My solution to 'Balanced Trading'

[Ginger_Warrior]

Firstly, I'd like to state I am NOT anti-Jagex and certainly not anti-Communist *points to avatar, although I'm Socialist, not a Communist*.

 

 

 

I believe that the justification behind Jagex's policy of removing unbalanced trading to be valid. From a logistical point of the view, the vicious cycle is happening and the fastest way to stop it would be to find a way of breaking that chain, and I've always been a supporter of "tackling the problems by its roots". The planned update does both of this.

 

 

 

However, from a philosophical point of view, this is completely wrong. Why should I, a person that has never been punished in-game for anything to do with money, be punished for the actions of a cheating few? I can tell from the tone of Jagex's writing they also feel the same way; they're just struggling to find some way of not punishing us, while at the same time, eliminating RWT.

 

 

 

I believe I have found a way, however, it will undoubtedly create more pressure on an already-stretched CS team. As such, it will require some real-money investment on the part of Jagex, but eliminating RWT while keeping the RS population happy, and at the same time, setting an example to the MMORPG community is a worthwhile price to pay.

 

 

 

My solution is for all 'unbalanced trades' (however you define that; that's another argument in its entirity) to effectively require authorisation. I'll explain in this chronological sequence (in this example, I have been monster hunting, and want to give my comrades a slice of the profit):

 

 

 

1) I offer the many millions of GP in profit we've earned to my fighting friend. We both click accept. We go to the confirmation screen. Once again, we accept.

 

 

 

2) Another screen comes up, telling us both the trade is deemed 'unbalanced', and as such, will require authorisation from a Jagex employee. The screen asks us to give the reasoning behind the transfer. To spare ambiguity, it should be a checkbox. I check the box labelled "I want to give my comrade a share of a monster drop". The box is filled by both traders to ensure consistency. Perhaps the monster drop should even be required.

 

 

 

3) A Jagex employee checks the claim, and if it seems to transfer is completely benign, the transfer is made. If one of the traders is, for example, a Level 3, the trade is denied, since that person clearly cannot earn a high-level monster drop.

 

 

 

I'm not suggesting this should be a live system. It would almost be like a CS query. You send the claim; it's returned in a few days with the result.

 

 

 

I believe strongly this is a fair, but rigid compromise to the system Jagex intends to place in. I have a philosophical right to give my hard-earned resources to whoever I want to, within the constraints of the rules of RuneScape. This process may be slow, yes, but it's better than nothing, and it least offers a way (albeit slightly complicated) of trading resources to each other whilst still ironing out most RWTs.

 

 

 

Discuss. :D

[Rcty]

I like the idea, I know that you've really thought hard about it, but I can't see that eliminating as many of the Real World Traders or Bots as they want to.

 

 

 

A player really could lie easily (if they seem to have legit levels) when it comes to real world trading, and not all bots have to level 3s.

 

 

 

However, if a thorough list of all the monsters the player has killed (and their drops), trades the player has made, and how many money-earning spells they have cast and money-earning mini-games they've played and won is submitted with the query, it would be fair.

 

 

 

In fact, the game could even detect if the money is legit automatically if it can analyze and compare the past actions with the contents of the trade.

 

 

 

If the system denies the trade to be fair, you can challenge it, and then a query can be sent to Customer Support for further review.

 

 

 

I think that the above would strengthen this suggestion. You still did a great job in thinking through these things, though. :)

 

 

 

~Rcty

[Munpie]

An interesting proposal indeed. One of the better ways to identify or weed out real world trading would be closer supervision.

 

 

 

Like any plan though it still has some faults. Please take this criticism constructively, but wouldn't there be a very large work load of unbalanced trades to be approved? Realistically there would probably be thousands of trades to sift through over a short period of time.

 

 

 

Another thing to consider is the possibility that real world traders could flood the check system with bot-traders, maybe to dilute and hide all their real world trades.

 

 

 

Maybe a trading-pin could stop the later, but still i think the main problem is having so many trades happening worldwide. Seems like a big workload for a staff of any size to handle. :-k

[kickbuta]

Maybe it could be tied into the Loot Share and GE.

 

As in if you get a drop you can chose to share it with your team mates.

 

Then you all get your share (in coins) and then the game sells your item on the GE for the average price or what ever it takes to sell it right away.

[o_knames]

One of the reasons for the drastic RWT changes was the amount of resources spent on the problem. I don't see this decreasing the manpower devoted to this and not other projects.

[Giant_Torti]

 

My solution is for all 'unbalanced trades' (however you define that; that's another argument in its entirity) to effectively require authorisation. I'll explain in this chronological sequence (in this example, I have been monster hunting, and want to give my comrades a slice of the profit):

 

 

 

1) I offer the many millions of GP in profit we've earned to my fighting friend. We both click accept. We go to the confirmation screen. Once again, we accept.

 

 

 

2) Another screen comes up, telling us both the trade is deemed 'unbalanced', and as such, will require authorisation from a Jagex employee. The screen asks us to give the reasoning behind the transfer. To spare ambiguity, it should be a checkbox. I check the box labelled "I want to give my comrade a share of a monster drop". The box is filled by both traders to ensure consistency. Perhaps the monster drop should even be required.

 

 

 

3) A Jagex employee checks the claim, and if it seems to transfer is completely benign, the transfer is made. If one of the traders is, for example, a Level 3, the trade is denied, since that person clearly cannot earn a high-level monster drop.

 

 

 

I like the cut of your jib. I've made a suggestion on a similar thread handling thissubject.

 

 

 

Maybe a further refinement would be to pre-empt the sharing decision by some sort of 'group trade' before the situation with respect to 'loot sharing' occurs?

 

 

 

So group of players, for arguments sake with different but useful combined abilities are able to earn a equal cut of the reward?

 

 

 

An example would be a gang of players agreeing before hand (trade screen or similar) that whatever is looted, is divided equally, based upon participation. Then upon completion of the agreed task the loot is automatically sold (possibly by the Grand Exchange?) then there is no ambiguity about Customer Service getting involved or undue concerns if the players have been 'fiddled' with respect to reaping the rewards from the clan leader.

 

 

 

Workable??

[HoMM88]

SUPPORT!

 

 

 

A wellthough and very good idea, that definately should be added.

[hohto]

I'd personally say a no to this. Why? Because it seems a bit too farfetched idea to work in reality.

 

 

 

1st problem:

 

First of all, Jagex already has problems with their customer support. There's far too many people messaging them and causing them work for basically nothing. Probably we both agree that their customer support could be better. With a system like this, it would be get filled by requests to trade 4 magic logs from player A to player B. The query would either be far too long to effective or it would cause the huge need of hiring more people. As Jagex already has few hundred employees and around half of them work for customer support, I'd assume this kind of a system would require at least a hundred more.

 

 

 

2nd problem:

 

It would be far too easy to transfer items through this kind of a system. If it was for monster drops only, why not to make an automatic option to split the drops? One possibility I've been thinking of is an option to automaticly send all items worth over certain gp to GE and then automaticly split the gp. This would be a lot easier and take less resources from Jagex. If this system was for sending stuff without the need of an actual drop, what's the point? I could then sell gp by saying it's a birthday gift, a clan award or stuff like that.

[Will H]

I'd personally say a no to this. Why? Because it seems a bit too farfetched idea to work in reality.

 

 

 

1st problem:

 

First of all, Jagex already has problems with their customer support. There's far too many people messaging them and causing them work for basically nothing. Probably we both agree that their customer support could be better. With a system like this, it would be get filled by requests to trade 4 magic logs from player A to player B. The query would either be far too long to effective or it would cause the huge need of hiring more people. As Jagex already has few hundred employees and around half of them work for customer support, I'd assume this kind of a system would require at least a hundred more.

 

 

 

2nd problem:

 

It would be far too easy to transfer items through this kind of a system. If it was for monster drops only, why not to make an automatic option to split the drops? One possibility I've been thinking of is an option to automaticly send all items worth over certain gp to GE and then automaticly split the gp. This would be a lot easier and take less resources from Jagex. If this system was for sending stuff without the need of an actual drop, what's the point? I could then sell gp by saying it's a birthday gift, a clan award or stuff like that.

 

 

 

+1.

 

 

 

Maybe your automatic loot to GE and split the price idea could be another form of LootShare? However, what would happen if the item wasn't sold after a certain period of time, say, 5 hours? Would the item then be sent to a random player, as is normal LootShare?