How so?

[i am zim00]

So could someone explain to me how "botting is the backbone of the runescape economy"? If there were few to no bots, prices of things like pure ess and bottable items would go up. With those prices going up, wouldn't more people start training there?
Also, with bots pouring money into the game and more people being able to afford stuff, shouldn't prices of stuff like ags's and whatnot being going up? There should be more demand for stuff like that.
So could someone lay out for me why bots are good for runescape? Because I'm still not getting why people are saying that without bots, there would be no Runescape and stuff like that.

 

[Simple Merchant]

If bots suddenly disappeared, items like green dragon hides and frost/normal dragon bones and herbs wouldn't just go up, they would skyrocket exponentially. When you remove bots, all you are left with are idiots like the ones trying to stop bots and merchants who know how to control the economy, when there are no more bots, the demand for these items goes up hundred fold and merchants knowing this would immediately pour all their money into those items making them even more scarce.

tl;dr Without bots, merchants would control the economy and nobody would be able to get any skills done w/o paying out the nose.

 

[Imagine]

Beside; who likes sitting there collecting flax. Without bots, I bet nobody would do that.

 

[aus aaz]

Pure ess is like 150gp now, if you remove bots it would be around 300gp.. As there would be none selling thro GE. This is just 1 basic example.. RS economy
Goes deep haha

 

[Picnore]

If we remove bots from the community, the constant supply of recources will be way lower and it will be harder to find items to sell/buy.

This will raise the prices of literally everything and people will have to work harder while doing boring tasks to make money for the armour, many merchants will just buy out an item at a alarmingly high price and hold all the value and control that item etc. etc.

 

[TahBreezy]

It's true, if EVERY single bot was removed, merchants would run the economy. >.<

 

[xOneDown]

The economy would survive and thrive just as well as it currently is without botting. The only thing that would change would be its focus: Without massive amounts of raw materials, the economy would be much less focused around skills and more around combat (though it already is EXTREMELY heavily combat-focused.)

 

[i am zim00]

I would think though that if pure ess did hit a decent price, more people would take the time to gather it themselves to make some money. And without all the bots in the way, people would actually go out and collect materials themselves to make money. People these days act like its impossible to do anything on Runescape without a bot. When I wanted to go make money and go to frost drags I couldn't because there were so many bots in like every single world. If they weren't there, I'd have taken their place along with other legit people. Wouldn't that happen with lots of other stuff? The only reason most people don't even bother gathering and selling raw materials is because its not even worth it with there being so many bots doing it.

 

[Scottay]

Simple Merchant basically summed the entire situation up. To expand on it though, I personally think that it is currently beneficial for allowing the common person to purchase items that used to be more expensive. However now you see so many players with an extreme amount of wealth. It would be better if about half the bots were to somehow be exterminated, thus prices would not to so ridiculously cheap. I liked it when RS was more of a challenge, however it seems like now everyone and anyone has lots of money.

 

[Veni]

Simple Merchant basically summed the entire situation up. To expand on it though, I personally think that it is currently beneficial for allowing the common person to purchase items that used to be more expensive. However now you see so many players with an extreme amount of wealth. It would be better if about half the bots were to somehow be exterminated, thus prices would not to so ridiculously cheap. I liked it when RS was more of a challenge, however it seems like now everyone and anyone has lots of money.

I agree with you, it seems like everyone has bandos and godswords now.. didn't see much of that even in late 2008. Money has definitely changed.

 

[Coinshare]

No one wants merchants to run the economy, do they?
If we allowed them to control the economy everything would be worse. All they care about is themselves, and even though most goldfarmers are the same at least they put supplies back into the economy and make the products prices within a good price reach.

 

[LooneyTick]

We need bots, without it RS prices would be crazy and anyone who doesn't think that is just as crazy...