rare items - my solution and ideas

[ixfd64]

There has been much debate on the subject of the future of rare items. Before I give my suggestion, I must acknowledge the different sides of the debate.

 

 

 

Some players argue that rare items should stay as is since they are status symbols. However, others argue that everyone should have a chance to get them, if they work hard enough. After all, RuneScape is a game where everyone should have an equal chance.

 

 

 

So here is my idea. Certain shops should sell these items. But to prevent people from getting upset that their items have suddenly decreased in value, the shop price should be considerably higher than that of the street value. Also, the shops should be very hard to access.

 

 

 

Party hats - sold in "nobility shop" in the Legends' Guild. It sells party hats from 100 to 180 million gp, depending on color. It will only sell to "noble" players with 1,500 skill total and 50 million total exp.

 

 

 

Masks - sold by mime artist. For players who have unlocked all the mime emotes: the next time they receive a mime, once they complete the mime, the mime artist will personally praise their acting skills. He will invite them to his home, where the player can buy masks for 15 million gp each, or ask to be returned to where they were.

 

 

 

Pumpkin seeds - sold in legends guild for 5 million gp each. They require level 95 farming and take 4 weeks to grow. Farmers will claim that their families are poor and will charge 1.5 million gp to look over the pumpkin. They give 5k exp when planted and 250k exp when harvested. Each harvest will usually only yield one, though once in a blue moon, a very lucky farmer will get two.

 

 

 

Santa hats - monster drop only

 

 

 

Christmas crackers and disks of returning - sold by Yanni Salika for 300 million gp and 10 million gp, respectively. He will only sell to those who have completed One Small Favour.

 

 

 

Easter eggs - sold by traveling "Food Painter" for 10 million gp. He will only sell to those who "truly appreciate the beauty of food", or those who have completely finished Recipe for Disaster. He travels around like Bob the Jagex Cat.

 

 

 

Half wine - sold by the Mithril Chef (parody of iron chef :P) for 60 million gp. He will also only sell to those who have completed Recipe for Disaster.

 

 

 

Also, monsters should drop them, but very rarely. Since d-square left half costs around 2 million, NPCs should drop pumpkin seeds at the 1/3 the rate, etc.

[L0rdmichel]

mmm sounds fun but no they will never do that

[illidan_98]

umm.....really unlikely because the price of phats, masks and santas ect. will always be rising. phats will be round 'bout 500mil @ the end of this year.

 

and the point of rares is that they're RARE! they'll never ever be dropped again

[Raichase]

We don't need a solution, because there isn't a problem.

 

 

 

You have offered a solution, without pointing out, irrefutably that there is a problem that needs fixing. Until that is done, all these "solutions" will just be the pipe dreams of someone who wants a rare.

 

 

 

So, prove that there is actually a problem existing, and prove it beyond all reasonable doubt. Then, propse a solution. Until there is a problem, fixing it will acehieve nothing but negative attitudes from players, some of which may leave over it.

 

 

 

Really, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[Duke_Freedom]

I really wonder what kind of crashes such idea's might cause.

 

 

 

Point is tons of people buy rares because they are a great investement tool. Idea's like these take away that effect, so you would expect that quite a few people sell off their rares.

 

 

 

In the short time after this idea would be implemented prices will probably be quite instable and fluctuate a lot downwards & upwards. Eventually they'll stabalize slightly below the shop prices though and won't change much from there on anymore.

 

 

 

My guess is that these idea's just aren't that much different as "removal of rares" idea's. Many investors would still dump their rares and their money would most likely be used to buy / invest in something else. Large rises in pseudo-rares may happen and materials may increase a lot as well.

[Bubsa]

A solution to what exactly? Are rares stopping you from playing this game?

[ixfd64]

A reasonable guess is that rares double in value every 6 months.

 

 

 

So after several years, they may be worth billions. It's a bit unfair if someone gets a party hat very early and just waits several years, while other players have to play 24/7 for years in order to get one.

 

 

 

But that's just my opinion.

[harper128]

Under that same type of logic, it's not fair that I don't have a rubber chicken. As well, it's even more unfair, because I won't ever be able to get one. Shall we have those removed as well? Maybe Diago can just start selling them?

[Raichase]

Under that same type of logic, it's not fair that I don't have a rubber chicken. As well, it's even more unfair, because I won't ever be able to get one. Shall we have those removed as well? Maybe Diago can just start selling them?

 

 

 

*Slaps Harper around with his rubber chicken*

 

 

 

Good logic actually, I never considered using that example. Can I slap again?

 

 

 

(I dropped my chicken BTW :P)

[Jarritos]

what happens to the people who already have p-hats but arent noble enough to wear them?

[ixfd64]

You only need that requirement in order to buy from the shop.

[Jarritos]

fair enough, its a shame these good ideas probably wont even get considered by jagex

[evil_me999]

lol i doubt somebody would spend there money on something they could buy for less from another player and jagex would never allow these things no offence man

[Raichase]

You only need that requirement in order to buy from the shop.

 

 

 

I'm still waiting for you to address my post.

 

 

 

Or, are you hoping you can ignore reasonable logic, and it will just go away?

[ixfd64]

Didn't I already answer it?

[Raichase]

Didn't I already answer it?

 

 

 

No. You posted the tired and true "They shouldn't be rich because they held onto it" line, which means nothing. Nobody KNEW it would happen initially, so that people didn't intentionally do it, thinking "haha, I'll rip noobs off". Happened to a small degree with the masks, but only REALLY with the santas did people start hoarding them.

 

 

 

Besides, a lot of old folks that DID get masks/p-hats on the day have long since left.

 

 

 

You point out that there IS a problem, because at the moment, there is no evidence.

[ixfd64]

There has been a long time argument about the future of rares. People always tend to disagree on whether rares should be kept as is, be removed, or made available to everyone.

 

 

 

After pondering those points, here is the best solution I came up with. However, I'm sure that someone else has better ones.

[Wonder]

Taken from a previous post, replying to the gp cap and how players are worth more than the 2.1 billion gp cap that's currently in place. It addressed the cause of the skyrocketing rare prices, and offers a solution to bring prices back down. Most of it still applies to this topic:

 

 

 

 

 

The problem isn't merchants, party hats, or any other rares either. The problem is inflation. Do you know what the original gp cap was when I broke it back in classic? 65k. That's right, not 65 million, billion, or trillion, the original cap was 65,536 gp.

 

 

 

So how did we get here? Sure there are a few things that contributed, but the biggest cause, by far, is alching. The high level alchemy spell creates artificial demand, and that's what has caused this rampant inflation that's causing so many problems now. In a functioning economy, goods are only purchased until the demand is satisfied, and price either drops or the good stops selling. However, in rs, the alchemy spell keeps 'buying' your product, well after the market is saturated.

 

 

 

As an example, I'll use myself and just two of the skills I've levelled. My fletching and smithing are both 99. To accomplish this, I've fletched over 53,000 magic long bows and smithed over 65,000 steel plates. Now, what did I do with all those items? I either alched them myself, or had someone alch for me. So for fletching, I alone brought 81.4 million gp(1536 x 53000) into the game, and for smithing, the figure is 78 million gp (1200 x 65000). That's correct, I checked my numbers. I alone brought close to 160,000,000 gp into the game from levelling only two skills to 99. I'm going to say that again at the beginning of this next paragraph just so all of you skimming through this post read that.

 

 

 

A SINGLE PLAYER, RAISING JUST TWO SKILLS, CREATED 160 MILLION GP THAT DIDN'T BELONG IN THE ECONOMY. Now, that's just me, and that's just two skills. Now take into account all the other money I've brought into the game with other skills. I bet you have a pretty big number in your head now. Yeah, that's just me. Now multiply times the number of players who have 99 fletching, smithing, or any other productive skill.

 

 

 

That's a big number, right? Now, keep that incredibly large number in your head, and ask me why party hats are worth hundreds of millions of gp. Merchants can ask for whatever price they want for a rare, but if the gp doesn't exist for a buyer to spend, the merchant doesn't do much merchanting, and the rare prices are much more reasonable as a result.

 

 

 

Merchants aren't the problem, party hats and other rares aren't the problem. The economy is skewed due to artificial demand, causing rampant inflation. More and more money is essentially being 'printed' every day, and the amount generated is only increasing at an exponential rate as time progresses.

 

 

 

So what can be done? Leave it alone, and wait for players to break the trillion gp mark? Sure, we could try that. But I'd rather try to shut down some of these money printing machines. Yes, I want to stop people from alching. Now, before you get all upset, I do have a reasonable solution. The spell wouldn't even need to be removed, and you could still alch if you wanted to. I just want to give you a better alternative. That's right, I want to help both you and the economy. Now I have your attention back, don't I?

 

 

 

Trade in your finished goods. Not to a store, and not to an alcher. Bring your finished goods to master guildsman for your skill, and have him reward you with xp for your hard work. Now, at this point, you decide to mention to me that this feature doesn't exist in rs. And this is the part where I tell you it should. Jagex, write this down, you'll want to use this later.

 

 

 

Allow me to take the steel plates I've just smithed to Horvik the Armorer, and trade them in for smithing xp. Allow me to trade those magic longbows in at the ranging guild for fletching xp. So, not only will the players following in my footsteps not create 160 million gp, but they'll actually have to make less items to get there. Not only is all the artificial demand gone, but a portion of the unnecessary goods are gone as well.

 

 

 

This concept does need to be explained a bit further to iron out the smaller details, but that's the main point, that's what you and Jagex need to know. Money will stop being produced artificially, and there will be a reduction in the overall number of products produced.

 

 

 

The overall net effect of this simple idea is staggering. The gp cap is just one of the minor things that's no longer an issue. In the bigger picture, the prices of rares will drop and people will level more efficiently, without a negative effect on the economy. Merchants will actually buy and sell useful items, such as ores or logs. As a result, the merchants will be forced to compete with one another over the raw materials. This means lower markups for the merchant, and more money in the pocket of the producer, and less out of the pocket of the end user.

 

 

 

Everybody saves money buying raw materials, everybody makes more from selling their raw supplies, and rare items come down to a much more reasonable price. Merchants stop making literally billions of gp, inflation is suppressed, and the economy is fully functioning as it should.

[Raichase]

Wonder, thats the best soution to inflation I have heard yet. Have you sent this idea in to Jagex, because it's a damned good one... Combined with a money sink to get rid of the majority of the current money in the game, and we're getting somewhere.

[Duke_Freedom]

Trade in your finished goods. Not to a store, and not to an alcher. Bring your finished goods to master guildsman for your skill, and have him reward you with xp for your hard work. Now, at this point, you decide to mention to me that this feature doesn't exist in rs. And this is the part where I tell you it should. Jagex, write this down, you'll want to use this later.

 

 

 

In other words, allow (less or more) direct 'buying of experience'. Something I've always been positive about and something that can definately stop the inflation if implemented well.

 

However, I don't think that Jagex and the largest part of the players like it.

 

 

 

In the bigger picture, the prices of rares will drop and people will level more efficiently, without a negative effect on the economy.

 

 

 

Hm with the current ~800bil+ estimated gp in the economy, you probably won't see rares dropping fast or perhaps not at all. In fact, it's very likely that they'll still continue to go up, just somewhat slower.

 

 

 

Don't forget inflation is only one of reasons why rares go up and that gp is merely a symbol for the relative worth between items. Fighting inflation will not change the relative extremely high value of rares nor will it stop their ever-increasing cycle on the long-term. Apart from inflation, the fact that rares are limited (and dropping) in numbers, means that their (relative) price will always go up on the long-term.

 

 

 

Another side effect of any suggestions like these is that the amount of higher leveled players will rise significantly.

 

 

 

Lastly, materials will see a great rise in price as well, depending on the exp you get from the finished goods.

 

 

 

Merchants will actually buy and sell useful items, such as ores or logs.

 

 

 

What makes you think merchants will suddenly shift to materials? Rares still exist and will continue to play a large role in the economy despite your suggestion.

 

 

 

Everybody saves money buying raw materials, everybody makes more from selling their raw supplies, and rare items come down to a much more reasonable price.

 

 

 

And what makes you think that people will suddenly stop buying rares? Admitted, the demand will drop somewhat if people can train skills faster / easier / buy exp directly, but it definately won't disappear!

 

 

 

Merchants stop making literally billions of gp, inflation is suppressed, and the economy is fully functioning as it should.

 

 

 

Like I said, gp is merely a way to express relative richness. If the total amount of gp in the game is dropping and my own amount of gp is staying constant, then I'm still becomming richer. ;)

 

 

 

Don't get me wrong, in opposite of most "solutions" people come up with, you at least gave it some good thought. In fact, I've thought about a "solution" along these lines myself various times and I'm quite positive about it.

 

 

 

However it isn't a "solution" to the "problem" of rares, but to the problem of the extreme inflation in the game. ;)

[ixfd64]

I think the Master Merchant is right. :P

[flava_sava78]

I vote for a cloths shop that buys rares for there current game price for like 2 weeks, then they buy them for 1gp each, and you buy rares for 5gp each(not eggs or pumpkins)

[Adam007]

Not that there needs to be any solution to this, but a few years ago I came up with the idea that you can just trade your hat's tradability away for a lot of cash. The advantage would be that you still have the hat, the disadvantage would be that you're losing on eventual potential profit later on. This would help remove party hats(tradability) from the game (everyone thinks it's so important that this happens?), it would also lead to more inflation and make the tradable ones a lot more in price, but hey, it still has its pros.

 

 

 

To the original idea though, it just isn't necessary. While it would help inflation, there's no need to mess up the healthy market going on like that. That would ruin the merchanting aspect of the game for so many players.

[Raichase]

Adam007 seems to have the gist of what would be done if there was a problem. Heck, I would be on that bandwagon the second it happened, as I have no need to sell any of my holiday items, I just think they look cool. And, I get paid to do the same thing I was planning on doing? Cool.

 

 

 

I vote for a cloths shop that buys rares for there current game price for like 2 weeks, then they buy them for 1gp each, and you buy rares for 5gp each(not eggs or pumpkins)

 

 

 

How silly. You need to think before posting. Might be healther than suddently having to defend your silly suggestion from people like me, who like to point out which suggestions are downright stupid.

[Wonder]

First off, I should mention that I'm not an economist, and I only have a very basic background in that field. I'm only operating on ideas I can think up myself, and quite a bit of guess work. I don't claim to have all the answers, but I do have suggestions. That being said, I think Jagex should hire an economist. They're making enough money to afford it, and the game is desperately in need of it. I know they won't, but this whole idea is a bit of a theoretical exercise anyway, so I figured I'd throw that out there.

 

 

 

Now as a reply to the master merchant himself, I'll offer my theories on the effects of implementing this idea on three things- the short term market, the transition period, and the long term market. These replies will all assume that Jagex has implemented this idea, and have done so in a way that players have decided this is the most advantageous way for them to spend their finished products. We can discuss the best way for Jagex to go about this in a seperate post. :P

 

 

 

First I'll address the short term market. I think you said it best yourself on this one:

 

Like I said, gp is merely a way to express relative richness. If the total amount of gp in the game is dropping and my own amount of gp is staying constant, then I'm still becomming richer.

 

When all the clever merchants such as yourself see this update, and realize what is going on, what's the smart move for them to make? Convert all (or most) of their rares to gp. Now, what happens when all the big name merchants rush to sell off their rare collection, and the bulk of the rs population sees it happening? Rare prices drop faster than you can blink. Prices may bounce around a bit, but you're going to see them dropping overall by a very significant amount.

 

 

 

In addition to all the current players in the rare market selling off, you'll also get those investors who have been sitting on them for years jumping in and selling them off as well. I've seen your estimates on how many rares there are in the game, and I'm pretty sure you've greatly underestimated the number of players that have been holding them since the drop, just selling a few here and there to pay the bills.

 

 

 

 

 

So that's the short term, a massive sell off of rares due to merchants foreseeing the value of gp as a better investment than the value of rares. Now on to the intermediate effects of this solution.

 

 

 

Again, IÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ll refer to your assessments of the situation:

 

Don't forget inflation is only one of reasons why rares go up and that gp is merely a symbol for the relative worth between items. Fighting inflation will not change the relative extremely high value of rares nor will it stop their ever-increasing cycle on the long-term. Apart from inflation, the fact that rares are limited (and dropping) in numbers, means that their (relative) price will always go up on the long-term.

 

 

 

As the short term scenario has shown, the relative values of rares will be dropping significantly, as gp will become the new hot commodity. Gp will take on a greater value, and will be able to purchase more rares and more experience relative to current gp values. Rares are still dropping, so people will, for the most part, steer clear of those and turn to raw materials, as they have become a much better value relative to the other values.

 

 

 

Values will fluctuate pretty heavily in this period for all things; items not directly effected will being changing in price, as well as raw materials, rares, and the relative value of gp. As rares are limited, they should see a continual relative increase, but the addition of new rares to the active market from those holding them as a long term investment will cause a decline in relative values for this period. Most importantly in this period, the raw materials will be in greatest demand; merchants will begin to use their vast gp resources to cash in on the growth in this area and the gp currently in circulation will begin to spread to the raw material gatherers, distributing the current reserves a little more evenly.

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, once all the values have become relatively stable and the rares stop being dumped into the economy, they will resume their steady upward climb. However this time, itÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s a much slower climb that starts from a point considerably lower than it is today. The climb will be so much slower because the amount of cash available to purchase the rares will remain virtually the same.

 

 

 

Raw materials will become a much more important part of the economy, and this is how it should be. The only real value in gp is that it can purchase you experience. If you were unable to purchase experience with your gp, it would be worthless. If you were unable to buy rares with your gp, it would still be a fully functional currency within the game, without one select set of relatively useless items able to be purchased with it.

 

 

 

You also suggest that higher levels will become more common due to all this. I disagree, because of the increased demand for raw materials. Initially, people will accelerate a little quicker in leveling, but once existing supplies are exhausted people will either be forced to pay gp thatÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s becoming shorter and shorter in (relative) supply, or gather the raw materials themselves. You have no idea how eternally slow it is to gather your own materials to 99 in any skill. :P

 

 

 

Well, I think thatÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s more than enough for one post, so IÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ll just add that I agree none of this will happen overnight, and IÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢m not 100% positive that any of this will turn out as I predicted. If it does, or even comes close, it will solve numerous problems with very little negative effect on anyone. I think IÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ve addressed most of the points youÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ve mentioned, and I really do appreciate intelligent replies to my ideas. Hopefully youÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ll give this a read and another reply; you always bring up very valid points.