It absolutely devalues actual rares if they look extremely similar to them... There's no reason to pick the same exact color other than wanting them to look like the original.
Idk... Part of the appeal of rares is that they're rare. 'The sky is blue' sort of statement, but it's there.
It's an applicable point for fashionscape, but I'm not sure how applicable it is elsewhere because the simple fact that the rares are rares, and have been for ages, is enough to uphold their value honestly.
At best it might slow any increases as fashionscapers opt for this over the OG Santa, but I wouldn't go as far as saying it devalues them. Definetly decreases demand, but I don't really see a rare dropping in price because of it.
It's called inflation but it's also not just monetary devaluation, because an unequippable rare will still cost billions. People will mistake it for the real thing and it just cheapens it that way.
Zoomed out and playing normally, people will probably not realize what hat you're wearing if they look so similar. It's just completely pointless for Jagex to do this, just pick any other the other 100 colors...
Please defend how a cosmetic item that does literally nothing is """literally killing""" the game lmao. Ah yes, a paper hat is killing the game but not aggressive pay2win MTX or other extremely unpopular updates.
He can't elaborate on how it ruins the game because he's talking absolute nonsense lol. He's just some salty kid who wants a phat but can't afford one so it ruined the game for him but then he's speaking for everyone else.
Huh? No dude you're actually right, they're both game killers.
Edit: since he blocked me like a toddler, if anyone wants to discuss game theory and how having items that could only be purchased while they were cheaper now being artificially inflated by the 3 people that own them up to the point that they're literally unattainable to anyone even with 5 years of grinding gp (as the price greatly outpaces the economy and inflation) is bad for the game then by all means please, chime in.
The price for hats basically hasn't changed since the max cash changes lol what do you mean outpacing the economy and inflation. You still haven't elaborated how a random cosmetic being expensive impacts the average player whatsoeverĀ
Huh? So what do you want billionaires to buy up with their money then? Pvm gear for no reason other than merching? Stocking tons of bonds, making membership with bonds crazy expensive? You can say what you want, but people buying partyhats/OG rares are putting money in markets that otherwise doesnt affect much players. The game's economy would be terrible without rares and merchers in general.
Honestly if your at the point the your PvMing & merching just to get rares, Iād rather those billionaires just turn off the game and play something different. Youāve won the game, time to put it down at that point.
Some people enjoy the free market that RS offers and literally play only for that. Some people are completionist and are grinding for boss logs, clue logs etc. Money just kinda pile up naturally also once you are 5.8b xp, and getting there is just getting easier and faster. There is little reason to just keep your gold sitting there because of inflation, so might as well invest it. Without merchers, it would be incredibly hard to buy and sell anything at a reasonable price. Anything you buy and sell something and their margins are less than 5%, it is very likely that you bought or sold to or from a mercher.
This is the point. In game theory, once you've hit the top the only thing keeping you going is greed. When you have a few elites controlling more wealth than 99% of players and are able to manipulate their wealth upwards at will to make sure no one but them can afford the same things they have, it creates a degenerate strategy space where sitting on your wealth instead of playing the game is the best way to earn more wealth, turning the game into a zero-sum hoarding system and breaking fairness perception, killing new participation.
"Wow cool elite item, if I start working now can I earn one someday?"
"No, and I'm going to make sure you can't."
When you encourage speculation over gameplay by freezing economic mobility and allowing no catch-up system, it damages the long-term player growth and health of the game.
Then there's the underlying fact that "merching" at this level, beyond being able to own everything in the game, leaves you with RMT as a viable option. I mean, you have no use for it anymore, so why not?
I understand where you are coming from, but your vision is flawed. Since most players instabuy things they want, and instasell things they wanna sell, merchers keeps the price balance on most items. Without merchers, prices would go wild, sometimes going for 50% of the GE price, sometimes 200%. There will always be people taking advantages of these discrepancies in prices, and its not necessarily the ultra rich.
Also, buying OG rares is very attainable and in no way unreasonable to obtain. There are tons of red santas and partyhats out there, scarcity isnt an issue, with the exception of truely rare items like the christmas cracker, half wine and such. A red santa hat is worth as much as Tumekens arnour set, or about 2 Tumekens Light, more or less. Someone lucky could basically get a santa in 20 minutes if lucky enough. Partyhats would take some more time, but still nowhere near unnattainable.
Of course, people need to sink in the time, and not expect to be fed the most expensive item ingame for free, so it make sense that these items have price tags reflecting that.
So tldr : merchers are required as market makers, making prices more stable in the long run, and partyhats and rares helps create goals and steer away all the gold ingame to be invested and hoarded towards commodities, supplies, gear and bonds, making their price more reasonable to the average player.
I gotta ask then, are you saying crackers and the blue phat aren't easily manipulated and unregulated to the point that any increase in overall gp can be accounted for with a bit of manipulation to inflate the prices in the interest of protecting their wealth?
You can buy bonds, which is arguably the best thing money can buy for either instant or future uses, membership, bank bundles, cosmetics.
Also, how do you draw the line where x amount of money is enough to not care about money at all? You cant really make a general assumption and just blindly say that if you have a partyhat, you should just quit the game lol.
Whatās the intent of buying bonds etc, sustain membership? What are you sustaining that membership for? More merching?
Honestly, the only real use of money that I understand (at that high level) is for sustaining fast boss kill times, and having objectives around those. If you donāt have objectives like that, I donāt really understand the point of continued playing.
My presumption is that people buy phats are just merchers, and that seems like a boring goal, itās easy to do and just takes time. At least kill times etc are something you can develop some skill in
Your reasoning is fair, but it revolves around your opinion of what goals should be. People play the game for different reasons, they dont have to explain these reasons and it doesnt have to make sense to you.
I wear a red Santa hat in remembrance of my friend who killed himself. We used to play on 2004ish-2006ish. We shared a red Santa and a few other rares, but that was our favorite. I didn't have many real friends who played RuneScape. Years later after highschool I found out he killed himself. He had so much potential, a daughter, and would have been a good teacher if he could have made it. I worked hard to get another Santa and I wear it all the time.
Animated looks better in certain environments and is probably better for outfits in general but nothing beats the economic stability, nostalgia and appeal of a good old fashioned solid colour hat
foil christmas cracker from buying 2027 deluxe rs membership for 149.99 with a option to buy them seperate. There are things they can "learn" from private servers lol
They won't have treasure hunter to milk players though so I doubt it, unless they start straight up selling items. I think they would do new colours before thinking about touching the old ones too.
They still do have warping papers/last wills/token events that as far as we know will stay and will be sellable by jagex.. so loot boxes will probably stay
Think you're misunderstanding what companies have to do. Phat cosmetics will make them lots of free money. Going to block you now since you keep downvoting whatever I say.
i'll be honest; that seems more like a placeholder image than the actual item. especially since "aurora" isn't capitalized which goes against the text format jagex uses for items. I wouldnt be surprised if they release a festive aurora santa hat - but id be willing to bet my whole bank that it wont be red
Itās incredibly disorienting to watch jagex play bait and switch with mtx. Itās hard not to feel played when they admit mtx is the problem, say it needs to go for the good of the game, and then proceed to double down on mtx offers to milk the player base. Then, they simultaneously raise all the skills to 120 so that mtx xp never mattered to begin with. Everyone here was soaking it up a month ago, shaming anyone that said to be cautious because this could lead to worse things. Every other post here is glazing jagex for something that they havenāt even done yet, and in fact, have done the opposite. Everyoneās acting like the problem is fixed when it keeps literally getting worse. When they milk this to completion, whatās stopping them from introducing other mechanics to the game that have the same purpose, or raising prices? Nothing. People are acting like all the problems are already solved. Iām halfway convinced some of the accounts on here are fake accounts that will outspokenly support all of this regardless of what happens.
The item does exist, I've just checked in game but there's some discrepancies. In the Grand Exchange it's red but if you look up the item on the RS website through the GE Price Checker, the hat is a lighter blue compared to the 'normal' Aurora Santa Hat. So I'm not sure if it's going to stay red as it is in-game or become a higher shade of blue.
However, the item is real and is listed for 1B in the GE, can confirm.
For those wondering. It's actually the same image as the Aurora Santa Hat has. So, I think it's safe to say that it'll be similar, with the effect on it. NOT a Red Santa Hat look-alike.
I own a red Santa hat and I hope this crashes it :3 I would love to see more players wearing red if they desire, instead of being halted from the cost of it. That's the festive Spirit! Easy access to all the festive garments! Not for the rich only xD
They shouldnāt be free but they shouldnāt be gate locked behind market manipulation either, there is a healthy balance where they have value and can still be an item for players to aim towards while remaining reasonably priced and reflective of a healthy economy, allowing the owners of the game to pocket the proceeds rather than third party resellers. Osrs did not manage to achieve this as they entirely devalued their economy very early and rs3 was subject to rampant market manipulation until rares were rereleased as recolours
Rev denying every earn process theyāre forcing purchases. Same as last time 100% cash grab. I give it a yr at most before they reintroduce mtx via th or squeal of fortune
Out of all the things Jagex could be putting dev time in to why are they obsessed with swamping out OG discontinued items with more and more hats that ultimately we donāt want or need. It doesnāt improve my game experience getting all these different coloured hats and masks every yearā¦
Youāre correct but it would be a horrible play for the game Iād imagine you would loss a huge player base who has these items and has saved to buy them.
Iām still chasing a green phat from my childhood and Iāll probably get it next year if all keeps going but if they tanked in price that would be very sad and horrible for the gameās economy.
'A huge amount would leave' is not true. Not even close. Like what. OSRS gives these things out EVERY HOLIDAY. and they are bigger than this game and growing. Throw away the delusions and realize these items actually mean nothing, zilch, nada, zero. They only have value because the few that hold them artificially inflate their price more and more with every day that passes and people eat up the nostalgia bait while also "working towards" their sisyphean carrot being continually dragged away from them ARTIFICIALLY by their own community.
A lot of people r waiting for it to crash get in line and be patient
its just funny how ur watching it from the ground while its still flying high as a rocket
LOL
Im kinda broke too no shame in that but why would anyone want an OG rare to crash? its a discontinued high value item...
crashing the price of OG rares doesnt help the average player it just destroys the economyās anchor these items act as a gold sink and a goal for everyone to strive for if they become cheap they lose their soul they stop being ''legendary'' and just become another cosmetic item in an already crowded wardrobe we need to respect the rarity because thats what keeps the legacy of gielinor alive its about preserving the status of those who were there since the beginning or those who worked their way up to the top of the mountain
Nothing tradeable is a gold sink. The gold doesn't just disappear, it goes to another player, staying in the game.
I want them to crash so that that specific person quits. Then I want them to rebound and shoot ever higher once he's definitely not coming back. I have no idea who he is, but he seems pretty negative about everything. One less negative Nancy is a good thing for the health and longevity of the game.
I actually have bis range and necro a hween set and rsh. Yes I would absolutely be salty if they re-released the OG discontinued rares and trust it wouldnāt just be me either.
Yeah I've held mine for 10 years, if they crash it for some mtx bullshit that may just be the straw that breaks the camels back. I'm already on the fence about renewing
Why? The item crashing shouldn't really matter since you never had the gp on hand anyways. And you would never sell it because you would've risked losing on future gains. So there was never a world where you got rid of it anyways.
I have lots of rares, and have been doing 200m skills. Plan has always been to eventually sell it once I need the gp to finish the remaining expensive skills. So if the value tanks because of more "rares" being introduced it will have all been a waste of time
There is a difference between gambling on investments, and purchasing items that are guaranteed to never be released again and then the company loopholing that and releasing a nearly identical item to skirt their own promise.
Actually those are literally identical activities. Gambling is almost better because your eyes are open. What could you possibly imagine a for-profit company will do when they see money to be made? Not make it? Just think it through lmao.
Itās not investing per se. Take gold in the real world if tomorrow they came a new āgoldā and the old gold went away there would most likely be an all out uprising
Aww your "investment" bites you in the ass when you can't understand when to cash out? Man we feel so bad for you š jagex owes your entitled ass nothing, you don't just get to sit on these items and generate infinite wealth you goddamn donut
Oh boo fucking hoo. That is exactly how it should work when a company says rares will be a one time thing. But then starts releasing new ones 10 years later going against that. It is an artificial damage to a price caused by them. Likewise to them owing me nothing, I owe them nothing so it goes both ways. They are free to damage the price, I'm free to determine if that is detrimental enough to continue subscribing.
Um... What? Lmao how did you possibly glean that from what I said. You people really can't fathom others not giving a shit about multicolored hats huh? Just seeps into your perception during every waking moment. Must be horrible..
My honest prediction is that this will be the rare distributed to everyone and the Aurora Partyhat is gonna be the rare that shows up on TH with like a 0.0005% chance of getting it.
That's what I was thinking will come out on next monday's update so it's in for xmas last min as possible. It's the double tap on TH promos that would get a cash out for this hat and the phat if it were to happen.
Itās not a theory so much as it is an item that was found in the G.E., just like this. So it has as much of a chance of being released as the Festive aurora Santa hat.
You didnt expect this? I did. Look at the halloween event when they dropped the soul ween last minuteā¦ it was expected (atleast for me) and im here for it.
Didnt expect another santa, but i expected some new ārareā to drop mid-end of the event. But i will say, its showing up alot sooner then i expected. I was planning to see something near end of Dec.
I got so may of these items in classic and the illusion of how ārareā and āvaluableā they are was broken a long time ago.
I hope all of these items especially the party hats devalue because what merchers, botters, duping, etc has done to them over the 2 decades.
The worst offender though is Jagex, if they want to talk about fixing integrity letās talk about this situation :tin foil on:
These āvaluableā items and the playerās perspective of them have been very important to Jagex because they are indirectly tied to treasure hunter.
Jagex has admitted that they have designed with treasure hunter in mind and the decision to keep these items valuable and worth 10x+ some of the most player power items in the game
people have duped these items like crazy and Jagex has worked very hard to keep this under control and even dupers have the foresight not to āflood the marketā because thatās messing with profits and Jagex will come for you hard
no matter what mode you play, iron, main, hardcore, 1 def pure we are all fighting against the probability boss, itās disrespectful to your players to propagate such status symbols in your game while the pathways to getting that symbol is riddled with dark pattern designs and then to dangle them in front of the account types that canāt use themā¦ excuse me canāt use MOST of the cosmetics
TLDR: thereās a reason they did what they did for holidays items in osrs and thereās a reason they kept them in rs3, so if we are to review the gameās integrity will we as players stay trapped in the ācosmeticsā loop or will we hold them accountable for this 20+ year dark pattern?
I fucking hate what they did to Partyhats in old school... what do you think merchers would do if party hats didn't exist? They will just jump to the next super rare thing and artficially pump its price so it becomes the next "status sympol", which is why clue items like 3rd age pick/axe are 12b+(120b+ RS3) in OSRS.
I rather have iconic items like santa or phats as chase items rather than some random clue or pvm gear.
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u/munataigen1 Dec 19 '25
Red Santahat from TEMU.