Behind the Scenes - February 2014

[Urza285]

 

 

i hope you're all really good at pretending to be npcs, because i've got a loose trigger and an eye for the barest justification to use it

Lol thatS pretty funny, but that's going to be most of the community. This is a roleplaying minigame I think. I'm worried people might not play by the 'rules'.

Roleplaying only works if everyone plays by the rules, and even then it's only as good as the weakest player (If RP communities ever seem viciously elitist, they have a very good reason for it)

 

Unfortunately, we have an entire community of players that could not possibly give less of a shit about either the rules or roleplaying.... And they're going to kill this thing, aren't they? :-(

If there aren't any guiding mechanics and its a role play like minigame then we might be looking at trouble brewing v2.

 

Edit: also sometime this afternoon I saw a jmod comfirm on twitter that abyssal demons have a graphical update coming too.

[Urza285]

Confirmed by Mod Raven on twitter that One of a Kind (OK) isn't coming out this week or next. That leaves us with 'Demon Evolootion', Hiest or no update week. Its also confirmed that WGS and OK similarities aren't in length, but in gameplay mechanics.

[Tim]

speaking of dead mini games, I love how they moved (or planned to move) Trouble Brewing in OSRS to be accessible easy, but it's still a dead zone in RS3.

[Urza285]

speaking of dead mini games, I love how they moved (or planned to move) Trouble Brewing in OSRS to be accessible easy, but it's still a dead zone in RS3.

They are both different projects by different teams. TB in runescape is getting overhauled anyways so moving it would be redundant and a waste of time.

[Yoko Kurama]

 

I am excited for the Quest. Hopefully this one will be a *real* GM quest (unlike certain other ones), but probably not.

 

I am terribly disappointed that the Gold Dragon lost -- what a tremendous mistake. It had the potential to be a new QBD, a solo high-level moneymaker. Instead everyone went for the Summoning supplies Dragon. The problem with that is the same that is there with every such dragon (including QBD). The reason people do them is for money, so if you have them drop noted resources, people just dump them for quick GPies, and that just crashes the market, and over time GP/hour decreases sharply. That's why gold caches are better, it removes the middleman, and you just get the GP up straight, and you can do whatever you want with it. With this dragon though, all it will do is crash summoning supplies, and that will be that, and once that happens, it won't be of much use, as a moneymaker, to people not looking for summoning supplies. At least a Gold Dragon would have been useful to a variety of players. God, people are shortsighted sometimes.

Direct gold drops from monsters also leads to higher inflation with gold being worth less because of so much of it being in game which leads to higher prices for everything because people with access to this gold monster have all the money they need to buy things they want except they don't because supply can't keep up with demand so you have to pay more to get what you want. 

 

The point is, there is far too much gp already in the game; intertrading between players (using the GE middleman as you put it) will, overall, keep the price of everything down, meaning the average player can afford more.

 

 

I knew someone was going to bring up the inflation argument as soon as I made my last post.  :D

 

I don't think that it would be a problem though for a few reasons. There are a lot of deflating mechanisms in the game already, such as the entirety of high level gear being degrading and having hefty recharge prices, the decreasing popularity of alching as a training method, the removal of coinshare and so on. Yes there is inflation in the game, but it's rather concentrated away from lower level or medium level players. For instance consider medium level armour and weapons, such as God Wars Armour or weaponry, or Corp Shields. There are enough of them in the game, and high level players have better alternatives (for the most part, aside from Corp shields) that they probably won't ever skyrocket. I mean there's plenty of money in the game at the moment but Bandos is still pretty cheap and affordable for the moment. Unless of course there is *hyperinflation* (Wiemar Republic type scenario where currency is so useless that bronze armour is like a million GP or whatever), where Jagex literally gives everyone billions of GP each, then you have a situation where everyone can buy anything for a lot more. But I don't think we are anywhere near that, and a Gold Dragon won't change that.

 

It will give solo players something to do, which a lot of people have been asking for, since a lot of PVM is about teams. Even if generates a lot of money, we still wouldn't have hyperinflation, but we would have inflation that would be targeted towards high level stuff. Even if it turns out to be a fantastic money maker, the GP generated will mostly be in high level hands (because it has pretty decent requirements, like a GM quest to access the dragon), and that probably means stuff like Seismics or Party Hats *might* rise. It won't make things like Bandos rise because all the people who have a lot of money have no interest or use for medium level armour like that. I suppose you might respond, well, Seismics rising is bad, but that's a separate situation, they are already ridiculously expensive independent of any future or current inflation and need a separate solution. I don't think this would adversely affect the average player.

 

I can see why you might be concerned with inflation, it's a reasonable concern, but I don't think we have much to worry about. Every economy has inflation and depending on the circumstances it may be a good or bad thing, it is not inherently a problem. 

[Alg]

79 magic/74 summoning/69 DG is probably closer to mid-level than high-level, by the definition you seem to be using.

 

Either way... Have you considered resources? There's no clean divide between high and low level resources like there is with gear in your scenario, and anyone who wants to make the jump from mid-levels to high has their work cut out for them even without this: I don't think anyone's expecting bronze to go for a million a set, dragon bones spiking to 10k each is another story (Sure, they'd be a good moneymaker, but trope.

[Hedgehog]

Inflation is acceptable if it comes with economic growth

 

I'm not sure that's currently the case

[Yoko Kurama]

79 magic/74 summoning/69 DG is probably closer to mid-level than high-level, by the definition you seem to be using.

 

Either way... Have you considered resources? There's no clean divide between high and low level resources like there is with gear in your scenario, and anyone who wants to make the jump from mid-levels to high has their work cut out for them even without this: I don't think anyone's expecting bronze to go for a million a set, dragon bones spiking to 10k each is another story (Sure, they'd be a good moneymaker, but trope.

 

I agree that the divide between resources is not as clear as gear in all instances, but it is still sort of there.

 

However, I disagree with your other problem. Training skills is easier than it has ever been, with mounds of bonus experience at every corner, and various D&D's that give generous experience, and serve as alternatives to training skills that used to be exclusively buyable and things like that. I don't think it would be much of a problem. Not in 2014, anyways. Also, a lot of the higher tiers of skilling have been filled now a days, that high level players are less likely to train the same way that lower level players do; they have separate markets now.

 

I will consider your particular example (though I acknowledge that your general point is not contingent upon just one example) of Dragon Bones. If there was massive inflation, then the people who accumulated money would much likely use their wealth for bones such as Airut, Daggonath, or Frost, rather than Dragon Bones. 

 

There is just a lot of high level stuff that is separate from lower level stuff, inflation is much likely to his us hard while not touching lower-medium levels much if at all.

[Urza285]

Demon Drop Evolootion confirmed for 2pm by #jagexkelpie via twitter. That is 2:15 minutes from now.

[Miss Lioness]

Demon Drop Evolootion confirmed for 2pm by #jagexkelpie via twitter. That is 2:15 minutes from now.

 

Not sure what your timezone is but it is 1h and 11 minutes according to my timezone.

[Urza285]

 

 

Demon Drop Evolootion confirmed for 2pm by #jagexkelpie via twitter. That is 2:15 minutes from now.

Not sure what your timezone is but it is 1h and 11 minutes according to my timezone.

I live in EST. I keep thinking I'm four hours behind them when its really three.