The Grand Ex Is Broken And Affecting ALL Gameplay

[Ren]

~A Possible fix to what is wrong with the Grand Exchange~

 

!!!!!! This is a long read. If you do not wish to read it all, skip straight to the Problem and Solution parts of the thread, and the "Important things I forgot to post" section. I do suggest you read it all to get the full effect, though. !!!!!!

 

 

------Intro

 

Ok, so mainly, this post is about IMPROVING RuneScape further from what it is. It's not that right now it isn't manageable or unable to be dealt with. It's that I believe there can be more to RuneScape than what currently is RuneScape. This is a suggestion to make RuneScape a better game and hopefully grow it more than ever before. I do not hate flippers, I do not hate legitimate Merch Clans, and I certainly do not think that you should stop doing what you already do (unless it breaks RS rules/RL laws, then yeah). I just want you to read through my post, or what I said you SHOULD read through, at the very least, to see something that could change how every player plays the game forever, in a benefitting way at that.

 

------Simple terms you should know before reading my post

 

Flipper: Someone who buys an item, then sells it for a gain as quickly as possible.

 

Merch clan/cc: Group of players, that buy out a predetermined item, set a goal price, and then ask other players to help buy the item to make it rise quickly to that goal price, and sell it about 30-80% between the starting and goal price. Most of the random players that participate do not make much money because they cannot sell what they bought unless they 'dump' the item before the goal price.

 

Rise: When an item begins to gain price quickly

 

Crash: When an item begins to lose price quickly.

 

Dump: When a player/merch clan sells most/all their stock of an item, usually if it begins to crash, making it crash even faster, or if it rises and they assume it will crash not far later.

 

 

------The First Time I Merchanted

 

The first time I had merchanted was before the GWD was released, so about 2006? I had seen this guy buying and selling stuff quickly in W2 near where the Karil barrows armor was being sold. I later found out that he had about 22M and I wanted to know how he made it, so he told me how. Within the first hour, I had turned 200k into 1600k cash. 2 hours after that, I turned 1600k into 20M cash. That friend had been able to turn his 22M into 46M in the same amount of time it took me to make it. We were partially competing with eachother, but since we would always be about the same price and whatever, it never mattered much. Since I wanted more money, and he already had been merchanting for however many days/weeks/whatever before I met him, we kept going for about 3 days. After that amount of time, karil's price crashed 300k, no one wanted to buy it, no one could really sell it for at LEAST 2 months afterward.

 

With 2 people (we dominated that area of W2), we single-handedly caused 4 items to crash longterm in a matter of days with little effort. I used to (and probably still do) have a picture of the Karils market on W2 on my older computer. It's slow running so I don't know if I could put it up here, but maybe some time I will. Even though all worlds are separate, obviously W2 was the main trade world and prices followed everywhere. Besides those who didn't really visit W2, W6, W18, and wherever else items were really traded, Karil's prices stayed low for a long time, and did not rise up to where they were for longer.

 

I forgot to post all this when I first created this thread, and it did not occur to me that with old trade systems, it was possible to mess up prices THAT EASILY. This is significant to me, and is significant to you because I still believe that my suggestion WILL prevent all this to happen, at least as easily as it did/does.

 

 

------History of Items and Item Prices

 

Most of you may know that the majority of prices on the grand exchanged are being or have been manipulated once or more by a clan or player. Most people don't see how this affects items and the world around them. To understand everything fully, you have to know the history of item prices. Let's start with pre-G.E. and trade limits.

 

Back before trade limits and the G.E., You were able to make money via merchanting quicker and somewhat easier. This is, not entirely, because not everyone was able to merchant. Why? For the most part, they either didn't know how, got fed up with competition and stopped, didn't have enough money, or didn't care for it much. The other reasons were because item prices were never stable like how the G.E. currently is. The item prices were very liquid, they were able to be shifted based on what a player wanted to pay, could pay, or should pay.

 

Let's say an item price was 600k "street", what the average player would pay for it. This would mean that in most situations a player could buy for little under or sell for little over. The way merchanting worked was everyone was going to the same place (for this example, on World 2 it was Falador garden) to buy an item. If a player got impatient and wanted to sell their item more quickly they would lower what they wanted for it, or compromise with another player's buying price. A merchanter would want to buy as low as possible, in most cases it was still a reasonable price. Then they would want to sell for higher than what the current "street" price was, sometimes compromising for less if they were still making money, or for what they paid if the item wasn't in demand at that exact time. Item supply and demand back then was based more who had what and who wanted what right that minute/hour/day/etc. Then player-determined price would eventually be worked out with newer items and, as more items worked their way into the game, the price would gradually lower because more players would be with the item than without, thus making demand go down causing price drops until it was at that point where it was stable and never really changed much, but players were still able to buy for lower and/or higher by however much those players respectfully determined.

 

------The Grand Exchange

 

The way the G.E. works is that a player will put up an "offer" for an item they desire to sell/buy into the G.E. system and it will wait until it matched another player selling/buying that item for the same/lower/higher price and then exchange the two player's items and GP. The G.E. allows a 5% below mid-price or above mid-price. This causes players to make limited amounts of profit/loss on an item. The G.E. records item sales, quantity and price of sales, and changes the price accordingly every 12 or so hours if the item sold enough items respectfully. If an item did not sell/buy enough times the price will not change.

 

The way merch clans work with the G.E. is how I explained in the first section. This affects item prices obviously, and hiddenly too. When an item is given "fake demand" either buy or sell offers, it will cause the "true price" or "street price" to be false. This is caused by the wave of buys making the item to rise very quickly, and then crash when the merch cc plans to dump the item. Eventually the item will balance itself out, or so you think. The price can either be unusually high or low depending on the item itself, it's useage and real demand/supply, compared to what it was before it was merchanted. Flipping works the same way as merch clans do, just in a smaller amount, and more quickly. But since more players do this, as it's safer to invest this way than with merch clans, it does enough damage to item prices itself. New items would be given a set price by Jagex on the G.E., for instance I think that most Royal clothing items were 300k each. And the player-determined street price became somewhere betweem 5,000,000gp and 50,000,000gp depending on the item.

 

How do street prices work with the G.E.? Players will use stable items, or items able to be bought for lower than they are sellable for, or random items/junk they cannot sell easily to trade with the newer item or whichever item it is for the other player's pure cash, or whatever the two players compromised on. The reason "Street prices" exist with the G.E. is because the set price is far lower than the current real demand (or false for merch clans/flippers) set on the G.E.. Since an item can only rise or lower 5% per 12 hours/however long the G.E. takes to update prices, people use junk to trade with an item for mainly cash or a valuable item street price-wise, depending if the street price of that item is higher or lower than the G.E. price. Rarely does that apply to when it's lower, if it is ever. That is because most people will want to try and sell it on the G.E. for higher than it's street price. This causes the item to drop lower than it should.

 

 

------Problem(s) with the Grand Exchange

 

Because of merch clans, some items can be unbuyable or unsellable on it, causing the real supply and demand to dissapear, and the price being dictated by whatever damage the merch clan/flippers do. Then when it is able to be sold/bought, the price is usually higher/lower than the real price. Over time, usually, that price becomes the actual price, and the old one is lost. This causes fake and real inflation and deflation. To make things worse, Jagex thought of the whole "statuette" thing to add more straight gp to the economy, money created by just one part of the game. Seriously large amounts of gp at that. They had said that 10% of the RS population was PKers (2009). Now, trillions and trillions of GP being put into the economy by 10% of the game, not THAT important part of the game, too? Maybe it was because of the mass quitting from removing trade limits and Wilderness along with merch clans, and they figured it would help. I don't know. Whatever.

 

This all stacks up to be one very very large mess of fake prices. This can dictate any and every player's gameplay for one simple reason: gold; money; $$$$; moolah; gp. Every player uses it, aside from newer players. It's the main trading component to anything. This can cause a player to not buy an item because its price is rising or u*buyable, stuck with gp, thus changing what they do/use in their gameplay time. This can cause a player to not sell an item because it's price is falling or is unsellable, possibly causing a person to not be able to buy that specific armor they wanted, or those supplies to their skill training that they wanted, and making their items devalue without them choosing to be.

 

Also, someone posted something about the Grand Exchange Database..I like the concept overall, but the graph thing causes problems in itself. I don't see much change without it, though, so I'm not that concerned about it myself..

 

 

------Possible Solutions to the Grand Exchange

 

You must look at what the difference between the G.E. and pre-G.E. trades are, first. Item prices before G.E. were more liquid and could be dictated more freely by players. They were able to choose more freely what price they wanted to buy/sell an item for. For most players it was a legitimate amount, not 1k for a 700k item, which is what the G.E. and trade limits were made to prevent (due to RWT and all the legal problems it brought..). The G.E. has a 5% increase/decrease limit to an item per update. It is not liquid because prices are updated only twice a day at most, as opposed to whenever demand/supply changed, and the G.E. prices are heavily based on quantity and not true demand/supply and what the average player wants to pay/get. The only thing keeping the G.E. alive is people compromising, merch clans moving on to the next item to manipulate, street trading higher priced/new items, and actual supply/demand slowly balancing an item out until it's overpowered by merch clans or flippers.

 

The first thing that I think can fix most problems with the G.E. is making item prices able to be more unique to the item/item type. Changing the way each type/each item updates will help tremendously. If there weren't set update times every day, and the updates were dependant on the item and its own quantity set for a random time + times based on quantity more times a day than currently (2), merch clans and flippers could not influence prices as easily. More than likely it would cause more players to buy/sell items and more likely be able to make money with these clans without disrupting actual gameplay.

 

The second thing I think would help would to make the min and max price %'s more dynamic to what the item is (or even also to how much is sold), MAYBE changing some to lower than 5% (perhaps as low as 2.5%), or more likely, to ~7.5% or higher. Each % would depend entirely on the item's statistics.

 

A not-so-needed feature involving the Grand Exchange would be removing that huge clunk of bogus out from Varrock, and adding Exchange tellers to banks. It would repopulate banks, make Varrock less crowded, create a little more ease-of-access to using the G.E., make the banks seem less overpopulated by NPC's (I always found it stupid that they made the varrock west bank twice as large, even though no one would be in it 1/100th as much as before). This should happen regardless of what is and isn't actually wrong with the G.E..

 

 

Now that I'm all done writing that dreadfully long post, you can comment now. I'm open to all arguements with information I've posted, needed corrections, questions about the information I've posted, support via bumping or telling your friends/clanmates/whatever about the thread/what you heard from it/where to find it. Please don't spam. Abide by the forum rules. And most importantly of all, try to learn something from all this.

 

Oh, and mods please move this to wherever it should be, if it isn't already.

 

 

---------Important things I forgot to post

 

 

--Since the G.E. updates every 12 hours or whatever, the prices are stuck at being changed slowly, so over a long period of time it will eventually settle down, but not change back to what it was (due to the bad system that the G.E. has). The game around the G.E. moves faster than the G.E. itself, which is why it isn't a very good system. The buy/sell aspect of it is good, but that too is quicker than how fast prices can change. Merch clans, or manip clans/scam gangs as you call them, would be able to do what they want, but I am pretty sure it would have less effect, and I don't think that players would be ripped out of money so easily, if at all.

 

--There is a main difference between trying to quickly buy/sell an item on the G.E. vs old trading. With old trading, you too would lower/raise your price from what the actual street price was to buy/sell faster. You can do this with the G.E., too, but the difference is that that price never changed the actual price of the item unless a lot of people started doing it. Of course the G.E. does that now, but since it updates way slower it can mistake real price lower/rises with fake buys and sells via flips/merch cc's.

 

 

A solution that would prevent Clans from price manipulating the GE as they do now? A simple practice of price culling would do that. Set the GE to ignore the highest and lowest sales, and factor in only the average sales after the culled prices are figured.

 

Clans that practice "buy Max!" to manipulate the GE will soon find that the price is not rising at all or very little from their efforts. The Culled min price will help protect the non merchanting players from "item dumps" that these clans also practice, since the min price is also ignored in the GE updates. This will prevent items from "crashing" in price since the lowest values are ignored.

 

Over all it would create a more stable buy/sell trend on the prices since it will be TRULY effected by the general population of buyers and sellers, not the price manipulating merchant clans. It would also encourage a more honest form of merchanting, which we know as the "flippers".

 

That could help the G.E. a lot but overall, doesn't change much. HOWEVER, it opened my eyes to perhaps an overall easier solution, or harder, I'm not sure which atm (cant think). If the G.E. recorded prices more frequently, perhaps not -as- frequently as I said before (simulating liquid prices), but make a dynamic/static hybrid updater. Whereas it would take old data of prices (the week-to-week average over 3-12+ months for instance, maybe), use more frequent prices (4-hour updates or something) and then create more realistic 12-hour updates that would not change prices dramatically and nerf large fake price changes! This actually could work much better than my first thought!!! I'm pretty intrigued by this thought, actually, more than my original post.

Edited March 8, 2010 by ren

[Ren]

Ok, people will probably contest my thread title with what I posted, but it really is. I'll put something at the top of the thread to explain this..

 

 

All better.

[20Rice04]

If you go look at the GE database just now you will see that about 95-99% of all items are dropping. Jagex are sooo totally manipulating it, although they'll probably deny it, but if you look you'll see a common enough trend. It's to stop inflation before you ask :D. And tbh I don't see the problem with them controlling the prices- but then what seperates the Ge from a shop?

[warrior5024]

God forbid people actually ignore the clans and just work around them. The only time I've ever been affected by merchants was during the prayer potion buy-out, and that didn't even go off, since the power is actually in the PLAYERS, not the clans, and the players didn't want prayer pots to rise.

Go to a different goal when times get tough, or a minigame.

[sees_all1]

A faster updating GE, no artificial price limits, and better limits on items/hour would solve most of the problems with the GE.

 

Also, a feature "Buy when", "Buy until", "Sell when", "Sell until" that allows a user to automatically put in an offer at whatever price level, i.e. buy all swordfishes until they reach 550 each, and then keep my offer at 550 each until the offer is complete, or sell until the price of my rune platelegs are 40000 each, and then keep the offer there, would help alleviate the problems of stuck items.

[Ren]

If you go look at the GE database just now you will see that about 95-99% of all items are dropping. Jagex are sooo totally manipulating it, although they'll probably deny it, but if you look you'll see a common enough trend. It's to stop inflation before you ask :D. And tbh I don't see the problem with them controlling the prices- but then what seperates the Ge from a shop?

 

Haha, I didn't really think Jagex would do that. Thanks for pointing that out. Yeah, that's the next thing, fixing shops! I don't like limited quantity, at least set to each player. For that I think it would have to be changed to a world stock again (much larger), but each player only allowed to buy x amount per 24hr period (larger than what each player can currently buy).. Not a bad thing to point out though. I'll have to keep this in mind :D.

 

 

God forbid people actually ignore the clans and just work around them. The only time I've ever been affected by merchants was during the prayer potion buy-out, and that didn't even go off, since the power is actually in the PLAYERS, not the clans, and the players didn't want prayer pots to rise.

Go to a different goal when times get tough, or a minigame.

 

That's the thing, you shouldn't have to work around them. The game was never made for merch clans, why should players have to change how they play to make them work? That's not fair to me, or anyone else.

 

 

A faster updating GE, no artificial price limits, and better limits on items/hour would solve most of the problems with the GE.

 

Also, a feature "Buy when", "Buy until", "Sell when", "Sell until" that allows a user to automatically put in an offer at whatever price level, i.e. buy all swordfishes until they reach 550 each, and then keep my offer at 550 each until the offer is complete, or sell until the price of my rune platelegs are 40000 each, and then keep the offer there, would help alleviate the problems of stuck items.

 

Yeah, I totally forgot the whole item limits thing, I'll have to implement that into my post somewhere.. As for the second part, that's a whole other problem I haven't put thought into yet. It's possible that this could make some merchanting way easier, which is why I don't think it would be a good idea. Along with the need to have excess gp on your offers to make it possible. But yeah, maybe if all this was implemented it could be a feature. I don't think there will be as much of a problem with stuck items if they changed the G.E. this way anyways, though. Needs some more thinking (which I'm not doing atm, sry lol), but definitely a good thing to point out.

 

Thanks for replying, guys.

[Ren]

There isn't a bump option for TiF is there?

[sees_all1]

There isn't a bump option for TiF is there?

no, and its typically frowned upon if you bump your thread if it hasn't fallen off the first page. There's no point putting your thread from #5 on the list to #1 - if people love/like/hate what they see they'll post.

[Bladewing]

Why does your "Problems with the Grand Exchange" section not actually detail any problems with the Grand Exchange?

[vivimancer]

Why does your "Problems with the Grand Exchange" section not actually detail any problems with the Grand Exchange?

 

 

because OP can clearly see it is a minefield. But more productively,

 

# Introduce optional auctions, restore the open call bidding ah la Falador east bank

# A function that allowed a player to see exactly how many of a certain item had been traded in 30/60/90 days

# A function that tells you how many other items, of that type are also waiting to be sold at that price.

[Ren]

Why does your "Problems with the Grand Exchange" section not actually detail any problems with the Grand Exchange?

 

 

because OP can clearly see it is a minefield. But more productively,

 

# Introduce optional auctions, restore the open call bidding ah la Falador east bank

# A function that allowed a player to see exactly how many of a certain item had been traded in 30/60/90 days

# A function that tells you how many other items, of that type are also waiting to be sold at that price.

 

Thanks for supporting me <3: . As for the rest, I'm not sure what you mean by the open call thing, because it doesn't exist unless I'm reading something wrong.

 

And I'm not trying to be an [wagon] about bumping, but I don't really think it's all too fair to let a good post die out just because people don't want to post. I feel like if I let it go too far it will be forgotten, and seeing as this is a huge deal (the way I see it..), I don't want that to happen.

 

 

Either way I was asking a question, not bumping my post.

[vivimancer]

 

Thanks for supporting me <3: . As for the rest, I'm not sure what you mean by the open call thing, because it doesn't exist unless I'm reading something wrong.

 

 

Its probably little hard to explain but, in "the good old days" in falador east bank there would be buyers and sellers (generally of ores) all trying to get the best price, a buyer might start with buying all x for y price, then a second would usually respond with also buying all x for y + 5, the sellers then take their pick.

 

 

And I'm not trying to be an [wagon] about bumping, but I don't really think it's all too fair to let a good post die out just because people don't want to post. I feel like if I let it go too far it will be forgotten, and seeing as this is a huge deal (the way I see it..), I don't want that to happen.

 

Either way I was asking a question, not bumping my post.

 

This forum moves quite quickly thankfully its not RSoF (BUT THAT'S AN OTHER RANT) but does any one honestly trawl page 5? Me neither....

 

Also trying to clarify not bumping. =)

[Ren]

 

Thanks for supporting me <3: . As for the rest, I'm not sure what you mean by the open call thing, because it doesn't exist unless I'm reading something wrong.

 

 

Its probably little hard to explain but, in "the good old days" in falador east bank there would be buyers and sellers (generally of ores) all trying to get the best price, a buyer might start with buying all x for y price, then a second would usually respond with also buying all x for y + 5, the sellers then take their pick.

 

 

And I'm not trying to be an [wagon] about bumping, but I don't really think it's all too fair to let a good post die out just because people don't want to post. I feel like if I let it go too far it will be forgotten, and seeing as this is a huge deal (the way I see it..), I don't want that to happen.

 

Either way I was asking a question, not bumping my post.

 

This forum moves quite quickly thankfully its not RSoF (BUT THAT'S AN OTHER RANT) but does any one honestly trawl page 5? Me neither....

 

Also trying to clarify not bumping. =)

 

 

Ah, thanks for explaining that. I get you now. Yeah, that would be kind of neat to have again. Also, since I'm not entirely up for using brain power atm :sad: , does anyone know if this is at all related to this problem:

 

I put up a sale of 10,000 iron ores for 200 each on the G.E. (mid price). It does not instantly sell. I get mad, so I put it in for minimum price on the G.E. It instantly sells for the mid price.

 

I am not sure why this even exists, and seems to mess up something. But like I said, I can't think right now, so I don't know if that's the reason I don't understand it. Lol.

 

Either way, responses to this and anything about thread are greatly appreciated. Thanks guys. :^_^:

[Jeda45]

Things I think might help:

 

Price floors and ceilings should be removed (Except for certain items, like spirit shards). I don't really see how they improve things any.

The market price should ignore completed offers* outside of the middle 50%. That way, if prices are going down, and some merch clan tries to buy for max while everyone else is trading at min, it would be ignored

 

This will probably lead to thousands of problems that I didn't see, but...

 

*Each trade counts twice. So if some item is traded for 500 gp, with both offers at 500 gp, it counts twice, both as 500. If for that trade, one offer is 475 and the other is 525, it will count once as 475 and once as 525.

[Ren]

I really don't understand your last bit.

 

I don't think the GE would work if it was like that, for one. And for two, wouldn't it be the same thing, one trade being 500 to 500 and 475 to 525?

 

 

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, maybe this is info I need to add to my thread.

[Zaaps1]

Mm, just a slight correction, nothing big.

 

--Since the G.E. updates every 12 hours or whatever, the prices are stuck at being changed slowly, so over a long period of time it will eventually settle down, but not change back to what it was (due to the bad system that the G.E. has).

 

The GE actually updates randomly, but averages one update per day. It updates partly based on randomness, and partly based on volume of trade. As I am typing, the GE hasn't updated for about 35 hours. But I've seen it update twice a day before and I've heard it's even updated 4 times a day in the past.

[Ren]

Mm, just a slight correction, nothing big.

 

--Since the G.E. updates every 12 hours or whatever, the prices are stuck at being changed slowly, so over a long period of time it will eventually settle down, but not change back to what it was (due to the bad system that the G.E. has).

 

The GE actually updates randomly, but averages one update per day. It updates partly based on randomness, and partly based on volume of trade. As I am typing, the GE hasn't updated for about 35 hours. But I've seen it update twice a day before and I've heard it's even updated 4 times a day in the past.

 

Hah, the whole thing that started this suggestion was totally wrong. Funny, isn't it? Yeah, I was told it updated twice a day. Ok, so I'll edit it to say twice a day at most on average..

 

 

Forgot to ask, is that "volume of trade" based on all trade? or just of specific items?