Duke_Freedom

Wow Jagex finally realized there is something more besides their arbitrarily made up high-alch values: mysterious "player values". :lol: Oh well apparently they are actually even going to track average market values of prices now.

People aren't charity organizations who reward nice people. The only reason people offer discounts is to sell their items faster, because they sell for a lower price. Buyers always seek the cheapest sale possible, and 10gp off on a bulk sale of 20K coal still means you have to pay 200K gp less. The main reason is that most buyers need bulk materials. Buying up items in small portions is an inconvenience and costs time (and thus money). Buyers will want to re-earn that money by buying smaller amounts for less money per item. They will most likely proceed to sell slightly below market price because they still want to get rid of it (fast). The total amount of sales of 1 law rune for 1,000 is extremely insigificant in comparison to the total amount of sales of bulk law runes. Hence, no effect at all. Furthermore, one can even argue that the occassional sales of 1 law rune for 1,000 is already reflected in the bulk price of law runes, because those who sell the 1 law runes generally bought bulk laws. No, it will mostly likely drive prices down instead. The way such goods are sold currently goes like this: Skiller: Makes 100 dragonhide bodies sells to merchant for 4500 each because that saves him valuable time. Merchant: Upmarks the dragonhide bodies to 6500 (an upmark of 2000) each due to the time involved in selling the dragonhide bodies individually. In the new system the skiller will be putting the 100 dragonhide bodies in the GE himself. As a result, the actual market price on the GE will be somewhere between 4500 - 6500 each instead, which is lower than the widely considered market price of 6500 before. Sorry to say, but your conclusions are rather invalid in my opinion.

It is important to note that glory ammy's are an item that goes for less when sold in bulk... So what do you think that the GE is going to do about it? Yes, it's going to make it easier to sell bulk. What does that mean for the price? Exactly, it is going to be lower. I would interpret the fact that these items are an annoyance to sell rather as an arguement that their inefficient market price is too high and any improvement in the ability to sell those items will then have to come from a lower price.

Well that's the same notion for efficiency that I use, so no misunderstanding there. Yes, I understand that is the point, but I still don't get where the buying/selling inefficiency comes from. Because equilibriums would argue that if buying AND producing the item is as efficient as you claim (at the current prices!), many people would be trying to buy the items and as such people will know that such items are wanted. I still don't see a suitable explanation for why this is not the case. Edit: Basically you are still suggesting a market inefficiency on certain items, where both potential buyers as well as potential sellers don't know the existance of. In that case, I still don't see how the Grand Exchange could contribute to it's popularity since the issue lies in the fact that people don't know about the item and not in the fact that it is so difficult to buy / sell the item.

Solidus, you are indeed right about the unnecessary use of price elasticity as well as what price elasticity is. In essence price elasticity is nothing but the slope (i.e. derivative) of the price graph of the demand or the supply. As I pointed it out in my posts, qeltar used it wrongly to "explain" a price change (caused by psychology or the GE) as you also noted. I believe qeltar mentioned it to point out that prices can't continue to fall in price forever ("crash"), because demand will rise and supply will fall (significantly) if prices fall. The percentual changes can be calculated with the use of the price elasticity of demand and supply, however that is not really relevant since we don't have any of those numbers anyway. Reason why I called it a theoretical concept. You're mistaken, IMO. It's very efficient to produce a lot of items that are currently not produced only because they cannot be easily sold. I don't think we'll be going to agree on this point, but I think it's nice to summarize it anyway... The problem we're getting into here is that we are observing two things: - There are few people willing to make such items (lack of bulk supply) - There are few people willing to buy such items (lack of bulk demand) Now we both agree on those statements being true, however our approaches to it are different: - qeltar: there are few people "aware" of the existance of the items and thus few people buy them (demand side) what in turn results in few people making them (supply side) - me: there is little production due to it being inefficient to produce those items (supply side) what in turn results in few people buying them, because it is practically impossible to buy them in bulk (demand side) To be honest I find qeltar's arguements extremely contradictionary (quoting the relevant statements): 1) You state that it is very efficient to produce the items. 2) You also state that it is hard to find people willing to make them. These two statements are completely contradictionary. You claim that it is "very efficient" to produce the items, but yet anyone who wants to buy them can't find anyone who is willing to produce them. You neglect to explain why noone is willing to produce them, while it is supposively "very efficient" to do so. Essentially you are arguing that there's huge market inefficiency in a market that has been in an equilibrium for ages. Sorry, but you are defying various economic laws here.

I understand the point and agree with it partly, but I don't expect that there will "suddenly" be a huge market for an item that didn't have a market before. I just don't see why you think that people will "suddenly" be starting to make masses of pineapples, potatoes, etc? If that is going to happen then why aren't people making masses of them already? Yes, you say because there is a lack of demand - but I do have to point out that lack of demand is caused mostly by a lack of supply. If people could more easily buy bulks of pineapples then I'm sure there would be much more demand as well - i.e. supply creates demand with these items (this is related to the fact that people want to buy items in bulk). Therefore I still think the problem lies mainly in the production of such items. It is simply not efficient to produce them - and the GE won't change that. Low-level herbs and addy boots may be a different story going off on what you say - as that are apparently items that are gathered (for "free") but never sold due the inefficiency of selling them. I'm sure the market on such items will become larger, but I doubt it will be all that impressive. Furthermore, the price on such items will certainly become (much) lower and items like addy boots are bound to fall down to their high alch values in near to no time (if they aren't already), because there is probably an oversupply of them. Either way, the liquidity on all those "unpopular" items will still improve significantly and that will be handy for anyone buying/selling any of them. Transaction fees themself create market inefficiency, however. I have actually played a game that had a stock market like trading system and transaction fees (only selling fees) of 5%. The price ranges on items were oftenly still large enough to be "merchantable". Especially if you add in the time merchanting I talked about. Well if those people who fill in that "job" enjoy it, I don't really see the issue, but I guess agree with the conclusion that a more sophisticated trading system (i.e. the GE) is preferred. From the point of view of "realism" or "human interaction" one may argue that the current stone-age trading system is "better" though. :P Those are people with a lot of experience in RS merchanting (which doesn't necessarily require much knowledge of economics at all), not with RS markets. Anyway, what I ment is that theory and practice don't always agree. Many economic theories make all kind of idealized assumptions that simply don't hold at all or don't hold completely in practice. Throughout the years I've seen people who said to have all kinds of economic educations claim the weirdest things that were simply not true. And I'm fairly sure I have seen you make various of such claims as well. I believe you posted at the other thread that according to you the whole rares market in RS doesn't even represent 1% of all items in the game. Without proof or any calculations, I may add. Price elasticity shows what a certain change in price is expected to mean for the demand of the item, according to the demand curve. Psychologic behaviour is not accounted for at all. Sure the factors I mentioned "apply" to / change the demand curve and thus the price elasticity, but that is something completely different than saying the price elasticity actually explains the price fluctuations. Psychology explains them, not economics. And I was talking more about the rares market there anyway. Raw material markets are generally much more stable due to the intrinsic / practical value matter I already mentioned in the previous post. However, the GE may (temporarily) distort the supply & demand of more items and as such temporary market madness could arise. Personally, I still don't really expect all that much to happen though.

I'm sure you could have written some things a bit shorter, but oh well, overall I agree on most of it. I still don't think the GE will actually have such a big impact on the prices of most items though. Sure, it will probably effect items that were not really traded before. Those markets generally aren't so large though and usually that is not because the trading process is inefficient, but because the gathering process is inefficient in itself. So I guess we may see several, relatively useless, TT items drop in value and several raw materials that were previously difficult to get in masses rise in price. That may in turn effect the prices of other items, but really, I don't expect the overall effect to be all that impressive. This update will also further assert that runite items will be trading more towards their intrinsic (high alch) value. These merchants profit from the natural price ranges that exist on all items at all times, no matter how efficient the market is. The price ranges will be smaller as a result of the GE update, but the reachable market will be MUCH wider and will compensate partly for the smaller price ranges. This is going to depend completely on the way the GE is implemented exactly. I actually expect this type of merchanting to suffer most, since the GE will probably make it MUCH easier to buy the preferred amount in various smaller quanities - hence largely removing the "upmark" for bulk sales. Apart from the two types you describe, the GE will probably mean the rise of what I will loosely call the "time-gap merchant". Prices on items vary throughout the day, most succesful discontinued item merchants have noticed that long before already. As a result of the GE this effect may now be more visible in raw materials and other items as well. Merchants will make use of this new arbitrage opportunity to profit. Again, it depends on how the GE will work exactly, but from what I have observed in other MMOG's that have auction systems, the time-gap merchanting is a very profitable business and one that most former merchants will be going into. Yup. I think the best merchants will actually profit more from the change as a result of the initial inability of other merchants to adapt to the new conditions. You are triviliazing former merchanting too far here and it goes towards jealousy. The statement that these merchants "were never good for the game to begin with" is extremely opinionated as well and I strongly disagree. Furthermore, it is rather contradictionary with what you said earlier as well: that many of these merchants existed to fill the market inefficienty involved in the current system.

Apparently you have forgotten you told me the real truth there then. :lol: Nah I'm out of here, posting in this thread is not contributing to anything and there's no discussion in here at all anyway... Clearly it has been a while ago that I last argued with blatantly ethicless merchants, I forgot it always ended up in childish yes-no games where actual facts are turned around completely: :lol: Edit: I don't know at all what you are talking about.

A lot to reply to... :roll: There's a HUGE distinction between real life trading and price manipulation (which is scamming in an advanced form). I don't want to be associated with the latter at all and never did anything like that. If you are unable to see the distinction between the two then you know nothing about ethics. I also want to point out I was on the SELLER side of real life trading. I still fail to see how people can name that as "cheating" or "advantage" in this game. All my gps were made by playing the game. If anything my "rulebreaking" led to a disadvantage in the game - and my real life is none of your business. :roll: That arguement simply ignores the 1000's of buyers too. Though I can say it sounds plausible that materials may see a minor set back when it is implemented, but I don't expect it to be huge. The way it was done in the past (with lying and fake bidding) was illegal and has always gone under rule 2: item scamming. That was completely based on fake bidding. Half wines never recovered from it. You told me different things in private once, which I can't go into detail here due to tip.it rules, but which does point out the real hypocrisy around the big mouth you dare to have against me. Furthermore, I have better things to do then having personal vendetta against certain individuals. Stop thinking so high about yourself. I have (had) issues with most other merchants because pretty much none of them really care about ethics and only about money making. There's nothing personal about that. Nothing slow about it. The rises were fast and the drops too. Reason why most didn't profit from it at all. And there was a lot of fake bidding around to support the price rises. Considering I kept rare price data when I was active I'm fairly sure that never happened so extreme. Bank value says nothing about economic expertise. You don't necessarily need to have brains to make 1000's of millions in this game, as I have always said. It is always easier to attack someone on things that are widely known and try to discreditize him on that. The sad part is that most people who see the need to continously attack me on such a weak point oftenly nearly always aren't clean themselves. The public is so naive. I have always said 90% of the top players in this game are not legit - even before I was banned. I know way too much about way too many so-called "respected" people.

I want to add that I agree with qeltar that the exact effect of the Grand Exchange will still completely depend on the EXACT implementation of the Grand Exchange, as I have been pointing out in most posts I made on it already. For example if the Grand Exchange has some sort of transaction fee like 1% of the value, many people will already evade it to sell their expensive rares (1% on a 500 mil item is a whooping 5 mil....). Not to imagine when transaction fees are even higher.

People way overestimate the effect of the grand exchange. Ego is a merchant who apparently sold his rares or is going to do so and now wants rares to drop as a result of the grand exchange, while there is no reason why they should drop due to the exchange. The arguements he comes up with are extremely contradictionary as well. He argues that people will be selling of their banks to raise money and that merchants will sell rares to buy the cheap materials on the market, however, he completely forgets all the money raised from the bank sales by "normal players" is quite likely to be going INTO rares - thus rather an argument why rares are going to rise. Again, I don't think the effect of the grand exchange will reach all that far anyway. IF there will be any effect at all, it will mostly be based on nonsense speculation that the update will have an effect. Wishful thinking. It won't make price manipulating any easier at all either. Individuals aren't able to influence prices by just buying one specific item, the markets are far too large for that. The only reason why price manipulating worked in the past is because the people involved were spreading false rumours and lies (which is against the rules) to create a market hype surrounding one rare. Buying up 50 - 100 phats of one colour alone has no effect at all.

They could if they wanted, yes. Perhaps they might once the game is over its peak - raw material prices are generally bound to go up then, as seen in many other games before. Although Jagex already partially prevented that from ever happening by having unlimited amounts of various key resources for sale in NPC shops. But even then I still don't think Jagex will ever interfer with RS' economy so directly - they generally seem to have a hands-off mentality regarding the player market - which is only good. On the other hand, they do try to regulate a lot of prices with their artificial high-alch values and unlimited NPC resources...

First, let me say I don't really believe in all the conspiracy idea's about Jagex and rares. I think they just try to ignore them these days, realizing that they have become a vital and/or popular part of their game and that they figured out leaving them alone may perhaps be the best. That said, Jagex has enough hatred against rares to actually unleash rares and the grand exchange would certainly offer an anonymous (assuming the grand exchange will be anonymous, which is not clear at this moment) and easy way to do that. If done well, they could let the prices go down gradually or stay constant or whatever they'd want without having noticeable effects on the economy or the rares themselves. But again, I don't really believe in that. Only thing I could see happen is that people who have hoarded specific rares may have an easier time selling of their huge stacks of rares (if they want), which may have a minor negative effect on the prices. Overall I don't really expect rare prices to be influenced much by the grand exchange though, at least not on correct fundamental reasons, and since most rares have been on the rise lately they will probably simply continue with that.

:lol: I'm going for option C anyway. I'm confident that Jagex reads more then you think. ;)

I don't know why you are suggesting that I made it look like I did nothing nor do I know why you also suggest that I "eventually" twisted my words around to admit. That is completely untrue and everyone who was around at the time knows it is. It would be appreciated that when people refer to something, they actually have their facts straight or better even: not refer to it at all if it is not of any relevance. Now if everyone could leave it at that - thanks. ~Duke Freedom

Let's just say you already have a nickname that fits with being a politician... I wouldn't want to be a politician in nowadays so-called "democratic" systems anyway. Plus, I'd be making way too many enemies there anyway, so that doesn't sound like it's good for my own health either.

Party hats are actually at a high point right now. Yup. Masks and santas are not by the way.

Historically speaking there isn't much to say about that, but in general, halloween masks haven't been influenced much by halloween comming up or being over. Without a time horizon they can go to anything. Even with, it is pretty much impossible to predict. Perhaps. You may have been better off speculating in santa's in anticipation of a possible overexaggerate christmas rise again. But other then that - a fall back in the prices of masks after halloween is not so normal so perhaps they'll rise back up soon enough too. Not that I am in touch with the market enough to make any statements on that. On the long-term it doesn't differ much at all.

I'm fairly sure that would still go under rule 6 then, although it may be a bit weird form of rule 6... "Rule 6 - Account Sharing/Trading Each account should only be used by ONE person."

Jagex seems to have a neck for backstabbing former loyal player mods. It's a shame this has to happen to you though. :( One upside, it makes quiting RS much easier...

It doesn't really matter all that much whether it will be a sale system / auction system (which is how I referred to it for simplicity) or an actual bid/ask exchange system. The latter would IMO, for transparency AND convenience, be preferred, so if it's really going to be that, even more kudos to Jagex. Well, since it says nothing about it, why assume you won't have to pay anything. ;) We'll just have to await and see how the system will work exactly when it is implemented. Exactly - without all the nasty spamming, bumping and price manipulative posts. :)

There is nothing "factual" about that it will be harder to merchant nor that there will be less profit to make for them. If a "merchant" his main income is to be derived from ripping off people who have a bad understanding of the actual prices then he doesn't fall under my notion of "good" merchants at all. Indeed, this update will make their money making business much more difficult. I don't think anyone should be caring too much about that whatsoever though. As I said: profit margins are bound to become smaller (which is negative for merchants), but market reach will be MUCH wider (which is positive for merchants as turnover / liquidity improves). But then again, a lot still remains subject to the EXACT workings of the exchange and it is far too early to conclude any definite impacts yet.

I think I can safely say my most fun time merchanting in RS was during the 3-4 month period at the start of RS2 that the prices of all rares were dropping and eventually all lost 50% of their value. There were few merchants around on the market at the time and none of them really knew how to trade in such a market. I thanked quite a bit of my fortune from making various good deals during that time and investing all my cash when the bottom price level was reached... :P To be honest I don't really expect the Fally W2 and Varrock W1 markets to completely disappear due to this update, although the amount of people there may diminish significantly. But even that will depend quite a bit on how the Grand Exchange will work exactly - if there will be any "transaction" fees like 1% of the value that is sold then it is already a fact that the more expensive items and rares won't be sold in there (at least not by merchants). Judging from another game I played, which had some sort of exchange system too, I would say it only makes a merchants life easier and more convenient. It also improves the total market merchants can reach, since the system will be working world wide as well as server wide. Perhaps it will make material trading for the richer merchants much more interesting again, as the past few years most of them only seemed to trade rares anymore. Anyway, I don't think it will be all that hard for most merchants to adapt to the upcomming trading system. People around here are way too afraid of changes and enhancements to the game's mechanics, while they should actually be excited about them.

I'm fairly sure you told my some other secrets in private too back in the days, which was worse than manipulating prices.. ;) Anyway, the only thing I find ironic here is that you think you can judge me like that, whilst admitting having manipulated prices on a significant scale. But let's not get into stupid fights over this here shall we... I don't believe one single bit you really care about that rule anyway. As for your wealth, I'm quite sure there are various people ingame with more than that, but I suppose you can probably claim the title of 'richest with proof and still playing'. :P Many top stakers and merchants have been banned over the past year(s).

*In general, a different and more complex trading system versus an easier and more primitive trading system does not change anything about the prices of products at all. The only thing it changes is market efficiency and, thus, trading margins and profit margins for merchants. The way I read the announcement I understood that people would be allowed to put buy & sell ORDERS into the system, but it is not completely clear from the announcement, so I guess we have to await the exact mechanics of the Grand Exchange system. I don't really believe it matters all that much whether it allows only sell orders or buy AND sell orders. * = I suppose there may be some rare exceptions for a variety of reasons though