Old School Economy - Future Plans

Whether you're selling your PvM drops, stocking up for your next PKing trip, or simply in the market for skill-boosters, the economy underpins everything in Old School for non-Iron players. It might sound a little dry, but it’s actually pretty interesting to think about how it all works and, we reckon we have some pretty good solutions for keeping it healthy and improving your game experience – including more Bank space! Read on and we’ll explain.

First things first: how does the economy work in Old School?

Well, item prices are dictated by players, and they fluctuate based on the number of coins available in the game. Essentially:

• If there is more gold coming into the game than there is leaving, then we experience inflation. The value of gold falls, so items cost more to compensate.
• If the demand for an item goes up, it will rise in price. If the supply of an item is higher than the demand, prices go down.

Being a very financially literate lot, you’ve been asking us to pay close attention to the game's economic health – so we went and hired some actual real world economists to help us! We had a really good series of discussions with them, and today we're going to talk about our findings.

Grand Exchange Tax

The Grand Exchange is OSRS's auction house and the vast majority of player-to-player trades take place here. It is currently untaxed, but to help remove wealth from the game and slow the rate of inflation, we'd like to explore taxing items that are sold on the Grand Exchange. You know what they say - in Old School nothing is certain... except PKing and taxes.

We’re thinking of adding a tax amount of 2% that would be removed from the final sale value. This means there would be no change to what the buyer pays, as the tax cost is always passed on to the seller.

In the case of selling multiple stacks, the tax would be applied per item sold, rather than the total received.

The Grand Exchange interface would be updated to clearly show how much tax the seller would have to pay if their sale is successful – so don’t worry about hidden costs!

Item Sink

While the introduction of a Grand Exchange sales tax helps reduce the amount of gold in-game, it doesn't reduce the number of items available.

Old School RuneScape generates many of its most prestigious items via loot from bosses or raiding dungeons. The rate of these items entering the game depends on the number of people playing that content. Many encounters within Old School are instanced, meaning that the number of players is unlimited (it's not even capped by the number of game worlds available). This can lead to more items coming into the game via drops than there are actual players to use them!

Old School has almost no mechanisms whereby such items may be removed from the game. Some items have very specific situations that delete them, such as the Abyssal Tentacle, which consumes whips. But this only sinks very specific items, so it’s not a scalable solution.

We can use items as payment for in-game fees. For example, Death's Coffer allows players to sacrifice any tradeable item worth more than 10,000 coins, adding their value plus 5% into a coffer that can pay down certain in-game fees. This can work for any item in theory, but in practice, the fees in the game are so low that players need never sacrifice any high-end items like this.

With the introduction of a Grand Exchange tax, there is a huge opportunity to introduce effective and scalable item sinks. How will we achieve that? Well, we could use the tax collected from Grand Exchange sales to purchase items from other players with the simple intention of deleting said items once the purchase is complete.

Essentially, rather than just deleting the coins that are taxed, we can 'spend' them on buying items off players – and then delete those items. This doesn't need to be the case for every item in the game, of course – we’d have the flexibility to pick and choose.

How does it work?

When a taxed trade takes place through the Grand Exchange, we'd allocate an amount of wealth from those taxes to a virtual coffer. This coffer would be used to fund the purchase of specific items that's chosen by us and based on the estimated quantity of the item entering the game per day and the amount we'd like it reduced.

This is what would happen when a player creates a Sell offer for an applicable item:

• If the virtual coffer's funds are below a specified item's value, we do not interfere because we can't afford to buy the item. The player's Sell offer is created normally on the Grand Exchange.
• If we've already removed the required amount of items for the day, we do not interfere because we don't want to create supply issues. Again, the player's Sell offer is created normally on the Grand Exchange.
• If the virtual coffer has enough funds, and the number of items removed for the day hasn't yet hit the limit, then instead of creating a Sell offer, we delete the item, and immediately pay the player a number of coins (minus the Grand Exchange's tax).

Here's what we’re thinking of adding to the Grand Exchange tax item sink:

• Spectral and Arcane Shields
• Nightmare Staff and Orbs
• Twisted Bow, Elder Maul, Kodai Insignia, Dinh's Bulwark, Prayer Reward Scrolls
• God Swords, Armadyl Armour, Bandos Armour, Saradomin Sword, Zamorakian Spear
• Abyssal Bludgeon
• Kraken Tentacle, Trident
• Dark Bow
• Smoke Battlestaff, Occult Necklace
• Toxic Blowpipe

Note: this list is not final and is subject to change. Are there any other items you think we should add? Let us know via one of the feedback links at the bottom of this post!

Now you've seen the detail, it's important we highlight our intentions with these changes before moving on. The economy plays a crucial role in Old School and ensuring it remains healthy is integral to the future health of the game. As such, we do not intend to poll the introduction of Grand Exchange Tax or the Item Sink inclusion, as we consider these changes a matter of integrity. However, as always, we'd love to hear your feedback on how the two systems might be improved!

Additional Bank Space

We're always asked about increasing the size of the Bank. In the past, we've been held back by technical constraints, but we have good news - following some game engine changes, we've been carrying out tests and we can now increase it. By a lot... Huzzah!

The current bank size is 800 for P2P and 400 for F2P. However, eight extra spaces are given for having a bank PIN and a further eight for enabling an Authenticator. So technically the maximum Bank size is actually 816. However, with this potential update, the maximum size could be increased to 1,200. That’s a big leap!

You would be able to go to any Banker and pay them for additional Bank space. Bankers will sell Bank space in blocks of 40, with each block costing more than the last. You'll of course be able to buy multiple blocks of space in one go if you’re feeling flush.

Buying Bank space would be a non-refundable and permanent unlock.

Let’s look at the cost of each Bank space block:

With all of the above, there are still 40 Bank spaces left over. As before, these extra spaces will be given for having a Bank PIN and an Authenticator. However, it’s not just eight spaces for each – now it will be 20. Much space! Very roomy!

Poll Question #1: Should it be possible to purchase additional bank space at the cost of Coins as described in the Economy blog? It would be possible to purchase up to a total of 400 additional bank spaces. If this question passes, we'll also increase the amount of bank space given for having a Bank PIN and an Authenticator from 8 to 20 each respectively. With all bank slots purchased, the maximum storage space available would increase from 816 to 1,200.

Literal Gold Sink

Yeah, so the gold sink is quite literally… a Golden Sink.

We know how much you love to show off your wealth. What better way to showcase how deep your pockets run than by adding a sink made of gold into your Player Owned House?!

Poll Question #2: Should it be possible to create a Golden Sink that is mountable in your Player Owned House? The Golden Sink would require 47 Construction to create and costs 10 Condensed gold, 5 Gold leaf and 5 Mahogany planks to mount. If this question passes, Condensed gold would be added to the Keldagrim stonemason shop, costing 10,000,000 coins each.

Thanks for reading – we hope you find it interesting, and we think this is going to make a big difference to the economy of Old School RuneScape. Let us know what you think!

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