Tip.It Times Presents: The Price is Right! Or is it?

[somerville]

How come it never occurs to theorists that because there are more people playing RS than ever before, and longer than ever. More raw materials are being produced just in the daily play of the game.

 

When RS2 was introduced, mining was made simpler than on classic. SO, there became more and more coal miners, then more and more rune miners.

 

Also, A player starting today has an easier time leveling skills. how i wish i could have leveled my combat WITH slayer from the beginning.

 

Most players today can't imagine what it was like to be a rune miner with only 2 rune rocks and a total of 9 worlds to hop to. You think competition for raw materials is hard now? you don't know what real competition is. Every resource in RS is hundreds of times easier to collect because of hundreds of worlds and dozens of added areas with theose resources.

[FinalChaotic]

i dont know who the editr is but they should be an economist, freakin genious =D>

[ilovecuttingyews]

VERY good read. There were many great points. Have you tried walking from Lumby to Draynor on f2p? Or stood in front of the cabbage patch? All I can say is that the macros are taking over all of Runescape. I really hate it! But the facts are, without them, everything would cost alot more.

[Lessi]

On the Official Runescape Forums, a player made a suggestion that would make all raw materials untradeable. This would totally stop autoing and all skilling businesses would die. But just think how few players would have 99 in a skill. I know this is not totally on the subject but it is just a thought to think about.

 

 

 

I saw this suggestion.

 

If they do this, autoers would stop playing!

 

But also lots of normal players will quit, if they can't sell there raw fish or logs how can they make money then. not a good idea.

 

 

 

On topic: Its a nice article :)

[silver24-7]

i dont know who the editr is but they should be an economist, freakin genious =D>

 

 

 

Well I don't really agree with him on one main point.

 

The skill cape rush.

 

Along with the skill cape rush came the rush to BUY logs, fish, hides, ores and bars to get skills as firemaking, fletching, cooking, crafting and smithing to a skill cape lvl. And in my opinion there are far more people wanting to spend a bunch of money on fish, ores, logs, etc. to buy a skill to lvl 99 then to spend ages picking at iron rocks to egt 99 mining. Therefore this hasn't caused as much a rise in supply as it caused a rise in demand. So instead the prices should be going up quickly, then why are they declining? you ask. Well, that's because of the autoers, there are that much autoers that they overdo the amount of demand caused by the skill capes with their huge amounts of automated supply.

 

 

 

Ohw and I strongly disagree on his "jagex selling gp" point as well, if jagex would start selling gp, which would appear magically without existing ingame before the sale, inflation would go crazy, and all of our money would become worthless. Not even mentioning the fact that noone would want to play a game in which the creators use and SHARE their superior admin powers with other players for economic benefits.

 

 

 

Well, that's just how I think about it :P

 

 

 

...Silver

[Hounded]

Does it really take a full article to point out the fact that the more of an item there is the less it is worth?

 

 

 

I enjoyed the analogy though... didn't use the common economist term of "widgets". Sick of those darn widgets from my economics courses...

 

 

 

Some more thought and commons sense would have come in handy in the writing of this though. ;)

 

 

 

A for effort... D for input. =)

 

 

 

~Dave

[D. V. Devnull]

Okay, I've read the article, seen the responses thus far, and am having very mixed feelings. :? (And a definite hate of all who would say "bye bye" to f2p! :x ...) Here's my thoughts on the issue, additional points covered:

 

 

 

 

 

From what I have seen on RuneScape with all the recent updates:

 

1.) Material Prices have only gone up. (Example: 150 gp ea for Coal instead of 100 gp ea.)

 

 

 

2.) 'Finished Item' and 'Treasure Trail Item' Prices have only dropped and thoroughly destabilized. (Example: Price for rune items has crunched. I barely got out from under that rock!)

 

 

 

3.) Some markets have totally collapsed. (Example: I can't find people who I can sell beads to anymore!)

 

 

 

4.) Trade Market Damaged, Autoers not affected much at all. (Example: The 'Pure Ess' Update. ~ Who does not hate that?)

 

 

 

 

 

There are basically a few theoretical solutions to this:

 

1.) Expand F2P bank space from 60 spaces to 72 spaces.

 

(My Favorite Solution, support thread link in my signature. 8-) ...)

 

(This will result in more jobs given to 'Honest F2Ps' by P2Ps because the 'Honest F2Ps' will become more able to handle it. See the footnote below for my definition of an 'Honest F2P'.)

 

 

 

2.) Kill F2P and go P2P-only.

 

(Worst Solution, and definitely not in Jagex's best interest.)

 

(The real result of this will be the total and complete death of RuneScape. Everyone started out as F2P, and many would lose interest from their friends who can not be P2P being unable to remain on RuneScape whatsoever. :( ...)

 

 

 

3.) Use Shockwave Applets as the medium for RuneScape to run on.

 

(Dream-pipe solution... :lol: ...)

 

(I have no idea of what is involved for a switch like that, but I would hope that it could destroy some of the problems that Jagex is having with Autoers. :-k )

 

 

 

4.) Wipe out trading of items.

 

(Second-Worst Solution, and definitely not in Jagex's best interest.)

 

(The only thing that could possibly happen would be a serious drop in the number of people who play RuneScape. There are players who can't get by, who play the game legally and correctly, without the Trade Market as it 'exists'/'is'/'has been'/'will be'. There would be a serious uproar caused by a change like that to the game. Their money is sometimes constantly low, and it is their 'life blood' that they survive on.)

 

 

 

5.) Allow gp buying.

 

(Third-Worst Solution, and definitely not in Jagex's best interest.)

 

(Jagex is trying to keep their hands out of the game. This would go against that policy, and would eventually lead to the downfall of RuneScape through an in-game economy that would turn into a duplicate of something out in Asia. :( ...)

 

 

 

 

 

Now, please keep in mind, these are just what I can see, as well as my analysis of other's thoughts. I'm only human, so please, no flaming me. I'm just trying to take a stab-shot at keeping RuneScape alive, and fix some of the major problems, in part, by pointing out the flaws that allowed some of the problems to rise and flourish. :-s

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To "The Editor": I know you meant well with this article, and it did make an interesting read, but you might want to double-check facts occasionally. Thanks in advance, and keep the articles coming. :wink:

 

 

 

 

 

See you all at the next article, and for any arguments that call my attention.

 

 

 

~Mr. D. V. Devnull

 

 

 

 

 

(Footnote: 'Honest F2P' = Those F2Ps who really play the game fully and are NOT doing pures/macroing...)

[Nightpolice]

good read, very nice on he\she linked auto'ers and the black market the years of probihtion in the USA

 

 

 

Yes, I agree.

 

 

 

BUT I do not think that it will have the same outcome, autoers with no doubt continue until Jagex finds an efficient way of locating and deleting the accounts faster than new accounts can be made and leveled to a profitable skill level.

[Aneron]

I think a GP market would hurt more than help. Everybody who used to get it illegally would simply get it without the risk of getting banned now. The same problems would still be there, except now you don't get in trouble (and macroers are out of business :P). It would also cause horrid inflation... :-k

 

 

 

The Editor is part-way correct about materials - 99 hunters have driven the prices of pre-processed materials up, and the processed version down (raw sharks up, cooked sharks down. Ummm... that's the only convenient example I can come up with, but oh well...)

[estarayella]

ok are we sure the editor isnt actually two people?

 

 

 

s/he starts off with some pretty decent points about prices coming down( with the exception being the point about rares staying stable, because they really are dropping but i'll get to that later)

 

 

 

But then s/he goes off into a rant about autoers... and a suggestion jagex sells us gold?!? lets all wave goodbye to our hard earned gp lets just buy it instead! they day that happens, as was said by someone else on this board, is the day i leave.

 

 

 

but as for my own opinions as to why the prices are falling? well in very easy terms i think a lot of it is due to third age stuff. everyone who had the expensive rares is now selling to get the newest, best, and rare items in the game, and they are willing to sell low to get it... i never thought id see the day i saw an easter egg go for just under 8 mil... they used to be hard to get for 11 mil.

 

 

 

basically the sellers want to sell faster... and buyers want to buy for less, sellers end up sacrificing a part of their profit to sell faster.... and this works with everything from rares to sharks.

 

 

 

you cant deny that autoers do help oversupply ,which does help buyers buy their raw materials for less but i dont think its fair to say autoers caused it. also with regards to skill capes, idk much since i dont have one, but i always assumed if you wanted something bad enough you paid more :roll:

 

 

 

but anyways enough of my opinions about money, back to the article... lots of potential, but went unrealized as it continues. very inconsistent and nowhere near as good as some of the others in the times

[blouinator]

Do cooks fish their sharks, or buy them?

 

I got 20mil cooking xp and never ever bought raw fish to cook

 

 

 

rares have also went down not up

 

 

 

also i agree with the macro thing they need to go. Jagex needs to ban them all! The gold farmers should be illegal also!

[lemontail]

runescape economics is a most interesting and rewarding subject, as proven by this article.

 

 

 

One of the reasons I like runescape is that it mirrors the real world economy , therefore I need to make a living in it.

[Nero]

The only things that are not going down in price are rares.

 

 

 

The Editor clearly hasn't followed the development of rares price throughout the last ~7 months. :lol:

 

 

 

However there's another group of people contributing to the overall downward price trend: Skill cape hunters.

 

 

 

I don't get the arguement why skill capes lead to a decrease in the price of material prices if it has any effect on the prices of materials at all. 'Skill cape hunters' need masses of specific materials to train the 'buyable' skills (fast). For the non-buyable skills, gathering those specific materials is usually not the fastest way of training, hence supply caused by skill cape hunters would be smaller then demand caused by skill cape hunters if you ask me --> I'd say skill capes rather lead to an increase in the prices of material prices. In fact, looking at the material prices used in production I believe they actually rose, rather then dropped.

 

 

 

What Duke said.

[Azurechaos]

Good read.

 

 

 

As for Duke's comment on the rares, it's probably just some fluctuation.

 

 

 

The rares will ALWAYS go up in price.

[autoersbane]

I think there could be a way that jagex could stop the autoers and that is to up the power of player mods.

 

What they would do is the most trusted of the current mods and some staff to have the power to "Freeze" or keep an bot logged in, but unable to aquire new items or discard old ones. This would mean that it would appear they are working, but the trick would be on them for a change.

 

This next one would be core staff only, but if they saw those groups of bots, just ban them out right, as well as a temporay ban on anyone who had traded with them, a zero tollerance policy :notalk:. Also this would block all comunication to that Ip adress.

 

While it is commendable they have so much forgiveness, but these are trying times and this is the only way I feel.

 

 

 

But on the idea of makeing raws untradeable, I love it, but I have a twist,

 

On the next big update, make it so. Leave it like this for about a month, and then make a note of who is still on mambers and what not.

 

Then once they think most of the autoers have left, change it back, and make a note of who comes back, and watch them closely. That would make pinpointing the bots much easyer. :thumbsup:

[RockRebel]

have seen the price of swordies dancing around a bit lately, some ppl offering 400gp for them, others only offer 150 ( probably Merchants)

 

 

 

Isnt the general price of swordies 250gp-350gp? :wall:

[attackyomom]

Skill capes only increased prices... yew logs maybe 6 months ago cost around 270 gp ea when people heard news of capes instantly 300+ again. Green dhides/blue hides greens went up from 1400ish area to 1600 right before update then to around 1500-1600 after skill cape update. Skill capes only increase raw prices because people need huge quantities of them. Also like many said rare prices have decreased past few months.

[Dairith]

Personally, I think the problem may be that RuneScape has to many players. :? So many nonmembers are playing, and producing goods that members buy for very low prices, then turn around and make a least some profit from them, and to compete members must lower their prices also. If RuneScape had fewer players, less people would be pumping out raw resources, and prices for raw resources would increase. I'm NOT saying that we need to get rid of a lot of players somehow, but I do think that this is a major reason for the decrease in prices. I think a good solution would be a new skill that costs a lot of money, like construction, to drain enough money to cause some inflation, because without it, the economy is going down the tubes :|

 

 

 

Most players today can't imagine what it was like to be a rune miner with only 2 rune rocks and a total of 9 worlds to hop to. You think competition for raw materials is hard now? you don't know what real competition is. Every resource in RS is hundreds of times easier to collect because of hundreds of worlds and dozens of added areas with theose resources.

 

 

 

You're completely right.

[malo2]

that was definetly a good article, except for the part about Jagex selling rs gold for cheap prices. That would eliminate the point of stopping macros, if you're going to sell gold to people, then why not just let the macros do it? The unfairness in people with money being able to buy their way to the top is the whole reason theres a rule against it.

 

 

 

The best way to solve it is by putting in more in-game features, like adding a lot more random events, but as you keep solving those events, you will keep getting less of them, so that the fair players don't get bothered way too much. Also they could put some lvl 10 aggressive guards behind Varrock castle that would attack all players below lvl 20 (lvl 3 skillers can get membership \), or they could have solved the rune essence problem by making the Rune Mysteries quest harder, yet more rewarding. They can solve the rune shop macros problem by adding an obstacle before the shop, could be something stupid like the witch saying "show me your skills before I hand over such power" and then place in a random event type animation obstacle that a macro could not pass.

 

 

 

Comments for me?

 

 

 

Most players today can't imagine what it was like to be a rune miner with only 2 rune rocks and a total of 9 worlds to hop to. You think competition for raw materials is hard now? you don't know what real competition is. Every resource in RS is hundreds of times easier to collect because of hundreds of worlds and dozens of added areas with these resources.

how many rune miners existed back then? as resource collectors rise, so do the manufacturers, and the alchers, and the eaters (lol), potters, and so on. If you go to seers you can almost always see several people alching away thousands of bows, if it weren't for macros, the supply and demand would be balanced out a lot more. Do you realize how fast raw materials are being eaten up by people looking towards high stats? the only reason the raw material supply is overpowering this massive demand is because of autoers.

 

 

 

If all macros one day stopped moving, then the prices of raw materials would jump instantly, yet at the same time a lot of fair players would look at collection as a means to make money, this would then reduce manufacturers and pretty much balance things out. Raising stats would become harder, making money would be a lot more realistic, ect... the economy would simply do better in multiple ways.

[mujtaba]

that was definetly a good article, except for the part about Jagex selling rs gold for cheap prices. That would eliminate the point of stopping macros, if you're going to sell gold to people, then why not just let the macros do it? The unfairness in people with money being able to buy their way to the top is the whole reason theres a rule against it.

 

 

 

The best way to solve it is by putting in more in-game features, like adding a lot more random events, but as you keep solving those events, you will keep getting less of them, so that the fair players don't get bothered way too much. Also they could put some lvl 10 aggressive guards behind Varrock castle that would attack all players below lvl 20 (lvl 3 skillers can get membership \), or they could have solved the rune essence problem by making the Rune Mysteries quest harder, yet more rewarding. They can solve the rune shop macros problem by adding an obstacle before the shop, could be something stupid like the witch saying "show me your skills before I hand over such power" and then place in a random event type animation obstacle that a macro could not pass.

 

 

 

Comments for me?

 

 

 

- autoers automatically detect the random events and solve them... no???

 

- the owner of the account could've finished the rune mysteries quest and then just let the char auto

 

- and dont macros just stay in the shop screen when buying and just click the things when the restock??? (corect me if i am wrong)

 

**i dont know too much about autos**

[malo2]

that was definetly a good article, except for the part about Jagex selling rs gold for cheap prices. That would eliminate the point of stopping macros, if you're going to sell gold to people, then why not just let the macros do it? The unfairness in people with money being able to buy their way to the top is the whole reason theres a rule against it.

 

 

 

The best way to solve it is by putting in more in-game features, like adding a lot more random events, but as you keep solving those events, you will keep getting less of them, so that the fair players don't get bothered way too much. Also they could put some lvl 10 aggressive guards behind Varrock castle that would attack all players below lvl 20 (lvl 3 skillers can get membership \), or they could have solved the rune essence problem by making the Rune Mysteries quest harder, yet more rewarding. They can solve the rune shop macros problem by adding an obstacle before the shop, could be something stupid like the witch saying "show me your skills before I hand over such power" and then place in a random event type animation obstacle that a macro could not pass.

 

 

 

Comments for me?

 

 

 

- autoers automatically detect the random events and solve them... no???

 

- the owner of the account could've finished the rune mysteries quest and then just let the char auto

 

- and dont macros just stay in the shop screen when buying and just click the things when the restock??? (corect me if i am wrong)

 

**i dont know too much about autos**

 

1. Unless you're talking about offensive randoms (golems, trolls, ect..) then no, things like genies follow you all the way and teleport you anyway if they cant reach you, as far as i know, and how are you going to get rid of a mysterious box?

 

 

 

2. How much time do you think that person will spend finishing a two hour long quest thousands of times over? accounts get banned after all, the current rune mysteries quest is not a problem since its so short, but if it were lets say two hours long, it would run an ess macro out of business.

 

 

 

3. I was thinking about that, but i I always see those macros running back and forth to the shop. Make a buying/selling random?

[Feralmonkey]

While very thought out I have to say that I personally feel that the OP is both right and wrong.

 

Decrease in price is never really a bad thing, this is due to the fact that newer players need things too. The drop in the price of many items is due to the increased amounts of said items (Glories for example), this means that many newr players will have access to them. This is a natural consiquence of gaming, this is the reason there are so many updates. Something gets old... need something new!

 

Autoing and macroing are a problem, because they add items to the game that normally take more time at the keyboard to obtain, allowing many players to get items/experience/gold much 'quicker' then other players. We all agree on that! There is little way to combat this because as soon as someone comes up with a way to combat a macro, someone comes up with a better macro. Or the addition ruins the game for everyone (Anyone remember fatigue? lol). I get annoyed at the auto-log feature. Sometimes it takes more the 30 seconds to fish a spot!

 

Now the most brilliant move by Jagex was the addition of Construction a skill that takes money out of the economy to level (54 million gold to get to level 99 if you chop your own trees). Credit sinks, as they are called, are the usual way games can stabilize an economy though the truth is NO game created that has a free economy is free of inflation that is just fact.

[darthvox]

Instead of having a player pay for GP, why not intorduce an entirely new currency only usable on members worlds, which can only be obtained from buying using real $$$?

 

 

 

As for autoers, Jagex could place multiple permanment invincible guards that can only attack lvl 3-5 players in every mining, woodcutting, fishing etc. location. First they ask simple questions like the ones the Mysterious old man asks you. If you get them right, they would let you do your business, but if you get them wrong, you get attacked. Thus, the autoers are caught up and die, while the non autoers can skill peacefully, if not run away and come back again if they get the questions wrong by mistake.

[Ezz]

We need Macgyver :-k

 

 

 

Very good read, it really got me thinking.

[m1cha34l]

This has caused quite a stir on the official RS forums aswell (the dropping prices not our article) It seems EVERYONE is worrried about it. Worry guys!!! :?