Interested to get some insight about why accounts may not ‘interact with or advantage each other in any way’.
What if we make a pure or alternate account and we would like to give that account supplies by way of drop trading? This is authentic to the time period & carries with it considerable risk of losing items due to another player picking them up or simple internet/server or user issues/error.
I understand that trading between accounts already breaks the rule of playing more than one at any given time, but i fail to understand how drop trading is not allowed. Would love some clarification.
Also many players are advantaging each other within friend groups or discord servers, so the way i see it, it makes no sense for a solo player to not be able to advantage themselves between accounts so long as they are not multi logging.
Drop trading between accounts owned by the same person is not allowed. Using a friend as a middleman to transfer items between accounts owned by the same person is also not allowed (and the friend risks being punished alongside the other accounts).
The logic is simple: you are already not allowed to trade directly between accounts that you own. Drop trading is an obvious loophole that could be used to subvert this rule.
Using loopholes to subvert the rules is the same as breaking them. I don’t recommend this!
This is the goal behind the rule, we want players to be social and play the game as it was intended. Interacting with yourself across multiple accounts is not the same as playing with friends or clans.
We enforce Jagex’s original rules as they were in 2004 - and we are much better at it because we have a smaller playerbase, so fewer infractions go unnoticed.
That is a shame however that you allow people to be advantaged miles beyond your average solo player purely because you want people to be “social”, but will not allow solo players to advantage themselves.
Hypothetical scenario;
If a group of 5 friends decide one of them will focus purely on smithing while the other 4 mine and smelt ores for that player, allowing them to climb levels extremely quickly and use that advantage in the early stages of a game to monopolise the market and create wealth at an exponentially unfair rate between their group to everyone else playing the game - i would argue that regardless of jagex’s unknown stance of this back in the time period it is unfortunate for you to allow this today while at the same time not allowing solo players to advantage themselves.
We’re all much older, have far more experience with the game and how things work. The time period is different for us as individuals and i think that should reflect on and complement the rules.
A group of friends playing the game together socially purely for the love of the game & not advantaging between themselves for monopoly is vastly different to what will likely be taking place within many discord groups and groups of friends on this server.
This is just my take on things and it doesn’t change my appreciation for this server & the team behind it. I hope to see some consideration for solo players in the future.
RuneScape’s economy has always been player-driven, and colluding with other players to capture the market is a core component of the game. If five players choose to work together on five accounts, that’s fine - there was no rule against this in 2004.
I do understand we’re older and the tendency for us to metagame is much higher than it was in the past. That’s part of why this rule is enforced. And for better or worse, there’s no rule against playing clanmanmode.
We don’t want players to feel like they need to use alts in order to build relevant accounts or be competitive in the game. We also want players to be social and interact with one another, instead of only interacting with themselves on alternate accounts.
I can see how this might read as solo accounts being disadvantaged compared to friend groups or clans, but again, that’s part of the game, and is not unique to RuneScape.
Friends and clans ultimately have an advantage in any competitive multiplayer game (and all MMOs). The difference is that advantage is split between the group or clan rather than held by a single person.
You will never complete with a clan as a solo player. Multiboxing alts should not be seen as a solo player’s “solution” for competing with clans. If you are playing solo then you are playing casually and should not be comparing your solo account to what clans can accomplish together!
Lastly - our player counts should accurately reflect how many people are playing the game. We don’t want inflated player counts due to multilogging.
I appreciate your perspective and agree with it to some extent. We had to draw the line somewhere. I’m a casual player and don’t particularly care for clanning but I don’t feel that clans devalue my progress and I don’t want to feel compelled to multibox to keep up.
Understood, i appreciate the importance of sticking to the integrity of the game.
Just to clarify i was not intending to insinuate a comparison of solo vs clans in the sense that any one person should be allowed to multi log an alt to fund their main or anything not dissimilar, or multi box accounts. I don’t agree with this in the slightest.
Merely hoping for drop trading between accounts to be considered.
I have one more scenario i would really appreciate you to give some clarification on;
Take my above scenario for reference - say that player 1 who was smithing for the clan decides to create an alt or pure account. It would be against the rules for them to trade (for example) 10 rune scimitars to their friend (player 2) for player 2 to then trade them directly to player 1’s alt or pure. But player 2 is well within the rules to just trade (as a “gift”) (that could be “returned” at any time from player 1’s main) any amount of gp or supplies to player 1’s alt or pure that they have gained through the vice versa advantage of co-playing together as a clan.
This type of scenario is not only highly likely, it is almost guaranteed among many clans and friends who will be playing this server.
This to me is much the same as directly trading through another player albeit with more steps, and it could be looked at in a similar way to washing dirty money. Where do you draw the line here? & not only where do you draw the line, but how on earth would you be able to actively monitor these types of exchanges? Impossible.
What you are describing we call “clan banks” and we’re still navigating how to deal with these while keeping the rules consistent. This starts to break down into a case-by-case basis. We often see account sharing in conjunction with clan banks which breaks a different rule.
Active monitoring is not really an issue, we can monitor things retroactively too. Rulebreakers are only cheating themselves and sinking more time into an account that is doomed to be banned sooner or later
Thanks for taking the time to clarify everything. Until now i wasn’t actually aware drop trading was against the games rules as everyone did it back then, and i wasn’t ever aware of any action being taken against players for doing so or any statements from jagex regarding the matter.
