Price Fixing on the GE?

EDIT: After making this, I found Arigold16 had made an official thread on the rs forums for the topic, rather than in unbalanced trades;

http://forum.[Please Use QuickFind Code].ws?15,16,204,54570977

Anyone who's read my posts in the past may already know I've been highly skeptical of Jagex and their money/economy motives for a long time, I believed cons to be nothing other than something to leech money out of the game for various reasons. I disliked the GE on release and the fact that player stock in NPC shops is tied to it(at the higher rate, may i add). Now, with the balanced trade 'system' being introduced and FORCING us to adhere to GE prices regardless, is it all one big attempt to control the economy, veiling under anti-macro/rwt techniques and summoning?

Now, this is NOT really a december 10th update thread, though alot of material is releated. In fact, I'm drawing this all off another person's hard work in a thread on the official forums regarding unbalanced trades, which was made BEFORE dec 10th however. I think the recent updates(GE and Staking) and their issues have been dwarfed by Dec 10th, but they are issues to be considered nonetheless if you ask me.

Anyhoo, this guy(Arigold16) has been looking at GE prices and ratios, and it seems to be that the isn't as straightforward as jagex are telling us. Maybe it's a coincidence from how they determined prices that these ratios have happened, but you can't argue with the price floors on this;

Following are some quotes of posts by Arigold16, from the thread on the rs forums, found here;

http://forum.[Please Use QuickFind Code].ws?15 ... 8,goto,119

I'm mainly just accumalting his efforts here, because I doubt it's a topic that'll last long on official forums, and I cannot post there anyway. I think it's very interesting, and that people might enjoy his findings/claims. If anyone knows Arigold16, tell him I said thanks, and possibly point him here. All credit to Arigold16 btw. For anyone wishing to follow the thread themselves, start at the bottom of page 119(where i found it mainly starts).

Horsechaser and Brunhoff,

 

 

 

If either of you two are still around, you might be interested to learn that Jagex really is controlling prices in the GE. I had been wondering about the yew longs... they've been stuck at 704 since they were released, even though I actually managed to sell 15k of them on the first day. This price never made sense, and it was even odder that it wouldn't drop. I did some investigating and found some other items that refused to drop below a certain point, take a look, its no mistake...

 

 

 

..................alch price...Xchange price.......ratio

 

Yew longs........768..............704...........11/12

 

Mage longs......1536..............1408..........11/12

 

gold bracelets...330..............303...........11/12

 

yew shortbow.....480..............440...........11/12

 

gold amulet(u)...210..............192...........11/12

 

 

 

You get the point. Its a little hard to track down, but several other important items that I saw were very close to this cut off, with the most auspicious being Rune pl8*.

 

 

 

I guess the idea behind this is to protect the kiddies, but this kind of artificial price setting doesn't make a lot of sense to me. People are still selling yew longs, they're just doing it outside of the GE. Anyway, thought you guys would be interested.

Okay, I can't really make heads or tails out of all this. I'll just put up some data for now and maybe one of the brigher minds of the "Unbalanced Trades Illegal?" thread can figure it out for me. All of these items have min prices closer to the average than 5%, so I'm certain they've hit a floor. But the nice little balance I initially was seeing has totally collapsed. I'll just put up the ratio of ge price/alch price, and the absolute difference between the two. If anyone wants all the info I suppose I can type it out, but please trust that I'm not cooking the books on this one.

 

 

 

item - ge price:alch price, alch price minus ge price

 

mage longs - 11:12, 128

 

yew longs - 11:12, 64

 

yew shorts - 11:12, 40

 

maple long - 7:6, -64

 

maple short - 7:6, -40

 

gold bracelet - 11:12, 28

 

gold amulet(u) - 11:12, 18

 

rune pl8 - 1:1, 0

 

rune full - 1:1, 0

 

rune med - 1:1, 0

 

rune pick - 1:1, 0

 

addy legs - 13:12, -320

 

addy med - 5:4, -288

 

mith pl8 - 5:4, -780

 

mith full - 5:4, -214

 

mith med - 5:4, -117

 

mith legs - 7:6, -260

 

steel pl8 - 5:4, -300

 

steel legs - 13:12, -50

 

green legs - 13:12, -195

 

green vambs - 13:12, -126

 

blue mystic top - 1:1, 0

 

 

 

all of those had nice ratios. the couple below did not fit a clean ratio (I just put in the closest match), but had a VERY convenient differential.

 

 

 

green body - 47:50, 280

 

air battle - 32:33, 280

 

fire battle - 32:33, 280

 

earth battle - 32:33, 280

 

dragon battleaxe - 1:1, 280

 

 

 

Also, check this out...

 

 

 

Dragon dagger has a price ceiling put in at 30,000! I haven't seen any other price ceilings before now.

Arigold thats quite an interesting figure.

 

 

 

I calculated green dragonhide bodies the other day, because I had in my mind that somehow when you sold stuff it wouldn't go for less than the alch price, so I sold off all my spare bodies.

 

 

 

The buy price was 4400 alch price was 4680 so obviously the profit in alching would be exactly 280 (the price at the time of nats).

 

 

 

I wonder if its coincidence or there are are other items with the magic 280 difference.

Brunhoff, heres some proof that this is not a coincidence (I'd like to thank Roguetek for inspiring the idea).

 

 

 

The min price of yew longs is 704, the market value is 720, the max is 756. Notice something weird about that? The max is 5% higher than 720, but the min is only 2.222% below it. That means the average price is still pulling down the max price, but it is having no effect on the min price.

 

 

 

Just in case you're still a doubter, the same is true of Rune pl8 (min 39000, average 39777, max 41766), Green d'hide bodies (min 4400, average 4430, max 4652), and Air Battlestaves (min 9020, average 9471, max 9945).

 

 

 

So, I believe we can now say that price floors in the GE are a fact. We can also look tot he green bodies and air battles as a sign that an alch price minus 280 floor exists for some items, since their mins were clearly are not being set by market forces.

 

 

 

EDIT: lol just saw this one... green d'hide chaps have a min price of 2535 and an average market price of 2535. They're the same! Free markets ftl!!!

Note that I have quoted these posts a bit out of order, but basically it's just some background to my topic of discussion.

Do YOU think Jagex are fixing prices? Do you care if they are or not? What are your thoughts, is it coincidence, will it peter out in time? Let me know, any comments are appreciated, thanks for reading!

Just another day in CommieScape.

I wonder when and where they're putting the gulags?

These are some very interesting findings to be sure. I knew that they would do some sort of regulation as to the prices of things, but they way it is done and the items they do it on is strange. I wonder what the absolute minimum price for nats would be? 280?

Pretty convincing stuff. Looks like Jagex wants us to alch stuff and get high magic levels :P

Now, with the balanced trade 'system' being introduced and FORCING us to adhere to GE prices regardless

This is the part that annoys me. Atleast, before this; we weren't forced to follow the GE, now we are.

Don't forget to feed my plushie

The chaps average being the same as the chaps minimum should give no doubt that Jagex is fixing the prices.

Jagex has always toyed with item prices by making them more/less powerful, and 99% of the time, Jagex never says anything about it. Remember when Jute was suddenly nerfed after several weeks of having good exp? "It was obviously unbalanced", they claimed. They didn't have the decency to fix that right away, as people pointed this out straight after farming came out. So, people lost money on their Jute investment. I have about 1600 myself, rotting in my bank.

It's obvious they don't care enough to tell people the entire truth and they haven't for years.

There's also rune battleaxes, min price has been at 280 below alch price for a while, Ive alched about 500.

Jagex has learned nothing throughout the years. They still believe that their artificially generated high alch values make any sense beyond having the effect of a government imposed price floor and they still believe they can force player values towards some artificial "market value" according to a crappy adaptive system, while all that will result in is less trade and an inefficient market system.

Jagex, let a real economist take a look at it all. Let him propose a suitable and better adaptive system and stop thinking that your own imposed "market values" make any more sense than the ones determined by free market supply and demand.

And just a thought, is it possible that the 280gp is equal to the GE market value of a nature? Would make "some" sense. Edit: ah it was already suggested - does seem logical though.

Some items (gems) don't have this price floor, but Jagex may or may not fix it at any time. A lot of gems allow members to break even or even make money with bracelet crafting, but perhaps Jagex only considered rings or whatnot in their price floor calculations.

Aren't Party Hats worth, like, several billion? Because if so, come January the rares market is gonna crash and burn.

GE prices for rares:

Blue Phat-556,000,000

Green Phat-218,000,000

Purple Phat-177,000,000

Red Phat-254,000,000

White Phat-330,000,000

Yellow Phat-193,000,000

Pumpkin-6,500,000

Easter Egg-6,000,000

Santa Hat-22,512,691

Now, these prices could be completely correct. I don't know, I'm not interested in rares. But if they're dramatically off, this month is going to show merchants feverishly trying to unload these items before the new year.

The min price of yew longs is 704, the market value is 720, the max is 756. Notice something weird about that? The max is 5% higher than 720, but the min is only 2.222% below it. That means the average price is still pulling down the max price, but it is having no effect on the min price.

Maybe the following (from the Grand Exchange manual page) has something to do with this?

Prices are entirely set by players trading! There is no 'set value' that prices are based on, with the exception that a price will never rise above a shop's main stock price, or fall below the price a shop will pay for it.

What does the store pay for a yew long? Is it around 704gp?

Jason

 

 

 

Prices are entirely set by players trading! There is no 'set value' that prices are based on, with the exception that a price will never rise above a shop's main stock price, or fall below the price a shop will pay for it.

 

 

 

What does the store pay for a yew long? Is it around 704gp?

 

 

 

Jason

Ive never seen that before, and i read the ge page very thoroughly...its probably new.

 

 

 

Prices are entirely set by players trading! There is no 'set value' that prices are based on, with the exception that a price will never rise above a shop's main stock price, or fall below the price a shop will pay for it.

 

 

 

What does the store pay for a yew long? Is it around 704gp?

 

 

 

Jason

 

 

 

Ive never seen that before, and i read the ge page very thoroughly...its probably new.

Don't believe it's new, and it's not the cause of these price fixings.

The general store buys those for around 500gp only.

Prices are entirely set by players trading! There is no 'set value' that prices are based on, with the exception that a price will never rise above a shop's main stock price, or fall below the price a shop will pay for it.

that bit made me laugh, because it's so blatantly a big pack of lies. yes they are set by player trades, but only within the narrow range that the game allows. Also, it says it will never rise above a shops main stock price.. does this then include thing's like whip's, where the price doesn't reflect its shop value at all.. if the price drops below the shop value, will it then be capped from raising above it again? Examples would be a whip not able to rise above around 160k, dragonfire shields not able to raise above a couple million.

i noticed earlier it was mentioned that dragon daggers aren't going above 30k in GE, although i'm not playing atm so i cant verify.. i remember when the GE came out dragon dagger's had a max price of around 33k, does this mean that since the max price fell below the cap, it can never go back over it?

It looks like as well as these massive price drops we've seen, any kind of natural recovery is also being capped.

Price Fixing? Wouldn't surprise me.

But why? What do Jadex gain from such control, when it loses them players and income?

Aren't Party Hats worth, like, several billion? Because if so, come January the rares market is gonna crash and burn.

 

 

 

GE prices for rares:

 

Blue Phat-556,000,000

 

Green Phat-218,000,000

 

Purple Phat-177,000,000

 

Red Phat-254,000,000

 

White Phat-330,000,000

 

Yellow Phat-193,000,000

 

Pumpkin-6,500,000

 

Easter Egg-6,000,000

 

Santa Hat-22,512,691

 

 

 

Now, these prices could be completely correct. I don't know, I'm not interested in rares. But if they're dramatically off, this month is going to show merchants feverishly trying to unload these items before the new year.

Maybe you've hit the nail on the head right there then, maybe it's finally their solution to the problem of ever increasing super mega expensive rares, finally stopped from spiralling out of control. It's a way to make them untradeable without making them untradeable.

Jagex has learned nothing throughout the years. They still believe that their artificially generated high alch values make any sense beyond having the effect of a government imposed price floor and they still believe they can force player values towards some artificial "market value" according to a crappy adaptive system, while all that will result in is less trade and an inefficient market system.

 

 

 

Jagex, let a real economist take a look at it all. Let him propose a suitable and better adaptive system and stop thinking that your own imposed "market values" make any more sense than the ones determined by free market supply and demand.

 

 

 

And just a thought, is it possible that the 280gp is equal to the GE market value of a nature? Would make "some" sense. Edit: ah it was already suggested - does seem logical though.

I must have missed quoting the post by Arigold16, but he did point out at the time that 280 WAS the GE price of a nature.

The min price of yew longs is 704, the market value is 720, the max is 756. Notice something weird about that? The max is 5% higher than 720, but the min is only 2.222% below it. That means the average price is still pulling down the max price, but it is having no effect on the min price.

 

 

 

Maybe the following (from the Grand Exchange manual page) has something to do with this?

 

 

 

Prices are entirely set by players trading! There is no 'set value' that prices are based on, with the exception that a price will never rise above a shop's main stock price, or fall below the price a shop will pay for it.

 

 

 

What does the store pay for a yew long? Is it around 704gp?

 

 

 

Jason

Again, I must have missed a quote, but Arigold16 DID point out this little fact in the kbase(very scarely mentioned, only in there and not in news or tutorial for GE or anything), but as highlighted by a poster above, it totally contravenes what is said about prices being set entirely by players. What was the point of player to player trading in the first place, if everyone was happy with the prices in stores?

quote]Prices are entirely set by players trading! There is no 'set value' that prices are based on, with the exception that a price will never rise above a shop's main stock price, or fall below the price a shop will pay for it.

That's what the USSR said under Stalin.