EugenyG

Quit.

It's annoying enough that the over-3-K limit only applies to P2P (but since most bots are F2P, yada yada yada, I can get the point of why they made it this way). But the worst is that if two people have different limits, the smallest applies, regardless of which one is transferring the wealth. Now THIS rule is illogical, unjustified, and plain dumb. Logically the limit should apply to the giver (by giver I mean the person who gives more wealth than he gets in a trade, and the reciever is the one who gets excess wealth from a trade). Logically, only the giver's quest points should determine the maximum excess gold they can give to the other person, regardless of how many QP the recieving person has). Two reasons for that: - Vast majority of gold farmers have low QP, so they'd be limited to the 3K anyways - Most of those who BUY gold are actually likely to have high QP since they will probably be mains What's the point of having the RECIEVER's QP be taken into account? It does nothing to stop bots, but does a lot to frustrate honest players. Pray tell me, what is the advantage of my high QP if the people I trade with have low QP? Having me restrict buying stuff from low-QP players can be justified because of RWT, but restricting me from selling my stuff to others who have lower QP than me makes absolutely no sense. I do however see some logic to having even the highest level cap at about 30K. You can say, "almost no RWTer will have 250 QP, so why not let the honest players be able to trade 100k+?". Well, here's why: Remember that the time limit between trade timer resets is only 15 minutes. This limit is intented to prevent lump RWT purchases. Almost nobody will stand around for weeks transferring gold from a bot, when they could have made more skilling in the same period of time. But now consider that an RWTer has a middleman, a person specifically trained with high QP. Only one middleman bot for hundreds of regular bots. The RWTer can then set up a macro to transfer gold from bots to middlemen, however slow it takes, because they can just have macro programs running for weeks doing that. RWTers will mine gold and slowly dump it on the middleman. Over the course of weeks, the middleman could accumulate millions of gold through lots of small trades with bots. And when the time comes, the middleman trades with the buyer, and since he has high QP, he can transfer the money very quickly if the limit was 100k+ as many ask for. And he can transfer by trade, duel, or whatever, so you can't limit trading while allowing million-gp bets in the duel arena. Yes, you can say that Jagex can track and ban the middleman, but they also could track and ban bots before, and we all seen how little effective that was. Jagex's objective is to create a system that police itself, rather than having to police it as before, or they are back at square 1, and all they'd achieve is more restrictions with zero benefit to stop RWT. So (while I still staunchly disagree with Jagex's changes, just so you don't quote me as being contradictory), I can at least see the logic behind keeping maximum trade limit at 30k, rather than hunrdreds or millions. The restriction of the RECIEVERs quest points still makes absolutely no sense. Only the giver's quest points should determine the maximum gold transfer allowed.

Qeltar: Just looking at Duke's statistics, keep in mind the graph is logarithmic rather than arithmetic, and thus the absolute price hikes/falls are actually much sharper than the graph shows. For example, between June and early August 2005, a difference of about 1.5 months, rare prices have more or less quadrupled, (e.g. from 20mil for blue hat to about 80m). That's pretty extreme even for rares. Falls are usually easier to explain as (other than dupe events of course) they usually happen when Jagex brings new expensive items in the game, which everyone wants and thus dumps rares to raise cash. A very sharp rise though, I'd imagine, indicates either a game mechanic change that disadvantages rares, a big nerf of items that are alternatives to rares, or a -very- major influx of cash into the game. I don't recall something happening behind the scenes (although perhaps that's when major bot farmers started their operation :-/). Of course it could also be something less like a major price manip. Do you have any idea what caused it back then?

I don't personally think it's necessarily true. In fact, I don't CARE if it's true. All I say is that what was the motivation, be it true or pretended, for Jagex to do the changes they do. I don't really give a crap about how much a person is making, but Jagex obviously does. If merchants still thrive now, that means that they are still able to offer some liquidity that the GE does not offer. In other words, merchants wouldn't thrive if the GE solved absolutely all merchanting issues in a perfect way, but that's obviously not the case. The bottom line is that if merchants are doing a service people are willing to pay for, they deserve the money. If their service is no longer needed, they won't be getting the money for that service. If they get rich by providing a service that the game should provide but does a bad job at it, Jagex should find a way for a game to provide that service better, rather than restrict the merchants. Refer above to my "acceptable" vs "unacceptable" restrictions.

I never objected at Jagex's moves against scamming, unlike many other "merchants". I thought and do think that complains against second trade window, ditch of "stupidity", town cryer, or any other means to make people safer, are not justified. And I read your article about the scammer mentality and fully agree that the wishes of those people should not be catered to. The statement "if you got scammed it is your own fault" (aka blaming the victim rather than the perpetrator) is fully invalid. However, the minute Jagex's measures against scammers started resulting in heavy fallout for the honest people, my support for Jagex stops dead. For exactly the same reason, by the way, that I supported them originally - punish the guilty, not the innocent, and punishing the guilty does not justify you in collateral damage to the innocent in the process. I always hated the mentality "it's their game so they have the prerogative of opinion". Jagex does not have the highest weighted opinion. It's opinion does not outweigh you, me, or a level 3 noob. Everyone has an equal right to an opinion. What Jagex DOES have is the legal right to enforce certain actions in RS, which are more likely to be based on their own opinion rather than ours. In turn, WE have the right to make certain actions on OUR part, notably pay for the game or not pay for it. Jagex has legal and physical options to do certain things, we have legal and physical options to do other things. Their opinion is not "heavier" than ours in any way - rather, the fact we play RS (and pay them if we are P2P) connotes that we both voluntary accept each others positions, or, alternatively, if either side does not accept the other (such as us disagreeing with the rules, or Jagex disagreeing with our behavior), the contract is terminated by either us or Jagex. But please don't ever say that their opinion is "heavier" than anyone elses, because it is not. So? I fully admit some merchants did bad things. I'm not opposed to the update because I like the dishonest merchants. I'm opposed to the update because, in my opinion, it is absolutely not justified to restrict the honest merchants so the dishonest ones get caught in the process. Jagex indeed didn't mind it very much, at least not enough to not take the action. But I mind it. And as a result of their action, I made an action of myself - namely cancelled membership and quit RS. Now, they may either care about it or not (and they'd obviously care more if more people quit), but even if I knew that my quittal wouldn't change Jagex's decision, I'd still do it for two reasons -- I simply do not enjoy being part of the new environment, and I'd simply feel happier knowing Jagex, which made a decision I don't like, now gets $5/mo less, however little that is. Beyond that, I'm no longer party to the me-Jagex contract, and I have no further way of directly influencing the game. I do however always keep the right to an opinion (which I here duly express). If other people are happy with the way Jagex runs things and prefer to stay members, that is entirely their right, and while I don't think that is smart for their own sake (why pay a company which does not treat it's own customers with respect?), it is really none of my business of how players interact with Jagex. I do NOT accept keeping paying money to a party which is willing to treat me as a collateral damage target in their crusade against whatever. If other people ARE, good for them, it's their full and absolute right. Now, if I really wanted to get down and dirty, I'd argue about the primary target audience of young children who are too young to realize the way Jagex itself is exploiting their client-provider relationship, which most comparable rational adults would not find nearly as acceptable. In this way, I could say that Jagex advertising to young children is very very similar to those "exploitation" merchants you described, who exploit a player's gullibility to get them to pay you money. :twisted:

There are different paths to "making a lot of money", and you can argue that a path is "fair" or not. I tend to sharply disagree with definitions of "fair" based on "niceness" and "equality" (especially when those are enforced by holier-than-thou attidutes), but tend to agree when looking from the perspective of balance. The difference comes when you make a choice of how to change the situation. Merchants made more money than everyone else because they were providing a service for which people were willing to pay more than for other services. From the perspective of balance, merchants did not gain skills like other activities would gain, but you can argue that nontheless, merchants made a disproportionate amount of money. Now, there are acceptable and NOT acceptable ways of changing the system so that merchants don't make that money. The ACCEPTABLE way to restrict merchants' profit is to change the environment such that the players no longer need to pay merchants gross amounts of money for the service merchants provide. GE (not the trade cap part of it, but the fundamental nature of GE) fullfills that role. It is able to provide the liquidity and be the middle man in the producer-consumer supply chain, bypassing the merchant class. That's completely fine. Merchants used to be rich by providing a needed tool, the tool they provided is no longer needed, so they are not making as much money anymore. The system has been chagned to remove the disbalance, buyers/sellers get a better service for cheaper, and merchants don't get rich because players choose not to make them rich. The NOT ACCEPTABLE way to restrict merchants' profit is by implementing an artificial barrier in the form of artificial price control on items (GE's micromanaged "adaptive pricing system", that while in principle is somewhat related to the real market price, is too slow to adapt, often has wrong initial prices, and subject to intransparancy and lack of public oversight). The other not acceptable item is, of course, the trade caps, which artificially limit flow of capital and thus the player's options. Stopping someone from being rich by making players not want to pay them is acceptable and fair market practice. Stopping someone from being rich by tying their hands behind their back is NOT.

How much work is there to chop wood? Fish? Mine rocks? One way or another, you are sitting with your butt on a warm chair and drink coke. Merchanting actually required you to at least have relatively intense communication going on, and probably tired you out more than most other skills. That being said, I'm not said at all that GE displaced that type of merchanting, because if it is able to provide a better service than merchants did, then it's a matter of progress, and the merchants should either adapt to the new rules or get out. Nobody is obliged to care for the merchants other than themselves, and if they can't make a living under the new systems, it's their own problem. I _am_, however, _very_ angry at the RESTRICTIONS GE places, such as the 5% trade limit, slow adaptive system, and more of all the trade cap. It's one thing to not have to pay for your welfare, but having a regulation that limits what you freely should be able to do is something completely different. It's one thing not to give you food to eat so you earn your own, and another to lock you up so you can't earn anything.

That's the most stupid ban I heard of. How about this: I'm offended by the speech line of the Rag & Bone man quest, because the word "s[racist term]" reminds me of a certain word that rhymes with it. Let's ban the person who wrote the quest! :roll:

I think summoning will be a hybrid f2p/p2p skill, like runecrafting. F2P can use the basics, but only P2P can summon advanced stuff. This will make F2P have a demo of P2P and entice membership, but also allow F2Pers to raise combat lvl. Probably an F2P could still get 99 summoning by using low level spells, it'll just take very long.

Renaming an account MAY be a hard thing to implement - it depends on how the database is set up. If the player name is used as primary key, it'll definitely be hard. However, it's not hard in principle to have the following process: - Ask user to enter a new name - Copy over all data from old name to new name (stats, quests, all game progress, items, friendslist), maybe even password/questions/pin - Permban old name The whole process can be automated, with no human involvement other than flagging the acc to be "renamed". As soon as the player logs in to a flagged account they will HAVE to choose the new name before being able to play again, and then they can just keep playing the new acc name as they had the old one.

The simple reason rares don't (or didn't before the GE) fluctuate as much as cheaper items is due to cost/benefit and opportunity loss analysis, which can be broken down to 2 main subdivisions: 1. Much more of those who circulate rares are professional merchants, while most of those who circulate, say, nats, are either the producer or the consumer, with the merchant filling an intermediary role, and strictly speaking the GE has overtaken the merchant's role. Now let's be clear here - I don't think that is a bad thing. Merchanting is not the be-all-end-goal, they were useful because they helped the economy. If there is a better way for the economy to function, merchants are obsolete, and they don't deserve any "concessions" that would prevent merchanting from dying. I don't like GE because of (a) it's 5% limit and dysfunctional "adaptive system", and (B) because it's completely intransparent and open to manipulations behind the scenes. But the fact it "removed" merchanting does not make me sorry - adapt, or die, and if you are not needed in the new economy, too bad for you. In short, I think GE should not IMPOSE restrictions upon you, but it is not obliged to care for you either. 2. Typical rare value transaction is much higher than raw material transaction. A rare may cost 400mil, but you almost never sell 400mil worth of nats at once (at least you didn't before GE, now of course you can, but almost no end buyer would buy 400mil worth at once, or original producer sell that much at once). It's all about how much money you are going to make per a time period of trading. If your goal is 5mil/day, the best cost/benefit is to try and buy/sell 10 rares with 500k profit on each deal. Trying to buy/sell 20 rares with 250k profit will take longer, as will trying to buy/sell 5 rares with mil profit. With raw materials, it's another story, because unlike rares where daily circulation can be in the billions, you are not likely to daily circulate more than 100mil worth of raw mats. Therefore, you obviously want to target a higher percentage profit, to keep a similar daily profit. Rares can drop for a variety of reasons, and while you are right that in an absolutely tranquil market rares will be stable or increase in a stable manner, the market is not tranquil and it should not be. In real life, stock prices can be sharply impacted by external events, but that's very different from them being impacted by cheating or insider trading. If RL gold drops due to a new alloy better suitable for electric conductivity, that's life, and too bad for the gold, but it's better for the overall market. Same here - the "welfare" of rares is not the end goal. If rares drop or [bleep]e because there are more/less market alternatives or other legitimate means, the market will benefit even though rares suffer. But if rares drop/[bleep]e because Jagex manipulates them, the market suffers together with rares. It's obvious that the first situation is going on right now, but as I said, there is no evidence that the second situation is taking place ATM. I agree that America did not behave in a free market manner in that case. I have no other choice but to say that, with all due respect, absolute free market is not the best course of action in all circumstances. Saying that "it's not good because it's not free market" doesn't make logical sense; rather, you say "free market is good because it provides benefit X". Free capitalism isn't good for its own sake, but only because of its benefits to society, and while -usually- in the long run its better than socialist/communist alternatives, there may be certain cases where exceptions are justified, and I think that was one of those cases. You may disagree with me on that one, though. In other words, I support capitalism (and oppose socialism/communism) not for dogmatic reasons, but because I think capitalism usually brings the best benefit to society in the long run, certainly better than alternatives. But if in a particular, given situation, a socialistic approach would work better than a capitalistic one, the socialistic approach should be used in that particular case. They already do that, in various grades of directness. Jagex controls all item market prices simply by controlling the rate at which resources can be mined, rate of monster drops, etc. If they think an item should be cheaper, they just make it more available, and vice versa. As for the assertion, they do that too with the GE, for better or for worse. Jagex already set the ballpark average price by controlling drops, and now they make sure nobody trades outside of that ballpark. Put together, those 2 items mean Jagex has complete control over the cost any item will go for. Rares are an exception with regards to the first part, since Jagex can't control the percieved market price due to their non-droppability. The fact they can, and DO, control the actual market price (through GE) is where this disruptive action shows most. If you think about it, Jagex's policy is pretty much as communistic as you can possibly get. They have a vision of what's a "fair" price for an item, and will both make sure the masses agree by controlling supply/demand (monster drops for supply, exp gained from an item for demand, etc), and now also make sure no "wise guy" will ever be able to substantially deviate from what they consider to be "fair". They also have a notion of how much it's "fair" to make per hour of work, which is why they removed easy moneymaking routes such as staking, because it's not "fair" in their eyes. They justify it on RWT, but I just don't buy that argument. It's very similar to Stalin enforcing his policies, and blaming the "people's enemies" for both having to implement the policy and for everything that goes wrong as a result of its implementation. With respect to "where's the fun in that", I believe I repeatedly stated that Jagex's definition of "fun" is different from yours and mine, and is much more in line of what an eight-year-old kid considers "fun". :-) Rare prices are next to impossible to determine in the current situation, IMO. The GE will act as a deadweight to slow down price shifts, so regardless of whether the market wants rares or not, their price will remain more or less artificially stable until the overall situation stabilizes. Of course, its quite possible almost nobody will buy or sell rares (Jagex can set a false price, but they can't force players to trade at that price). Then again, it's quite likely that's what Jagex wants to do to begin with.

I don't think they will die immediately (unless they are made untradeable but that's unlikely at least in the nearby future. Jagex lost too much support already, they wouldn't want to do something that will make players even angrier (of course I have been mistaken in the past about this :/ )) The more expensive an item is, the less % fluctuation. A nat rune can easily fluctuate 10%, but a rare wouldn't fluctuate more than 1% in any given normal trading day. Crashes (such as dupes) are of course an exception. Rares are still: - Rare (in both senses: there's very few of them, and you can't produce any more) - Can be worn in a unique style that shows off how rich you are - Can be traded on GE, which -currently- is on par with market prices more or less - Is a solid long-term investment thanks to items 1-3 As long as the above are true, I see no reason for rares to drop. Now, since Jagex has complete controls over GE internals, this could change if they artificially change the rare price, or secretly introduce more rares, or secretly buy them up, whatever. There's no direct evidence any of that happens now. If prices DO fall, I expect the non-wearable rares to be hit hardest, due to them not having the #2 quality on the list. Hats/masks are always desired even if its hard to trade them because they are a showoff factor, but pumpkins/wines/etc have no value other than investment. For example, if Jagex announced that rares become untradeable Jan 1, hat/mask/santa prices would rise LIKE HELL (the rich players would want to reserve one for themselves so they own it forever), but the non-wearable rares would drop to next to nothing. True, the GE limits how much rares can rise/fall regardless of what the market actually wants. But in a way that may be a good thing, because it prevents mass panic and exploitation. Consider when after 9/11 the US shut down the stock exchange for 5 days, even though people wanted to trade, just so there isn't a massive panic and crash. This could well have prevented 9/11 from being the next Great Depression (we still had a recession, but it could have been much worse). Jagex's immediate objectives are to stabilize the economy and try to restore the seriously shattered player confidence in the market. Maybe next year they'll do a battle against rares, or start a covert operation, but I don't see it happening in the next few months.

Well, due to the destruction of wildy and pures, combat levels serve no purpose other than showing off. Also, getting a few easy summoning levels (starting levels are always easy to get) will make it easier for you to get on high-level pest control =) Oh, and the honor "triple digit club" (100 combat) would go even lower, assuming it had any honor left, because for example with 50 summoning you'd have 4 extra combat levels. But in any case, your combat rarely means anything than just an arbitrary show of how powerful you are, rather than give you any advantage in and of itself (the SKILLS that make up your combat level are of course advantageous, but you no longer care about having a "too high" combat level). In other words, as long as you got the skills, you don't really care what your combat level is or how it is calculated, since it won't affect your game. If it hadn't been the case, the concern I would have had is that it would even further disbalance equal-level combat and empower pures. The reason being is that Summoning will likely be a specialty for a specific class - just like a warrior, ranger, or mage, you'd have a summoner. Therefore, if you DON'T use summoning (but have the level), you'd have a higher level drawback with no benefit. Unlike prayer, summoning will probably cost resources and be expensive to use in combat, so you can't say "just use it if you have it". I could be wrong if isntead summoning is just an "assist" skill that lets you summon a monster to HELP you fight rather than fight FOR you. If that is so, summoning may indeed be a worthy assistant to combat (like prayer), and the level raise is justified. My other concern would have been that unlike other skills where returns are diminishing (a level 20 will beat level 10 easier than level 120 beats 110), the bonuses of summoning will likely grow instead, because presumably very high-level summoners will be able to summon truly powerful creatures, and the difference in power between 99 and 75 would be likely much higher than between 75 and 50, especially when in terms of other combat skills both players are in the 100's or higher. It may be different with noobs, but a lvl 110 player will probably not care about a level 50 summon much more than he cares about a level 1 summon, but he definitely will care about a level 99 summon more than level 50 summon. But the bonus is fixed. That means that those who train summoning to VERY high levels will have ALMOST the same combat who train it JUST to high levels, but much more of the benefit in terms of more power for your combat level. But back to the original point... Who cares about your current combat level right now? It's not affecting your game in any way whatsoever anymore, except for showing off.

Simple reason. Let's say there's a 10% disbalance limit, just like the GE. I want to buy 1 mil gold. Seller tells me to meet him and bring 10 mil gold with me. I do that. Then seller trades me 11 mil and I trade him 10 mil. I end up with the 1 mil I paid for. Yes, it requires me to have the original money, but also remember that the difference in trades is only 15 minutes. With 10% disbalance, I can double my original deposit in 7 trades, no matter whats the size. So if I have 100 million, it'd logically be wrong to let me RWT another 100 million in less than 2 hours of trading. Maybe not implementing this system at all would be better in the first place, but if you are determined to do so, you gotta use fixed numbers or its as good as nonexistent.

Remember that 30K is not the limit of the overall trade value, just the disbalance. Yes, if that amount if the entire risk factor (such as duelling), than its as dead as it was. But it does make a difference in other cases, notably trade. For example, if I want to buy a whip without using GE, finding someone who's willing to trade within 3K of my offer is very hard, but finding a 30k margin is much easier and pretty close to the actual market fluctuation before GE was introduced. In fact, the only items where this range would still be too low are the _very_ high end items - rares, 3a stuff, etc. In other words, the items where you can trade like 100k over and under the average price without it being considered a rip-off. High-end merchants are still in the dust (especially rare merchants), but for the "smaller burgeoisie" the 30k offers a bit more breathing space. As for gifts... Yes, Jagex made it pretty clear they don't want you giving away full barrows etc, and while they only justify it on "rwt" grounds, I suspect the real reason is also because they just don't want you giving freebies to someone, instead of them "earning" it themselves. I suppose there is _some_ justice - as a noob, going through bronze-> barrows armor sets is a fun challenge in itself, and if someone just gives you full barrows it's almost like using a money cheat in a single player game, all the fun is gone. Do I think it compensates for all the drawbacks? Heck no. But I'm not the one to decide, and as much as I hate this new initiative, I don't want to be a blind fanatic in my hate, but rather look at the subject from all possible viewpoints. Also, remember, the 30K limit is only 15 minute long. If you really hang around a friend often, you'll easily transfer 500k or more per day to him. In 2-3 days he'll be able to buy a barrows set. Well, TBH, of course, I assume the player in question has all quests done. The average P2Per probably has around half, so the limit is more like 15K, but you can still finance your friend's barrows in about a week if you play together often. Also, this may give players incentive to actually do quests, which really are the best part of RS. I won't lie when I say that (IMO) the quest system in RS is better than any other MMORPG I ever played, this includes WoW/GW. As for F2Pers... Yes, their max quests will only give them like 5k transfer limit, but remember that for stuff other than rares you don't really need a lot of money in F2P. A full rune set costs about 200k, which means that the time to give your F2P friend a full rune set will be the same as the time to give your P2P friend a full barrows set. In short, Jagex took away the 50 pound ball and chain tied to our feet, and replaced it with a much better 30 pound one. We oughta thank em for that!