Jagex, think before making an update.

It has become evident over the last few years that Jagex do not always consider every player when updating their game. Not considering every player causes divides and schisms, which make some players hate other players, as well as hating Jagex. This is obviously not a good thing.

One of the worst of these updates is probably that of pure essence. Jagex are presented with a problem – and that is of macroers. These players are breaking the rules, screwing with the economy, making millions for themselves. Before now, Jagex banned these players, but they got more and more clever, making new ways to prevent being banned, prevent being found. Hell, there are even some macro bots that will 'type' generic phrases, just like players do, like 'Mining level?' etc, etc.

And so Jagex decided in their *cough* infinite wisdom that they would do something to prevent people from wanting to macro in the first place. One of the largest macro markets is in essence.

Now, there was a huge economy in which poorer free-to-play people would mine thousands of essence, and sell to members – hell, even I did some of this, mining 5000 essence and making a nice little 150k. Jagex decided, as I'm sure you all know, to divide essence into two forms, normal essence and 'pure' essence, the latter of which is only available to members, and is required to make members runes.

Now, this is a good solution, in a way, to the macro problem. Macroers are less likely to make members accounts, because if they are found and get banned, that’s $5 down the drain. In this move, Jagex closed a very large chunk of the f2p/p2p essence market, making it very difficult for macroers to make money this way.

However, as you all know, this completely screwed the economy. The price of normal essence, which was edging towards 60gp each, shot back down to a price of 20gp each. Pure essence was instantly expensive, around 110gp each, because members don't like mining essence too much.

With this update, Jagex closed the cross-f2p/p2p essence market by probably 80%. The vast majority of p2p players who bought essence bought it to make Nature or Law runes, and then, suddenly, they couldn’t. Hundreds of f2p players who made their living selling to members hated the update. Hundreds of p2p players who now have to pay triple the amount they would have done for essence hated the update. I could not have made my 150k, which I have now used to flip deaths, get a million gp, and with that money gain 60 magic.

Surely Jagex would have seen this coming?

Yes, they would have. Jagex do plan and look ahead, as we have seen in construction – it was designed to partially stabilize the economy, and to be honest, they have done a very good job of it. I have not seen the price of the blue party hat move much since construction at all. They do look ahead, they do plan ahead, and they do consider the future. So why didn’t they with the pure essence update?

Z0mg th3y hat3 us all!!!11!!One!!!

Jagex seriously need to start thinking about the players. They make an update in which a booming business between f2p and p2p is shut down overnight, ‘because of the macroers’. While macroers do exist, 99% of the players who sold essence to members were not macroers – and yet Jagex seem to completely ignore them. It’s like placing everyone in prison because some criminals stole money from the government – not everyone is a criminal, but everyone is punished.

What Jagex need more than everything is to start using more humans and not using so many traps or blocks to stop the macroers. A J-mod standing by the willows in Edgeville in basically any world will see a horrible amount of macroing going on. And a J-mod could instantly ban them, on the spot. That’s what Jagex needs.

If it were not for the F2p/P2p essence market, I would not have become a millionaire. Now, someone else will not be able to be a millionaire. It was a great way for lower-leveled players to make money, and while it might not be too efficient with a bronze pickaxe and a mining level of two, it’s still a good way for those just off Tutorial Island to make a little bit of cash.

So the message the Jagex is this: think about everyone next time you make an update. A far better way of stopping the macroers would be just to get a J-mod out there banning them on the spot, not screwing over the economy or with computer tricks that can be easily outsmarted.

Thats so true exelent point, you need a spot on the newspaper crew.

It's a bit of a late rant and while I agree with some parts, it's difficult for Jagex to actually please everyone regardless of if they tried to update around the players. This is why you'll get "high level" updates and "low level" updates because at the end of the day it's still going to annoy someone.

I personally dislike construction, I see it as a filler skill, a complete waste of money, ditto farming it's a filler skill a complete waste of time, I can easily get more herbs from killing chaos druids in the time it takes for a piddly ranarr weed patch to grow and die five times while I "look after" the stupid thing.

Why didn't jagex think and take into account mine and some other people's feelings in this regard? Several people don't like Farming or Construction and don't agree with the skills or their purpose (Goldsink and time-waster imo) therefore it shouldn't have been released, alas, this type of thinking is hypocritical I suppose, because there are some who will have wet dreams over the skills and their purposes defending them to the very hilt in a cotton-wool-over-the-eyes-way.

Anyway, more to the point, the pure essence update was harsh especially on both sets of players (F2p and P2P), but was predictable really, ever since the whole "fatigue" crap that piddled out in RSC and their massive clampdown on "macroers" which, I have beef with, because I see this as a geniue distruption to an other-wise enjoyable game and I disagree with Jagex's subtle *SPAM RANDOM EVENTS ON ANYTHING OVER LEVEL 80 FIFTY TIMES AS MUCH* tactic, which is evident (I skilled at level 3 to 80 in *four* stats and barely got any random events, yet while I was on my level 90 combat account back in the day random events popped up for me just for logging in, walking two yards and opening a door...)

Maybe they do need to re-valuate how they trap and macroers, maybe they do need to re-think future updates to accomodate the economy and it's players (legitimate players need to start getting rewarded not punished for playing the game, I agree) but I doubt you'll find them implementing a J-Mod around certain areas of the game, because:

1) They're lazy.
2) They don't care as much about macroers really, it's an excuse to up the difficulty/tedium of the game
3) They have people like you and me to hit the report button for it, so they can claim "lack of evidence" everytime regardless of whenever there *is* evidence or not

If they really were worried about it there would be more of a clamp-down, more investigation into claims of autoing/macroing and less ways of penalising legitimate players...

End of the day though, it's easier for them to throw in random events, put in skills that are difficultish to macro (farming/construction) and put down measures such as pure essence regardless of the impact on player's lives and so on...

And I think I'll be quiet now, I've sorted ranted myself O_O sorry

That's true. Whatever Jagex do, whatever updates they put out. Someone will find something to moan about.

It's a mmog, any change to it will cause change to the entire game, it's impossible to know how things will work out, impossible to foresee all possible outcomes.

Best they can do is go with it and see how well it works.

Hmm...good point. Hard to please some people these days.

look at it this way, its just as easy to mine pure ess, so u can make more money as a member mining pure ess

Pros.
- I made over 10m merching pure essence. Bought them from low levels for 50 gp, sold at 110 gp.

Cons.
-F2P is left with only Lobsters as their moneymaker. As the essence is now near useless, and yew trees filthy with macros, F2P will have to rely on Lobsters, and TBH it really is hard to find buyers in F2P unless a pure is willing to buy in bulk.

-P2P runecrafters no longer can power train without losing much money. 5k rune essence used to cost 100k, so apparently the cost to power level is now five times more expensive. Unless you're a merchant, expect to go bankrupt real fast.

Now it is a lose-lose-win-win situation (forget the other 'win' if you're not a merchant)

F2Pers lose. P2Pers lose. Macros win(Moved on to yew trees now). Merchants win.

Took the words right out of my mouth....

Yeah. Don't be so angry about it. You did say that Jagex did a good job on Construction, so why be pessimistic about the "pure ess" thing?

Plus, the pure ess update was forev4rh ago, so why the big deal now?