What next for G.E? Prevent manipulation?

[upthebanner]

There have been some strange goings on in the market place in the last few weeks. Prices of even the most ordinary items have yoyoed. There has been a lot of mutterings about market manipulation by groups of wealthy players. At times it has been impossible to buy at mid price or even just above common every day items. Price updates appear more frequent and in general the market has appeared more unstable.

 

I had not really believed in the market manipulation theories but now I do. I ahve made some bad decisions on trading which has not happened before and I am losing money more often.

 

The question is (and this is assuming I am correct above which obviously is not factual) what can be done to stop this manipulation and will JAGeX bother.

 

The really easy way would be to introduce a system where nobody could buy an item if they already have the maximum allowed in their account (so if you had ons SGS you could not bid for another or if you had 5000 uncut diamonds you could not buy more) The other alternative is that the number of items you can sell is equal to the number of items you can buy in any four hours. This would prevent one person buying for example all the wool and then selling 200k balls of it when it hit the price the player had manipulated to.

 

Do we really want this to happen and is it necessary? or am I just upset my old marketing strategies need refining?

[Bini]

There are already ways of stopping price manipulation in the GE, for example: You can only buy 25K of any rune every 4 Hours.

 

It's like that with all items and you have to wait 4 Hours after you have bought an item to sell it.

[Omali]

I think they need to lower the limits on some of the items.

 

 

 

Is it really plausible that someone will need 5k gems in the span of four hours? Or some of the other limits far too high for their actual use?

[upthebanner]

That is correct, but you can sell any number after that 4 hours. This means you can stock up on an item as its price gradually rises and dump the entire lot in one hit ie (and this was an example used on these boards) buy wool at max price then four hours later buy again until update at which point the price has risen. Then repeat until the wool has reached a very much higher level. Then dump the lot at the latest mid price.

 

If they only allowed you to sell in groups every 4 hours then the price would gradually fall again as you sold so no profit (and probably a loss) would occur.

 

 

 

Edit - This is in response to Bijay

 

 

 

In response to Omali I have to say that no one needs that many gems but that is similar to old style merchanteering ie I collect these together so someone else can buy en masse. I really do not want this stopped but I am afraid that it might happen if JAGeX WIELD A BIG STICK

[kudos6969]

or you could just buy an item because you actualy want it wheather or not it goes up or down. at the end of the day unless your merchanting its silly to buy an item thinking it might go down 1m you have not lost 1m you still have the dam item. Dont buy the items in the first place if you have no intent on keeping them its just silly. Let someone else who is willing to buy the item and keep it have it.

[Omali]

In response to Omali I have to say that no one needs that many gems but that is similar to old style merchanteering ie I collect these together so someone else can buy en masse. I really do not want this stopped but I am afraid that it might happen if JAGeX WIELD A BIG STICK

 

 

 

If it gets to the point where the whole economy is being fubar'd by a small group of players, and that is what is necessary, then so be it.

 

 

 

Dont buy the items in the first place if you have no intent on keeping them its just silly. Let someone else who is willing to buy the item and keep it have it.

 

 

 

Yea, because I'm sure the main market for unstrung yew longs is people who are buying one of them to string and keep. #-o

[compfreak847]

I'm still unsure of what the whole price manipulation thing is. Yeah, the prices of some items are going up and down, mostly due to PVP worlds. A few people, myself included, are taking advantage by buying them when they're low, and planning to dump when they're high. And as for restrictions as to how many items you can own, just say NO. That's simply too much control, and what if people want duplicates, say, to loan to friends? Price manipulation is very difficult, and I do not believe a small group of people could significantly manipulate such a wide range of markets as Armadyl\BGS\DFS\Sara brews\Toadflax all at once. The trade volume is simply too high.

[compfreak847]

In response to Omali I have to say that no one needs that many gems but that is similar to old style merchanteering ie I collect these together so someone else can buy en masse. I really do not want this stopped but I am afraid that it might happen if JAGeX WIELD A BIG STICK

 

 

 

If it gets to the point where the whole economy is being fubar'd by a small group of players, and that is what is necessary, then so be it.

 

 

 

Dont buy the items in the first place if you have no intent on keeping them its just silly. Let someone else who is willing to buy the item and keep it have it.

 

 

 

Yea, because I'm sure the main market for unstrung yew longs is people who are buying one of them to string and keep. #-o

 

 

 

 

 

http://itemdb-rs.runescape.com/viewitem.ws?obj=66&scale=1

 

 

 

What's with the yew longbow thing? No manipulators there.

 

 

 

The economy is not in ruins, a small group of players isn't controlling item prices, and drastic measures are not necessary. Did anyone notice the whole PVP worlds thing? There's a whole host of reasons that some items could be behaving in strange ways, and even though some people may be taking advantage of it, I doubt they're really causing it. Think of all the hilts that come in from EVERY bandos world EVERY day. Now consider that happening every day that GWD has been out. Think of the thousands upon thousands of hilts in the game. Then think of the guy claiming to have bought 80. He's not exactly controlling the market, is he? Even if 5 of them each bought 80, they've only got a tiny corner of the market. Oh, and buying 80 at, say 30m each takes 2,400,000,000 or 2.4 billion cash, higher then the GP limit. Not a whole lot of people are that rich. The only thing that could cause real chaos in the market would be a huge, game changing update like PVP worlds, which didn't really do that much - it caused a few items to drop and rebound, but that's about it. Or a massive, wide-scale panic that leads to everyone selling items because they believe all items are going to crash, which, if they do that, they will. And about the only thing that could start that would be a bunch of price-manipulator witch hunts.

[pulli23]

I'm still unsure of what the whole price manipulation thing is. Yeah, the prices of some items are going up and down, mostly due to PVP worlds. A few people, myself included, are taking advantage by buying them when they're low, and planning to dump when they're high. And as for restrictions as to how many items you can own, just say NO. That's simply too much control, and what if people want duplicates, say, to loan to friends? Price manipulation is very difficult, and I do not believe a small group of people could significantly manipulate such a wide range of markets as Armadyl\BGS\DFS\Sara brews\Toadflax all at once. The trade volume is simply too high.

 

 

 

 

 

Price manipulation is in fact the usage of a small "bug" in the GE, and the way people think:

 

 

 

What happens is that a select few people buy an item so much that there's no stock anymore.. Now since the ge has a delay before updating it's prices they all got it for the same low price. But after that the update kicks in and the prices start to rise: this rise is being magnified by the fact that the item is needed for the avarage scaper AND the fact that others see the price rise: and they decide to want a free lift and start stocking up too that item. Making the demand skyrocket (and in time: the price too).. Notice that the "manipulators" who initialy bought the item aren't doing anything now: they just let the price rise.

 

 

 

Now after some time the initial buyers, who really have a lot of them, suddenly sell a lot of the item again: and suddenly the supply skyrockets.. However since there's a delay in the GE update all those items will be sold for the maximum price. After that the price plummets again, and all people who wanted the free ride start to panic selling: making the price drop to a very low mark again.

 

 

 

 

 

Now what can be done against this? - In real life there's that rule that you aren't allowed to organize such buyings (in dutch: "handelen met voorkennis") - However it's unenforceble in runescape..

 

 

 

What can be done is making the ge react much faster to the supply/demand rises. But there the biggest problem are the players: they sell an item for XXX gold: and don't 'look' at it the whole day: so the price they offer is greatly outdated. A better system would be that you can say:

 

"sell for average price + 1%" - However this is too difficult for most players (I bet 99% of the people around rs can't calculate the money you would get if you offer something 1000 times for ge + 1% and the ge price is 234gp within a second)..

[Hobgoblinpie]

The problem with introducing a system whereby you have one set limit is that you need to think about people like smithers and crafters. They need to buy a lot of raw/manufactured goods from players/G.E. The problem with your system is, say they wanted to get to lvl90 crafting, but needed to make 5020 ruby bracelets, but the limit was 5000. They would have to buy 2500 gold bars, 2500 rubies, then 4 hours later, do the same. And they would even have 90 crafting.

 

 

 

Jagex have said that they will only intervene in extreme situations. But they clearly havent seen A C I D Y's clan chat. It is filled with a few people who know what they are doing, and the rest are a bunch of noobs who leech of the good people. The People who know what they're doing say to dump an item (say tassets at 10mil), but because they have the money, they just buy the ones that are being sold. therefore, pushing prices up even further, before they dump them and make a lot of profit.

 

 

 

A better way to prevent price manipulation would be a system based around the item type. Raw Materials should be unlimited purchase, because these items are constantly being put into the system, so there would be no point merchanting them. Armour would be limited in a system whereby the more valuable the item, the less you can buy per 4 hours. e.g.:

 

 

 

Bronze armour: 1000 per 4 hours

 

Iron Armour: 950 per 4 hours

 

Steel Armour: 850 per 4 hours

 

Black Armour: 800 per 4 hours

 

Mithril Armour: 700 per 4 hours

 

Adamant Armour: 550 per 4 hours

 

Runite Armour: 300 per 4 hours

 

Dragon Armour: 10 per 4 hours

 

Barrows Armour: 5 per 4 hours

 

GWD armour: 1 of each item per 4 hours (this means one each each piece of the set, e.g. 1 armadyl helmet, 1 armadyl chest, 1 armadyl legs)

 

 

 

The reasons for the limits are that high cost items like Bandos/Armadyl armour are susceptible to massive price increases/decreases. The only people who by more than 1 seperate piece of armour at a time are merchanters/Price Manipulators. so by limiting it to 1 of each piece of the set per 4 hours, you stop price manipulation (to a certain extent) of these items. Things like Runite Armour would not be so limited because as we know, many people do F2P bounty Hunter so a lower limit would just annoy people. Dragon Armour is just for show, its defensive stats are weaker than barrows armour and costs quite a bit more than barrows, so a limit of 10 pieces of armour per 4 hours is enough.

 

 

 

However, Jagex wont really stop price manipulation unless an item like a dragon chainbody went up to say 30mil. The G.E has no proper stop on Price Manipulation which is why Price Manipulation happens.

[r4ngewarlord]

im personally against another restriction on trading i mean imo we've got way to many already

[mario_sunny]

You are way off. What is going on right now is not price manipulation at all. All it is is kiddies selling all their combat gear and members items because they are going back to f2p for the schoolyear. It happens every year, starting about a week or two before summer ends for most, then ending two or three weeks after the schoolyear starts.

 

 

 

The only time I have heard of mass price manipulation being sucessful is the half-jug of wines way back in the days. A group of merchants decided to buy all the wines they could, hold them until they reached 80M, then sell them back. Ever wondered why half wines are so expensive? That's why.

 

 

 

I've never heard of any other time this has been sucessful (and by sucessful I mean making millions off it).

 

 

 

Okay, here's how the waves have been happening:

 

 

 

Kiddies sell their members gear to GE.

 

Sudden supply causes prices to drop dramatically.

 

Other people panic and start selling their gear low.

 

The price eventually hits a point where buyers find it so cheap its irrestistable, and buy it.

 

Price begins to rise, merchants panic and buy high.

 

The buying high lets the price soar, and more merchants try to buy high.

 

The price eventually hits a point where sellers find it a good profit and sell it.

[Great_one]

im personally against another restriction on trading i mean imo we've got way to many already

 

so you like it when a group of people buy 1000+ bgs and other items over 3m to make the market un buyable for those that actualy want the item to use for a few day/weeks untill the dump in which the price will sink lower in a week than it was before. :wall:

 

 

 

 

 

i like the restriction that were listed a few posts up and there should be a selling limit double that(you dont get more than 2 of the same gdw item in the same ls or solo trip...and if you do you deserve to have to wait 4 hours)

[Omali]

http://itemdb-rs.runescape.com/viewitem.ws?obj=66&scale=1

 

 

 

What's with the yew longbow thing? No manipulators there.

 

 

 

Yew Longbows probably weren't the best example, but still: Kudos said you should just buy an item because you actually want it whether or not it goes down, not to merchant with it. My example with the unstrung yew longbow is that the grand majority of raw materials are not bought by people who are looking to turn it into a finished product and keep it and use it to train, with the possible exception of cannonballs. Instead, such as with the unstrung yew longbow, they are turned into yew longs, and either sold back onto the market or high alched, but either way the factor of cost and plays a big part in it, and it is sensible to speculate whether or not the prices will drop overnight.

[upthebanner]

I actually think Mario Sunny has made a really valid point and it does make sense of what I am personally seeing. My marketing methods rely on a fairly stable market or either rising or falling slowly. When prices change by the maximum amount I get caught flat footed.

 

However I do still believe that there is no smoke without fire and that some very deliberate manipulation is happening. You have to remember that 50 guys with billions can buy up whole markets easily.

[r4ngewarlord]

im personally against another restriction on trading i mean imo we've got way to many already

 

so you like it when a group of people buy 1000+ bgs and other items over 3m to make the market un buyable for those that actualy want the item to use for a few day/weeks untill the dump in which the price will sink lower in a week than it was before. :wall:

 

 

 

 

 

i like the restriction that were listed a few posts up and there should be a selling limit double that(you dont get more than 2 of the same gdw item in the same ls or solo trip...and if you do you deserve to have to wait 4 hours)

 

no but another restrictions just stupid honestly in real life this happens with currency and if you add a restriction your annoying 1 party for anothers benifit

[mario_sunny]

I actually think Mario Sunny has made a really valid point and it does make sense of what I am personally seeing. My marketing methods rely on a fairly stable market or either rising or falling slowly. When prices change by the maximum amount I get caught flat footed.

 

However I do still believe that there is no smoke without fire and that some very deliberate manipulation is happening. You have to remember that 50 guys with billions can buy up whole markets easily.

 

 

 

I still believe it's solely the schoolkids doing this. Just look at combat-related items, ALL of them are going through the price wave. Is that just a coinsidence?

 

 

 

I'm not bashing on anyone particular on this thread when I say this, but most 'price manipulations' have simply been a case of merchant panic. Ever wonder why the price of halloween masks rise near Halloween? It's because merchants expect them to, know one actually buys a halloween mask just for the fun of halloween. Merchants know that halloween masks go up near October every year, so they all start buying at once near that time, and the price goes up. That is the sole reason for the price rise. There is no 'manipulation' involved (but people do make millions ;) ).

[flash]

You have got to be kidding me? You guys do realize that the G.E. is based on a stock market in theory. The same way a stock market is effected by demand the G.E. is. Price manipulation as you cal it is just people with money flexing their muscles just like in real life. The G.E. is doing exactly what it was designed to do and that is provide items at a price which it is demanded at. If it gets so high people refuse to buy at then the price will fall.........just like a stock market.

[Hobgoblinpie]

I should have made my post clearer. The going down part of the items is mostly schoolkids selling all their stuff as they become F2P again. However, certain items are being bought out. These include: Bandos Tassets, Saradomin Brews, Fury Amulets. In a few days, these items will be 'dumped' and we will see a drop in these items.

[upthebanner]

Flash - I do not believe for a minute that the GE works like the stock market. There are rules and regulations governing the stock exchange designed to prevent this manipulation. Speculation is based on many factors but mainly does the buyer believe the price for stock represents good value (or he has inside knowledge). There are of course cases where a stock is hyped up but you can be sure that each and every trade in that particular stock will be scrutinised.

 

This is really my worry though. Will JAGeX apply more rules and regulations to prevent this behaviour which is not about supply and demand but more about exploiting less well off players and forcing them to accept inflated prices? If they do this it will kill of merchanting completely and fixed prices may become re rigueur.

 

I absolutely believe that JAGeX hate this aspect of the game.

[Nightsword]

I fail to see how this will make fixed prices on items. If they are buying mass quanities of high end equipment to raise prices. People will just stop buying and then they will be stuck with all of those high end equipment with nobody buying it and they will be the ones losing out.

[upthebanner]

Sorry Knightsword but you misunderstand me. What I am suggesting is that JAGeX might start to fix prices so that no one can manipulate. They will then only change prices themselves when they consider it needed.

 

As for your second point you are right in that it is possible that the players who have stocked up may end up losing loads but only if there is a general education of all players so that they understand that the price must drop if manipulated in this way. So if they wait a while then prices will come down. Then you will see real panic selling by the big boys.

 

Unfortunately even my paltry little methods rely on inexperience and impatience of newer players.

[siim]

I know of a clan chat which at evening is so full, that it is impossible to get in to. There are players who discuss which item to buy out next and at what price they should dump an item. If anyone wants to know the name of the clan chat, PM me.

[SwordKing]

I know of a clan chat which at evening is so full, that it is impossible to get in to. There are players who discuss which item to buy out next and at what price they should dump an item. If anyone wants to know the name of the clan chat, PM me.

 

 

 

Everyone knows it's A C I D Y, lol.

[upthebanner]

I know of a clan chat which at evening is so full, that it is impossible to get in to. There are players who discuss which item to buy out next and at what price they should dump an item. If anyone wants to know the name of the clan chat, PM me.

 

 

 

Go start your own thread. This post is aimed against this type of play. I suggest that any players wanting to join this fantastic "bargain basement make me a millionnaire" clan should instead join the " omg make me a brain cell"

 

 

 

Edit - Sorry to Siim. I have misinterpreted what was said by him. My understanding is that he is stating that such clans do exist for any unbelievers out there.