Schadenfreude is a German word that describes a feeling of happiness or satisfaction experienced as a result of the misfortune of others. And it’s been flowing at high volume in the RuneScape community over the last 24 hours, as a result of Jagex’s decision to make mint cakes a more common reward from the Gnome Cuisine minigame.
Mint cakes are simple food items that restore 100% of your run energy. While marginally useful in and of themselves, that use was not enough to make them exceptionally sought after—and that was even before the 2009 run energy update made all energy restoring mechanisms less valuable. Rather, mint cakes had come to be used as a substitute currency of sorts, allowing players to balance out trades of expensive items. By greatly increasing the supply of these items, Jagex has effectively devalued them, leading to a significant loss of apparent wealth on the part of those who owned them.
I was amused myself when this update came out, because I had warned players for a long time that something like this could happen. While they told me that mint cakes were a valid currency alternative, I pointed out that they were only rare because Jagex made them rare for no particular reason: most likely, they just never really thought anyone would care very much about them. And unlike real discontinued items, Jagex never made any representations that mint cakes would continue to be rare.
The comments I’ve been reading for the last 24 hours, though, suggest to me that a lot of players’ feelings on this subject go well beyond just chuckling at a bit of foolishness. They indicate an attitude of relief and even vindication of sorts at the thought of players getting stiffed due to this update. Most of this indignation seems to be directed at “merchants”, who are the convenient scapegoat for every situation related to trade in RuneScape these days.
But are these viewpoints really fair? Or even valid?
I have no problem with items like mint cakes being made more common, for a simple reason: they never should have been rare in the first place. An item like that is only useful (for its intended purpose) if it is available in a reasonable supply and/or at a reasonable cost; an item that restores run energy but costs 40k is of no use to me.
But I do have a problem with the reason why Jagex appears to have made this change. It seems quite clear that they made this item more common specifically to reduce its “alternate” use as a means of balancing trade. And that strikes me as both unfair and ineffective.
Contrary to popular opinion, mint cakes were not used by just “greedy merchants out to screw honest RuneScape players”. They were used by a lot of players who wanted to exchange items they got as drops or no longer needed for other items that they wanted. Like most forms of currency, mint cakes were usually obtained in a trade and then used in a subsequent trade, with most players not holding on to them for very long periods of time. By making this overnight change, Jagex has made this like a game of musical chairs: the music stopped, and the ones who happened to be holding mint cakes on the morning of February 1, 2010, were left holding the bag.
Beyond the fairness aspect, though, we really should ask ourselves honestly: why did anyone ever care about mint cakes anyway? Nobody gave a darn about them before the Grand Exchange. Why did merchants and other players use them?
The answer is simple: the dysfunctional state of the current economy. Mint cakes (and other substitutes) are used to allow players to try to get around the flawed prices in the Grand Exchange, which gum up trade. Their use was not a cause of the problems in the RuneScape economy, but rather a symptom of it.
It is a fundamental of economics that if you try to force someone to pay more or less for an item than he or she thinks it is worth, that person will try to find a way around the restrictions. And so, predictably, that’s what happened here. People like myself have been trying to get people to understand these basics of economics since the GE came on the scene, but apparently, nobody is paying attention.
“Fixing” mint cakes doesn’t really fix anything. Even if they start spawning on the ground in Lumbridge, players will just move on to some other substitute currency, or the use of other tricks to try to get around the real problem: a system that forces unbalanced trades on players in the name of enforcing balanced trade. Jagex can’t make every uncommon item more common; it simply won’t work.
I don’t blame Jagex for popping the mint cake balloon. But the company needs to recognize that the ultimate cause of this problem is its own policies. For over two years, we have been waiting for Jagex to correct the tight trade restrictions on the Grand Exchange that lead to these sorts of problems. For over two years, Jagex has claimed it would monitor and adjust item prices based on actual values, but has not followed through. Those are the fixes that we really need.
Ok, i am happy about mint cakes crash, unhappy that they did is so unsuddenly, that normal people could not reduce loses. What i am almost angry about that nobody talks about real problem – the system is too good, its just too easy to buy and sell. No, not price fixing, not tight trade restrictions and so on, but the balance between supply and demand. Lets take some examples:
How much money do you need to buy such ammount? Each should have about 20-30mln for such buyout for one day. Its not difficult to gather 20-30 people to buyout items for increasing demand to maximum. And there will never be enough suply for such….
Or increase people playing rs 
some time ago there was table with most traded items – top 10 items were traded more than 100.000 items per day. So lets assume that there are no more than 100000 items every day of every item. How much people it takes to buy all items? 3?
What you can do and can’t do:
– Loosen trade restrictions – its even more easy to buy everything. Demand will increase
– Price fixing – ruining free market principles, make items unbuyible, merchanting between limits and so on.
– increase suply of items – getting 100 ranarrs from 1 seed? hm.. no
The only thing that will work – make it difficult to buy and increase amount of players needed to buy everything out – that will work, but at the expense of allmost all players. That was the way before ge – standing in markets, forums, shouting, meeting people and so on. Do i want this – oh no,inflation and merchanting is better than no ways to easily sell goods. Ge is bad, but there were never better way for normal players
You know, if Jagex had even ONE full time staff member, devoted solely to correcting the GE….that could solve a lot of problems….
Then the only thing to watch out for is him becoming corrupt >.>