RuneScape Discussion

Leave it alone and reduce inflation
Increase the GE fee and add more gold sinks (do they work?)
Raise the gold floor of skilling and reduce inflation (not the right solution in Mod Jack’s mind)
NIB: Reduce common drops and alchables from PvM (Mod Jack’s preferred solution) and a kill rate cap?
Boss kill rate cap?

Higher DPM = more damage than 10 years ago. If something like Graarador (bad example! - Thaxy) were cycled, people would go back to the previous bosses.
Zamorak -> Telos -> etc.
What if a boss had a X minute respawn time? If you kill it under that spawn time you wait for it to respawn.
If Zamorak had a 3 minute respawn time and it took you 3 minutes to kill, that would be the most profitable.
The idea behind this comes from the following example:

If Zamorak had a 3 minute respawn time and Vindicta had a 15s respawn time (hypothetical), then you would kill 12 Vindicta in 3 minutes. Therefore, Zamorak must be 12x profitable.

Pit falls? Forcing someone to stand around at content they like is bad because that’s a forced break and at that point you might as well leave or go play something else.
Collection log, hard to find right boss, IM farming components & supplies, reaper tasks.
Alternate idea: Nerf old bosses to the ground, seems worse in Mod Jack’s eyes.
Alternate idea: Adjust the drop tables (commons & alchables), don’t over engineer, adjust GE fee if necessary? -Shane

The depreciation in the value of gold when supply is higher than the demand.
Saw with Rune value improvements: increase the value of runes and the price goes up. Resulted in Vis Wax amongst other things.
Higher value creates demand which increases prices.
Having something just have a low supply does not automatically increase value.
To reduce gold inflation, reduce the price of gold. Price is equated to the purchasing power something requires.
To increase the value of gold: make more things to buy, the problem is that in the game today XP is not worth that much.
Adding more uses for gold: bonds, gold sinks, PvM gear, high profile cosmetics.
Decrease the supply of gold: reduce alchables (PvM), by comparison not much comes from TH, there aren’t many more significant sources of gold.
Both solutions are on the table: increasing gold value and reducing supply.

Dark Onyx core: extremely low supply and the price extremely high but it has a low value. People either “need” it from a completionism point of view or it feels wrong that it isn’t either better or less rare.
Water rune: Has both a high supply and high value.
Gold: High supply, mid-range value.
Stone spirits: High supply and low value.
FSoA: Low supply, high value.

Imbalance: Inflation doesn’t affect all things equally.
The numbers feel wrong. In theory could just reduce GE values by a factor of 1,000 and then reduce people’s bank values by a factor of 1,000.
When gold is worth less, a person’s ability to generate gold is higher. Therefore, items with fixed prices take less time to buy.
Returning players will come back and see their money is worthless.
Increasing the GE fee by 1% would eclipse the amount that any gold sink could do.

The worst outcome: pay GP to a player, increase alchables. What this has done is increase the net gold in the economy. This is not a gold sink.
The best outcome: Destroying GP (paying to the game) and Increase non-alchables
The two paths forward:

Reduce inflation: reduce the amount of gold coming into the game by modifying alchable drops and utilizing the GE fee.
Aim for deflation: The price of copper or bonds or whatever item would drop. The non-GP commodities would drop over time where the value of GP relatively becomes more valuable. Mod Jack is not sure that deflation is a healthy thing for the RS economy.
Example: Set GE fee to 15%, the value of GP goes up since the supply goes down. The GP you have is becoming worth more but the items are worth less. Over time non-alchables would start to feel like stone spirits. A deflationary spiral.
Mod Jack’s inclination is to try to reduce inflation and a small amount of inflation is better than deflation.

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Show Data

Episode Title: Economic Drops
Teaser: It’s all economics with a discussion on Mod Jack’s two recent live streams. First we talk about common drops and PvM profitability. Then we look at the finer details of the RuneScape economy and what can and should be done about inflation.
Recorded Date: March 9, 2023
Release Date: March 10, 2023
Executive Producers: Shane, Cireon, and Tanis
Producers: God Emperor Earth and Thaxy
Hosts: Shane, Tanis, and Earth
Duration: 1:35:36
Editing Notes: Earth call, what have we been doing