Open discussion: future of Sythe

We have all benefited from Sythe, one way or another. Sythe has helped us get in contact with a seller of a product that we wish to buy, or help offset a product. The value of a trading platform is that it helps bring supply and demand together at market-conform prices - leading to more paretto efficient outcomes. This has all sorts of benefits.

Sythe also has a secondary role, namely that of a dispute platform. It solves disputes, names and shames scammers and creates a quality threshold for products by overlooking agreements.

What I'd like to discuss in the open is Sythe's primary role. I'm sure that it has been done in the past, but it can't hurt to do it again, in the open, with the community that actually cares about itself and wants it to thrive. I'd like to ask some questions to you, to find out what your idea/vision is:

1. What can be done to attract more users to this Sythe?
2. If the answer to question one is: more money -> PR: how will the website raise money to promote itself?
3. What is, in your opinion, the future of Sythe?

I'm looking forward to reading your ideas.

 

I do feel that Sythe was very Runescape heavy, which although this isn't an issue it is also why the other parts of the forums feel "dead" if you will

as for the advertisement bit to raise money etc, I do feel that a lot of people put effort into even trying to draw normal members in, in the hopes of them also donating etc. An example I can give you is @Ringeman donated his money after speaking to me and I explained what I feel the benefits of having the donation rank are

I feel Sythe has plenty of life left, especially if it's able to put more capital into other things, if I remember rightly we used to have other things such as twitter/instagram etc, but one problem you will find and I think it was from @Death people are moving onto bigger projects because Sythe is becoming a sesspit for third world countries

You got to think, from an outsider looking in -

> You see shit tons of third world countrymen
> You see shit tons of scamming/hacking/other crap

Now I don't blame the staff on this website, or the minority who want the website to thrive because people will always be greedy when it comes down to certain aspects. What you need to remember is beyond these lower cost parts of the world to live in, a lot of us are from let's say the UK/US and similar places, where in fact it costs a lot to live and we are no longer children who want to mess around on a game so unless we take this quite literally serious we get nothing in return but wasted time

I will say the same as I said about OSBot back in the day,

I love the forums, I love the game. I started this game in 2002 and I lost myself in my teachers classroom for the 30 minute breaktime we had messing around in lumbridge and watching all the traders in varrock/falador, now days it's about who can scam the most or who has the biggest discord server and it's just a shame

 

we had a wow torne a while ago (you can see by my miniranks) and to be fair, we actually probably had more people come play that than you see in the current CDT events

 

3. What is, in your opinion, the future of Sythe?

Think the best strategy to go about this is to start with Q3, as the future outcome and goal of Sythe should dictate how you plan to attract more users and how you could hope to monetize the platform. User attraction/monetization by design, not as a secondary goal.

I don't know your original vision, but I think the future of Sythe, while I love forums, could be something more streamlined within an easy to use application or interfaced trading system, with a forum as secondary for what you mentioned as a dispute/support/reputation tracking system.


- amazon of game items
edit
- shopify for people that sell game items (you're a hub for specialty shops)

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Thinking of use cases to dictate how Sythe could play out, attract users and make some money:
A. I'd come to Sythe to sell something I have, related to [game], that people might or might not want.
B. I come to Sythe to browse for unique [items], I might want, for [games] I play (items not being sold anywhere else)
C. I come to Sythe to buy [items] for a [game] that isn't being sold anywhere else



Analyzing problems with each use case (quick brainstorm solution -- expand on these notes/ideas)
A. I have an [item] for [game]
- where can I sell it? (Sythe opportunity: advertise you help people sell in game items)
- do people want this item? (develop a way to track user comment sentiment from all networks; these forums, wherever you advertise)
- lets say the stars align, people want the [game] [item]. This is a Sythe opportunity to charge per posting. You're a service not just a posting board for others to make money off of, we take a cut to continue operating {as the #1 game item / trading hub.}
- how does the transaction work so that everyone can benefit and feel comfortable that they're not going to get scammed? (This requires either long term thinking/planning and you need to make sure to account for all sides of participants, they include: seller, syth, buyer) ... quick ideas/issues. Buyer does a charge back on a card after taking the item from the seller - do you reimberse the seller? I think at the very least you reimburse their auction/posting cost. Who is the middleman, do you want to create a service that's like the uber of video game middlemaning or is this out of the realm of possibility? Gig workers that go in, and secure a trade between two parties. Work around for avoiding bans from game companies not approving of item trading or RMT.

B. I want to browse per [game]
- People don't care about games they don't play
- Easy to view/use item browsing system. (How do you display these items, how do you want to make sure that you're not giving too much information out there to make it easy for games to track what is being sold and what isnt, are you creating false positives for items within games to dupe these companies a bit, and mask some of your services?)
- Currency per item (if you're a RMT direct buy, and ingame currency, and whatever else payments, how do you want to display this? Allow posters to set what type of currency they want to be paid in? Could have a display for currency per [game]. WoW for example, 'gold' label, with gold icon and an digit input for the currency the buyer will accept. With maybe a way to set current rates for gold > $... that conversion could be Sythes way to making more money through some game > real currency arbitrage.)

C. I know what Sythe has [items] for [games], and I want to buy something
- Can I trust buying from them? What guarantees can I get, any?
- Will I get scammed, if so what happens?
- I want to trust this place, even though it feels shady at times for the stuff they sell, I guess it's the nature of the site, but I still want to protect myself from doxxing and from not losing money.
- I know Sythe has certain [game][items] I want to easily filter the [game] and filter the [item]
- Does Sythe take a cut? Why? (You want to protect Sythe, the seller and the buyer. You should create marketing to make this view that you're trying to make this a marketplace where everyone is on the same team. Sometimes the buyer loses money on a deal, sometimes the sell does, but Sythe as a trading platform takes the biggest reputation hit if we can't protect people and allow them to trust we have their best interests considered and if not accounted for, we're working on implement changing to account for them)


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Just some quick ideas.

 

Wondering what staff thinks of this.

 

@Juws @Blupig @NukeACola and I would like to give you a not so formal introduction:

Spam Forum

The matter you brought up is one we'd gladly discuss in depth with you

 

1. Sythe is highly correlated by RS. RS has been stagnant for a while, and I could say the same for Sythe.

2. You need a select type of person that enjoys both video games and 10+ year-old forums.

3. Forums have been replaced by Discord like the iPhone replaced the blackberry.

4. Sythe would need to do a complete overhaul… like turning this into a streaming platform or something else significant.

I will update later if I think of anything else

 

Sythe could be so much more than a giant advertisement to other peoples discords or private websites. Don't let people post gold buying threads without posting and updating the price at least every bump. "Join my discord/website for the price" should not be acceptable. Same for account selling, posting one singular account and something like "Join my discord for the 100+ other accounts like this one". If people want to add your discord or go to your website to make the purchase awesome but post ALL of your accounts for sale and list your price to buy/sell gold on your thread. Having a spread like $.10-.90 OSRS should not be considered within the rules either.

You want people to use sythe more? Actually enforce people to put useful info into their threads instead of fancy images and gif redirects. Sythe has a HUGE following and a good reputation but the community is dead because every new customer gets siphoned off to a discord or website instead of staying here.

 

Reddit's taken a lot of users too, especially in regards to casual sections like in our off topic category. Why interact with the same 5 people when you can reach a broad audience for your niche interests?

Edit: To add some substance to the thread though I think all it takes is to study successful fan communities and see what they do. You can't attract people from community alone. You need an attractive product, whether that's something you sell or a platform you provide. An old forum isn't the best platform for a black market anymore. If this is the rabbit hole we want to stay nestled in, it'd probably take making an app for game related sales or something like that plus the associated marketing.

 

I would argue its a combination of what I said above, and what Pikachu said. Sythe is an attractive product because of its reputation, and people like it because they are used to it. This forum, this site. Is great, it could be better though.

I understand the ToS are there because Jagex was shutting down the discord servers, but it accomplished what they wanted. People cant post accurate descriptions of their offers and its not worth the effort of bouncing around a dozen discords to price check. Its easier to just go to the highest feedback person you can find and if they don't scam keep returning. With how Sythe is set up now, they will keep going to that discord/website cuz nobody really puts real substance in their sales threads. Its all redirects and vague info and nobody wants to go through the effort of negotiating prices or comparing them when its so difficult.

 

hard to believe that wow event was almost 3 years ago ;_; that and the pokemmo event in 2017 gotta be my favourites

 

Riffing off this. As a product Sythe had two things going for it back in 2007-2010: it was a marketplace, and it was social media.

People came in equal parts to transact AND to chat because there wasn't a popular enough or welcoming enough alternative at the time. Reddit was just getting started, myspace then facebook were purely local-focused while people wanted to separate their internet life from their private life (mainly because we were all autists without irl friends), and 4chan was too intimidating.

Therefore, you got a blend of interest where people wanted the thrill of cheating and of entrepreneurship, but they also were interested in the social aspect for lack of any alternative. So the two pillars of sythe co-mingled, and popularity, cliques, bonds and friendships arose out of the camaraderie for a very niche and focused interest. Popularity actually meant something here, being well liked, respected, and trusted was almost a tangible credit system (that sythe gold attempted to make truly tangible). People aspired to be cool, so there was pressure to stay active, to post the next viral spam thread, to interact with all the other general discussion threads so people would learn your name, to stand out and get recognition, to gain the confidence to jump on cam chats and be addressed by staff-- who were WAY more revered back then. To be screenshot while on cam chats and talked about in spam forum was the pinnacle of cool, it was a dopamine hit because clout mattered, an addiction to attention that kept people coming back and engaging day after day.

So what happened? Reddit, instagram, twitter, twitch, discord-- astronomically-better social platforms than xenforo or vbulletin came along and took all that community away, which only left the business aspect of sythe. Without the community value of camaraderie and friends and respect, scammers became prolific because no one cared about maintaining a reputation when it was just easier and more rewarding to abuse the site that couldn't effectively ban them and vade constantly for the money. Look how our policies changed around this, scammers at some point were allowed to return because preventing vades was impossible, and we KNEW people were completely apathetic about reputation or morality here.

With socializing out, what about the marketplace? Well, with scammers and vaders becoming prolific, entry into the market formed a HUGE curve for how dangerous it was, and the only people who has the time and will to overcome that are entrepreneurs with access to local cheap labor, which floods the market with lower quality, knockoff, throwaway businesses. You're no longer transacting with a market personality, you're buying shit from either a bot or from an employee getting paid pennies to farm all day and to sell in the name of some account expressly registered to bump a thread and redirect traffic to a gold farm site. R2P for example used to be a personality, a human you interacted with, who you formed trust and rapport with, who perpetuated the community when he'd way in on matters or interact in general discussion. Now most of the market giants are just accounts strung up to auto-bumpers, taking you to a website whose chat function is just a zendesk installation of preformatted responses. A robot.

The only people who are left in the community are people like me and blupig, people who have zero fucks, but are at least moral enough not to get banned through some scamquit; people who spam in order to get post count to start the millionth gold business duplicate; and people who invested time and donation dollars before realizing the community is dead and are trying their best to salvage their investment of time and money, but now are just trying too hard and achieve the opposite effect such as laptop, izad, etc.

How does it get fixed? Well.... to be honest I doubt it can. I think the most enterprising decision Richard could make is to convert it into some sort of regulated gold dispensary that programmatically functions as a virtual farmers market without the weight of a forum format. Features are expressly developed to facilitate trade and no longer trying to revive a dead social community. A product is created that competes with all other gold farm/services/account websites and attempts to absorb startups into the fold of a franchise. Truly, sadly, I think Richard already suspects this. That's why matthew is silent, that's why administrators are no longer community leaders or tech developers, but just twice-glorified mods with a little extra trust to handle things like the pay-back fund bitcoin accounts and donations, that's why every single forum announcement for the past few years has had nothing foundational to the site, merely promotion announcements or subforum restructuring or rule changes. Richard is probably sitting back and letting the vestiges of donation funds roll in in exchange for minimal expense, meanwhile probably using his accumulated server space for unrelated projects and enterprises.

The moment donations do not offset expenses, this site will disappear without preamble, that's my prediction, along with whatever is left in the anti-scam payback fund

As a side note: I'd also say that the conversations were like... 10% videogame related really. Like you could only talk about runescape so much, people preferred and still prefer to talk about themselves, their lives, or whatever random thing came to mind. Staff would talk with non-staff about videogames when it came to scam cases they were taking, forums they were moderating, etc., a way for non-staff to feel included and experience being mod-cool vicariously. We were all just similar that we liked videogames and that's what got us all in through the door, and we enjoyed playing WITH each other while we talked about non-videogame stuff, but the social entertainment was pretty minimally related to videogames, so trying to expound on videogame conversation by beefing up the videogame discussion forums understandably failed... so when asking ourselves "how do we fix this?" expanding videogame conversation is tried-and-tested NOT the way to do it.

 

I am down to help out the off-topic forums with that activity I think if we can get some traffic in those forums as well it would be cool

 

everything will prob all be through discord in the future.

 

Can't, discord bans us if we condone game cheating, which is the only reason this site exists. All it would take for a salty individual to grief the sythe community is to report our discord for breaking rules, and the whole thing gets deleted permanently and completely. Richard has tried to move to discord a few times in 2020-2021

 

never knew that! damn. not sure where I see this site years down the line then..

 

Don’t think there’s a whole lot to say by them. Sure they could give their opinion, but if I’m not mistaken I’ve seen threads like these made before and they all end up the same: couple veteran users speaking the truth, some active users sharing their impressions, some obvious vaders sharing their thoughts - all leading to no resolution at all. It’s an interesting read for sure, but in reality Richard is more distant from the site (and it’s staff) than people imagine. At the most I can expect from him is him expressing his opinion toning down any ideas as the vibe I’m getting from him is that he’s not interested in developing any more in this site.