As a member of the RS community for over 8 years, I can say that, in my opinion, gameplay decreased dramatically in quality upon the implementation of the trade limits. I never was a big fan of wildy PKing, but it was always a very interesting facet of the game that required strategy and planning.
As for the cheating concern, I don't think it'll make things dramatically worse. For one thing, most bots now are skill bots, which still gain the cheater money via the GE with or without trade limits. As for the GE/current price listing, I'd suggest something like listing the average price and maybe one standard deviation in both directions to take the place of the upper and lower limits.
One major issue that I think this will really help is item values. As it stands now, there are numerous items that have had their values drastically overinflated due to their use as "junk" trade items to get a transaction within the trade limit. Take, for example, Dharok's Helmet. It's steadily been rising in price from less than 1M all the way up to the 7M it stands at today; a rise which has more to do with its use as "junk" than actual demand for the item.
The way I see it, this can only help the game. It will bring back the influence of supply and demand, and certain overpriced "junk" items will become cheaper and more available for everyone.
My gameplay time has dropped off over the past few years, and I must say that this is the proposition I've been hoping and waiting to see. Thank you to everyone who created/signed the original petition, thank you to all the Mods/Admins who listened, and thank you to everyone who's voted yes.
28-Dec-2010 21:45:11
