game and you can't know how many of each rare there exist. I think reasoning the other way, trying to estimate the amount of rares around given an estimate on the total gp in game, is a lot safer. I guess I didn't really mention it, but obviously I never ment the 455bil estimate to be exact. I would say an error percentage of 10% is nothing but reasonable, making the estimate like 400 - 500bil. And ofcourse a lot of minor facts could add up to significant amount. Don't forget it goes two ways too.. There are both loads of small gp creators and small gp drains. I can't say much more on this: if you want to make any estimates at all you'll have to simplify the reality in a way that it hopefully doesn't give totally different results from the reality. Or rares / richness may just be a more important part of the game then a lot of people are willing to admit. ;) Easy calculations show that high alchers doesn't make money though.. Strung yew longs are sold for ~500gp each, while nats are sold for ~325gp each. That would mean it costs ~825gp to alch a yew longbow, while it alchs for 768gp. So the money gotten from the high alching goes the yew cutter, the bow string maker and the nat maker, and the high alcher even pays a little extra for the (fast) exp he gains. Materials probably stay low because there is a certain consistency between the amount of pure gp one can create / hour, how much you can earn from doing skills / hour, and how much extra exp buying materials gives you / hour. As all these 3 factors are somewhat constant and considering the idea that the game is not only about skills, this sounds like a good reason why inflation doesn't effect material prices.

Very good point, PDJ. To be honest I didn't even think about the possibility that all the people with less then 48 smithing would have been able to supply enough bars for higher level smiths. Quickly adding the exp of rank 200K to rank 1000K and subtracting the exp needed for level 30, adds up to an impressive 33bil exp though. Even if only a third of that was gotten by smelting steel bars for the top 200K smithers then your calculation of 47bil extra would be true. Personally I don't think the effect is that big though. Let's see if I can come up with some good arguements why... The supply side of the smithing market: I believe that most players who are new to the game don't really sell their materials but use them for their own skills. I know that I did when I first played this game. The demand side of the smithing market: With smithing exp costing around ~10gp / exp point I don't think that many smithers (especially the ones below like 75 smithing) bought much, if anything at all, of their experience by only buying bars. Calculating their total exp (rank 6K - 200K) and subtracting exp needed for level 48 they were already responsible for 33bil of the 46bil exp gotten after steel plate smithing. Assuming half of the people with above 75 smithing got all their exp by buying bars that would mean some ~12bil gp more created then I estimated. As I never considered iron smelting & smithing either I think we can forget about that too. My end conclusion is that I don't think it is good to assume much of the exp of the top #200K smithers was gotten by smithing bars smelted by smithers ranked #200K+. Sure, a lot of people with like level 75+ smithing* probably got most of their exp by buying bars, but my thought is that most of these bars were made by the lower leveled players in the first #200K ranked smithers, still keeping my estimate accurate and true. *Note that they only make up for 1/4th of the exp gotten after steel plate smithing though, in the worst case scenario this could lead to 12bil gp counted too less. Thanks for your well-considered and interesting view though, Pker Dude Jr. :)

Situation wouldn't change, besides, most skills do cost money already and people still train them. But the total production will not lower because of higher item prices, so nor will the gp generation lower. Newer players always think prices have rise when they play the game longer. This is just *not* true. The prices on materials have not increased in ages. Prices on coal when I started were 200gp each (2.75 years ago) it was 220 per right before runescape 2, and was 180 per shortly after. Ever since rs2 it has been somewhere in the range of 150 - 180gp. You remembering them being 100gp each when you started was just the prices you got when selling 100 coal. Yes ofcourse, 100 coal goes at a considerably lower price - that has nothing to do with prices increasing, but with you looking at bulk prices now, instead of small amounts ;). Depends on what the market price of the drag full helm and boots would be ;). I can't see them be 50mil, so I guess no ;).

Well as you already said about most of your factors, they are probably all very small, thus it probably doesn't do too much harm for the estimate to ignore them. Besides it's impossible to determine how much gold is lost by people dying in a place where practically nobody comes. Luckily there are both small money drains and generators that I left out so that may even out a bit. One of the factors I do find interesting that you named is drain 4. It may be a reasonable factor but is really hard to determine. Thinking about it, you should *not* exclude any money from players that come back in 6 months or so though. And taking into consideration that people who quit oftenly buy rares before they leave, the amount of pure gp on 'permantely quitted accounts' is probably not that high, but everything that is left could be put under the section 'gp banned by jagex', because, from an economical stance, that's exactly the same. And I can also reason a different way and say that the money created by 'permanentely quitted accounts' isn't count either as they don't show up on highscores. ;) Hm I don't think many people really hoard large amounts of gold and never! spend it. I'm sure most of the 455bil estimate will, most of the time, be laying around in people's bank and not be spend, but that's not the point of the estimate. Yes, rs has (huge) inflation. The weird thing about it, compared to real life, is that it only leads to higher prices of rare items, while everything else tends to stay at the same price.

Usually much less, but the most pure gp I ever had was around 600mil. Gp only deflates, I prefer rares ;). I think that may change a little bit given that since late RSC / early RS2 many higher level smiths made knives and arrowheads out of their bars. I'm thinking that a fair amount of that XP may have been gained making rune armor as well. True. But note that I didn't count any exp the top smithers got above 98 smithing and that mith bars give nearly twice the gp / exp, while I didn't consider them at all. Seeing how quite a few smithers do use mith bars, my thought was that not considering them would make up for the assumption that all the exp gotten was by smithing steel plates. The same is true for fletching. I didn't take arrow makers into consideration, but neither did I do something with the fact that people make magic longs too. Well I put those in the group of gp drained by expensive items bought in a shop. But from what I heard crystal bows aren't too popular. Thanks for the positive reactions, I was affraid it would be little boring or something, but luckily most of you seem to like it :).

Something interesting I would like to add here is that I did similiar calculations before, about 2 months ago and somewhere around december 2004. My estimates were respectively ~350bil and ~150bil at those times. This means that, if my estimates are right, between december 2004 and july this year, approximately 1bil gp entered the economy each day. And comparing the current estimate to the one of about two months ago it would be even more like ~1.5bil gp / day now. Now you might wonder, isn't ~1.5bil gp / day a little much? Roughly I think we can say there are ~60-70K players online simultaneously on average. This translates to about 1.6mil 'player hours' a day. So to reach the ~1.5bil estimate, every hour a player spends on this game, he should (on average) introduce 1K more gp then that he drains from the economy. That doesn't sound too impossible and unlikely. :)