Duke_Freedom

A (more sophisticated) trading system itself can't be responsible for changing the fundamental (read: theoretical, based on perfect market assumptions) equilibrium prices at all. However, due to the more efficient trading possibilities provided by a better trading system, the actual market prices will be going more towards their fundamental equilibriums. That is what is currently happening with various previously hard-to-sell-in-bulk items.

The issues I see with the Grand Exchange: - Lack of Flexibility. 5% price range is simply too small. I don't want to go as far as to urge for complete freedom of deciding the price on items, as there are some good arguements against that, but something like 10% or even 20% would do the Grand Exchange nothing but good in my opinion. - Lack of Liquidity. Being able to put up only 2 offers as free player or 6 as member is really not much. Purely on the argument of liquidity I believe this really should be increased. - Lack of Transparency. Currently users can't know at what price people are willing to buy or sell at all, nor can you know how much. Some basic information would be rather useful. - Adaptive behavior of the Grand Exchange. According to various points raised throughout the tons of GE threads, it seems the adaptive system of Jagex market value price doesn't work entirely correct (understatement? I have no experience with it, sorry). Allowing for larger price ranges probably solves that issue already, however. If not then Jagex might want to take a look into it as I'm sure there are quite reliable methods for doing this right all around. I can see some technical problems and considerations for Jagex on the lack of Liquidity and Transparency.

No. A = There are people who drive cars B = People who use drugs are breaking the law Some people who use drugs (B) also drive cars (A) Arguing fallacy: some B do A --> A breaks the law A = There are people who RWIT B = People who scam lead to people quiting Some people who scam (B) also RWIT (A) Arguing fallacy: some B do A --> A leads to people quiting The discussion here fails because we can't get beyond trivial things like this. IMO it is a shame that for some reason you saw the need to change the whole debate to discussing what the scientific value of my articles is, as you believe me linking to them was "authorative", even though I linked to them so that people could read the more elaborated arguments behind my thoughts as well as see some numerical evidence supporting my views. I also find it humorous how you claim to have made 8-9 "major" points now, since we barely disagreed on anything related to the topic. In fact if I reread things, the only 3 points you made that were open for discussion were: 1) The analogy. I argued it. I think we were done with that. 2) How you are disturbed with me linking to various of my articles and how I cannot do that, because you don't consider them to be scientific enough. 3) Some more comments on the massivity of flames in this thread. I did found this quote which I didn't address earlier: A bubble collapse has happened at the start of rs2 during which rares prices lost half of their value within 2 months. Another one happened december 2004 with santa's when they were overhyped for christmas - they lost 40% of their value in a month time. Rare-wide bubble mid 2005, most rares loosing 40% of their value within 2 weeks time, half wines never recovered. End 2006, decrease of 30% of most rares in one month. More recently, some rares had lost 30% of their value during the panic-anticipation of the GE update. So yeah. In overall it's quite likely to happen some time, but those who are affraid of that still lost out of a 10000% increase in 4 years time. I'm not sure whether that was directed at me, but I don't claim its negation - as should be clear by the factual info above - as the bubble bet you are willing to take is merely a short-term effect. Back in the days I'd have add that on long-term rares will always recovered from that. However, nowadays I am careful with making strong long-term predictions anymore. Rares have gotten in a stagnation period one year ago, IMO based mainly on much lower population growth as you could have read in one of the articles I linked to. Add to that the various updates that effect(ed) rares negatively. I still remain slightly positive on rares on long-term, if player population does continue to at least grow at this low rate.

I believe you missed my point. You claim a lot of people quit the game over scamming, botting, etc and you use that to justify your arguement that a lot of people quit the game because of RWT. Don't you see the how wrong that is at all? Don't put words in my mouth. I never stated that anywhere, I have just pointed out that you are rejecting my research without any good reason, probably because it does not fit in your line of thought. How can I respond to someone who states that my research "might" be biased, without providing any reasons why. You might want to take another look at the graph again. It shows 3 actual data points and exponential interpolation and extrapolation. :roll: There is nothing more to discuss. If you want it so badly, call the graphs astounding empirical evidence.

Sony's experiment allowed transfering of characters from disabled servers to enabled servers, but not back. Which is a logical argumentation fallacy as I already pointed out in my previous post and you then agreed with me. Make up your mind and stop arguing that ALL RWT'ers are bad because they either bot, scam or duel cheat. People who do any of that already break other rules and people quit because they break those other rules, not because they break ONLY the RWT rule. You should know better. I claim that all you do is talk the talk, oftenly without any backing, be it numerical, theory or observation. Actually you seem to admit that yourself by saying that all you do is "philosophical speculating". In that case there would be nothing to discuss. Oh and I couldn't care less for your education. I have mine and at least I don't need to mention it to gain some (again logically false) authority from it. I find it ironic how all people I have debated with whom disagree on some point with me see the need to mention that they have some kind of education - a little more confidence in one's own intellectual ability would do you guys great. Education means an ability to absorb knowledge out of books, it does not proove an ability to philosophate about practical issues. Most theories learned during education use extremely idealized assumptions that rarely, if ever, hold in practice. I'm saying you might not know what you are talking about and that I think you might start to look a lot like the average politician with that statement you just made. You just don't stop. It is your choice whether you want to go against all the astounding emperical evidence, theories and actual observations to continue to believe in your own opinion. It just means that you aren't open minded IMO and therefore I see no use in arguing about it. Besides, I have never said inflation / money supply was all that there is to explain the growth in rare prices on the long-term. I've always named population growth and loss of rares due to high-alching or banning as well. And there are many more minor factors involved. My math is just fine, thanks. Anything else? I only make one assumption which is that RuneScape is similiar to Everquest.

Actually, I doubt making RWIT within the rules will change much to the price of RS gold. I disagree wholeheartedly, but it's not really worth arguing. Indeed it is not worth arguing. Actual research done by Sony agrees with me. Too bad for you. Ofcourse I expect you to state that Sony's research is just as much cabbage as mine or how RuneScape and Everquest are different games while there is no fundamental difference between the two at all. I have yet to see even one person really quit the game over RWT. You're making a baseless claim there, especially as RWT is rampant as is. According to your statement people would already quit massively over, which is clearly not happening. And to say the least, comparing someone quiting a game he plays for fun versus people dying is stretching things into a ridiculous area. Sadly that is merely your opinion. I don't see any predictions in it that didn't come true, but I'm really not interested in arguing about it here and with you. Says the person who posted: Instead of only critizing my work, perhaps you should do some research yourself before you make all kinds of baseless claims. At least all my research has actual backing using actual numbers. Science is about making premises. Again I'm not interested in discussing any of this further with you, considering the hostile attitude you have regarding about everything I write and all research that I have done. If you don't believe the numbers I came up with to be objective or accurate than that is your problem and then we have nothing to discuss about - I actually explained how I calculated everything and what the premises were, so the bias you talk about does not exist, no matter how much you'd want it. Nah. You seem to belong in the group of people who continously critizes others without ever contributing anything useful themself. Despite that, you think that they can wave away all arguements and research done without having any field experience or practical observation yourself.

Just a small correction:

Actually... Pretty much everything Fey Warrior talks about is a result of the black market aspect. Allowing it the way Sony did gets rid of all those issues in an instant. Black markets have always attracted more serious crime when the money involved gets serious and when the rule-enforcers blow at actually enforcing rules, as is the case with RWT. The only thing IGE shows is the huge hypocrisy of game companies. They don't even dare to take up a lawsuit against the company - and the main reason behind that is that they know they'll take a significant risk that they will actually loose such a case, which would then serve as example for many RWT cases. Game companies close their eyes for the real crime and only deal with the small fish that they can handle and whom are generally insignificant in the larger picture. The player population is so blind that they can't even see through all of this.

RWIT is not illegal, but against Jagex rules, which are of very little value in actual courts. People still don't get the difference. Except that RWIT has no negative effects on the society at large. People are just brainwashed to think it does. Read the more extensive article on RWIT that I wrote on that while actually considering it objectively, something you somehow seem to accuse me of. Which is an argumentation fallacy if you use it to explain why RWIT is immoral. Actually, I doubt making RWIT within the rules will change much to the price of RS gold. It is not. It means your defintion of "a game" and "real world" are being diluted so far that you can't even understand the difference between an act that is quite harmless (RWIT) versus one that actually leads to the death of many people (drugs). Again read another of my articles that I wrote here at tip.it. The amount of practical evidence is astounding, and I'm not going to argue about this point here. The stagnation certainly accompanies a change in inflation if you know where to look. I looked into it and found out population growth (which is related to inflation, perhaps in a bit more complex way) is significantly lower nowadays. Population growth and money supply growth are the main drivers behind the development of rare prices, as I have always claimed. Nice thought. Except that rares prices didn't go down when construction came out... :lol: Do I have a suitable explanation for that? No. Edit: Actually I do have a theory on that. Something along the lines of: while construction in general costs money and drains money, it also allowed for some massive and extremely profitable merchanting at the time, which may have allowed some formerly "poor" people to climb up the ladder at light speed, which in turn created an enormous new demand for rares. People don't say famous real life paintings that cost (tens of) millions or special golden coin that was sold for over $7.5 million are price bubbels. That factor has gotten far more important throughout the years, yes. I am not surprised you take it up for qeltar, because I can recall having similiar discussions with you, although I believe they were quite a bit more civilized. Perhaps look at all the personal flames and subtle offenses he makes throughout his posts, before you make such overhasted conclusions. Erm? I handled his arguements point by point and showed them all to be wrong. Read his reaction on my arguements. All he comes up with is that he doesn't play other games, that I come up with false arguements, that he doesn't care about my arguements and that he thinks he can wave them away based on his limited practical experience and observations. No, indeed that is not debating properly at all. Thus there is no use in continuing such a "discussion". Comming up with random numbers that you pulled out of the air doesn't help your point of view to get any credit at all. Who wanted to discuss on a scientific level again? Wow. You are more or less completely reiterating the whole point here, which is that there is no issue with rares at all, except of the jealousy / hate campagins that people run against them for whatever personal agenda they have. ... Another problem people continously seem to face is a huge lack of factual knowledge. Jagex has always hated rares inherently for what they represent, as can be figured out my favourite 2-3+ year old quote of Jagex: As you can see it is completely unrelated to RWT. Jagex has left rares alone for the 5 years that I have been playing this game. I have no reason to think that they will now suddenly "solve" a "problem" that does not even "exist". Jagex long entered the phase "if we act like it does not exist, it does not disturb us anymore". All these rare-haters would do a great job if they assumed that ideology from Jagex. Jagex are certainly on a holy crusade against RWT, I pointed that out on many threads already as well. Ofcourse, IMO it is based on wrong assumptions and invalid reasoning.

You don't know what you are talking about at all and simply wave away my arguements because of your lack of actual knowledge, which you even point out yourself this time in various sentences: As Hohto indirectly said already, you are completely blinded by your own opinion and simply ignore ALL the FACTS and actual economic theories that completely disagree with your arguements. Yup. I'm done. Edit: Nice post Hohto. You described every aspect in a very comprehensible way and I obviously agree with every single bit of it.

Sorry, your analogy is absurd. 1. Yes I can hand-wave it away by pointing out that it is extremely subjective. Everyone can buy and sell rares. And it is no more an unfair advantage than older players generally already have over newer players with their higher levels and more game experience. As well that newer players have the "unfair" advantage of being able to level MUCH faster than older players could back in the days. If you realize the game is about FUN, you'll realize that all these "unfair" arguements are generally rubbish. The game progresses, adapts and changes. These games are not called "persistent Virtual Worlds" for no reason. The game environment changes continously from the time it starts, its economy included. Discontinued items are no exception and over long periods of time they seem to track the inflation / money supply growth quite neatly. It is not an unfair advantage to keep up with the inflation. 2. You have such a class structure in every MMORPG, except that more useful, rare (under the normal definition of the word as in "very uncommon") items take their place in other games. Rares are not responsible for this class structure. It's the difference in play style: hard-core players and normal players. 3. Again you fall back to your subjective notion of "unhealthy obsession with earning money" and you want to force YOUR playing style on others. People play the game for different reasons. Some people like merchanting and accumulating virtual wealth. Let them be. And again it has nothing to do with discontinued items, considering it happens in all other MMORPGs as well. 4. Apparently you have never calculated how much money you need to level various skills the fastest (= most expensive) way possible. And again, scamming and RWT are not caused by discontinued items for, yeah you guessed it, the simple reason that it happens in all other MMORPGs as well, of which most / many don't have discontinued items in their game at all. So much for your arguements. If it would be relevant for anything at all, it would be to give me some authority on what RMT buyers actually use their gold for. I can guarantee you it doesn't flow into rares.

That's quite interesting considering I recall you saying something along the following lines somewhere else: Which is in complete contradiction with above statement. You want to say you do not? I'm fairly sure you are on a journey to convince everyone that "rares are a huge problem" that "should be solved" by "removing rares" somehow. Yes, that IS a hate campaign. Yeah, bringing up irrelevant historic facts about me is useful. :roll: Lying that it is the first time you mention that is interesting as well. Concluding it all by calling it "relevant" is even worse. I've been having various arguments with 'anti-rares' people during the last 4 years... And yet, I still have to see ANY arguement against rares that doesn't begins with or ends with "it's an unfair advantage". I still don't get your arguement here though. Pointing out that a significant portion of the uninformed RuneScape population does not agree with my notion that rares are not an issue does not defend your point at all. In fact it even breaks it down as you apparently think you can derive authority from it. Now I challenge you to actually explain what you consider to be the "problem" with rares, without using any of your subjective hatred for whatever reason and to do so within a few sentences. If you are able to do that then we can actually continue to argue about something useful. Nah. The "rares are evil" arguement carries over to ANY thread that discusses something that is related to rares, mainly because of the hate campaigns that some people run against them.

Well, I think there is. And so do many other people. Many people don't know what they are talking about. I'm sure you can't even explain what the problem is. You just dislike a part of the game that doesn't effect you at all. Big deal, get over it and stop whining. Oh you couldn't come with anything better than that again... :roll:

Except that there is no problem and thus nothing to "eventually" deal with. Go play the game your own way and you won't be effected it, according to all your own statements that you seem to spam around about everywhere to get more people to join you in your anti-rares hate-campaign. :roll: :lol:... Shows how much you know. They are not.

Theoretically, yes. In practice the botting will always remain a cat-and-mice game that neither party will ever win indefinitely though. Jagex dealt some death-blows through the history but on overall I would say the botters had the upper-hand most of the time. In the end game companies "can" limit botting significantly by requiring RL identification, as is done in various asian MMORPGs already.

Will be replaced by GE merchanting? :P

Effect of this update on the games economy: nihil to non-existant. Still a good update though and seems to be implemented quite neatly, although I think some variables will require some fine-tuning.

Interesting... No multiplayer online economy. No, but perhaps RWIT and chinese farmers / bots if they go a bit further even.

Well it was just a reply on a thread anyway, choose one of the 100 topics about GE / Duelling. :P :lol: I personally still don't expect Jagex to actually proceed with disallowing player to player trading... But right now I also think Jagex has become rather unpredictable and in the larger scheme of it all the likelihood that they will actually do it with the changes they have done to duelling has grown significantly... I guess we'll know soon enough anyway.

I already wrote about that 2 days ago:

You have a lot of guts here, hehe. :) Just know you did well, done what I should have. Respect. ;) And obviously I agree completely. :P ~Duke Freedom

Read: "We declared war on RWIT". They are not targetting the source anyway. The source is described in the RWIT article I have written, which you can find in my sig. The source is the ridiculous massive grinding required in these games. Jagex still hasn't learned a bit. I've said it on another thread about the duel change already: if they actually have the guts, Jagex is going to take away player to player trading in their holy crusade against RWIT. Trading will be replaced by the GE in that case. So if communist Jagex is serious, you better hold you breath... They are willing to destroy their whole game over a non-issue. Good call. :lol: Jagex themself even forgot about this game being about fun - as have most people.

Heck why I said in another topic that communist Jagex next step in trying to get rid of RWIT is to remove trading. With the GE people will have the necessary ability to trade all items. Since they'll actually be tracking market prices for items, they will be able to easily detect extremes that may be RWIT trades. It is quite funny that many so-called "honest" players are now thinking about ways to circumvent game mechanics that were designed to be this way. It's clear that Jagex doesn't want people to stake millions anymore and yet all people can think of are ways to circumvent that. It's quite ironic, since the same people condemn the so-called "cheats" who essentially don't do anything different. :lol:

It is nothing too special, various other games track player prices on items and adjust ingame NPC prices on it, but it is surprising to see Jagex actually doing is. They are seriously attempting to change their stone-age trading system to a high tech capitalistic economy in one month. :lol: Except that it's still communistic since people aren't even able to do with their money what they want - they can't even stake more than 3,000 gp anymore, which you almost already have when you leave tutorial island... Yeah, Jagex lost their mind. I was positively surprised when they came up with the GE, but now I can only laugh about the ridiculous idea's they have about how their game works and how everyone should be playing it. Read my lips: soon they will disable person to person trading to remove RWIT for definite. ;) That is, if they are smart enough to think of that option and actually have the guts to do it.

Stakers have always been quite a big players in the Rares Market - not too surprising rares have been going down so much on this. Even though I have no clue of the current sentiment, with all the panic going on the drop may last a little longer yet, especially with people being all so negative about the GE. In the end, all of this is futile to bring down the rares prices permanently. They will rebound to new heights sooner or later anyway. Although Jagex does continously add new negative price factors for rares, which is partly why they haven't been increasing all that much over the last year anymore and perhaps might not do much in the future as well. Plus, there are other factors, like stagnating population growth and lower money growth. Excellent news! Thanks for the update. :) It is quite sad that some people actually enjoy it if other players gameplay is disturbed, while they claim that such gameplay doesn't effect them at all. Yeah, sad. Especially when the same hypocrits call for people to take on a "nicer attitude" in the game. :roll: Edit: Cross quoting the following from another thread makes it even 10 times worse what you said.