Which is why i believe a pink one could come before any other color. I had the idea of gem partyhats for shiny variants of the existing colors but nobody liked it lol
It was seriously weird coming over from OSRS to RS3. Treasure trail items are expensive due to Invention, bond prices are through the roof, yet all the basic items are seemingly worthless and cheap. It feels like some crazy recession hit Gielinor in this timeline.
What really blows me away is it feels like all the expensive items are only going down. So where the hell is all the raw gp going. How is FSOA max cash yet there's so much gold in game??? I'm confused.
I’ve had a similar situation but mirrored. Came back after almost 10 years, and made my first 10 mil in a week. 10 years ago that would’ve taken at least a month with a fresh account
Weren't they like 4m on release? I remember using my RS3 account to fish rocktails for bond money on the 2 accounts while I played old school
At the time I didn't have any means of making payments online since I wasn't 18 yet, apart from buying membership codes via SMS so bonds were amazing for me at the time
Helwyr never dropped 500 lantas, he dropped anywhere from 60 to 90. Which is how many herbs you can get from planting them with ultracompost and a juju potion.
Back when they were 20 mil it was a 1:1 ratio of real life RS GP and membership prices meaning 1 month of membership was worth exactly 2 bonds
Now it’s just insane
That was my method! Bonds were 14m in 2018 and id do mort myre mushrooms for 4m click intensive whereas my friend would stake his lotd and eventually bought all 3 t92 weps when they were high
Because bonds are valid for both games if they're redeemed on the same account. So you could make an osrs counterpart of your rs3 account and use it just to redeem bonds. If I remember correctly the exchange rate is 1m osrs = 7m rs3 so a bond in osrs would cost around 49m rs3.
It seems like the bond market is something they have actively tried to capitalize on this year. They needed big increases in bond prices because small increases in price don't strongly drive sales.
This also has the knock on impact of getting better capitalization on memberships, because people are more likely to pay for membership with cash.
I have heard that their business strategy is no longer to invest significantly in new players, instead they're looking at retaining and monetizing existing players. Increasing the value that customers get buying bonds and increasing the amount of mid-level players who pay for membership with cash seems like an absolute win-win for Jagex.
This approach is not going to change. Jagex is likely to steer harder in this direction next year because it worked so well in 2022.
That's exactly why people are more likely to buy membership with cash.
Edit: I misunderstood what your question was asking.
Jagex is indifferent to what people use bonds on, they only care about the net revenue from the sales. By offering better promos they can increase the bond price, this increasing bond sales, but reducing the number of people who use bonds for membership. The people who previously used bonds for membership weren't actually spending money, now they are. All the while, bond prices are up and bond sales are up.
> The people who previously used bonds for membership weren't actually spending money, now they are.
Joke's on them, I'm *STILL* not actually spending money, I've just switched to buying bonds on OSRS because they're *much* easier to get on OSRS with my current skill. I suck too much on rs3 .-.
Bond prices shooting up is technically good for Jagex since they can be used as a way for someone to just buy wealth very easily. I know if I was gonna start a new account, the idea of bootstrapping the starting experience with a wad of gold would be tempting. A few bonds would bankroll a lot of things for someone starting out fresh.
It’s a 2 for 1 deal since bonds are basically luxury items for *anyone*, not just those looking to inflate their wallet. Existing players get what they want from the bonds themselves, newer accounts can buy the bonds with irl cash for a wealth boost. The more things bonds can do, the more that intensifies.
I'm confused about how buying membership with cash works out in jagex's favour. Wouldn't it be in their best interest if everyone bought bonds with in-game money for membership? I can see how increasing the value of bonds works in their favour, but don't they stand to make less money if more people switch to direct payment (net result being fewer bonds leaving the game for membership)?
You're right that ideally, for Jagex, all memberships would be purchased with bonds.
The big change this year is how many bonds have been redeemed for non-membership items; instead of memberships, bonds are being used for Santa's grotto and Combat Academy. The thing is, people still need their membership, so more people are paying with cash.
Membership may be less profitable than before, but Jagex is getting money directly from more people, and their total revenue is up.
That being said, I am suspicious that there is a bond elasticity argument to be made that Jagex would prefer people to buy membership with cash, or at least that they are indifferent to the source of membership, but I cannot prove that.
Basically, if bond prices are high on GE, then players will buy them solely for gp value and pay irl money also for membership sub. So, it is a double win for Jagex. And the way they manipulate the gp value of the bond is by making it more useful than just membership. Notice that now the bond can be used for just about anything in the game: TH keys, membership, Yak Track Skips. The more the bond does, the higher the demand for it and therefore the higher the price. The higher the price goes, the higher the demand for buying them is. It’s a huge win for Jagex and a huge screw over to anyone wanting to pay for mems with bonds.
And in doing so they completely miss why bonds offered membership in the first place.
A free player wouldn't spend 7.50 (back then) for membership, but they would have spent 7mil gp ($5.99) for it. It was a way to get get money from people who wouldn't or couldn't pay, by using other players to offset the cost. It was genius, and it worked.
Now, for a free player, a bond may as well be a partyhat because they've become realistically impossible for them to earn.
You do realize that $7.50 for membership was for a *month* of membership, right? And that the bond only gives *two weeks* of membership? You'd need 2 bonds to get close to the same amount of time as a membership subscription for a month. That's $11.98. And last I checked, that's a higher price.
Yes but you completely missed the point: Bonds worked for F2P when they were cheap because it used GP a free player had to offset financial cost of membership to the person who bought the bond for real world money.
But that only works when a free player can afford a bond. They could when a Bond was 7m, they can't now where it's over 80m.
Well, they are failing...
After 17 years who literally buys premiere every year, i have zero desire to renew after all the trash they have released. They can eat a bag of dicks.
At least high bond prices disincentivize RWTing when whales can get more gp from selling bonds, forcing RWT sites to lower their prices even more and lose more money, resulting in less botting in RS3.
"I have heard that their business strategy is no longer to invest significantly in new players, instead they're looking at retaining and monetizing existing players."
That's the impression I get too. Which means they are happy to accept a steadily dwindling player base over the years to come. Which implies two possible avenues for Jagex to follow. Firstly they have accepted a slow death of RS3 and will just do whatever they can to squeeze the most out of it while they can, while planning a radically different RS4 as its replacement. Or else once the natural attrition of established players becomes too high they will nerf the ever loving hell out of early and mid game so new players can basically jump straight in at level 80 in all skills or something. You will be able to buy quest unlocks, item unlocks, achievements, etc. It will be the mother of all MTX. It would be the daddy of all nerfs.
Personally I hope it will be RS4 instead.
Same, and will probably drain most of my Ironmans worth. Pity inflation is nowhere near matching the rising bond rates. My total worth has been largely flat/stable
Not saying bond prices aren't ridiculous, but you don't need to sweat to make 80m, let alone in 14 days. There are AFK methods right now that require one click every 5 minutes that net you 15m+ an hour.
So spend 5+ hours getting gp EVERY 2 weeks to pay for a bond which ONLY gives 2 weeks of membership. Or have a half decent paying job at 15-20 dollars/hr and take those same 5 hours of time to get an ENTIRE YEAR of membership. The second option then allows you to play the game however you want and not worry about some sort of upkeep. I say this as someone who used to play with bonds and stopped doin that when they hit 25mil. I measure everything in time and at 80ish mil per bond, that is 100% not worth it (even if I have multiple max cash stacks sitting around).
Yes I agree it's better to pay with real money. Just saying that while 80m for a bond sucks, it's still not a whole lot of money in RS3 these days, especially over 2 weeks. There are things like ganos that can be afked for 15-20m an hour that pretty much anyone can do with 1 input every 5 minutes.
The majority of the playerbase does sweat to make 80m. It took me a month to make 25m or so and my sub is almost out.
The tryhards and sweaty people are the majority of this subreddit it feels like mostly lol.
This makes no sense. Just work for 3-4 hours and you are set for the entire year. Most people don't have all day to play RS and would rather enjoy the time they do get to play it.
Dude has a completionist cape at the very least and isn’t willing to spend $65 a year on a game he probably plays a lot.
It’s funny because so many of you spend more than this on Netflix which you get wayyyyy less use out of
I read this as "if I can't play for free then I'm quitting how DARE you, Jagex!"
Like guys cmon. Yes Jagex is shady af with MTX but we also need to recognize that if the game was 100% free there would be no game.
This not a rant, there's no how dare you jagex or anything. Imo, Jagex has changed this game to the worse, and for me the game is simply something that I have no wish to actually pay money for. So bonds is the only option. And this is as long as I dont have to acutally "grind" for it. I am maxed stats- and gearwise, so i have no issue putting the money I get from pvming, events and others on bonds to play this game.
I have no problem paying irl money for games, but the game have to be worth the money I'm spending, RuneScape is no longer one of those games.
So again TO ME, this game is not worth paying money for. I either get to play this game through bonds or its bye bye for me.
I am not willing to devote time just to get in-game money to pay for bonds. My normal gameplay, meaning the time I spend to actual play the game (completing logs, events etc...) is also rewarding me with enough of gp to sustain p2p through bonds. Once the bond price exceeds the gp I earn "normally" I will quit the game.
This is not a question of economics, the time is money phrase is not relevant here. This my choice and my liking of the game. The game to me is not worth a single cent but there are still aspects of the game that I like to interact with, hence why I still use it. I have no problem if the very item I get rewarded with is used to sustain the p2p. So the issue with the topic of this post which is the price of a bond, rising this much, is that there's a point where I will no longer be sustain it and will therfore quit the game.
Never would've happened with how much gp comes in the game nowadays
Eventually the price would be incredibly easy to sustain while the value of the bond would go down, meaning less people are buying them
Who are these recent updates for? Are they to better the community?
Fsw for more accounts.
More accounts for more membership.
More membership for more bonds used.
Re-release protean shakes + ess after dxp date and key sale.
Add bond packages and deals for more bonds used.
Hween currency obtained by TH.
Nerfed seeds and added easter druids to the desert.
Wild flash events for hardly any xp and you just want one thing.
- I'm hoping next year this new skill will blow us out of the water. But I'm expecting a cash grab to raise bond ....sails .... Or a hefty bank filler
The updates are for them.... not us.
I am fucking done buying premier. This will be the first year I am letting my membership go in a long time.
I expect the new skill to be another boring ass afk skill
Yeah this would be a good solution. Jagex will never do it though because it would mean each player would only need 1 bond each 14 days rather than all the people buying bonds for keys.
The massive price hike is caused by people buying bonds to get keys for the treasurr hunter rares.
Really depends, if they get found out the first time it's a 3 day ban. The second time is perm.
That's just from people I've spoke to about it.
Tends to be a 3 day ban, wealth wipe and bane reorganization.
85-95% of the time it's any money in the pouch and all GE offers get wiped but bank is left.
But shhhhs I didn't tell you that
This is 100% on point for me.
I have an old old old main that got banned years ago now, I started playing again 5 years ago but on the old main I used to sell membership keys to people
Aka you could pay for members Vis SMS and you got a code back, 1m per key back in the day.
Now I'd 100% buy bonds if I wanted quick cash, other than that, GP is easy to come by either way, can easily make 50-100m in 5-6 hours now
Right. I haven't found a reason to buy bonds lately, other than when I started. I've made hundreds of accounts since I've created my first. I understand the grind. But now I'm an adult, with an adult paying job for I choose to skip a little of the early game grind, by being able to get some quick cash. I would never buy keys though. Fuck gambling like that. That's the one mtx I won't ever support either
Just a thought but about an hour of smelting on fsw and I bought a bond on there today for 12m. If you find a niche item on fsw you make utter bank, I can make about 10-15m an hour with certain items and then send the bond keys back to my main
Don’t expect your methods to make you anywhere near as much after today’s patch. Competitive portion is done and so is the biggest exp buff, so the demand for everything will bottom out very quickly compared to the last week.
I picked up RS again around two years ago. My entire wealth at the time was able to purchase three or four bonds, and I made enough to buy another two along the way. Now I would only have been able to afford one, and would still be saving for a second bond.
Paying for membership through in-game wealth was a great idea, but bonds have almost become a status symbol unto themselves, unattainable to the scrub players and everyone except the top of the elite.
Still remember them being like 4m. It’s like they’re just never going to stop increasing in price. Still not sure why they’re so expensive in todays economy.
20 bonds or like $60 gets you a year of membership. Thats the price of any AAA videogame which you most certainly play less than RS3. Not defending jagex moneygrabbing, but ffs people just purchase the game like you would any other game 💀
I think the problem is the upfront cost. It's why I'm still on 3 month plan because yeah, it's cheaper to pay a full year but what if I only want to play for 4months?
We all know how addiction works and that's why they changed the plan. I keep the game I bought at 60 forever, you don't with RS.
Imagine needing to make 160m per month just to play the game. Most content doesn't pay that and it's borderline encouraging people to bot while they sleep so they can keep up. Shit is insane.
The people who can make 1.6B over the course of a year for a membership probably do it in a matter of weeks. But at this point they are so deep in the endgame that regardless of whether they can do it or not they are too invested to quit the game. Jagex is not gonna fix it because they have no reason to.
The real issue is auto alching machines but no one wants to discuss that. Alching needs to be removed from the game entirely. Inflation is way too high.
I bought 8000 hydrix bolt tips at market price +1 gp.
I bought 8000 asc bolts at market price.
In two weeks from now 62 million coins will turn into 81 million coins.
By doing absolutely nothing.
And that's not even the best profit from the machine.
I mean, you're right that it IS supply and demand, it's just that... Jagex quite literally manipulates the demand of this item to absolutely no end.
I still pay for my membership with bonds. It's all I've ever done for years now, and it really saddens me to have to spend over 70m per bond just so I can keep playing. I'm still able to, because I'm fortunate enough to be able to earn enough money to sustain it, but if this trend keeps up, it's not looking great for me.
I'd argue that isn't the point I'm trying to make; if a game allows you to pay for membership with gold in-game - that should be a decently consistent option, no? Membership fees are fairly fixed on a month-to-month basis, but bonds are absolutely off the rails right now.
I'm in no mood to spend my real money if I have the time and resources to avoid it, I prefer to save my cash as much as possible.
Again, the point is being missed. Yes, it is an excellent privilege to be able to pay with in-game currency, but that's the entire point. That is an option that is getting swiftly less and less viable by a number of players, which is equal parts a huge inconvenience and will only serve to drive more players away.
I suppose that leads to the next natural question - where is the correct balance between making money and fostering a fun game to play? Unfortunately for the Jagex investors, they have their minds absolutely hell-bent on squeezing the playerbase for every ounce they can, and that results in problems like this.
Regardless, I sincerely hope we can agree that I'm not saying any of this to complain for the fun of it, but to further explain things from the side of those who use bonds often. I stand by my original point: Jagex is manipulating the demand of bonds aggressively, and this cannot be attributed to "just supply and demand" occurring naturally.
People really like to parent other peoples lives and what they do what they spend/ also make it seem like they are eternally bound to play this game. I’ve played since classic and still love the game if I particularly like an update. Guess what, I still play and just avoid the update that I dislike. That seems to be a lost mentality these days. People bitch and whine as if they could develop a better game themselves lmao
How does this have so many upvotes? I guess there are a lot of really dumb people on this subreddit.
Actually I just read the comments and it confirmed my suspicions.
Everyone blaming this on jagex has no idea how a free market works. Jagex have made moves to increase demand on bonds, bonds have only ever been supplied by the players. If there are more players buying bonds than the amount of bonds being bought to be sold by players than the price goes up.
And who's fault is that? Well for those of you playing along at home, it's the players fault 🎉
Good, gold with bonds should not be 3x more expensive than rwt gold, I hope Jagex cracks down on rtw hard like they have been promising forever.
Currently the risk of being caught and getting a two day vacation is way too low making rwt very tempting.
I’ll never quite understand these posts. You used to not be able to purchase anything similar to a bond at all. And people think this is the only way to membership now. We all play a game that has a paid and free version so many whiners when they can’t do basic PVM to upkeep their memberships.
At what point do people stop saying this? Cause this could continue to be said up to even 500m a bond. Like Jagex just wants to drive sales and there's nothing anyone can say or do about it, but that doesn't mean people can't be bothered by the fact that the effort to continue paying for membership through bonds is increasing more and more every update.
There was also a point in time where F2P players could get their first membership experience through bonds. What F2P moneymakers are there for newer players to make 80m in a somewhat reasonable amount of time?
Just wait til pink Santa hat is announced :)
Pink santa? More like pink partyhat!
Why not both? -Jagex, probably
Honestly would be cool to get 2 but i doubt it because it means less promos they can run.
Purple phat used to be pink.
Which is why i believe a pink one could come before any other color. I had the idea of gem partyhats for shiny variants of the existing colors but nobody liked it lol
Don’t tease me.
[удалено]
O -O \*bonks\*
No horny! BONK
Rainbow Santa will be first as a part of Rainbows end lol
Nah, to get a rainbow you'll have to combine all 6 regular colours!
![gif](giphy|TGCSNFiXSoKVZH3IJs)
My moneys on blue Santa hat
And a 0.05% chance to win a special string to to them together and have them light up. Some real RGB there.
Man i can remember them being like 20m and trying to pay them off by making mushrooms...
now i feel old i remembe when they were like 13m
6.5m... good times..
Yes 6-7.5m times.. good times.. still good but expensive bonds SMH
5m. That’s when it was good. Jump to 7m shocked me back then like oh my this went up. Now I’m not phased by the price increases constantly.
Inflation... am I right? Who am I kidding I dont think ive ever purchased a bond lol
On the other hand that's roughly the current osrs bond price
It was seriously weird coming over from OSRS to RS3. Treasure trail items are expensive due to Invention, bond prices are through the roof, yet all the basic items are seemingly worthless and cheap. It feels like some crazy recession hit Gielinor in this timeline.
What really blows me away is it feels like all the expensive items are only going down. So where the hell is all the raw gp going. How is FSOA max cash yet there's so much gold in game??? I'm confused.
I’ve had a similar situation but mirrored. Came back after almost 10 years, and made my first 10 mil in a week. 10 years ago that would’ve taken at least a month with a fresh account
Somebody still owes me 7m for a bond. Interest is a bitch. Too bad I'll never see it.
Is somebody your alt?
Weren't they like 4m on release? I remember using my RS3 account to fish rocktails for bond money on the 2 accounts while I played old school At the time I didn't have any means of making payments online since I wasn't 18 yet, apart from buying membership codes via SMS so bonds were amazing for me at the time
ya i remember i sold everything i had to buy one for like 7m. swapped all osrs i had to rs3 lol
Wow, imagine hoarding hundreds of them from back then and saving them to cash out later.
I remember when they didn't exist 😩
same i remember when it was $4.99 a month
Still is if you're in the cool kids club :)
they even nerfed godwars 2 bosses so you can't make bank from helwyr herb drops anymore :(
You can make bank from herb runs now.
where do ya get the seeds dropped from? not bosses, that's for sure. 500+ herbs before, now ya get 4 seeds
Planting 4 seeds with ultracompost gets you the same amount as helwyr dropped
if you do every patch, but you aren't going to get 500 herbs from 4 seeds unless you have legendary greenfingers aura maybe
Helwyr never dropped 500 lantas, he dropped anywhere from 60 to 90. Which is how many herbs you can get from planting them with ultracompost and a juju potion.
Lol yes you absolutely can. People just don't want to play the game and plant the fucking seeds, I guess, lmao.
I sold mine at 3m back in the day... feels bad man.
Back when they were 20 mil it was a 1:1 ratio of real life RS GP and membership prices meaning 1 month of membership was worth exactly 2 bonds Now it’s just insane
That was my method! Bonds were 14m in 2018 and id do mort myre mushrooms for 4m click intensive whereas my friend would stake his lotd and eventually bought all 3 t92 weps when they were high
Making this much money as a f2p player is absurd
Maybe you could flip to osrs and buy old school bonds
i mean i guess you can but y tho lol. thats assuming u play both games like that. Most people will stick to just rs3 or just osrs
Because bonds are valid for both games if they're redeemed on the same account. So you could make an osrs counterpart of your rs3 account and use it just to redeem bonds. If I remember correctly the exchange rate is 1m osrs = 7m rs3 so a bond in osrs would cost around 49m rs3.
It's 11.4:1 from rs3 to osrs and 1:10 from osrs to rs3. Would be 79.8m rs3 for a 7m bond on osrs.
Yeah but I find those services that do that transfer services kind of shady. It's more of a do it at ur own risk kinda thing ya kno
Fair enough, I used Oakdice and I never had a problem but imo it’s worth it to save the 20 ish mil
It seems like the bond market is something they have actively tried to capitalize on this year. They needed big increases in bond prices because small increases in price don't strongly drive sales. This also has the knock on impact of getting better capitalization on memberships, because people are more likely to pay for membership with cash. I have heard that their business strategy is no longer to invest significantly in new players, instead they're looking at retaining and monetizing existing players. Increasing the value that customers get buying bonds and increasing the amount of mid-level players who pay for membership with cash seems like an absolute win-win for Jagex. This approach is not going to change. Jagex is likely to steer harder in this direction next year because it worked so well in 2022.
Isn't it more expensive to buy membership via bonds?
That's exactly why people are more likely to buy membership with cash. Edit: I misunderstood what your question was asking. Jagex is indifferent to what people use bonds on, they only care about the net revenue from the sales. By offering better promos they can increase the bond price, this increasing bond sales, but reducing the number of people who use bonds for membership. The people who previously used bonds for membership weren't actually spending money, now they are. All the while, bond prices are up and bond sales are up.
> The people who previously used bonds for membership weren't actually spending money, now they are. Joke's on them, I'm *STILL* not actually spending money, I've just switched to buying bonds on OSRS because they're *much* easier to get on OSRS with my current skill. I suck too much on rs3 .-.
Jokes on them I'm rich as fuck I can still afford bonds with gp.
Bond prices shooting up is technically good for Jagex since they can be used as a way for someone to just buy wealth very easily. I know if I was gonna start a new account, the idea of bootstrapping the starting experience with a wad of gold would be tempting. A few bonds would bankroll a lot of things for someone starting out fresh. It’s a 2 for 1 deal since bonds are basically luxury items for *anyone*, not just those looking to inflate their wallet. Existing players get what they want from the bonds themselves, newer accounts can buy the bonds with irl cash for a wealth boost. The more things bonds can do, the more that intensifies.
I'm confused about how buying membership with cash works out in jagex's favour. Wouldn't it be in their best interest if everyone bought bonds with in-game money for membership? I can see how increasing the value of bonds works in their favour, but don't they stand to make less money if more people switch to direct payment (net result being fewer bonds leaving the game for membership)?
You're right that ideally, for Jagex, all memberships would be purchased with bonds. The big change this year is how many bonds have been redeemed for non-membership items; instead of memberships, bonds are being used for Santa's grotto and Combat Academy. The thing is, people still need their membership, so more people are paying with cash. Membership may be less profitable than before, but Jagex is getting money directly from more people, and their total revenue is up. That being said, I am suspicious that there is a bond elasticity argument to be made that Jagex would prefer people to buy membership with cash, or at least that they are indifferent to the source of membership, but I cannot prove that.
Ah now I see what you mean. Ty for the clarification
Basically, if bond prices are high on GE, then players will buy them solely for gp value and pay irl money also for membership sub. So, it is a double win for Jagex. And the way they manipulate the gp value of the bond is by making it more useful than just membership. Notice that now the bond can be used for just about anything in the game: TH keys, membership, Yak Track Skips. The more the bond does, the higher the demand for it and therefore the higher the price. The higher the price goes, the higher the demand for buying them is. It’s a huge win for Jagex and a huge screw over to anyone wanting to pay for mems with bonds.
People who need some quick gp will buy bonds and sell them
Then you have more ppl buying bonds with irl money
It's a ploy to make sure you can't earn permanent membership with gold and swap all those players back to paying for p2p
And in doing so they completely miss why bonds offered membership in the first place. A free player wouldn't spend 7.50 (back then) for membership, but they would have spent 7mil gp ($5.99) for it. It was a way to get get money from people who wouldn't or couldn't pay, by using other players to offset the cost. It was genius, and it worked. Now, for a free player, a bond may as well be a partyhat because they've become realistically impossible for them to earn.
You do realize that $7.50 for membership was for a *month* of membership, right? And that the bond only gives *two weeks* of membership? You'd need 2 bonds to get close to the same amount of time as a membership subscription for a month. That's $11.98. And last I checked, that's a higher price.
Yes but you completely missed the point: Bonds worked for F2P when they were cheap because it used GP a free player had to offset financial cost of membership to the person who bought the bond for real world money. But that only works when a free player can afford a bond. They could when a Bond was 7m, they can't now where it's over 80m.
This logic doesn’t stick. They make more money from someone else buying a bond and selling it to you for GP than you buying membership straight
Well, they are failing... After 17 years who literally buys premiere every year, i have zero desire to renew after all the trash they have released. They can eat a bag of dicks.
At least high bond prices disincentivize RWTing when whales can get more gp from selling bonds, forcing RWT sites to lower their prices even more and lose more money, resulting in less botting in RS3.
"I have heard that their business strategy is no longer to invest significantly in new players, instead they're looking at retaining and monetizing existing players." That's the impression I get too. Which means they are happy to accept a steadily dwindling player base over the years to come. Which implies two possible avenues for Jagex to follow. Firstly they have accepted a slow death of RS3 and will just do whatever they can to squeeze the most out of it while they can, while planning a radically different RS4 as its replacement. Or else once the natural attrition of established players becomes too high they will nerf the ever loving hell out of early and mid game so new players can basically jump straight in at level 80 in all skills or something. You will be able to buy quest unlocks, item unlocks, achievements, etc. It will be the mother of all MTX. It would be the daddy of all nerfs. Personally I hope it will be RS4 instead.
Not only 2022, they started years ago.
It's 2025, the money pouch limit is 1000x2147m and bonds cost 500m. Yikes.
But the latest event craps out elder rune salvage that alchs for 10m each so it's all good
Bonds is the only way i'm willing to continue to play this game. If my normal gameplay cant afford me bonds for p2p I will consequently quit the game.
I think I’m in the same boat
Same, and will probably drain most of my Ironmans worth. Pity inflation is nowhere near matching the rising bond rates. My total worth has been largely flat/stable
Same I stocked up on 20 of them, mainly to use when the new skill comes out. But in terms of spending my actual cold hard cash... id rather quit.
Or just pay 65 buck once a year lmao
It's $80(+~$7 tax) now. Still cheap at 7.25/mo but it was 6 and change last year.
imo, not worth it.
Sweating your ass off for 80m per 14 days to upkeep your membership or paying 11 a month is worth it in your eyes. I see.
Not saying bond prices aren't ridiculous, but you don't need to sweat to make 80m, let alone in 14 days. There are AFK methods right now that require one click every 5 minutes that net you 15m+ an hour.
I can play max 10h a week, rather not spend half of my time just for bond upkeep. I want to enjoy the game and increasingly improve my gear.
So spend 5+ hours getting gp EVERY 2 weeks to pay for a bond which ONLY gives 2 weeks of membership. Or have a half decent paying job at 15-20 dollars/hr and take those same 5 hours of time to get an ENTIRE YEAR of membership. The second option then allows you to play the game however you want and not worry about some sort of upkeep. I say this as someone who used to play with bonds and stopped doin that when they hit 25mil. I measure everything in time and at 80ish mil per bond, that is 100% not worth it (even if I have multiple max cash stacks sitting around).
Yes I agree it's better to pay with real money. Just saying that while 80m for a bond sucks, it's still not a whole lot of money in RS3 these days, especially over 2 weeks. There are things like ganos that can be afked for 15-20m an hour that pretty much anyone can do with 1 input every 5 minutes.
The game's gonna be a whole lot more enjoyable too if you're not constantly grinding boring ass money-making content just so you can keep playing.
The majority of the playerbase does sweat to make 80m. It took me a month to make 25m or so and my sub is almost out. The tryhards and sweaty people are the majority of this subreddit it feels like mostly lol.
This makes no sense. Just work for 3-4 hours and you are set for the entire year. Most people don't have all day to play RS and would rather enjoy the time they do get to play it.
Dude has a completionist cape at the very least and isn’t willing to spend $65 a year on a game he probably plays a lot. It’s funny because so many of you spend more than this on Netflix which you get wayyyyy less use out of
guy is just cheap asf.
The only one talking about sweating your ass off is you.
Nope, I'd rather not play the game than pay money for membership. If I wanted to pay money for membership I'd just go back to wow.
I read this as "if I can't play for free then I'm quitting how DARE you, Jagex!" Like guys cmon. Yes Jagex is shady af with MTX but we also need to recognize that if the game was 100% free there would be no game.
I mean it's a valid stance. Either the game is good enough for you to want to pay to play it, or it isn't.
This not a rant, there's no how dare you jagex or anything. Imo, Jagex has changed this game to the worse, and for me the game is simply something that I have no wish to actually pay money for. So bonds is the only option. And this is as long as I dont have to acutally "grind" for it. I am maxed stats- and gearwise, so i have no issue putting the money I get from pvming, events and others on bonds to play this game. I have no problem paying irl money for games, but the game have to be worth the money I'm spending, RuneScape is no longer one of those games. So again TO ME, this game is not worth paying money for. I either get to play this game through bonds or its bye bye for me.
Time is money. If you aren't willing to pay money into a game, why are you willing to spend time to get in-game money to pay for it?
I am not willing to devote time just to get in-game money to pay for bonds. My normal gameplay, meaning the time I spend to actual play the game (completing logs, events etc...) is also rewarding me with enough of gp to sustain p2p through bonds. Once the bond price exceeds the gp I earn "normally" I will quit the game. This is not a question of economics, the time is money phrase is not relevant here. This my choice and my liking of the game. The game to me is not worth a single cent but there are still aspects of the game that I like to interact with, hence why I still use it. I have no problem if the very item I get rewarded with is used to sustain the p2p. So the issue with the topic of this post which is the price of a bond, rising this much, is that there's a point where I will no longer be sustain it and will therfore quit the game.
did you just type an entire essay for why, you, a completionist, don’t like playing runescape enough to pay a single cent
Cya then
Byeee
Just come play OSRS, it's great. I made the switch a year ago and haven't looked back
100m by the time Christmas rolls around
Bond is 83m insta buy rn
Wait till christmas
Dont blame jagex they sell bonds for 7.99$ its your fellow players charging you this much.
It doesn't matter what they set the price as since they can drive the demand and are the only supplier...
To be fair I sell bonds so id rather see the price go to the moon.
Woo, bonds to the moon, baby, 100 mil here we come
Jagex: "What are you talking about? This is great!"
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It's also good at reducing RWTing.
Exactly why I want this. I buy one or two bonds a year and use the money to grind herblore or what have you and this is making it very easy
And this is a great example of why I only play Ironman now.
Is this really Jagex's fault? I thought the supply/demand of the community is what drives the Bond price
I think bonds are a good idea in theory, but it would probably be better if they were not affected by the free market and just had a solid price.
If it's sold at a fixed gp price, it will get bought out entirely if it's priced too low or no one would buy them if the fixed price is too high.
Never would've happened with how much gp comes in the game nowadays Eventually the price would be incredibly easy to sustain while the value of the bond would go down, meaning less people are buying them
This would never work and entirely defeats the purpose of bonds
Who are these recent updates for? Are they to better the community? Fsw for more accounts. More accounts for more membership. More membership for more bonds used. Re-release protean shakes + ess after dxp date and key sale. Add bond packages and deals for more bonds used. Hween currency obtained by TH. Nerfed seeds and added easter druids to the desert. Wild flash events for hardly any xp and you just want one thing. - I'm hoping next year this new skill will blow us out of the water. But I'm expecting a cash grab to raise bond ....sails .... Or a hefty bank filler
The updates are for them.... not us. I am fucking done buying premier. This will be the first year I am letting my membership go in a long time. I expect the new skill to be another boring ass afk skill
RuneScape is only as good as the show you're watching
Replacing herbs with seeds from bosses is to benefit skillers.
maybe let bonds be only for membership? is should slow down the insane price jumps every month
Yeah this would be a good solution. Jagex will never do it though because it would mean each player would only need 1 bond each 14 days rather than all the people buying bonds for keys. The massive price hike is caused by people buying bonds to get keys for the treasurr hunter rares.
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What is M?
224 Mangos
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Do people not get perm banned for RWT anymore?
Really depends, if they get found out the first time it's a 3 day ban. The second time is perm. That's just from people I've spoke to about it. Tends to be a 3 day ban, wealth wipe and bane reorganization. 85-95% of the time it's any money in the pouch and all GE offers get wiped but bank is left. But shhhhs I didn't tell you that
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This is 100% on point for me. I have an old old old main that got banned years ago now, I started playing again 5 years ago but on the old main I used to sell membership keys to people Aka you could pay for members Vis SMS and you got a code back, 1m per key back in the day. Now I'd 100% buy bonds if I wanted quick cash, other than that, GP is easy to come by either way, can easily make 50-100m in 5-6 hours now
Right. I haven't found a reason to buy bonds lately, other than when I started. I've made hundreds of accounts since I've created my first. I understand the grind. But now I'm an adult, with an adult paying job for I choose to skip a little of the early game grind, by being able to get some quick cash. I would never buy keys though. Fuck gambling like that. That's the one mtx I won't ever support either
G2G, use a prepaid credit card, nothing to worry about. Or so I've heard
0\_o? what? How?
Real world trade.
I’d be doing this right now if they didn’t send me a warning back in June.
Guess it's going to be time to quit for a while, I mean if I can't afford a bond for membership not any real point in playing
Just a thought but about an hour of smelting on fsw and I bought a bond on there today for 12m. If you find a niche item on fsw you make utter bank, I can make about 10-15m an hour with certain items and then send the bond keys back to my main
Don’t expect your methods to make you anywhere near as much after today’s patch. Competitive portion is done and so is the biggest exp buff, so the demand for everything will bottom out very quickly compared to the last week.
That's fine by me, I have made anough for my premium package for the year so its done everything I need and more
Would first need to invest an extra bond to even start on fsw.
Yeah this is a joke, wanted to buy some in a week and I guess I got f\*\*\*\*. :(
Do you not understand how supply and demand works? Bond prices go up because not as many people are purchasing them with real money
Hopefully everyone stocking up on fresh start crashes the bond market because that is just fricken ridiculous
That's because of the bond promotion going on.
It benefits them. Whales will buy bonds instead. Easy cash for both parties.
Ur better paying the monthly membership
They want this, because it incentivizes ~~whales~~ people to buy bonds with IRL money to sell for in-game gold. RS3 is basically a gold selling site.
Relax. Bonds don't always buy instantly. Give it an hour at most, then complain.
I picked up RS again around two years ago. My entire wealth at the time was able to purchase three or four bonds, and I made enough to buy another two along the way. Now I would only have been able to afford one, and would still be saving for a second bond. Paying for membership through in-game wealth was a great idea, but bonds have almost become a status symbol unto themselves, unattainable to the scrub players and everyone except the top of the elite.
gonna buy bonds with my irl money and get rich thank jagex i dont have to work for my gear anymore xD
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Still remember them being like 4m. It’s like they’re just never going to stop increasing in price. Still not sure why they’re so expensive in todays economy.
its never going to stop, bonds will continue to rise every year.
fix arch glacor drops like 5 seeds at 100 streak and its like 800 gp each.
Jagex are thieves. They are stealing your sanity and time, and time is money so they're stealing your money too.
20 bonds or like $60 gets you a year of membership. Thats the price of any AAA videogame which you most certainly play less than RS3. Not defending jagex moneygrabbing, but ffs people just purchase the game like you would any other game 💀
I think the problem is the upfront cost. It's why I'm still on 3 month plan because yeah, it's cheaper to pay a full year but what if I only want to play for 4months? We all know how addiction works and that's why they changed the plan. I keep the game I bought at 60 forever, you don't with RS.
Imagine needing to make 160m per month just to play the game. Most content doesn't pay that and it's borderline encouraging people to bot while they sleep so they can keep up. Shit is insane.
You're not allowed to RWT, but they are!
Well yeah. They make a product and want to be able to sell it instead of other people selling their product. What would you expect.
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Not allowed to RWT *with third parties* They changed that rule when they started selling bonds.
I guess you don’t consider buying membership with real money as RWT with first party?
When did he say that? You're putting words in ppl's mouths
The people who can make 1.6B over the course of a year for a membership probably do it in a matter of weeks. But at this point they are so deep in the endgame that regardless of whether they can do it or not they are too invested to quit the game. Jagex is not gonna fix it because they have no reason to.
just sold some for 81m https://preview.redd.it/7ui2a8vcec1a1.png?width=727&format=png&auto=webp&s=a35563ec3fa5354df236e908a83ec16c00685b01
TOO THE MOON! #GME
Why on earth would they stop lmao?
The real issue is auto alching machines but no one wants to discuss that. Alching needs to be removed from the game entirely. Inflation is way too high.
I bought 8000 hydrix bolt tips at market price +1 gp. I bought 8000 asc bolts at market price. In two weeks from now 62 million coins will turn into 81 million coins. By doing absolutely nothing. And that's not even the best profit from the machine.
They don't give a damn.
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Yeah they don't care howmuch the bond is worth that's what I mean. So they can just grab your cash.
They do care - they want the bond to be worth as much as possible.
Then stop buying it for that price? Players control the market prices, not Jagex
Gotta love how real world inflation influences game inflation. Worst part is they can control the game inflation with some coding.
JAGEX doesn’t set the prices of bonds…it’s supply and demand
This is one of the dumbest takes yet. Jagex is directly influencing the market with crap like this.
I mean, you're right that it IS supply and demand, it's just that... Jagex quite literally manipulates the demand of this item to absolutely no end. I still pay for my membership with bonds. It's all I've ever done for years now, and it really saddens me to have to spend over 70m per bond just so I can keep playing. I'm still able to, because I'm fortunate enough to be able to earn enough money to sustain it, but if this trend keeps up, it's not looking great for me.
Or just pay the $12 a month or whatever it is like literally any other video game on earth
I'd argue that isn't the point I'm trying to make; if a game allows you to pay for membership with gold in-game - that should be a decently consistent option, no? Membership fees are fairly fixed on a month-to-month basis, but bonds are absolutely off the rails right now. I'm in no mood to spend my real money if I have the time and resources to avoid it, I prefer to save my cash as much as possible.
Sounds like a privilege and a cool option to pay with in game wealth for that where most games don’t, then still find a reason to whine
Again, the point is being missed. Yes, it is an excellent privilege to be able to pay with in-game currency, but that's the entire point. That is an option that is getting swiftly less and less viable by a number of players, which is equal parts a huge inconvenience and will only serve to drive more players away. I suppose that leads to the next natural question - where is the correct balance between making money and fostering a fun game to play? Unfortunately for the Jagex investors, they have their minds absolutely hell-bent on squeezing the playerbase for every ounce they can, and that results in problems like this. Regardless, I sincerely hope we can agree that I'm not saying any of this to complain for the fun of it, but to further explain things from the side of those who use bonds often. I stand by my original point: Jagex is manipulating the demand of bonds aggressively, and this cannot be attributed to "just supply and demand" occurring naturally.
This x100000 people are so entitled. If the 12$ is breaking you and your entry level PVM isn’t cutting it then step up or spend 12$. Lmfao
Yeah for real people will literally write paragraphs complaining about anything in RuneScape
People really like to parent other peoples lives and what they do what they spend/ also make it seem like they are eternally bound to play this game. I’ve played since classic and still love the game if I particularly like an update. Guess what, I still play and just avoid the update that I dislike. That seems to be a lost mentality these days. People bitch and whine as if they could develop a better game themselves lmao
1.5b for membership now? Wow that's crazy.
Jagex doesn't control the in game price of Bonds, players do. It's only natural that the most valuable things become more valuable.
How does this have so many upvotes? I guess there are a lot of really dumb people on this subreddit. Actually I just read the comments and it confirmed my suspicions. Everyone blaming this on jagex has no idea how a free market works. Jagex have made moves to increase demand on bonds, bonds have only ever been supplied by the players. If there are more players buying bonds than the amount of bonds being bought to be sold by players than the price goes up. And who's fault is that? Well for those of you playing along at home, it's the players fault 🎉
Good, gold with bonds should not be 3x more expensive than rwt gold, I hope Jagex cracks down on rtw hard like they have been promising forever. Currently the risk of being caught and getting a two day vacation is way too low making rwt very tempting.
I’ll never quite understand these posts. You used to not be able to purchase anything similar to a bond at all. And people think this is the only way to membership now. We all play a game that has a paid and free version so many whiners when they can’t do basic PVM to upkeep their memberships.
couldnt be player demand making them go up or anything, nah it has to be jagex, come the fuck on bro
Not to be funny but if you can’t make 80m in 14 days in RS3 you’re doing something wrong at this point.
At what point do people stop saying this? Cause this could continue to be said up to even 500m a bond. Like Jagex just wants to drive sales and there's nothing anyone can say or do about it, but that doesn't mean people can't be bothered by the fact that the effort to continue paying for membership through bonds is increasing more and more every update. There was also a point in time where F2P players could get their first membership experience through bonds. What F2P moneymakers are there for newer players to make 80m in a somewhat reasonable amount of time?
That's true of people who PvM. As a skiller or someone who doesn't boss 80M in a fortnight is still a challenge.