Duke_Freedom

The first few days, I think I'll agree the merchants set the price. They are not directly the ones setting the price though - after all they have to buy the item of non-merchants first. So actually the first non-merchants who get the items the first few days set the price of the item. When the "it's a new item!" hype is over, the market (supply and demand ;)) will decide the price :). Usually (you can almost say always) the price of the first few days is halved or more, because the initial price was way too high.

Why do people pay tons for 'cool' cars in real life? A car is a car. The only real 'use' it has is that it brings you from location A to location B. Whether it looks nice or not shouldn't really matter, and as we have a max speed limit on the roads, having a car that can go faster has no use either. Yet, there are enough people who buy the faster and better looking cars anyway, because they like to drive in such a 'cool' car. Now we are at it, why do you even play RuneScape actually? What use does it have? Ok, I'm sure you already understand where I'm going to... Using 'the item doesn't have an use' arguement isn't valid. People pay these prices for them, so they are worth that. There's no way you can reason otherwise. There are 4 groups of people who own rares: 1) Collectors. They love collecting useless items. Comparable to stamp or coin collectors in real life. 2) Show offs. They just buy the rares to show off, show rich they are and brag about it. You can say the same about most of the people who buy expensive cars in real life. 3) Merchants. They only own them to immediately sell them for more. 4) Investors. They buy up rares with the sole purpose to resell in the future, when they went up in price. Were paintings of famous artist worth anything when those artists were still living? In most cases - no. I want to repeat: I'm not fully against the removal of the rares. The only valid reason for removing them is the one Jagex uses though. They said that rares weren't ment to work like this and were ment to be "free gifts". Just like you yourself, Jagex probably intended them to be a sign of how long someone has been playing. Making something that's a sign of how long you've been playing tradable doesn't make sense to me though, but Jagex must have looked over it back in the days... Hey - I said it isn't easy ;). I must admit I don't have a good solution. And I'm quite convinced it doesn't exists either. Any solution that somehow compensates the ones who bought the rares, will have a major impact on the economy; mainly because - although people like to deny it - the total value of the rares market is insanely high. But, to have something new to discuss :), what do you think about disks of returning and half wines? They are not like holiday items. They are rare because Jagex took away the way you could make them. The only valid arguement Jagex can have against them is that they never intended to have the concept of a rare in their game at all...

Too bad they can only effect it with propaganda, not with actual hoarding. Noone ever noticed my "silent" hoard of yellow party hats, which I did to test the truth. Prices didn't react on my buying nor reacted on my selling. So in fact, there are more party hats around then people think.

Prayer. Since the beginning of rs2 I gained like 6 or 7 prayer levels thanks to the genie :P.

Hmm. They choose a perfect time to manipulate them then... Party hats were about to rise heavily on their own effort IMO. Hate it how those manipulators force it to go even faster though - makes prices unstable and always backfires in the form of a price drop or a period of price stagnation.

The steel bars have a purpose related to raising legit RS skills. The phats do not. That's fact, not opinion. Point is that merchanting is merchanting. In both cases the merchant provides a service: he saves you time. And whether he does it with an useless item or an item that does have an use doesn't really matter. Besides, most players do find these rares very 'useful' or at least 'attractive' to have, because otherwise they wouldn't be worth anything in the first place. ;) That you don't agree with most people on that is an opinion. It's not a fact that rares are 'useless', because if that was true, their market price would be zero. Your right, an opinion ain't a fact. :P I'm just trying to make you realise it's a overreaction to remove everyone's rares without compensation. Like I said in my other post: I'm convinced that the biggest part of the rares is in hands of people who weren't around back in those days. These people actually paid millions upon millions for their rares. What are you going to say to those people when they see their millions turn into ashes? When you want to change something you should be objective and view the situation from different perspectives - failing in doing so leads to a solution ("just remove the rares") that will never make almost everyone agree with you. If that's your best solution (and since you discuss about it you seem to find this an important matter) then your not taking the merchant / players who bought the rares at high prices situation into account. You either don't care or forgot about their situation - but if it's such an 'important' matter I can't really believe you forgot it. So you don't care? But I'm sure you are smart enough to understand that not caring about someone unfairly and unwillingly loosing millions can only lead me to the conclusion of jealousy - I definately wouldn't call that "unfounded". Yes, you will continue to deny this; until you realise it's actually true - and when you realise that, you'll probably come up with a better, fairer solution, because jealousy is not one of your character traits and you still want to get rid of the rares an other way then. :) After all my disagreeing with you, you might think I'm fully against the removal of rares - while I'm not. Although I do think the whole "rare market" is a very interesting economical concept in the game, I can understand why people, including Jagex, would like to get rid of it. Comming up with a solution that satisfies everyone is difficult though. Most solutions would mess up the game's economy too much or would only stop the rise in the rares prices, but not get rid of the high prices attached to the rares.

He ment to say it doesn't take any "pointlessly click here for 100 times" skill. Merchanting does take some real skills - although I must say merchanting nowadays is much easier and less skill-involving then it used to be. Better merchants (read: merchants with better trading tactics) make more money though. Merchanting is providing a service. Services take time, which means money too. Oh god, are people still pointing to the ages ago that they were dropped for fun? You can safely say 99% of the rares around are in hands of people who were never around during these drops. It's just a worthless arguement to say that the merchants NOWADAYS are still taking advantage of something that happened YEARS ago. Heck - myself I even started AFTER all tradable rare drops. Then stop complaining about them. People who say they don't want a party hat, but who so actively support taking them out of the economy seem to have a nasty character trait to me: jealousy. Ofcourse you'll deny this anyway though. Why precisely is it unfair? What's unfair about buying a party hat for 1mil and reselling it for 1.1mil. Secondly I don't think you have any problems with the merchanting of rares. Merchanting is done with ANY and EVERY material. You buy up loads of steel bars 500gp ea and resell 600gp ea - that's merchanting, and it's considered fair by everyone. No, I think you mean you have 'problems' with the investing in rares, or in other words: "making money while your asleep". It is not true this wouldn't be possible if rares didn't exist though. What you don't realise is that the 'hoarding' you don't like would probably happen when rares didn't exist too. People would try to do it with (raw) materials and they would most likely succeed doing so; as the amount of money going on in the rares market is definately enough to *temporary bring up the price of some material. *temporary: several months should be considered temporary here. Also, like someone already said, if rares are removed, the 'inflation' that happens to the rares will move to the raw materials. Especially back in the days, when there were almost no other expensive items in the game apart from rares, this would have been true. But common, if you want to get rid of rares anyway, come with a reasonable solution. Just saying "remove them" without giving the ones who own them any compensation just shows you are jealous about the money people made - that has nothing to do with any form of fairness.

Well, I don't agree that the official forums made the margins of items smaller. In fact, margins of things like p hats have never been as big as they are nowadays before, although that might be caused by the weak stability of p hats nowadays. I think the difference between margins nowadays compared to about one and a half year ago is that there now are more players, thus also more merchants all in the same markets: this leads to smaller margins. These smaller margins don't necessarily mean less profit though, as the general player base grew a lot too, so merchants nowadays just sell MORE of an item for a little less profit per item, getting the same profit results as before. As to your suggestion: I've always thought about something among that lines. Many other mmorpgs have a auction-type of system, and thats basically what you promote. I would take your suggestion a little further and actually let trades take place for pure gp via that system.

Heh, although I like your reasoning behind that, amid, I don't think you can really compare apples with pears just like that :P. The raw materials are identical: 10 times an amount of 50K xp = 500K xp. While ten times an engine still ain't a car - the parts of a car aren't identical. There is a little difference between that. ;) Doesn't mean your observation was very wrong though. In the end, the key concept behind merchanting is that it's a service which saves time for other people - and your example pointed that out well.

Can't, I would miss loads of good deals then :P. Yeah, I would love larger friends- and ignorelists, but I don't think Jagex will make them larger.

Merchants - we should actually speak of investors here - buy up rares, which obviously contributes to (faster) price rises of rares. Still - they only invest because the concept of rares is that they will go up, and that concept is caused by the normal players, not by the investors themself; thus the investors are not the real cause of the price rises if you analyse it closely. Prices of rares can quite easily drop. It happens whenever all investor type of merchants loose faith in the prices / when the concept of the rares changes. If Jagex ever introduces such a money drain that more money is drained then the money that enters the economy, then the rares might see a large drop again. In fact, we have seen a small depression of 3 months a year ago; the party hat prices halved then.

Since when is there a "you must play the game like this" rule with mmorpgs? The idea is that you can play any way you want... That most people play one way, doesn't mean it's *wrong* to play differently. Besides, you say the game is about becomming one of the best - isn't becomming the richest practically the same concept? Just because we have no written highscores for that, doesn't mean we can't compete on that, does it? Having 99 in any skills shows nothing, besides that you pointlessly clicked somewhere for hours and hours. :roll: Let's not start a "this is pointless, no that is pointless" discussion, as the end conclusion will be that the whole game is pointless anyway. As 100% of the time, the high leveled players just spend a lot of hours getting those skills ;). Opposite to common believe: merchants are not the cause of the price increases of rares. The underlying economical concept of the 'rares' forces them to always go up in price over time.

Like vmser already said - (mass) production isn't the problem in real life: the supply side of the market isn't the problem. In your example, the company that makes the t-shirts can make another 1000 t-shirts in no time, so if someone wants to buy 1000 t-shirts of them (which saves them a lot time, compared to when they would have to sell the t-shirts one by one), they are willing to sell for a little lower price / t-shirt. Rs is different because with almost all materials the rule goes the other way around - everyone wants the materials: the demand side of the market isn't the problem. This makes for the fact that bulk materials always go for a higher price / product. Still, there are markets in rs that do show the 'normal' type of market. Weapons and armour are cheaper in bulk amount. These items are more comparable with real life products too: you only need one of them, just like you only need one car, etc. Same goes for rare items generally, although they may go for higher price in bulk sometimes, depending on the current market sentiment. Now there's still one question left: "why do people pay so much for bulk materials; or in other words: why do they pay so much to gain experience, while they will never make back all that money with the skill.?" In real life people pay for education (comparable to investing in skills in rs) too. However, in real life people generally do that to earn more money later on. Thus, in real life, the real reason why people pay for education is to gain more money in the end. In rs people pay for skills for the heck of getting their skills up. Getting 99 prayer has cost 400 - 500mil for a long time (it's probably a bit cheaper today, but the exact amount doesn't really matter). They'll never make all that money back with such a high skill in prayer. However, they don't mind: in rs people don't invest in skills to gain more gp later on; no they invest in skills to have higher skills. Thus the difference between rs and rl: rs is skill-orientated, rl is cash-orientated.

Somewhere from 2 - 4 years is what I give rs.. That should be the time, the 'new generation' mmorpgs will come... With much more dynamic content then found in any mmo's now.

SELL TO ME! I got 24 of them I believe. :lol:

This was in RSC a week ago when people were trading in a bank and they putted up like 2 blue p hats and you put up 12mil and you would only end up with 1 blue hat. Or so I heard, not sure.

Maybe to ask the way back to p2p when they are lost :lol:.

Yea, that works, and otherwise just alch them yourself and you'll basicly get 900gp for the plate (buying nats 300 ea).

Well.. I think prices went up because many people rather mine coal then iron ore somehow. Another good reason might be that you can smelt iron ore with 100% success rate now (with ring of forging, 140 ores each ring), which makes iron ore a very cheap way to level smithing. I was in the yew log market and I saw it happening, there was a huge overproduction of yew logs lately and that could only lead to a (big) price decrease. However, the lowest price of a yew log is limited due to it's high alch value: High alch value of yew longbow = 768gp Cost of a nature = 300gp Cost of a bowstring = 130gp Cost of a yew log at break even = 768gp - 300 - 130 = 338gp.. Prices can't drop much further anymore, unless the overproduction of yew logs is so badly that fletching becomes a profitable skill. My guess is that prices will stay stable around 350gp per log (in bulk), at most 50gp less or more, but it also depends on what happens to the prices of nature runes and bowstrings. You can only guess.. You don't know if carpentry will use logs or the planks that can be found in the wildy, and how many. We don't know if they'll use tiles and nails. As long as we don't know how the skill will work we can't say anything useful on what it will cause to the prices of certain items.

It's not.. Quite profitable that way to make steel bars and then sell them. Skills cost money, it has been that way for a long time already. Only need to call one thing.. The law of supply and demand. Rich people don't mine, and people also buy ores because they are making money another way. For example: a woodcutter might hate mining but love smithing anyway.. He cuts logs and sell them too buy ores. You made that sound like you think that's a positive thing.. Do you want the economy to collapse or something? :lol:

Faith isn't knowing without proof... Faith is believing without proof. Believing without proof is ignoring logical reasoning.

Yup, Militaris, that's mainly all there's to know about party hats. What I want to add is that the party hats is what the RuneScape economy keeps going. Without the party hats there would be a lot of inflation in raw materials, or it could result in the total deflation of gp, which could end in that people wouldn't even accept gp as a payment anymore. All of this is caused by Jagex, who didn't realise the necessacity (sp?) of big money-drains. Now about the coal. Coal has been his stable price of 200gp per ore for very long.. It was only short before the RS2-update that coal certs dropped to 900 (180 per ore). This price drop continued in RS2, and it is possible to buy even lower then 180 ea now. I don't expect to see their prices go up any time soon yet (they can't drop much either by the way), especially not because the steel bar price somehow seemed to lost his stability of 600gp per bar a bit too. Inflation doesn't influence ores and bars that much anyway (at least with items like party hats ingame).. Like I said: ores and bars have been the price they are now for over a year already.. In fact they dropped a bit even. Another discussion in this board says "smithing is obsolete", which is true.. Smithing has become a skill people only level to get a higher skill total, and (luckely for the economy) people are willing to pay a big price for it. The prices of smithing-materials are based on the high alch price of the items you smith, plus some extra money, as people are willing to pay for smithing experience. This price per smithing exp is about 11gp, if you buy steel bars at 600gp each. What I found interesting to note is that iron ore worked the opposite of coal. Iron ore have been 100gp per ore very long, but right before the RS2 update (just like the coal) they changed in price. Instead of going down like the coal did, they went up to 120gp per ore :?. They kept that price since RS2 and dropped slightly again since then. And as last the rune ores.. I really don't get why their price is up to 13K each per ore now. Somehow rune smithers like smithing rune without much profit :?.

Um watch out with your words lol. Party hats just have a price drop of 30 - 50% behind them...

I understand your point, but all gods people talk about are bound to some religion, therefore I can say it's unlikely that those gods those religions talk about exist. Religion is doubtful --> What religions say is doubtful --> Some religion says that god exists --> It's doubtful that this god this religion talks about exists.

Hehe 8-) Yea, they'll rise from now on, unless something happens that can influence the party hat market in a negative way again (more trail items / dragon stuff? although people might have learned something from the current trail items). Without Jagex interferring in the economy, the prices will go up to their old ones soon again. Would love it if RuneScape would have some build-in political system, that would be interesting (although... knowing Jagex it would be a vague system :P). Yes very true too.