01-Feb-2013 Squeal of Fortune: Cash Bags

[Warlover]

01/02/2013 - 00:00

 

This weekend, Yelps is making a crucial update to Squeal of Fortune by replacing most gold prizes with Cash Bags. What’s the difference between Cash Bags and regular gold prizes? The amount of gold you receive upon opening a Cash Bag depends on your skill levels.

 

Cash Bags complement your adventure far better than before, offering everyone a more balanced and rewarding experience – your prizes are tailored for you.

Cash Bags come in three sizes:

• Small bags land you between 750 and 10,000 coins.
  
• Medium grants you 7,500 to 100,000 coins.
  
• Large bags yield 75,000 to 1,000,000 coins.
  

This brand new item is replacing all gold prizes on the wheel, with the exception of the 200 million coin prize, which is still up for grabs for those with considerable luck on their side.

 

To see in this new addition, Squeal of Fortune is holding a massive gold blowout: all Cash Bags opened this weekend will grant twice the coins! Keep in mind: once you’ve won a bag, you need to open it this weekend to earn your double winnings.

 

Cash Bags will yield double the coinage starting Friday 1st February 00:00 GMT until Monday 4th February 23:59 GMT. Following the weekend they’ll be a permanent fixture, serving up their regular rewards. If you want to know more about Cash Bags, check out the official FAQ. You can purchase spins here, or by clicking 'Add Spins' next to the wheel in Squeal of Fortune. Don’t forget that subscribing will bag you two daily spins instead of one!

 

The RuneScape Team

[Ammako]

Okay with this.

The only problem I see is that it makes it much easier to buy large amounts of money directly from Jagex if you're at a high level.

But I like that the rewards scale with your character's level, much like the "Rune platebody" reward, which would be addy plate/mithril plate/black plate/etc if your def level was lower.

[Sbrideau]

Much better than always winning either 1k or small lamps.

[decebal]

7390 coins from a small bag @ 1302 total level.

 

Look like it's an improvement from what I was getting on the SOF before.

[Huge Noob]

I got 2 small Cash Bags and got about 12-14k each. 2222 Total Level.

[jayc3399]

2302 I think lol and my 3 small bags were just over 15k each.

[MTheory]

My small bags were 17k and 18k and some cents I believe

[Urza285]

Lmfao "directly"...

[Sy_Accursed]

It's hard to have an opinion since sof gave me no bags today.

[Urza285]

It's hard to have an opinion since sof gave me no bags today.

You don't need to even be an active and in-the-know player to have an opinion of a runescape upset these days.

[Drazhor]

Just over 18k from a small bag at 2413 total

 

Am I the only one that's still seeing this as direct micro-transactions for cash? :P

[Urza285]

About as "direct" as speaking to someone of these forums.

[Yoko Kurama]

This is an irrelevant piecemeal reform. Sure, it has a balancing component to it, but it only balances and reduces a small part of the cash rewards, the 200M prize is still here. So, yeah, now instead of winning fixed sums of 50k, or 100k, or 200k, you will instead get 10k(if I recall correctly, the amount of money you're getting now is doubled for this weekend for cash bags).

 

I mention the 10K figure because I received 2 cash bags, and they both gave me ~20K gpies at 2488 total level.

[Sy_Accursed]

This is an irrelevant piecemeal reform. Sure, it has a balancing component to it, but it only balances and reduces a small part of the cash rewards, the 200M prize is still here. So, yeah, now instead of winning fixed sums of 50k, or 100k, or 200k, you will instead get 10k(if I recall correctly, the amount of money you're getting now is doubled for this weekend for cash bags).

 

I mention the 10K figure because I received 2 cash bags, and they both gave me ~20K gpies at 2488 total level.

 

By what logic are the everyday cash rewards that most users get at least 1 of a day only a 'small part' of the cash rewards?

The ONLY bit of cash rewards untouched is the 200m jackpot prize, which is a tiny part of the cash rewards as it is 1 prize and so rare that almost no-one actually gets it.

[Yoko Kurama]

By what logic are the everyday cash rewards that most users get at least 1 of a day only a 'small part' of the cash rewards?

The ONLY bit of cash rewards untouched is the 200m jackpot prize, which is a tiny part of the cash rewards as it is 1 prize and so rare that almost no-one actually gets it.

 

I was obviously referring to the microtransacting nature of the Squeal in a structural sense rather than narrowly focusing on the Cash bags. What I was saying was, sure, they've sort of balanced the smaller rewards, but the big jackpot still remains. After all, people who purchase lots of spins do so in the hopes of acquiring the 200M reward, not the 50K one.

 

It's true that the 200M is rarely won, but the principle still remains.

[Fallstar]

By what logic are the everyday cash rewards that most users get at least 1 of a day only a 'small part' of the cash rewards?

The ONLY bit of cash rewards untouched is the 200m jackpot prize, which is a tiny part of the cash rewards as it is 1 prize and so rare that almost no-one actually gets it.

 

I was obviously referring to the microtransacting nature of the Squeal in a structural sense rather than narrowly focusing on the Cash bags. What I was saying was, sure, they've sort of balanced the smaller rewards, but the big jackpot still remains. After all, people who purchase lots of spins do so in the hopes of acquiring the 200M reward, not the 50K one.

 

It's true that the 200M is rarely won, but the principle still remains.

 

They haven't balanced the lower rewards. The 10k cash bags are as common as 1k and 5k used to be. The 100k cash bag is in the uncommon slot, making it as common as the 50k used to be. And the 1M cash bag is in the rare slot, not the super rare, meaning the 1M bag has basically replaced the 500k reward.

 

The 200M is so rare I actually don't care about it.

 

I wonder if Jagex realize we need money sinks, not an increased money influx.

[NukeMarine]

The 200 million is so rare as to be irrelevant to the discussion. Usually you ignore the outliers or go with the median, but even here on average it adds little to the overall output.

 

Until this change, the SoF was only useful with regards to XP lamps in my opinion (barring those that wanted specialty items and those two discontinued tradeable items). This change looks like you're going from 4000 gp per spin average to 10, 20 or even 30 times that (wild ass guess on my part). Now, $100 for 450 spins for 36m gp is probably 6 times what gold farmers charge. However, its a method that doesn't get a player banned and directly pays Jagex. Plus, that's on top of the skill lamps. I can see it encouraging a lot more players to pay.

 

Not saying it's good or bad, but it will change the economy. Now to see if the sinkholes are gp sinks via ingame gambling to offset this update.

[Yoko Kurama]

They haven't balanced the lower rewards.

 

I was referring to the fact that the cash bag rewards are contingent upon your level.

 

----

 

As for 200M reward, I was talking purely with regards to abstract principles, my implication being that the SOF's nature as a microtransaction scheme by which Jagex makes money, much like how casinos make money, remains the same. My claim was not one about material reality or practice, or statistical analysis -- in those cases, I agree, obviously one would discount outliers, I even mentioned that it's rarely won.

 

---------

 

I wonder if Jagex realize we need money sinks, not an increased money influx.

 

It's a bit too late for that. Any money sink will "balance" the economy by being exacting on the backs of the average players. Wealth in RS is far too concentrated, a handful of people probably have hundreds of billions of Gpies. Any money sink will barely put a dent in their wallets, while putting a noticeable dent in the wallets of average players. If Jagex is serious about taking money out of the game, and taking large chunks out, they should simply seize the assets of obscenely wealthy players(past a certain threshold, a couple Billion, at the absolute max) and erase them from the game.

[chenw]

2346 total, got 16586

[Estoc]

It's a bit too late for that. Any money sink will "balance" the economy by being exacting on the backs of the average players. Wealth in RS is far too concentrated, a handful of people probably have hundreds of billions of Gpies. Any money sink will barely put a dent in their wallets, while putting a noticeable dent in the wallets of average players. If Jagex is serious about taking money out of the game, and taking large chunks out, they should simply seize the assets of obscenely wealthy players(past a certain threshold, a couple Billion, at the absolute max) and erase them from the game.

 

How much do those obscenely rich players actually spend though? I always assumed they had sort of a dragon's hoard of money, no reason to have it other than to have it. While it's true they have the wealth of thousands of combined players, they also don't have the needs of them (thousands of sets of bandos, hundreds of thousands of potions etc). It seems to me that these players are effectively taking money out of circulation.

 

Seizing their wealth would also only be a temporary measure. After all, there will always be obscenely rich people, whether it's defined as 100b or 100m. I think some kind of tax on traded (ge or player to player) items would be far more effective than just outright removing wealth from the rich. For example, even a .1% tax would remove 190k for every torva platebody traded, which happens I'm sure hundreds of times every day and is honestly not that much when you're spending 190m. It would also ensure that a fair, proportionate amount of gold is removed, instead of like you said, money sinks demanding the same amount from poor as well as rich.

[Platinum_Myr]

Taxes would also impact merchanting more than regular buying since you'd lose the tax multiple times.

[brunokiller]

I wonder if Jagex realize we need money sinks

 

Why?

[Ginger_Warrior]

Because the influx of new money being generated into the RuneScape economy is far greater than the amount of money that's taken out of the RS economy. Consider someone who is camping K'ril; everytime they get a Garb of Subjugation, they basically "magic" 10 million gold pieces worth of goods out of nothingness. There isn't any combination of things in the game that "vanish" another 10 million gold pieces elsewhere. So with 10 million new gold pieces in the RS economy, the value of each individual gold piece (of which there are trillions and trillions in the whole economy) depreciates very very slightly.

 

Now imagine tens of thousands of people using similar "money making" methods at the game time. Suddenly, that depreciation isn't so slight.

 

That's why RuneScape needs money sinks, and that's why so many top armours require gold pieces to repair.

[Platinum_Myr]

While you are correct in that more gp enters the game than exits, and you are also correct in that equipment enters but doesn't exit.... the drop of a Garb of Subjugation does not generate 10m gold. If you sell it, it moves gp from the buyer to you. The 10m gp has to be created somewhere else. There is no "magic" creating of 10m gp unless it was dropped as 10m gp. Even coinshare isn't true because the item goes on the GE for someone to buy. It only magics the GP for a little while.

 

If there were no GP entering the game by any method, and a garb of subjugation was dropped, it wouldn't add to the gp count. It would add to the garb of subjugation count which, since very few of these leave the game, would increase supply and lower cost.

 

However, gp enters the game via drops, squeel wins, stores, alching, and others all DO generate GP.

 

Your example is flawed, but the concept is real. However, there are many ways for gp to exit the game: buying something from a store, (battlestaffs, construction items, manage thy kingdom) anything which takes gp away from the player. Repair costs, as well. Since you don't have access to the database, you can't see how much gp exits via those actions. However, it is probably quite higher than you anticipate. I do believe we have some inflation but closer input gp to output gp. And once the gp is in, it requires higher output than input to actually reduce the overall gp in the game.

 

Since many people want to hold on to their gp, the "damage" has been done due to the updates like the statue glitch in the wilderness pking during the no-free-trade era. That introduced a lot of gp into the game, and it hasn't exited.

 

But please understand where gp comes from :)

[Ginger_Warrior]

It was a bad example. A better, and more archetypal example was when people used to cut yew logs and alch yew longbows. Although a small transfer of GP was incurred in the nature runes, this was far outweighed by the amount being generated through the alching. The base materials of course are free; yew logs, flax, rune essence are all reproducible at no expenditure, but 768gp still magically appears at the end of it. The 768gp appears in the players inventory and therefore doesn't need to be matched by another player losing money through a trade.

 

It used to be a huge problem, much worse than it is now.