The Destruction of the Game…The Bad points

“Bad points? That’s the only thing that happened in this update, BAD THINGS!”

Well, no. There were certain things about this update that were good, these RuneBeast will talk about. I get to do the bad points. (Woo hoo!)

Let’s start from the top…

Trade and Drop Changes

The first part of this update was fixing ‘Unbalanced Trades’. An ‘Unbalanced Trade’ is a trade where one party puts in an item like a Dragon Chain and the other party puts in 10k, this was definitely either a scam or someone trading between characters. To stop these trades, Jagex made a balancing system in the trade to where you can only trade within 3,000GP (based off of the Grand Exchange’s prices) per fifteen minute period. This means that you can only trade 15,000 GP for 18,000 GP once per fifteen minute period. Now I know nobody would do that trade but what about this one; Say you’re selling 75 lobsters to someone for 250 GP each, you both agree that this is a fair price so you try to trade but you’re stopped because the difference is more then 3,000, the Grand Exchange values 75 lobsters for 15,000GP but you and your friend are valuing them at 18,750. (GE Price: 200, Your Price: 250)

Now here’s another situation for you Power Merchants, let’s say you buy a green party hat for 215M, you want to (and have the right) to immediately turn around and sell it to someone for 220M, this new ‘balancing system’ stops all big merchanters like this, the only way to get around this is to use the Grand Exchange which we know is not accurate on most prices.

Here’s another thing this ‘Balancing’ part ruined; You can no longer lend your friend an item. You know how you might lend your friend an Abyssal whip or Dragon Dagger to kill a tree spirit or troll? Because either of those items are above the 3,000 GE GP value you can’t trade them.

Now, about the changes to drop things. I must remind you that the reason Jagex did all these changes was to stop Real World Item traders and bots, these updates succeeded slightly but failed mostly. One way RWITs could get around the trading change was to drop items and let the other person pick it up. HOWEVER, Jagex thought of this and did nearly the same thing as they did with the trades. You may drop any item you wish still but it will only show up to other players if its Grand Exchange price is less then 3,000 GP. That means you couldn’t drop an uncut diamond and let someone else pick it up. Now this does stop RWITs from drop trading and it also stops normal players from drop trading with themselves.

“What about the person dieing? Can’t RWITs still do that trick?”

You’d almost think they could, Jagex changed the way items drop when you die. Now instead of your items just dropping on the ground they now go into a ‘gravestone’ or ‘gravemarker’. These grave signs last anywheres from 2-5 minutes and cost anywheres from 50 GP to 500,000 GP. These grave markers will keep your items safe from others until you return or until their time runs out. However, a friend can come and repair or bless your gravemarker, doing so will make it stay for 5 minutes more (if they repair it) or up to almost an hour more. (if they bless it) This definitely stops RWITs from trading by dying. I must admit, this is one of the good parts of this update.

Now about their replacements…

Jagex has been adding replacement ways for players to help/trade with each other legibly. I’m going to say their list of replacements and then comment on each one.

Popular activity – – – – – New way of performing activity

Helping other players train their skills – – – – – AssistSystem
Fighting other players to win their drops – – – – – Bounty Hunter
Fighting other players to win money – – – – – Duel tournaments
Fighting other players for fun and glory – – – – – Duel Arena is now free, and also Clan Wars
Trading items with other players – – – – – Balanced trades OR the Grand Exchange
Keeping an economy where the player determines the prices (based on supply and demand) – – – – – Grand Exchange
Looking after the items of a friend who has died – – – – – Gravestones
Sharing monster drops when fighting together – – – – – LootShare
Having enough room to store stuff, instead of getting your friend to hold it for you – – – – – Extra bank space

Hosting drop parties – – – – – Using the party room which we moved to the free world for this purpose

Helping other players train their skills, the Assist System

The Assist System wasn’t a bad idea but its experience cap was way too low.

Fighting other players to win their drops, Bounty Hunter

Bounty Hunter would’ve been a good addition to Player Killing. Though I’ve never done it myself I know many people who enjoy it. They should’ve left Player Killing in.

Fighting other players for fun and glory, Duel Arena is now free and also Clan Wars

I don’t know how good or bad making the duel arena free was, I always thought that was one of the special perks of being a member. Clan wars definitely shouldn’t be free as clans are (or at least, ‘were’) a big part of RuneScape.

Trading items with other players, Balanced trades OR the Grand Exchange

Neither of their new ways worked, the balanced trades so far have just caused problems and the Grand Exchange’s prices are not what market prices really are.

Keeping an economy where the player determines the prices (based on supply and demand), Grand Exchange

This is how the market already was, Jagex did not need to do anything about this. If they saw a problem then they should’ve tried to remove the autoers a different way as they were the only thing messing up the market prices.

Looking after the items of a friend who has died, Gravestones

Like I said before this is probably one of the most useful parts of this update, I can’t find anything bad about this part.

Having enough room to store stuff, instead of getting your friend to hold it for you, Extra bank space

Who’s going to complain about having more bank space? Certainly not me! 🙂

Hosting drop parties, Using the party room which we moved to the free world for this purpose.

They shouldn’t have moved the Party room completely, if they had made a second one in Falador then it would be better. Also they are now ‘forcing’ you to use the Party Room to host parties. (Stopping users from having Private parties anywhere they want.) I recently read a topic on our forums by Anubis which suggested Player Owned Party rooms in players’ houses. This is probably one of the best ways to let players host private parties.

The rest of this article will be a few comments about Future Changes to Recent Updates. (These are comments about Jagex’s news post “Future Changes to Recent Updates“.)

The first thing they say will be added is a 1 vs. 1 combat area, this will be good for bringing back Death Matches IF they make it like the old Wilderness.

The next part is about changing the amount of cash value (based off of the GE) you may trade per fifteen minute period. They say that this will be determined by your Quest points. I do not think Quest Points are the right scale, I think it should be Quest Points vs. Total Level. (a ratio set by them) They say the amount it will change will be up to Ten(10) times the current value, now does this mean 3,000 X 10? or 3,000 X 3,000 X 3,000 X 3,000 X 3,000 X 3,000 X 3,000 X 3,000 X 3,000 X 3,000? (Sorry if the second choice seems crazy) If it is only 3,000 X 10 then that’s only 30,000, you’ve got to admit that that is hardly anything for a serious merchant, if it is the second option then that’s great. (Though that is 59,049 with 30 0’s on the end so I highly doubt that.)

After that is a change to LootShare users. Apparently some people are complaining that the Lootshare system isn’t splitting the Clan loot evenly. Jagex plans to have a choice where users may have the item immediately sold on the Grand Exchange and then that money would be split evenly. This should calm any problems Lootsharers might have.

The second to last part of this is their talk of a Lending system. With this a user may lend an item but as soon as either the Lender or Lendee logs out the item will immediately return to the Lender’s bank. This is a very good way to solve the lending problem created by the above trade changes.

The last part is a planned update to the Grand Exchange and a current update to it. They’ve assigned a team of Jagex staff to watch the RuneScape markets and insert the current values of every item that is selling on the market. This should hopefully make GE prices more realistic.

A few more of there plans are the following,

* Purchased items of a large quantity will be automatically noted
* There will be less unnecessary clicks when buying or selling items
* A ‘1,000’ quantity button will be introduced
* Access to single-click increases to your item quantity

All of those will be useful if the Grand Exchange’s prices are altered to make it more worth using.

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There were a few good parts to this update and we all know Jagex meant to do this for the good of all. It just takes helpful comments from us for Jagex to know what needs to be changed.

If any part of this article sounded like a was really angry with Jagex I didn’t mean it to, I know Jagex was trying to stop RWITs.

Now, why don’t you go read RuneBeast’s Article about the Good Points of this update.