Which Money Sinks Would Help Runescape Economy?

[Kill_Life]

Taxes in Runescape? The horror!

The only way to make it even worse is if part of the tax money goes to a player(s) if they win something.

 

Make items unlimited again in the stores. Instead of buying in the GE, people will buy items suchs as arrows, bolts, feathers, ... in the shops again: Drains money.

Atleast, as long as it isn't cheaper in the GE. Then gain, the items in the GE are most likely bought in the shops aswell.

 

We need more skills like Construction, but even more expensive.

Or expensive mini-games, with untradable rewards.

Armour such as Barrows and weapons such as the latest Dungeoneering items are also a good step in the right direction.

 

Perhaps Jagex has to do some things they've never done before: Release items for a limited time which cost a lot. Wouldn't matter if they are tradable.

But that would be just like releasing Partyhats, Santa Hats and other rares. So chances are slim they'd actually do that.

 

I don't care if I lose money or have to spend money, as long as I get something in return, be it a skill or rewards from minigames.

Taxes won't give me a thing but frustration.

[NukeMarine]

Taxes in Runescape? The horror!

The only way to make it even worse is if part of the tax money goes to a player(s) if they win something.

(snip)

I don't care if I lose money or have to spend money, as long as I get something in return, be it a skill or rewards from minigames.

Taxes won't give me a thing but frustration.

Well, great point. I even removed the idea of a tax altogether from the first post. Instead of a tax, what the GE would do is charge a consignment fee. That's a 2% fee applied for it doing your selling and buying for you. If you don't wish to use it's services, then you can always advertise on the forums and try to trade in person.

 

Granted, any change to the GE should be done in conjunction with other things to improve it.

[Bladewing]

Whether you call it a consignment fee or a tax, it'll have the same effect because it does the same thing. People aren't opposed to it because the word "tax" is a bad word, it's because the tax is a bad thing #-o

[NukeMarine]

Whether you call it a consignment fee or a tax, it'll have the same effect because it does the same thing. People aren't opposed to it because the word "tax" is a bad word, it's because the tax is a bad thing #-o

A tax in Runescape is pointless (among many things in a virtual world programmed to give the illusion of reality), hence the name change as it is a service fee if implemented.

 

Taxes in real life are not a bad thing. How taxes are collected (and used) can be considered a bad thing, but that's up to the society that empowers the government that collects and uses them. Unless you have friends that are putting out fires and building roads for you for free. So yeah, taxes is a loaded term that people associate with punishment. Never mind that many things that give life a bit of luxury and security comes from taxes.

[newge4]

Whether you call it a consignment fee or a tax, it'll have the same effect because it does the same thing. People aren't opposed to it because the word "tax" is a bad word, it's because the tax is a bad thing #-o

A tax in Runescape is pointless (among many things in a virtual world programmed to give the illusion of reality), hence the name change as it is a service fee if implemented.

 

Taxes in real life are not a bad thing. How taxes are collected (and used) can be considered a bad thing, but that's up to the society that empowers the government that collects and uses them. Unless you have friends that are putting out fires and building roads for you for free. So yeah, taxes is a loaded term that people associate with punishment. Never mind that many things that give life a bit of luxury and security comes from taxes.

 

I really don't understand what the problem is with a tax. Like I said on the first page, make it on ALL transactions over a certain amount, let's say 1,000,000. Not just GE transactions, but all. I personally would have no problem with paying 1% on anything over a mil.

[NukeMarine]

I really don't understand what the problem is with a tax. Like I said on the first page, make it on ALL transactions over a certain amount, let's say 1,000,000. Not just GE transactions, but all. I personally would have no problem with paying 1% on anything over a mil.

And that's a reasonable opinion.

 

Seriously, the GE is a great service despite all it's flaws. Yeah, it got rid of almost all the real merchanters and increased the number of speculators, but man it made trading easy. Many would have paid a 5% fee for such a service when the GE was first released.

[Bladewing]

I really don't understand what the problem is with a tax. Like I said on the first page, make it on ALL transactions over a certain amount, let's say 1,000,000. Not just GE transactions, but all. I personally would have no problem with paying 1% on anything over a mil.

Economics of taxation

 

Taxation causes inefficiency. And the scary thing is that people like you grow up to be legislators.

[Lep]

Honestly, a lottery would do it. No limit to invest and everyone in game can participate. Once a week, the invested money gets totalled up and the winner recieves 50% of it. The other 50% vanishes.

[jsboutin2]

Honestly, a lottery would do it. No limit to invest and everyone in game can participate. Once a week, the invested money gets totalled up and the winner recieves 50% of it. The other 50% vanishes.

 

I like that.

[SanNo1]

Honestly, a lottery would do it. No limit to invest and everyone in game can participate. Once a week, the invested money gets totalled up and the winner recieves 50% of it. The other 50% vanishes.

I have to say I'm not too excited about this idea, but I wouldn't mind if they implemented it. However, there should be limits on investing, or the more you invest the more chance you have on winning. The latter would IMO be the better option, it would be like buying raffle tickets; the more you buy the more chance you get on winning.

[timmmmm83]

Honestly, a lottery would do it. No limit to invest and everyone in game can participate. Once a week, the invested money gets totalled up and the winner recieves 50% of it. The other 50% vanishes.

It harms noone and only affects the people wishing to participate.

 

Cool idea!

[embluss]

I really like that lottery idea. I have a modified tax idea- any item which has fluctuated by 30% or more during the past week has a tax on it. Higher fluctuation means higher tax. Takes out money at the expense of merching clans while leaving most of us alone.

[Grimy_Bunyip]

Honestly, a lottery would do it. No limit to invest and everyone in game can participate. Once a week, the invested money gets totalled up and the winner recieves 50% of it. The other 50% vanishes.

I understand that runescape itself works on luck, ex: boss drops.

but the big distinction is that hunting for drops, you can EXPECT to earn a profit.

when you go into a lottery you EXPECT to lose money.

Instead of promoting perseverance, this kinda of lottery just promotes recklessness.

 

I really think of a lottery as a brute force solution.

Not that I expect better from Jagex idea wise.

But it's still a "Oh we couldn't think of any better ideas so just use this" kind of idea.

Sort of like the PVP statuette drop idea, which helped create this inflation problem in the first place.

 

There's no guarantee that players just won't splurge on the lottery and cause horrible deflation.

There's no guarantee that players won't just stop playing the lottery suddenly.

It's not a precise solution.

 

Whereas if Jagex introduced a new piece of content, in which you spend X gp's to save Y amount of time for yourself.

Then would exists a value of X gp's that the entire population of runescape SHOULD spend as a whole, to achieve an efficient ratio of X gps to Y time saved.

And the amount of GP taken out will always be pushed towards that efficient value.

Sure there will be some fluctuations, but several orders of magnitude less than a lottery scheme.

 

^^those kinds of updates are ones that induce economic stability. They're like supports on chairs. They need to be tough and well defined.

a lottery would cause all sorts of havoc on the economy, we just don't know what yet.

[Bladewing]

There is not a strong incentive for anyone to play a lottery which has an expected return of 0.5 lol. It's interesting, but as morionic said the incentives need to be strong to get players, who are rational contrary to common belief, to participate.

[NukeMarine]

There is not a strong incentive for anyone to play a lottery which has an expected return of 0.5 lol. It's interesting, but as moronic said the incentives need to be strong to get players, who are rational contrary to common belief, to participate.

The lottery is still an idea, though it is kind of a inverse proportional tax. There is another gambling option: convert the Game Room into a more Las Vegas style gambling hall. Would be interesting to see wheel games, dice games and card games all around that place. However, such a place needs some sort of limits. Perhaps, like Manage thy Kingdom, one can buy 75k gp of "credits" per day that saves up over time (max of 15 mill credits for example). So, you can cash out all your credits in one day (max of 15 mill gp), but you can only buy 75k gp of them a day. So long as Jagex makes the various odds of winning lower than 1:1 then all is good as a money sink.

 

And don't give me that BS that children play this game. Last I checked, players murder men, women, baby animals, demi-gods and even gods now and again. Characters drink beer and steal. There are even games of chance and competitive gambling occurring (duel arena, rat pits, etc.).

[Kill_Life]

Honestly, a lottery would do it. No limit to invest and everyone in game can participate. Once a week, the invested money gets totalled up and the winner recieves 50% of it. The other 50% vanishes.

 

Not too sure...

If not many people would participate one time, people won't be bothered to buy tickets because of the low reward, causing an even lower reward and even less people buying tickets, ...

So it'd have to stay popular to work.

And one person could cause an inflation if he or she was extremely rich, I think.

 

They need to hit it where perhaps most of the cash is: F2P.

It's the main supplyer or most resources, I think, yet, doesn't have that much to spend it on.

Items like Gravite are a good start.

[meb]

Maybe the coin drops from monsters could be decreased by 20%; not too drastic, but won't upset too many players either and would slow the flow of coins into the game

Except that it wouldn't.

[Peronix]

I was thinking about this the other day. What I thought of was a D&D of sorts, where traveling merchants or as I call them, "marauders", will randomly appear at places around RuneScape and sell items that have been lost by players in PvP at a certain percentage below minimum GE price to give players an opportunity to make a profit, but at the same time taking money out of the game.

 

The items these marauders carry would be randomly selected from a database of lost items, with more expensive items being rarer. Also these shops would NOT be personalized, first player to find them and buy an item gets the item.

[atestarossa]

What I don't get is why on life and death should put up bigger sinks into the game for. The only thing that would be good for is creating even more instability into this game.

Runescape has always had some inflation, and quite a lot as well, if you compare the value of 1gp today and 1gp in 2003. And there should always be a goal to try to keep inflation to a minimum. The problem though, as everyone here knows, is that you don't have a accurate way of entering cash into the game. It's not something the state (read: Jagex) makes and manages fully, but rather everyone in the game does. Of course this is a system that creates instability, but overall it's working quite great. The job now for keeping inflation to a minimum would be up to Jagex to "balance" the flow of gp into the game, but I don't think they should mess around too much on this.

 

If we look at the inflation that occurred after the introduction of the pvp statuettes, it has been a line that boosted at the start, and slowed down after a while. Actually, the inflation we see now have slowed down and pretty much stabilised. The reason for this would be that all ways gold pieces enters the game is "static" One action gives x amount of gp back, no matter how much gp is actually in the game on beforehand. If inflation occurs because of this, then all prices will raise (or rather, the value of gp will sink) and thus, the value of doing the activities like pvp tricking will get less valuable, or effective if you want. So pretty much what I mean is that if you leave it to itself, and don't mess around with the in- and outflows of money in the game, then it will eventually balance itself out. It's when new content that messes with the balance of this that we see sudden changes in the economy, like we saw with the statuettes.

 

Back to the money sinks that would help the rs economy. I don't really think it is a goal in itself to give gp more value than it has now, since the economy has stabilised pretty well right now. And if we introduced a money sink then people would just hoard on to money, making it harder to sell items for a while. There's not many reasons to do this now, as you still get rewarded with the same for the amount of work you do, relative to the other prices in the game. Remember that there's no big difference if the "base level" of the economy is 5, or if it is 10. So if we say it has changed from 5 to 10, not good in itself, but it doesn't justify subtracting 5 just for the sake to get back to the old level.

 

There is one part of this that actually would benefit from having an economy with a more valued gp though. Since 2004, and the introduction of runecrafting, there have been one chain of activities that people have seen as the "main motor" of the economy for a long while. This being the creation of rune essence, as well as using woodcutting, crafting and fletching to create items to high alch. As the price of all these things (and pretty much everything else that was made to be alched) is bound by a static gp price, the alching price, they will get worse to do as the gp is worth less, just as less people tricks in pvp. This is a bit sad in my eyes, as I would like a game where skilling was more rewarded than it is now. I think there was a thread about this this week as well, wasn't it?

But this is still a purely subjective point of view, and is more about what the game should be about, rather than how the economy right now should be "fixed". (which I as mentioned, don't think it needs)

 

 

Tl;dr: I think the economy has stabilised well enough, and that messing with it more would harm it more than it would benefit.

[Sir_Kurity]

Maybe the coin drops from monsters could be decreased by 20%; not too drastic, but won't upset too many players either and would slow the flow of coins into the game

Except that it wouldn't.

Yea, monster drops arent even close to the main source of coins.

 

Most of its from alching and PVP.

[nubbycubby]

Something similar to buying daily battlestaves; I get ~1k profit for every 7k GP that I take out of the economy.

[Grimy_Bunyip]

Something similar to buying daily battlestaves; I get ~1k profit for every 7k GP that I take out of the economy.

battlestaves put 9300 gp back into the economy when they're alched though...

[nubbycubby]

Something similar to buying daily battlestaves; I get ~1k profit for every 7k GP that I take out of the economy.

battlestaves put 9300 gp back into the economy when they're alched though...

 

Battlestaves alch for 4.2k GP.

[NukeMarine]

Something similar to buying daily battlestaves; I get ~1k profit for every 7k GP that I take out of the economy.

battlestaves put 9300 gp back into the economy when they're alched though...

 

Battlestaves alch for 4.2k GP.

Put an air orb on one and try again.

[noble_aloof]

heres my idea. bring back a randomized staking where you get paired with someone within 2 combat levels of you who also has the same rules selected as you. instead of staking cash, bring a type of staking currency into the game (100 gp for 1 token, for example). tokens you buy will be called blue tokens. tokens you win become green tokens. a certain amount of both blue and green tokens can be traded in in the duel arena rewards shop for POTIONS, BONES, EXPERIENCE, and some new armor or gadgets.

 

another idea: add a hard thzaar quest (70+ smith, 49+ defense, 20+ summoning, for example) that unlocks a spell at 79 magic called "thzaar alchemy" that turns regular items into Tokkul.

 

extra:

add more teleport options (lunar, ancients) to a player owned house (requiring large amounts of law runes)

 

sailing. not a skill but being able to build your own boat and sail it around, tie it in with construction in a quest requiring 62cons, but not allowing your first ship until 64 cons and then add stuff all the way to 99

 

a new dungeon where you have to build stairs and "summon" builders- requiring 70+ cons and 60+ summmoning (and a dungeoneering level)

 

add shortcuts that require high construction levels.

 

allow people to retrieve their lost minigame items for a large cost (5mil for full void back, etc)