RuneScape Forum Archive | Old School Economy Plans

Seri Rein

Posts: 1 Bronze Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

I would say, although very difficult to code, to tax players based on income, total money including items traded/obtained/dropped for the past 48 hours to avoid people just dropping an expensive item on the ground, like stated above.

Don't tax without thinking, tax the players within/above a certain wealth range, and then slowly work your way down, don't just tax for the sake of taxing.

2% for a player that owns billions means different than for a player that got a lucky drop and is hoping to sell that item for an upgrade in their gear.

Also, and I cannot say this enough times, please stop hiring people that don't actually play the game to make integrity changes based on 0 experience with the game. I'm sure these people are overqualified in their fields, but not when it comes to understanding a game by playing it for years.

EDIT: To continue my point with an example. As a bad player with minimal gear that constantly dies on Zulrah, I have already payed my "2% tax" when the Tanzanite fang finally drops for me. I already payed the "tax" with my time and with consumables. There is no need to further tax me just because numbers state there are a lot of players making profit by not dying as much as I do on that encounter.

05-Nov-2021 13:49:09 - Last edited on 05-Nov-2021 14:01:51 by Seri Rein

Hyper Craft

Posts: 248 Silver Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

My main concern for taxing the GE is it will have negative impacts on certain Quality of Life aspects of the game, and certainly will affect Merchanting, which has been a part of Runescape since its birth.

2% tax is just too High in my opinion.

Players, like myself, purchase certain items to use for a particular event, and then sell them afterwards, usually within the day since I dont need them long term and dont have enough gold to have every item in the game at my disposal. "Testing" Items is a QoL aspect that will be impacted.

At 2% tax, there will no longer be enough meat on the bones, if any at all, for most items to be merchanted, which will effectively destroy this aspect of the game, which for many, is a big deal.

I would like to see Jagex revise this 2% tax point to a percentage significantly lower, around 0.25 - 0.5%. This will still provide a generous gold sink to the game without drastically impacting Quality of Life and Merchanting aspects of the game.

I also feel like there are probably more creative ways to create gold sinks than taxing the GE and making degradable items.

I would rather see the GE NOT be taxed honestly, if it can be avoided.

Issues will arise from this, such as players trade chat selling items that are extremely valuable such as spirit shields and twisted bows, avoiding the GE, while the peasants and merchants are the ones being harmed by the tax for selling everyday or more common items

.

PLEASE

think long and hard before implementing this change that will

drastically alter Old School Runescape!

05-Nov-2021 14:22:04 - Last edited on 05-Nov-2021 14:39:26 by Hyper Craft

Jun

2017

Castchaos

Posts: 563 Steel Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

This post above is my favourite in the thread.

True enough, Jagex must pay attention not to implement this in a way that it becomes the same for OSRS economy what was EOC for RS3 combat/gameplay. I wouldn't like OSRS be the second RS I quit.

05-Nov-2021 16:34:37

Oct

2021

Jabb1337

Posts: 53 Iron Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

While keeping the economy healthy is in everyone's best interest, I must agree with everyone in saying that a GE tax is not the way.

Way back when the GE was first introduced it would have made sense to add a tax or fee for the convenience, but since then a free GE has become a central part of the game. Taxing would destroy flipping and merching, which are primary activities for some players. Additionally it violates the Runescape circa 2007 'vibe' that OSRS strives for.

Purchasing bank space on the other hand is a brilliant idea. That line of thinking for sinking gold is the way to go, add things that players will want to spend gold on to remove it from the game. This could be cosmetics, temporary perks that make skilling/questing/bossing less tedious, or completely new aspects added to the game.

Recurring gold sinks would be best. Some ideas:

A new pet that looks bigger/happier/cooler if fed a steady diet of gold.

Ability to move the POH (not the entry portal) to a new location that provides a different landscape/background for a monthly rent in gold.

New distractions & diversions that exist outside of Runescape proper (like Daemonheim in RS3) but sink gold. Funding and expeditions for the Varrock Museum perhaps?

There are so many ways that gold can be removed by adding to the OSRS experience vs taking away like a tax does. The dev staff are very smart and creative people, I know you can come up with some amazing ideas!

05-Nov-2021 18:13:38

Old Orius

Posts: 411 Silver Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

NOT happy about the idea of a GE tax at all. I recently returned to OSRS after a little over a year away only to find that bond prices had gone up by a about million coins, while a good number of the old ways of making money had been depreciated. I don't see a tax doing anything but making things worse.

So yeah go ahead and only pay attention to the economy that's experienced by high level end game players and pay no heed to the low and mid level players. That's going to help build and maintain a base of fresh players, and RS of course has absolutely no competition out there in terms of other MMOs, especially free MMOs that aren't presenting new players with grindy 20 year old content at the start. Taxing the bottom of the player base will likely just anger them and not grow the base, and that base needs growth to offset the inevitable player attrition.

I'm going to add another gripe about bots and gold farming, since that dumps a lot of excess gold and items into the game by breaking at least two rules: macros and RWTing. This already hurts players that will be hurt more by a tax.

And it doesn't help that skilling drives a good part of the economy, people skill to gain resources to level up or to make money by selling to other players. Over time, that's added so much crap to the economy that prices have fallen. That crap needs to be addressed not just boss drops. And done in a way that doesn't hurt players following the rules.

An item sink is very much needed in the game. But it should not end with high level boss drops, hell that doesn't even scratch the surface of the problem. I think damn near everything should be put in the sink, especially the high volume trades, and especially ores, gear produced through skills, logs, runes, probably herbs, etc.

I'm not impressed by Jagex hiring real world economists for advice unless they understand how RS's economy works. The RS economy does NOT follow any number of RL economic rules.

05-Nov-2021 22:16:00 - Last edited on 05-Nov-2021 22:21:36 by Old Orius

daedlus58

Posts: 1,530 Mithril Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

IF you are going to tax the ge, tax player to player trades the same or you will recreate the merchant class again.

06-Nov-2021 01:59:52

Lucy HFilia

Posts: 308 Silver Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Some things I agree with:
Yeah, we have an overinflation of items in the game. Holy cow, clue scroll items are high-alch prices. Like..what? I remember when black elegant outfits were 1m because of rarity/player desire to own it.

But choosing to tax the GE and then use the coins to increase rarity of items…I don’t know. That doesn’t sound like a real gold sink to me, just an attempt at an item sink. And only at “high end bossing drops,” which makes me sad because that speaks how much the developers stopped caring about anything that isn’t high-end bossing.

I actually don’t want a “generalized tax,” which is what I currently see proposed. That will interfere with smithing/crafting profits, which are already marginal at best when I do this at low levels. That means well…need I say it again? Ignoring starter players, as always. I’m not convinced this is truly an “integrity update” if you’re going to hurt the newbies in this way.

If people are truly getting this lucky when bossing, why can’t they use these drops to help them in some way? Sacrifice a scythe at theatre of blood to revive 10 times for free in any mode. Or give yourself a chance to restock on food if you die but your team survives. Or y’know…anything else that would be super helpful in these high-end situations with these high-end items. And stop screwing over people that aren’t that lucky.

And yeah, we probably do need a gold sink. Since everything is at high-alch prices, that’s exactly what I do. Produce more gold and make the problem worse.

Let me sacrifice clue scroll items to get re-rolls on clue caskets. For smithing/crafting items, that’s tough. Darts used to be the way but then too many people made them and less demand due to less useful blowpipe. Starting to think a re-smelter to get some used material back is a better answer (I think that’s how invention works or something…?).

06-Nov-2021 03:56:24

Lucy HFilia

Posts: 308 Silver Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

(To continue)
I think for the gold sink, jagex messed up in that they wanted people to continue to come back to the boss, so charge-items only required items from the boss (scythe = vials of blood. Sanguinesti staff = blood runes only. Even the trident of seas requires some coins). These rechargeable items honestly probably required coins to help charge them. Hell, even barrows requires coin maintenance. So why were all the other rechargeables left out? Corrupted blade probably needed coin sacrifice as well.

On top of that, jagex made slayer too consistently profitable. Holy crap, if I just sit and alch at a gargoyle task, I can get 1m coins no problem! Gargoyles have never given me this kind of money. And abyssal demons…give only whips still. Oh.

I can go on and on about the things that made this game’s economy really tank that are now being ignored, namely they did that to help ironmans play the game more easily, but let’s focus on the fact that this fix is not the way to go. It’s a bandage on a bigger problem throughout the game that probably requires more attention.

And I will say I don’t think this blog falls under integrity change. In its current form, I’m too afraid to let it pass. I watched runescape in 2007 tank and junk-trading become a thing because of jagex trying its best to help the game against rwters, scamming, malice, etc by implementing trade limitations. It didn’t work. It made the game far more frustrating for people. Since our economy is player-led, changes to the economy need to be player-led. This will REQUIRE a vote. And no, there shouldn’t be enough scammers to make anything important or helpful to the game fail. The GE passed, afterall. Best anti-scamming measure you could’ve taken in this whole game (which is also why prices are at an all-time low!).

So please, poll this and revisit some of the ideas. I want good ideas to pass, not to have to quit this game again. I’m already close to that.

06-Nov-2021 04:18:04

Grobar20

Posts: 2,223 Mithril Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Tax on ge? Whaattttttt?? It is not a problem in selling at ge..it is a problem with to manyy high alchable drops and to many bots...Fix the bots problems and also a big impact is a item transfer from irons to main normal accs.

Reather then that stop adding so much alchable items in drops or maybe rethink about a new gear wich need coins for a fix...Like in pre eoc had torva/pernix/virtus....that was nice gold sink since gear was not cheap in fixing.

We also have a death tax wich is ok...But new taxes in all game ways? Insane..

Keep it simple as it is now.
Complicating in some things was never a good way for RuneScepe.

06-Nov-2021 09:21:01

True Hamster

Posts: 1,405 Mithril Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

I agree with an item and gold sink, but I don't think this is the way. Players are just going to bypass the GE altogether, which will lead to an increase in scamming. Especially as the items' actual prices decouple from the GE prices.

If you want to decrease the overall supply of items, you could decrease the number coming into the game. To do this, you could reintroduce CoinShare from RS2. Except instead of selling the item on the GE, it should just convert the item to cash. While you're al it, you should let players decide how they want the coins divided among the group.

For an item sink, let players sacrifice items for additional chances to get the associated pet.

For a gold sink, I've got a few ideas:

A daily lottery with tickets starting at 100k. The winner gets half the total value of tickets sold, and the other half gets removed from the game and/or put in the GE coffer.

The ability to buy temporary perks. I'm sure there are players who would pay a few million per day for an increased chance at getting a pet. Or a perk that gives you one resurrection in any non-PvP, non-instanced area. (Hardcore Ironmen wouldn't be able to buy this).

Or, swing for the fences and add a pet players can buy from an NPC in exchange for a max cash stack.

06-Nov-2021 09:38:55

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Old School Economy Plans