RuneScape Forum Archive | Wilderness and Free Trade Vote

May

2005

Mystic Monad

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Agent B MiB,
Go to Varrock west bank on any world and you'll see multiple players shuttling back and forth from bank to anvils, smithing bars.
Where do all those bars come from?
Do they come from the blast furnace?
I don't think so. When using the blast furnace, it's most efficient to smith the bars right there in the blast furnace. Anyone without the 60 smithing required is unlikely to use the blast furnace for long.
Instead, the bars come from players smelting ores into bars at regular furnaces. Much of that takes place at the Edgeville furnace. It's closest to a bank, and most players can easily do the tasks required to use it. Other convenient furnaces around RS also get regular use.
The blast furnace gets nowhere near the usage that regular furnaces and anvils get.
It's true that the blast furnace can save mining, balance exp, and save money on smithing. It's also a lot more fun than traditional smelting and *mithing methods. I spent quite a bit of time there myself earlier on.
But it's still not the most efficient way to gain smithing exp. That's why most smithing exp in the game is not gained at the blast furnace, but at regular furnaces and anvils.
Now, if Jagex were to put a bank in the blast furnace, it would instantly become the most popular smelting and smithing location in the game.
Until that happens, the blast furnace simply can't compete with regular furnaces and anvils that are located near banks.

19-Jan-2011 22:40:21 - Last edited on 19-Jan-2011 22:42:05 by Mystic Monad

dunforgiven

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Mystic Monad

19-Jan-2011 22:33:44
Phthartic,
I think Jagex was pretty sure before conducting the poll and referendum how they'd turn out ...
of course they did. they set it up to get exactly that result. frankly my dear, I couldn't give a dam. never had a river to build one on.
veteran of 4 runescapes

19-Jan-2011 22:45:31

dunforgiven

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...Where do all those bars come from?...
its very simple.
1) they are from 59 and below smithers
2) with the blast furnace acting as a balance, its just dandy mining and smelting in edgy and smithing in vorack.
3) people that are getting their mining to 99 and selling the ores along the way.
as i said, the blast furnace is a ballast, acting to ballance the difference between the exps you get from mining and those you get from smithing. frankly my dear, I couldn't give a dam. never had a river to build one on.
veteran of 4 runescapes

19-Jan-2011 22:48:31 - Last edited on 19-Jan-2011 22:49:19 by dunforgiven

May

2005

Mystic Monad

Posts: 12,305 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Agent B MiB,
Merchants never controlled the game nor the economy. The laws of supply and demand controlled the game, and merchants obeyed them just like everyone else. Once again, please learn some basic economics. In the end, conspiracy theories generally just make people look ridiculous.
As for the GE, I agree that it's a fantastic addition to the game.
I use it every single day, and I make most of my money on the GE.
I also do all of my purchasing and selling of items for and from personal skilling and combat on the GE.
But it does have its down sides, and one of those is making the game more impersonal.
On balance, I still think the GE is fantastic.
And I think the GE will be even better when free trade returns, and the bottlenecks caused by price controls no longer make it difficult or impossible to buy and sell many items on the GE.
But make no mistake about it: the GE is now the primary forum for merchants to do their business. And if they didn't do their business there, both the GE and the whole RS economy would be a complete mess.

19-Jan-2011 22:48:46

dunforgiven

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Mystic Monad

19-Jan-2011 22:48:46
Agent B MiB,
Merchants never controlled the game nor the economy.
what do you call it when coal and ores sold for more than you can get smithing them. no one deliberately loses money, its only that they had 2 choises.
1) mine all your ores, though you have way more levels to mine addy (AS AN EXAMPLE), but you can only smith mith.
2) sell the ores you cant use, then spend more money on lower level ores. you got less money selling addy to a merchant than it cost to buy mith from him.

...The blast furnace gets nowhere near the usage that regular furnaces and anvils get....
1) the regular ones get a lot of usage from pre 60 smithers
2) the blast furnace doesnt need to be used as much. its faster and but it cost a bit. granted you get your money back, but...
the thing is, you still need to mine your ores to get to 99 smithing, and its just as fast to run them though the furnace in edgy if its above mith because he doesnt unnote addy or runite. if you have runite or addy bars, it doesnt make any sense to run to the blast furnace to smith them. frankly my dear, I couldn't give a dam. never had a river to build one on.
veteran of 4 runescapes

19-Jan-2011 22:52:15 - Last edited on 19-Jan-2011 22:55:54 by dunforgiven

May

2005

Mystic Monad

Posts: 12,305 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Agent B MiB,
An "imbalance" in the exp of various skills, including mining and smithing, just means that it takes longer to level one skill than another, and that players overall will have more exp in some skills than in others. It's really no big deal.
Since there is more mining exp than smithing exp in the metal bars used for smithing, there is more overall mining exp than smithing exp in the game. You can verify this by looking at the players ranked 2m in mining and in smithing on the hiscores, and comparing the figures.
There is really no need to balance one skill with another, because exp can go on beyond 99 right up to 200m, and that is plenty to soak up any "extra" exp generated by skills that are linked to one another, such as mining, smithing and rc, woodcutting, fletching, and firemaking, etc.

19-Jan-2011 23:05:16

May

2005

Mystic Monad

Posts: 12,305 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Agent B MiB,
As I said in a previous post, the reason coal and ores sold for more than you can get smithing them is that the primary goal of most RS players is to gain exp. So players are willing to pay for exp. And if players are willing to pay for exp, it will cause the materials needed for that exp to cost more than the resulting items (armor, etc.) are worth.
Another reason is that far more items are produced than the RS economy actually demands. So the law of supply and demand says that the price of those produced items will drop lower than the cost of producing them.
In a real world free market economy, this would result in fewer of those items being produced, until it is once again profitable to produce them.
In RS, however, since players must produce those items in order to gain exp, those items will continue to be produced despite the fact that there is insufficient demand to cause the price of the produced item to be higher than the costs of producing it.
One way to fix this would be to make all armor degradable. But that would also make it quite expensive for new and poor players to engage in combat.
The result of all this is that the fastest methods of smithing lose money. Slower methods, such as the blast furnace, can turn a small profit by sacrificing speed.
Merchants had nothing to do with ores selling for more than you can get smithing them. They obeyed the laws of supply and demand just like everyone else.
It is the game mechanics themselves that cause some skills to be money-sinks to level at any reasonable speed. And that would be true even if all merchants were instantly and magically removed from the game.
And it's not a matter of people losing money. It's a matter of players spending money for something they want--in this case, fast smithing exp. All the merchants did (and still do) was make it more convenient for players to spend their money in order to achieve their goals faster.

19-Jan-2011 23:34:09 - Last edited on 19-Jan-2011 23:36:25 by Mystic Monad

May

2005

Mystic Monad

Posts: 12,305 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Agent B MiB said:
"merchants . . . only had their own interest in mind."
Not much of a revelation there. Most non-merchants also have their own interests in mind.
What percentage of RS players do you think play for unselfish, altruistic reasons of making the game a better place for everyone else?
I suppose there are a few such saintly players.
But let's be realistic.
Most people play RS, just as most people do most other things in real life, to satisfy their own desire for enjoyment, fun, sense of mastery, ego, desire for wealth and possessions, or some other thing that revolves around their own interests.
So let's not just talk about merchants. Let's talk about *all* players.
The beauty of the free market system is that it harnesses people's basically self-centered drives into doing things that benefit others, whether that's their goal or not.
Do most people go to work in the morning (or the evening) in order to benefit humankind? Some do. But most go because they need money to live, so that they won't find themselves hungry, without clothing, and living on the street.
Yet when those people go to work, they produce all sorts of goods and services that benefit others--even though they're primarily doing the work to for reasons of their own self-interest.
This, my friend, is how a free market economy turns self-centered people into useful, productive people that benefit their fellow human beings.
And that's exactly how it works with merchants and with nearly every other player in RS. Merchants are intending to benefit themselves by making money. In the process, they benefit others by providing other players with needed goods and services when and where they want them.
Players toiling away in the ess mines do it to make money and gain mining exp. In the process, they provide ess for other players to engage in rc.
Miners toiling away in the mines are working for their own benefit . . .
I think you get the idea.

19-Jan-2011 23:47:50 - Last edited on 19-Jan-2011 23:50:56 by Mystic Monad

dunforgiven

Posts: 102,158 Ruby Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Mystic Monad

19-Jan-2011 23:05:16
Agent B MiB,
An "imbalance" in the exp of various skills, including mining and smithing, just means that it takes longer to level one skill than another ....
it was never meant that be that way. it was meant that you could get both up at the same time by helping others.
you decry the ge for making the game more impersonal, while talking of merchants as though they were the spirit of it. that is the reverse. merchants didnt make the game more personals, they destroyed it by removing the encentives to help other players the way the game was intended. instead of being about helpingothers, it became a way to make bocos money.
...So players are willing to pay for exp....
some are. others are forced to. others that cant, are forced out of it. frankly my dear, I couldn't give a dam. never had a river to build one on.
veteran of 4 runescapes

19-Jan-2011 23:50:52 - Last edited on 19-Jan-2011 23:52:10 by dunforgiven

May

2005

Mystic Monad

Posts: 12,305 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Agent B MiB,
If there is a differential in exp between mining and smithing, no amount of "helping others" will change that.
No matter which way you slice it, if there's more mining exp than smithing exp in the finished product, then overall, there will be more mining exp than smithing exp in the game.
If Jagex meant it to be different, they would have had to balance out the mining and smithing exp in the finished product.
Obviously Jagex is not trying to balance all the skills, because some skills are far slower to level than others.
Is cooking really going to be balanced with slayer? I don't think so.
And there's no particular need to balance related skills either.
As for merchants, they are simply middlemen in allowing some players to help others. They buy products from players who produce them, and sell them to players who consume them, making a small profit in the process in payment for their services.

19-Jan-2011 23:58:40

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Wilderness and Free Trade Vote