Runescape NEEDS bots, an economic perspective
Coming back to RS3 after a long break, something stuck out to me. As the RS3 world continually expands with the addition of new skills and in-game materials there just aren't enough F2P players supplying the demand of certain items. Evidence of this can be seen in the price of easily obtainable items that hold high demand with higher skilled players (nerds :bart: ). Take feathers for example at a price of 52gp each. The "stores" around RS can be used as a guide and feathers can be purchased for approx 9gp. Another example is iron ore at a price peak of 409gp in Sept. 2016. As the player base changes to higher level paying players who don't want to spend their time killing chickens or mining iron but still need these items to level other skills, we are left with an inflated economy. F2P worlds have declined in players with only a few worlds left and some containing only 40 players spread out over a vast game but mainly sitting around at the GE asking each other's levels. This trend, at least in RS3 will continue to get worse as new players diminish and skills will get harder to train efficiently by buying goods.
TLDR:
As people quit and get older and RS bans bots that farm low level items, RS economy will become unsustainable without injection of goods. Prices are stupid when feathers cost 52gp each.