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Thread: Runescape NEEDS bots, an economic perspective

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    Lightbulb 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 ). 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.

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    Yeah...no. They can pump the items into the game a different way and do so already (e.g boss drops).

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    Quote Originally Posted by acow View Post
    Yeah...no. They can pump the items into the game a different way and do so already (e.g boss drops).
    I know that they do certain things like set limits as to daily price drops/rises to keep prices semi-fair. I'm not up to speed on what bosses drop but i'm guessing by your comment that they drop large amounts of iron ore or feathers? They "could" also just inflate the supply manually from Jagex end but whatever they are doing doesn't seem to be working. Fire runes worth 75gp?

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    Didn't invention mess with all the prices? I think they were more reasonable before it was released.

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    Things were crazy expensive back in 02 before bots were huge. Once bots came out people used them to train for pking, then moneymaking . Botting cb was better though because you could make accounts for every level. Then all the raw materials flooded in.

    Bots keep prices low which lets people spend time doing more enjoyable things.

    I can imagine in rs3 though, if the new player base isn;t growing, then most players will already have high levels so there is no reason to do low level work.

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    Pretty sure that bots make up a massive percentage of the players on every world. If they didn't exist, ofc the economy would be fucked. Its reasonable to assume this because there's spikes in prices after every ban wave.

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    Your argument pretty much hinges on one point, "valuing low-level goods at high prices is bad" but think of what that really means. Now I can make a lot of money per hour killing chickens (for feathers) or running fire runes. Previously, these low-level methods were useless because the market was flooded with vast quantities of byproduct: the easily-accessible goods produced by bots. This meant that you either had to be running a bot farm on a massive scale, or control an uncommon/difficult method (bossing, for instance) to make any meaningful amount of money.

    So, I tend to disagree with you. RS doesn't need bots. High prices for low-level goods also isn't necessarily evidence of inflation. It's more likely due to simple supply and demand.

    Bots might occasionally contribute to available resources and alter the economy, but different people will view those effects in different ways. You might be placed at an advantage when fire runes drop to 3 gp each, but at that point, all the low-level runecrafters have just been put out of business. Cheap feathers might mean cheaper fish, but chicken-killers can no longer make a living. Cheaper iron ore means cheaper iron bars and cheaper iron equipment, cheaper cannonballs... but the people that produce these items can no longer turn a profit.

    It's a push and pull. Bots are on one end or the other, not both. Which end depends on who you talk to.
    Last edited by KeepBotting; 12-13-2016 at 06:15 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by KeepBotting View Post
    *very good arguments*
    I was going in here to argue the same thing, I could not have said it any better myself.
    One downside with bots having taken over many low level resources is that legit players ends up out of business, some quitting the game because what they liked the best has been overrun by bots (this was me many years ago).
    !No priv. messages please

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    @KeepBotting You bring up good points. From a free market perspective, high demand for feathers should result in high prices thereby making it "worth it" for market participants to get that particular item. What's bad for me might be great for you and you can take advantage of the short term arbitrage. What I meant to highlight was more of a trend and a future scenario where if RS cannot gain a new player base and game popularity declines, the RS3 economy could be in trouble in the long term. Another part of it is that it's not just about the economy. You have to somehow balance that with the leveling system. My perspective is that higher levels should be the objective and that these levels should help you exponentially making money. But maybe that is an unrealistic view to have on my part.
    Thank you for your thoughtful comments.
    Edit1: I motion to make KeepBotting a member. Have always enjoyed your scripts. How the hell are you not a member.

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    Is there any proof that jagex isn't tampering with the GE anyway?
    I've always had this tinfoil-hat-feeling that they are pumping items in and out of the game through the GE.
    The devs also pushed for the GE in OSRS.

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    Quote Originally Posted by nkd2009 View Post
    ...
    What does in trouble mean to you? RS doesn't have any social programs to fund, people's livelihoods won't be ruined if the price of a feather jumps to 2000gp. If the price of iron skyrockets because no one mines it, players who previously thought it wasn't worth their time will mine it.

    I'll accept the stretch that the main motivation for new players to create an RS account is economic participation. Why wouldn't new players be attracted to the idea of making higher amounts of gold from mining iron?

    Also... how does anything that you are describing resemble an arbitrage opportunity? Most items in RS, unlike DS, only have 1 market price.

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    Quote Originally Posted by hackingislol133 View Post
    What does in trouble mean to you? RS doesn't have any social programs to fund, people's livelihoods won't be ruined if the price of a feather jumps to 2000gp. If the price of iron skyrockets because no one mines it, players who previously thought it wasn't worth their time will mine it.

    I'll accept the stretch that the main motivation for new players to create an RS account is economic participation. Why wouldn't new players be attracted to the idea of making higher amounts of gold from mining iron?

    Also... how does anything that you are describing resemble an arbitrage opportunity? Most items in RS, unlike DS, only have 1 market price.
    1) By arbitrage opportunity, since there are no puts or calls in RS, I was referring to buying and almost instantaneously selling an item. From my understanding, you can by 2k feathers at general stores for 9ea=18kgp. If, by your example, they rose somehow to 2k ea, you could sell for a profit on the GE for almost 4m gp. But realistically, right now, you can by for 18k and sell for and sell for 100k profit. Then you could buy 900 fire runes at 18 ea and sell at 75 right now? That is what I was referring to by arbitrage.
    2) In trouble from a RS developer perspective, where items are unfairly valued. My whole thought process revolves around the idea that there is a fair trade value for items specific items that could be broken in the future if they are not able to add new players. I didn't level my player to 99 stats just to kill chickens, no matter the GP made.
    3) solid points.

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    Quote Originally Posted by nkd2009 View Post
    Do you still think that "Runescape NEEDS bots"?

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    Quote Originally Posted by acow View Post
    Do you still think that "Runescape NEEDS bots"?
    Haha good question. I think if they can't bring in a sufficient amount of new players and to quote someone else: "bots make up a large percentage on all worlds," yes they need bots.

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    Quote Originally Posted by nkd2009 View Post
    Edit1: I motion to make KeepBotting a member. Have always enjoyed your scripts. How the hell are you not a member.
    I'm secretly a huge noob
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    coffee debate .. sufficing from 07s i noticed that and have something in common

    im no botter but i think theres a use when at the dwarven mines power miner will drop for you hahahahaha then you can
    reward yourself with the the spell and profit from that

    but this is about rs3 as well as the graphics itself on the java app and maybe its too much for a
    stand alone java applet.. maybe runescape needs to move to dos

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    Quote Originally Posted by m3gaman3g3nd View Post
    coffee debate .. sufficing from 07s i noticed that nature runes and yews have something in common

    http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/...20111126121053

    but this is about rs3 as well as the graphics itself on the java app and maybe its too much for a
    stand alone java applet.. maybe runescape needs to move to dos
    The nature rune from RS Classic looks even more like a tree:
    Last edited by KeepBotting; 12-14-2016 at 04:18 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by nkd2009 View Post
    yes they need bots.
    I'm curious, is this also what you thought when you yourself were not botting the game?

    Quote Originally Posted by KeepBotting View Post
    I'm secretly a huge noob
    Tbh I'm still confused on why you don't just copypaste one of your [Status: Flawless] scripts into an application & hit submit (if hitting submit doesn't work then just tell an admin?). Pretty sure you wouldn't even need a script that functioned at all

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    Quote Originally Posted by acow View Post
    I'm curious, is this also what you thought when you yourself were not botting the game?


    Tbh I'm still confused on why you don't just copypaste one of your [Status: Flawless] scripts into an application & hit submit (if hitting submit doesn't work then just tell an admin?). Pretty sure you wouldn't even need a script that functioned at all
    Thinking back to the many years ago when the game was very simple and Xp was much slower, I fondly remember making 200k to buy rune armor after mining iron. So I can see how if the market was just absolutely flooded with items it could function as a huge negative for new players. I think that is a great thing to keep in mind. On the flip side, the game has completely changed. XP rates are much faster, the currency seems to be devalued a lot. If you buy GP from RWT(I don't but used as a reference), RS3 gold is not worth nearly as much as old school GP. But maybe that was all due to botting, I'm not actually sure. Seems to me that there are a lot more bots in old school than RS3 but the damage could have already been done. I'm not quite sure. What I meant to point out, and probably did poorly, was the fact that the player base seems to have fundamentally changed and less new players are playing the game. If that continues, I'd rather be able to still buy items on the grand exchange, even if I'm unknowingly trading with a bot. But perhaps I'm not taking into account that bots caused the problem to begin with. It seems much more likely, to me, that as time goes on, the 13-17 age group might rather spend time playing COD or faster paced games and that updates that made the game easier unknowingly made the game less enjoyable instead of more. You definitely have a point, I was just making a paradoxical claim that maybe the focus and hatred towards bots isn't really that well thought out.

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    Quote Originally Posted by nkd2009 View Post
    Thinking back to the many years ago when the game was very simple and Xp was much slower, I fondly remember making 200k to buy rune armor after mining iron. So I can see how if the market was just absolutely flooded with items it could function as a huge negative for new players. I think that is a great thing to keep in mind. On the flip side, the game has completely changed. XP rates are much faster, the currency seems to be devalued a lot. If you buy GP from RWT(I don't but used as a reference), RS3 gold is not worth nearly as much as old school GP. But maybe that was all due to botting, I'm not actually sure. Seems to me that there are a lot more bots in old school than RS3 but the damage could have already been done. I'm not quite sure. What I meant to point out, and probably did poorly, was the fact that the player base seems to have fundamentally changed and less new players are playing the game. If that continues, I'd rather be able to still buy items on the grand exchange, even if I'm unknowingly trading with a bot. But perhaps I'm not taking into account that bots caused the problem to begin with. It seems much more likely, to me, that as time goes on, the 13-17 age group might rather spend time playing COD or faster paced games and that updates that made the game easier unknowingly made the game less enjoyable instead of more. You definitely have a point, I was just making a paradoxical claim that maybe the focus and hatred towards bots isn't really that well thought out.
    Yeah the easier part is funky, some people really want it easier (e.g buy gold/bot) & some people want it harder (e.g ironman). The biggest factor here imo is what the goal of the game should be. Take for example your own goals, they've clearly changed over time and thus.. your perception of the game (including botting relative to the game) has also changed. Regarding goals, I'd say the primary motivating goal should be to learn from experiences.

    I'm going to pm you my skype even though you didn't ask for it and dunno if you use it. Feel free to hmu on there if you'd like to chat about anything.

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    Quote Originally Posted by nkd2009 View Post
    RS3 gold is not worth nearly as much as old school GP. But maybe that was all due to botting, I'm not actually sure.
    RS is by nature inflationary. Introducing gold to the game is much easier than removing it. Looting gold off a mob kill, getting gold as a quest reward, stealing gold from a chest, and so on are all ways to introduce gold to the game. Drinking a potion, eating a shark, and dying in PvP does not remove gold from the world. It only causes gold to change hands. Gold is only destroyed when it is transferred to someone who cannot reuse the gold. Degrading equipment and players permanently quitting the game with wealth on their characters are the only two ways I can think of to destroy gold in a self-serving manner.

    Reality not only has ways to remove gold in mass amounts such as the bond retirement and currency destruction as monetary policies, and promoting unemployment with tax hikes as a fiscal policy. But we also have market-centric mechanisms in place to passively deflate the economy such as financial depreciation.

    Botting is just automation. We have automation in reality as well on a scale much greater than automation in RS and yet robots taking over manufacturing jobs isn't usually cited as a reason for inflation. I agree with you that the real-world motivations to create power creep content promote inflation in RS, but bots are not a solution or hold-over for it in anyway. You're overemphasizing the importance of an operational component in a larger economic picture. You can't just apply classical macroeconomics to ludological economies and draw conclusions.

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    Interesting that the OSRS team reckons they have banned 1383783 Bots since April with 671 billion worth of GP, bots do add quite a lot of gold into the economy.

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    Quote Originally Posted by acow View Post
    I'm curious, is this also what you thought when you yourself were not botting the game?
    Truth.

    Hated them, so much. When you are a low level newbie, you have to compete against a bot who will usually win. Training def on rats in f2p when trying to make a mage tank used to be nearly impossible without a bot. F2P gets shafted much more when it comes to autoing. RSC botting in particular was too OP. the bots ALWAYS beat the player, in every skill and for every resource.
    Anyone here remembe how brutal crafting longbows was on rsc?

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    i actually despise osrs because partyhats are 2k

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    Quote Originally Posted by lolskilla View Post
    Things were crazy expensive back in 02 before bots were huge. Once bots came out people used them to train for pking, then moneymaking . Botting cb was better though because you could make accounts for every level. Then all the raw materials flooded in.

    Bots keep prices low which lets people spend time doing more enjoyable things.

    I can imagine in rs3 though, if the new player base isn;t growing, then most players will already have high levels so there is no reason to do low level work.
    ^this, without bots everything would be expensive and everything would be more of a grind

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