GE - Give it time...

[NukeMarine]

The major growing pain with the GE is it turned many low trade items now into bulk items.

 

 

 

Ex: I buy a law rune for 1k gp. In bulk, yeah, 300 each, but the 1k is the "goto your bank and get me a rune, I'm in a hurry" price. Many, many items are just not sold in bulk due to it being tedious, so the prices are single sell prices which in RS generally means its higher (I say generally, because in many cases, bulk items sell for a higher price). Anyway, you have two common prices for Law: 1k and 300.

 

 

 

Imagine if Jagex based the price of law runes SOLELY off the 1k trades? Insanity, yes. Because that price was based off annoyance. With the GE, any item is no longer an annoyance. Any item is automatically a bulk item. So the prices need to be tweaked early on for things. It's not really Jagex's fault. They were probably doing automatic monitoring of trades to get a fairly accurate representation of item prices that PLAYERS actually traded for.

 

 

 

Ok, rambling. The main point then is Jagex will monitor trades outside the GE. If there are more trades outside the GE than in, it will adjust GE prices to match the player trades.

 

 

 

What that means by example: If Crystal Bows get an update making them even better (say, always keep full charge), then Crystal Seeds (currently 200k GE) will now be worth more because more archers would want the Seeds. As a seller, I know I can get a better price outside the GE, so now trading for Seeds inside GE stops (no one wants to sell for such a low price) and instead Player trades increase (300k gp for example). Jagex monitors that Player trades for Seed is averaging 300k, next day at update time, you'll notice that the GE now has the Seed at 300k average.

 

 

 

The same idea would work with any new item introduced into the game. The GE may have a Jagex price, but the Player Trades will quickly alter that price within 24 hours.

 

 

 

So, Qelter's doom and gloom on the GE would be wrong IF (and that's a big IF as Jagex never confirmed) Jagex will ALSO use player to player trades to alter Grand Exchange prices. With that, then the 5% limit makes alot of sense as it would stop rapid price changes based on rumors. If an items value change is drastic enough, trade outside the GE and help Jagex find out the real player value.

[qeltar]

 

Not that I'm conceding the point, but so what? People have been bemoaning inflation in RS for years, now we have a little deflation. The point of the 5% limits is not to make the price drop less, it's to prevent manipulation. I think it's disingenuous to use the word "worsened" instead of 'increased' without providing a reason why greater price drops are, in fact, worse.

 

 

People have bemoaned inflation for years, yes, but they bemoan falsely. Except for Burger King hats -- which are a pocket economy that affects hardly anyone -- there really has always been more deflation than inflation in RS. The deflation we have now affects a lot of players, and that's why it matters. Furthermore, Jagex justified the controls on the basis of "economic stability", not just price manipulation.

 

 

Do sealed auctions distort everything?

 

 

Not really relevant. We are mostly talking about frequently traded commodity items here; nobody uses sealed auctions for such.

 

 

What you are missing is that the downwards pressure on prices is diffused by the 6 item limit.

 

 

This is a valid point I hadn't considered. Though it's somewhat diffused itself by the fact that many people don't leave items just sitting there. They list them, and if they don't move, they remove them and try something else.

 

 

By definition, any transaction in the GE is market price. There may be other markets with different prices, but the GE is just as much of a market as the forums or world 2.

 

 

You're indulging in pedantry here. I think you know what I mean.

 

 

 

If the entire world outside the GE is paying one price and the GE has listed another, the GE is not at the market price.

 

 

It's hard to refute your claim when I don't know what you mean by efficient markets. Are those markets that benefit the economy the most, markets that cost the least to run, or markets that maximize both according to some efficiency function of multiple variables?

 

 

I'm not using the concept of efficiency in the economic sense, but just the simple sense of the word: "Acting or producing effectively with a minimum of waste, expense, or unnecessary effort."

 

 

 

The GE is not efficient because it doesn't allow buyers and sellers to quickly and easily come together to transact at a mutually agreed-upon price. That's the bottom line.

[qeltar]

 

Ex: I buy a law rune for 1k gp. In bulk, yeah, 300 each, but the 1k is the "goto your bank and get me a rune, I'm in a hurry" price. Many, many items are just not sold in bulk due to it being tedious, so the prices are single sell prices which in RS generally means its higher (I say generally, because in many cases, bulk items sell for a higher price). Anyway, you have two common prices for Law: 1k and 300.

 

 

Valid point, but it really argues against the GE's mechanism. Because the GE has absolutely no way to account for these differences in motivations of buyers and sellers, and this means that those who want to pay more to buy or sell for less are effectively locked out. That's not something that can ever be corrected with time.

 

 

Imagine if Jagex based the price of law runes SOLELY off the 1k trades? Insanity, yes. Because that price was based off annoyance. With the GE, any item is no longer an annoyance.

 

 

Yes, the GE is good for some items that before one had to pay a lot for to get in small quantities. But MOST items are just as annoying to buy now as they ever were, if not worse, because the market is always locked up. The majority of items either have buyers and no sellers, or sellers and no buyers. There's little liquidity.

 

 

So the prices need to be tweaked early on for things. It's not really Jagex's fault. They were probably doing automatic monitoring of trades to get a fairly accurate representation of item prices that PLAYERS actually traded for.

 

 

Huh? They claimed to have done "extensive research" and this for a MAJOR update. They got not a few prices wrong but THOUSANDS of prices wrong. How exactly could this be anyone's fault other than Jagex's?

 

 

What that means by example: If Crystal Bows get an update making them even better (say, always keep full charge), then Crystal Seeds (currently 200k GE) will now be worth more because more archers would want the Seeds. As a seller, I know I can get a better price outside the GE, so now trading for Seeds inside GE stops (no one wants to sell for such a low price) and instead Player trades increase (300k gp for example). Jagex monitors that Player trades for Seed is averaging 300k, next day at update time, you'll notice that the GE now has the Seed at 300k average.

 

 

What you're forgetting is that Jagex has a long history of putting out updates, paying attention to them for 2 weeks, and then never looking at them again. Consider, for example, that the Fishing Trawler net STILL dumps all your fish on the ground, and people can still freeload. How many months has it been?

 

 

 

If Jagex couldn't get the prices right when it had months to research and prepare, what makes you think they will get them right when things are changing rapidly?

 

 

 

They've had a sticky in the forums for price changes for what, 5 days now? I don't think any of the prices have been fixed.

 

 

 

What really would happen in your scenario is this. As soon as the new update occurred, all the merchants would run to the GE and put in buy orders at the highest possible price. Anyone who had a sell order in would get ripped off. Anyone who wasn't paying close attention to prices and went to the GE would offer to sell, sell below market, and a merchant would get a steal. The merchants would then make millions selling at higher prices on the forums.

 

 

 

That's not what I call a good outcome.

[NukeMarine]

Qelter, I think Jagex put that sticky up there to shut people up. I wouldn't want them to change prices on an item solely because L33tPk3r says long bows are x price.

 

 

 

I honestly, honestly believe that Jagex moniters all trades to get a market average of player prices. Heck, that could have been a big reason behind the Unid Herb change. Can't narrow down what prices are if people are paying 1k for Ranarr herbs then paying 7k later. The grimy update made the herb prices much more solid. With this monitering, you may find a quicker adaption of GE prices.

 

 

 

Now the worrying part: Yew Longbow prices. Now, these things sell in bulk so often that the GE price should have been dead on. For some reason it was 100 to 200 gp too high. That is evidence that Jagex is messing up in a bad way.

 

 

 

I'll summarize in saying that so long as Jagex utilizes both forms of trading (GE and Player) to update GE prices, then I'm cool with it and the 5% limit. If not, then as you have said, the GE will move too slow in reaction to players that many will bypass to get a better deal.

 

 

 

Hmm, perhaps we should ask Jagex if they're taking player trades into account when updating the GE prices?

[quitthegame]

Nuke-marine-- I'm almost completely sure that Jagex isn't monitoring player trades to change the GE prices, and even if they were I'd have no confidence in them doing it in a helpful fashion.

 

 

 

 

People have bemoaned inflation for years, yes, but they bemoan falsely. Except for Burger King hats -- which are a pocket economy that affects hardly anyone -- there really has always been more deflation than inflation in RS. The deflation we have now affects a lot of players, and that's why it matters. Furthermore, Jagex justified the controls on the basis of "economic stability", not just price manipulation.

 

 

 

I know that since I started playing, bowstrings, logs(except maple), ores, have all gotten more expensive. Fish seem to have gotten cheaper over time. I would attribute that to botters deciding to start paying for memberships, though. I really don't understand how you say there's more deflation than inflation. Sure new items that come out decrease in price, but that's not deflation, that's just supply increasing. As to what Jagex meant by "economic stability", you may not agree with me that all they meant by it was 'prevent price manipulation', but I'm at a loss to see how you can interpret that to mean "prevent deflation".

 

 

 

 

Not really relevant. We are mostly talking about frequently traded commodity items here; nobody uses sealed auctions for such.

 

 

 

It's relevant in that you haven't given any reason why free information is needed for any kind of market-- even though commodity markets are different than constructions contracts it would still behoove you to explain how those differences make free information needed for commodities and not for sealed bids. As far as I can tell, the more knowledge people have about other offers on the market, the more people attempt to game the market, and the more people try to delay action until they see other people's offers so that they can game them better. I fail to see how these are improvements over a blind computer mediated system with less information given. I know you might be tempted to say "well, they're improvements over the GE", but that would end up being circular logic and also unfair, the GE is a deliberately crippled computer mediated system, it shouldnt' be held up as an example.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a valid point I hadn't considered. Though it's somewhat diffused itself by the fact that many people don't leave items just sitting there. They list them, and if they don't move, they remove them and try something else.

 

 

 

Yea, I suppose if the prices floated faster, than people would start buying for bargains after selling 12-18 stacks of items quickly. It would have been chaotic but fun, might have crashed the system though.

 

 

 

 

 

If the entire world outside the GE is paying one price and the GE has listed another, the GE is not at the market price.

 

 

 

If, for some item, transactions are taking place in the GE, than the GE is by definition at the(a) market price. If no transactions are taking place, and you only have sellers or buyers listing, then the GE is by definition not at the(a) market price. If there are both sellers and buyers posting in the GE but they are at opposite ends of the spectrum, then the GE is at the market price but there isn't sufficient interest in the item to make transactions happen. I don't think that's pedantic, it's just obvious. It makes sense to me to define the market price, in respect to the GE, solely by the GE, since it is possible and simpler and more coherent to do so. If the market price differs from other markets, than arbitrage will happen. If the GE is not at the market price, then it will change it's price. Slowly.

 

 

 

I'm not using the concept of efficiency in the economic sense, but just the simple sense of the word: "Acting or producing effectively with a minimum of waste, expense, or unnecessary effort."

 

 

 

The GE is not efficient because it doesn't allow buyers and sellers to quickly and easily come together to transact at a mutually agreed-upon price. That's the bottom line.

 

 

 

Your definition of efficient is the common definition, but your given reason for the GE not being efficient boils down to it being slow. That's why people are always using the phrase "quick and efficient", each does not include the other. To me, under your definition, the GE is very efficient, but currently very slow. This is vexing because the GE *should* be very fast, but perhaps it still will be, eventually.

 

 

 

We should be discussing the items that seem to have overcorrected, like you mentioned sharks. Some reasons I might see why sharks would appear to overcorrect--some people are mainly finished with selling off their banks and starting to buy, many of them decided to buy sharks and the price went up by more than 5%. Another reason, that people have gone from the duel arena to the wildy due to the staking change, which made sharks go up in demand. I don't know what percentage of duels are fought without food, so I can't say how likely that is. An interesting observation: how many common goods will overcorrect before people on the buyers side see that as a reason to buy the other kinds of items quickly, before they also overcorrect?

[Silver_Corner]

Heh.. I just replied to this on the RSOF and then found this here.

 

 

 

C&P:

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry, but the "give it time" argument entirely misses the point, which is that the GE is fundamentally flawed in ways that ensure it will never work, no matter how much time it is given.

 

 

 

Just one example: for the first few days, nobody could sell raw sharks because the price was too high, so all the sellers offered at the lowest price and nobody would buy. Then yesterday things evened out finally, and now today it's reversed: I can't buy raw sharks at the HIGHEST price because the price has gone back up and nobody wants to sell.

 

 

 

Most item prices vary by more than 5%. The price controls are choking and ruining what could have been a great update.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So your saying..

 

 

 

A) Because shark prices change with supply and demand. Its "Flawed"?

 

 

 

B) While 5% may be a bit excessive, if there was no lower limit, prices would drop so rapidly it would kill the market over night. People would sell lower and lower until the entire market for that item was gone.

[qeltar]

 

I know that since I started playing, bowstrings, logs(except maple), ores, have all gotten more expensive.

 

 

These are really exceptions to the rule. How many more items have gotten more expensive? Not many.

 

 

 

Now consider that nearly ALL equipment has gotten cheaper.. some of it substantially so. Whips, rune armor, Barrows set, dragon weapons, dragon chains, d meds, you name it -- pretty much everything has gotten not just cheaper but a LOT cheaper. This represents millions and millions in savings over a period of time.

 

 

As to what Jagex meant by "economic stability", you may not agree with me that all they meant by it was 'prevent price manipulation', but I'm at a loss to see how you can interpret that to mean "prevent deflation".

 

 

Fair enough. But bear in mind that most people would not consider the current situation to be "stable".

 

 

It's relevant in that you haven't given any reason why free information is needed for any kind of market-- even though commodity markets are different than constructions contracts it would still behoove you to explain how those differences make free information needed for commodities and not for sealed bids.

 

 

I have no idea why you brought up sealed bids at all -- it's a red herring. The GE is comparable to a stock or commodities market, and they don't use sealed bids.

 

 

 

The simply reason why information is needed is that good information leads to good decisions, and bad information leads to bad decisions. The GE right now mostly provides bad information.

 

 

If, for some item, transactions are taking place in the GE, than the GE is by definition at the(a) market price.

 

 

Again, you're being pedantic. If I am in a bank and some guy offers to sell me a palm seed for 1k, does that make 1k the market price for palm seeds? No, it means some dude didn't know what they were worth.

 

 

 

The same applies here. The GE is providing information about "average prices" that are flatly bogus, and people are making poor decisions based upon them.

 

 

Your definition of efficient is the common definition, but your given reason for the GE not being efficient boils down to it being slow.

 

 

Well, that's part of it. "Justice delayed is justice denied" -- the same goes for markets. More to the point, though, I'd guess that up to 99% of the attempted transactions in this marketplace never go through. That's an inefficient market.

 

 

We should be discussing the items that seem to have overcorrected, like you mentioned sharks. Some reasons I might see why sharks would appear to overcorrect--some people are mainly finished with selling off their banks and starting to buy, many of them decided to buy sharks and the price went up by more than 5%. Another reason, that people have gone from the duel arena to the wildy due to the staking change, which made sharks go up in demand. I don't know what percentage of duels are fought without food, so I can't say how likely that is. An interesting observation: how many common goods will overcorrect before people on the buyers side see that as a reason to buy the other kinds of items quickly, before they also overcorrect?

 

 

 

My interest in raising it is more to dispel what I feel is the myth of "give it time and the market will adjust to the right prices". The point is that prices *change*. If Jagex comes to its senses tomorrow and ups the staking limit from 3k to 100k, what's going to happen to half the things nobody's been able to sell on the GE for the last week? Right, now nobody will be able to *buy* them for at least a week.

 

 

 

Oh, and some merchants will make a fortune at the expense of producers and end consumers. That's good? I don't think so.

[qeltar]

 

So your saying..

 

 

 

A) Because shark prices change with supply and demand. Its "Flawed"?

 

 

Nope.

 

 

B) While 5% may be a bit excessive, if there was no lower limit, prices would drop so rapidly it would kill the market over night. People would sell lower and lower until the entire market for that item was gone.

 

 

 

Silly myth passed around from person to person. Markets don't behave like that.

[TheAncient]

Qeltar -- you cannot write the "give it time" argument off completely. Much of the current market turbulence is due to rich skillers that are and have been using the GE to buy mass unfinished products (i.e. herbs), process them for xp, and sell at a loss. As a result, there has been an influx of finished products and therefore a price decrease. However, once these "sell-at-a-loss-to-get-mass-xp" people stop training or reach their goals, the prices of finished goods will probably stabilize / go back up.

 

 

 

I do agree, though, that the GE is extremely flawed in its price caps. It's f'ridiculous.

[Iv_Green_vI]

I say the economy was already slipping, Jagex realized it. So they created G.E to caress the economy on it's fall, then later on it will stabilize

[snowager286]

Silly myth passed around from person to person. Markets don't behave like that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don't know about that.... I mean it makes complete sense. People see shark prices are dropping at an incredible rate, they sell their sharks as quickly as possible in order to salavage what little money they can before the sharks become worthless. You know that sounds familiar.... Hasn't that ACTUALLY happened in the real world :-k

 

 

 

Of course I maybe completely wrong. :D

[Danqazmlp]

... Nobody still bought any of my gold bars yet... *sneaks away with a chicken*

 

 

 

Thats because mine were ahead of yours in the que :

[Joooely]

I can safely say that merchanting isn't at all going to die, it might even get better from GE based on what i've seen so far.

[Jukeskywaltz]

Would it be nice if the GE had more of a Neopets or World of Warcraft style market? The seller/buyer puts it up for all the world to see, and people just decide whether or not they want to buy/sell it and react accordingly. It would also be pretty nice if you didn't have to take out the item/money and it would take it out of your bank automatically, but i get the feeling Jagex isn't gonna chance the GE all that much...

[quitthegame]

 

I know that since I started playing, bowstrings, logs(except maple), ores, have all gotten more expensive.

 

 

These are really exceptions to the rule. How many more items have gotten more expensive? Not many.

 

 

 

Now consider that nearly ALL equipment has gotten cheaper.. some of it substantially so. Whips, rune armor, Barrows set, dragon weapons, dragon chains, d meds, you name it -- pretty much everything has gotten not just cheaper but a LOT cheaper. This represents millions and millions in savings over a period of time.

 

 

 

Come on, I specifically explained how those aren't deflation, but increases in supply, and then you omitted that part from what you quoted ~_~

 

 

 

I have no idea why you brought up sealed bids at all -- it's a red herring. The GE is comparable to a stock or commodities market, and they don't use sealed bids.

 

 

 

You said open information flow is essential to the functioning of free markets. So, I brought up the fact that all free market economies in the real world use restricted information trading systems of many varieties. Your original statement about free markets that I responded to didn't mention the GE, so I didn't feel the need to only bring up markets that are analogous to the GE.

 

 

 

The simply reason why information is needed is that good information leads to good decisions, and bad information leads to bad decisions. The GE right now mostly provides bad information.

 

 

 

I don't believe that good information leads to good decisions, sadly. If that were true, casinos would be empty and libraries would be full, but the opposite is true. Since people are irrational, the best way to achieve rational economic decisions in a commodities market is to design a computer operated agent to complete the transactions based on people's bids using a rational system, at least theoretically. The GE's agent is crippled to be painfully slow, and such computer agents in the real world have been plagued by price manipulation schemes. This is most probably why Jagex is so paranoid about price manipulation on the GE.

 

 

 

I haven't mentioned this before as I was treating this on a more philosophical level, but I'm pretty sure that the reason Jagex isn't using a listing system similar to WoW's is because the computer load for a database goes up faster than linearly, my estimate is that it goes up as the square of the number of users. So, if WoW has server sizes of 5k and RS implements the GE to serve 200k simultaneous users logged on, then RS's GE server would need to be 8000 times as powerful as WoW's AH server. Of course wow has like 150 servers, but that's still over 50 times less efficient. Sadly, that's not the whole story, you can't just put 8000 servers together to make one 8000x as powerful server. Those servers would spend so much time making access requests to each other that nothing would get done. Eve online, which puts 20k users online concurrently in their one and only server, does that not with a wide network of cheap small servers, but with one giant supercomputer cluster with military spec flash hard drives and supercooled cpu units. Basically, the point I'm making is that Jagex had a choice... make the GE the way it is, without allowing database queries to display a list of prices, or not making it at all. Even if they made the GE work only within each world, instead of between all worlds, then everyone would flock world 2 to use the GE, crashing the GE instantly on that world.

 

 

 

Again, you're being pedantic. If I am in a bank and some guy offers to sell me a palm seed for 1k, does that make 1k the market price for palm seeds? No, it means some dude didn't know what they were worth.

 

 

 

Eh, let's not argue semantics any more, at least on this topic :P. We agree on most of the basics philosophically, and we're not making any progress on the semantic points, so let's focus on the practical.

 

 

 

My interest in raising it is more to dispel what I feel is the myth of "give it time and the market will adjust to the right prices". The point is that prices *change*. If Jagex comes to its senses tomorrow and ups the staking limit from 3k to 100k, what's going to happen to half the things nobody's been able to sell on the GE for the last week? Right, now nobody will be able to *buy* them for at least a week.

 

 

 

Still, that only adds another week or two. How many other updates have we had in the past 2 years that would have a large effect on more than 1% of the currently traded items? Sure seems like the typical month has had zero updates of that kind. We'll see in a few weeks. If the GE establishes stability for a week or so, then we'll be able to expect stability for 98% of the time from then on. If it doesn't establish stability in 2-3 weeks from now, then it probably never will.

[fx1970]

The only thing really missing in my opininon is a clear view on current seller and buyer.

 

 

 

Meaning knowing what are qu,atities avilable to buy and at what prices (not only mean or low, but all the current offers as it is the case on a regular Stock Exchnage)

 

 

 

SAme for sellers, having all quantities people want to buy and at which price.

 

 

 

With taht people will set their price more efficiently and the market will goes on without all this booooo

[calum12]

I don't claim to be some ecnomics expert, but i dont think the law of supply and demand should be messed with. Time may help, but I'm not so sure...

[Dire_Wolf]

Im so *Curse* pissed. I accepted GE, cause i coulden't use it to put a demand of my choice for my spined set.

 

 

 

But now it has affected it, im really pissed off.

 

 

 

I can't get my Spined sets sold, cause people dont wanna buy ? Why GE TOOK PRICE FROM 300K to 212K!

 

 

 

Bloody annoying update, and people go talk about "Unbalance"!

 

 

 

How *Curse* stupid is that!

 

 

 

FIX THIS *Curse* !!!!!!!

 

 

 

Before it, i sold 5 sets each 2 days.

 

 

 

Now so far, ive not sold 1 even in a week.

 

 

 

It's not that i can't get my sets sold that makes me furious, the thing that GE has changed the sets price + i can't put my sets for 300k in GE

 

 

 

Someone say "GE is for fast selling" well i realize that, but can't i demand to put a set/item for a price of my choice?!

[Duke_Freedom]

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.