One of the concerns the EoC tried to rebalance was scimitar dominance. Scimitars were considered better than all of the other "metal weapons" due to their speed and slash.
Jagex's solution to scimitars being better than maces, warhammers, longswords, daggers, shortswords, battleaxes, etc was to make them all the same. Make them all have the same DPS. Make the only difference between be whether or not it is stab or slash or crush based in terms of monster weakness.
At the same time, they removed the stab, slash, and crush stats from the items and replaced it with an attack rating.
That was entirely unnecessary.
In the Old School Runescape forums, I've seen two good threads about how to rebalance them for RS2's combat system.
One person suggests adding a sort of perk based on the lore of the items, like making maces get bonus damage based on your prayer points or making maces able to smite and remove 1 prayer. See: Rejuvenate Bad Weapons
Another person suggests making most of the weapons have the same attack speed, and then rebalancing their stats based on that. See: All Weapons at Scimitar Speed
After reading those and giving them feedback, I gave them my own suggestion, which I'll paste here.
First of all, Jagex needs to make monster's defensive stats transparent. I think EoC did that? Good on them for that, but they use the new lame mmo copy pasted stat system.
Design weapon stats like so:
Scimitar: 10 slash, 0 stab, 0 crush
Warhammer: 0 slash, 0 stab, 10 crush
Shortsword: 0 slash, 10 stab, 0 crush
The problem there is that a rune longsword has the same stab as a rune shortsword, even thought the shortsword is a faster speed.
Longsword: 8 slash, 7stab, 0 crush
Mace: 0 slash, 7 stab, 8 crush
Battleaxe: 8 slash, 0 stab, 7 crush
"Unique" weapons:
Dagger: 5 slash, 6 stab, 0 crush, 1.8 attack speed (as op suggested) or faster as a fun rapid attack weapon.
Spear: 7 slash, 7 stab, 7 crush, 5 def - The all rounder type of weapon with some defensive capability (as op suggested)
Halberd: 9 slash, 7 stab, 0 crush - Keep it at it's own special "longer reach" melee weapon status. However to make it less unused, maybe it could use a little speed bonus.
2 Handed Sword: 11 slash, 0 stab, 9 crush - Pretty much works as it is now
Now, some weapons may be worth equalizing the speeds of the weapons for the trade-off of making the weapon's strengths and weaknesses more prominent or important. But some should still have different attack speeds.
As the wiki mentions about longsword vs scimitar, scimmy is 25 hits/minute and longsword is 20 hits/minute. It adds up over time. Because Jagex isn't transparent about how accuracy and damage amounts work, we can only guess as to how the stats would have to change to get them equal or into a position of "having tradeoffs against using one or the other".
Anyway, the point of weighing stats like this, is to give people opinions like this:
Player A: Oh I like to use Scimmy + Mace to cover the 3 melee weaknesses cause I've been using scimmy for years.
Player B: I roll Scimmy + Warhammer + Shortsword because I'm l33t min/maxer. (I personally would be that kinda player).
Player C: Spear is nice for inventory space, plus I don't have to worry about a shield.
Player D: The new shortsword's awesome, it's like having a lower level CRapier, though I still bring a battle axe to cover the slash/crush enemies.
Player E: I like to main warhammer now that it's good... and longsword hits hard too!
Player F: Dude the new dagger is like melee throwing knives now it's so much fun
----------
In reality, the stat suggestions I just made, are already how the weapons are sort of designed in RS2.
I say Jagex should at least be transparent about monster's defensive stats, because it opens up Jagex to a load of suggestions on what their actual defenses should be or how to alter defense stats for things in order to make weapon choice more prominent.
Yes, this is what EoC tried to do. But they did it in an extremely lazy way, by giving all 3 points of the combat triangle 3-4 different types of attacks, where melee had stab/slash/crush, mages had air/water/earth/fire, and rangers had... bolts vs arrows or something.
Mage and range don't need that variety. Jagex trying to make mage elements useful or bullet type useful was merely the result of them trying to make the classes the same... that's bad game design. I have many ideas for making mage and range more unique like melee is and I have them on a blog too, I might post them later.
Anyway, making the 3 melee weaknesses more prominent is a good way to make weapon choice a little more important. But it really does call for editing stats of monsters (Assuming they really are slash biased or stab biased or whatever).
I only remember things like Rock Crabs mattering for crush weapons for example...
At the same time it was good that the casual player could just use 1 type of melee weapon everywhere and not be /forced/ to min/max in some way.
We want it to be an advantage, not an overwhelmingly better choice.
The EoC didn't need to happen. This could have been applied to RS2.
Monday, February 29, 2016
Pre-EoC Runescape Wishlist
Here's a wishlist I made when Legacy was about to come out, what I actually wanted from Legacy.
Actually, this .txt I found from back then which is an archive of some forum thread(s) that are gone now.
Keep in mind, I was still trying to give EoCers their own option to stay as well back in the Legacy release days, which I really care about less now that EoC is dying on its own.
Good community trumps ad-hoc attempts to fix game balance.
Also note that this post will be extremely unformatted until I work on it some more, it's copy pasted from the Runescape forum.
------------------============[Main Proposal]============------------------
Old HP/Armour system
Old Inventory & Prayer Sprites
Old special attacks
138 maxed combat, tweaked to make range/mage count more (pretty much already in effect)
Staff + Shield
Old Ancients/God spells
Old style weapon stats. Magic, ranged, stab, slash, crush, strength. Instead of whatever the heck EoC armour/weapons are now.
Stab/Slash/Crush/Defend | Quick/Accurate/Long | Mage/Mage+Def attack styles.
Poisoned weapons
Dominion Tower gloves (Especially Goliath - Give spellcaster its own spell like the polypore staff).
Same player saves (no need to restart completely like for 07RS)
Make the action bar optional for skilling only.
Here's the big part:
Re-stat the 2013 items to be like the old system, keep the re-balanced gear
Keep dual wielding (just don't make it OP or more viable than everything else)
Old models, and more importantly - animations
Edit: I underestimated how much I dislike the new models. I just logged in and yeah, I'd really like to see Jagex remake them to appear like the old models some day.
Optional:
100% prayer protection.
Sara brews, or rather, an alternative to"stacked healing items"
Other stuff to keep from the EoC:
Food/Potion Balancing.
-----
"But the old models don't support new animations from solomon or dual wielding"
Jagex was able to make completely new models that support being animated in more ways than in the past. They can definitely make new models that mimick the old ones, but use the new animation system. From this point, they could make it a cosmetic choice as to how your player is animated while it walks/attacks things. I think the old animations are funny/nostalgic and would still use them. Doing this would also mean less work needed to keep new emotes/animation overrides.
I do agree that this is a lot of work. But making EoC in the first place was a lot of work and not a lot of paying attention to how much players approve of it.
Edit: At least make old animations over the new models an option as an animation override.
"But Jagex can't bring back the old stats or system"
They were able to completely change them to something new, they most definitely can bring them back. Even if they don't have the stats recorded, they can re-implement the old system.
Considering they were able to re-instate 07RS, I'm fairly certain that they do have a save of the game from what it was like pre-EoC, as well as all of the item stats.
"Dual wielding sucks and doesn't fit Legacy and thus shouldn't be part of it"
Let's say EoC was never a thing, and Jagex just decided to release dual wielding on its own. Would you feel the same way? Let's assume it gets released to be just as viable as sword+shield or 2h or something.
IMO, they should make off-hand weapons not be offhand, and just let you choose what hand to hold it in. At the same time, allow shields to be carried in the other hand.
My suggestion for dual wields in pre-EoC combat is to make them like darts. Weaker hits but faster. Unlike darts, they'd probably be less accurate too.
"But Legacy is worthless, EoC is superior"
Opinions have little bearing in a discussion, especially with the results of the survey Jagex quoted saying otherwise.
Not to mention, the goal of this suggestion is to bring back Legacy with the main goal of the EoC to rebalance the combat triangle.
(In my opinion, old combat was more exciting/faster in terms of PvP).
"But your idea is basically throwing away the EoC"
My suggestion is not saying EoC should be completely removed, Jagex would still provide the option to use abilities and RS3 animations if you want.
Though, the main thing I don't care about seeing stay are abilities and the new form of armour stats.
As suggested, a choice between RS2 and RS3 animations would help a lot. And with Legacy, Jagex is already giving you the choice between old/new damage scaling and hitsplats.
Abilities do not require the new form of item stats in any way, nor does rebalancing the classes in the game. This can be done with math alone.
If my idea sounds still sounds like it's "throwing away EoC", please post and tell me how so I can think of a way to satisfy both sides better.
Actually, this .txt I found from back then which is an archive of some forum thread(s) that are gone now.
Keep in mind, I was still trying to give EoCers their own option to stay as well back in the Legacy release days, which I really care about less now that EoC is dying on its own.
Good community trumps ad-hoc attempts to fix game balance.
Also note that this post will be extremely unformatted until I work on it some more, it's copy pasted from the Runescape forum.
------------------============[Main Proposal]============------------------
Old HP/Armour system
Old Inventory & Prayer Sprites
Old special attacks
138 maxed combat, tweaked to make range/mage count more (pretty much already in effect)
Staff + Shield
Old Ancients/God spells
Old style weapon stats. Magic, ranged, stab, slash, crush, strength. Instead of whatever the heck EoC armour/weapons are now.
Stab/Slash/Crush/Defend | Quick/Accurate/Long | Mage/Mage+Def attack styles.
Poisoned weapons
Dominion Tower gloves (Especially Goliath - Give spellcaster its own spell like the polypore staff).
Same player saves (no need to restart completely like for 07RS)
Make the action bar optional for skilling only.
Here's the big part:
Re-stat the 2013 items to be like the old system, keep the re-balanced gear
Keep dual wielding (just don't make it OP or more viable than everything else)
Old models, and more importantly - animations
Edit: I underestimated how much I dislike the new models. I just logged in and yeah, I'd really like to see Jagex remake them to appear like the old models some day.
Optional:
100% prayer protection.
Sara brews, or rather, an alternative to"stacked healing items"
Other stuff to keep from the EoC:
Food/Potion Balancing.
-----
"But the old models don't support new animations from solomon or dual wielding"
Jagex was able to make completely new models that support being animated in more ways than in the past. They can definitely make new models that mimick the old ones, but use the new animation system. From this point, they could make it a cosmetic choice as to how your player is animated while it walks/attacks things. I think the old animations are funny/nostalgic and would still use them. Doing this would also mean less work needed to keep new emotes/animation overrides.
I do agree that this is a lot of work. But making EoC in the first place was a lot of work and not a lot of paying attention to how much players approve of it.
Edit: At least make old animations over the new models an option as an animation override.
"But Jagex can't bring back the old stats or system"
They were able to completely change them to something new, they most definitely can bring them back. Even if they don't have the stats recorded, they can re-implement the old system.
Considering they were able to re-instate 07RS, I'm fairly certain that they do have a save of the game from what it was like pre-EoC, as well as all of the item stats.
"Dual wielding sucks and doesn't fit Legacy and thus shouldn't be part of it"
Let's say EoC was never a thing, and Jagex just decided to release dual wielding on its own. Would you feel the same way? Let's assume it gets released to be just as viable as sword+shield or 2h or something.
IMO, they should make off-hand weapons not be offhand, and just let you choose what hand to hold it in. At the same time, allow shields to be carried in the other hand.
My suggestion for dual wields in pre-EoC combat is to make them like darts. Weaker hits but faster. Unlike darts, they'd probably be less accurate too.
"But Legacy is worthless, EoC is superior"
Opinions have little bearing in a discussion, especially with the results of the survey Jagex quoted saying otherwise.
Not to mention, the goal of this suggestion is to bring back Legacy with the main goal of the EoC to rebalance the combat triangle.
(In my opinion, old combat was more exciting/faster in terms of PvP).
"But your idea is basically throwing away the EoC"
My suggestion is not saying EoC should be completely removed, Jagex would still provide the option to use abilities and RS3 animations if you want.
Though, the main thing I don't care about seeing stay are abilities and the new form of armour stats.
As suggested, a choice between RS2 and RS3 animations would help a lot. And with Legacy, Jagex is already giving you the choice between old/new damage scaling and hitsplats.
Abilities do not require the new form of item stats in any way, nor does rebalancing the classes in the game. This can be done with math alone.
If my idea sounds still sounds like it's "throwing away EoC", please post and tell me how so I can think of a way to satisfy both sides better.
-----
The EoC isn't a superior system if it has less than half of the player base enjoying it. The best way to run a game business is to release content that players agree with and enjoy.
So far there are two huge things that Jagex forced onto us that players largely didn't like. Squeal of Fortune, and the EoC. (Note: Just because you like it, or it does address some issues, doesn't mean it's perfect or even better).
Imagine if things went a different way:
What if they didn't release abilities, change the interface, change models/animations when they came up with "the EoC".
What if the big update was just the introduction of dual wielding, shield bows, wands, more books, more armour for mage/range, and the buffing of ranged/mage so that you can use both just as commonly as melee used to be in the game? Along with mage/range armour being rebalanced to have better defence (mage armour being made a little better against melee I guess).
In other words, all they did, was release a ton of new items at once in a way that completely changes the balancing of the combat triangle to be how they wanted it be?
Make runes easier to obtain or spells cost less runes. Arrows too.
----
If the EoC had gone down that way, a lot less people would have left the game because it's essentially still the old system. The only difference is that other parts of the combat triangle would be more widely useable. You aren't stuck with using melee for 90% of everything because ranged and even mage are almost just as affordable.
I feel as if that would have kept many of the game's veterans while addressing the real issue Jagex was trying to tackle with the EoC.
You'd still have all the PvP gimmicks, interface people prefered, etc etc. The wilderness might seem crazy at first and people would say mage/range is overpowered until it comes to the point where it's actually an even mix of people using whatever part of the triangle they want. You'd still have hybridding as it used to be as well.
What makes the game go backwards are how the business decides to implement things and the player's satisfaction rate. EoC was too huge of a change and too different. I was a very loyal member and even continued paying during half a year long absences because I was supporting a game I knew I'd always come back to. Ever since the EoC came out, it was like they closed the game so I stopped paying and lost the $5 membership I had from so long ago.
Also, 200 wasn't good for how it hid stats. It's nice to see the new formula brings mage/range higher now that they're more prominent in the combat triangle. I would still much prefer that the game was just updated with a bunch of armour/weapon changes. I do agree that it'd be easier to make sense of if the level cap was 140 or 145, but that just doesn't really fit Runescape well. Weird numbers are interesting to this playerbase.
-----
Basically, the only thing that was needed to rebalance damage between classes was to change numbers and fill some gaps with items for mage/range.
The animations of the game are a completely different problem.
"Old animations are boring and shouldn't be supported!"
Yea, a lot of people thought the old animations were slow paced, unexciting, or boring. In a similar way, the old system of combat felt that way.
However, I do not think that a need for newer/better animations warranted the introduction of abilities. But for fixing the "pace" of combat, who knows. The polls already indicated that abilities weren't a better alternative. This is why Jagex is making Legacy in the first place.
Personally, the old system of combat was faster paced for me, especially with hybridding in PvP. Though agreeably PvM was afky, I preferred that. Though bossing was also fast paced/exciting cause I only got to level 109+10 pre-EoC so it was hard enough to solo GWD stuff. EoC didn't introduce faster paced combat and only an annoying need for button spam for me.
Not to mention, as suggested before, make the animations optional.
In any case, I agree with Coli's feedback thread about Revolution.
QFC: 360-361-249-65280878-92-329782912 | 10.3 - Revolution
If we end up needing an ability macro, it means that the system has failed.
-----
I notice some EoC supporters saying to just scratch Legacy. Don't offer it at all.
I kinda consider these to be troll posts.
As much as I'd like EoC to be completely scratched, Jagex already introduced it and some people have already grown to like it. The community is split half and half and we can't just completely throw away either one. We already saw what happened due to Jagex throwing away the old system before considering to bring it back in some ways now.
I'm trying to think of what to say in terms of keeping abilities. I guess I'd say it'd be like what Jagex has already promised for Legacy where you can choose between the two systems. But rather than EoC being the "main system", EoC becomes the "dressed up system" that needs to become compatible with Legacy. Not Legacy becoming compatible with the Eoc.
In terms of bossing, I'm not sure why Jagex thinks abilities are important to making fresh/new boss ideas.
I can already think of boss gimmicks they haven't/have hardly used. For example, breakable parts on bosses. Make a huge boss with different sections that can be attacked and broken separately to reveal weaker parts. At least, make more bosses like that than that one tzhaar mole/armadillo thing. Make stuff like Vanstrom even.
Speaking of Vanstrom, put him in the Dominion Tower.
-----
Miscellaneous Threads I support:
QFC: 355-356-981-65284809 - EoC is not EoC
- One point he mentions is that crits do not suffice to replace mage/strength bonuses. If Legacy could be made like I suggest in this thread, I think that would suffice.
- I'm also in support of pretty much all of his suggestions.
QFC: 355-356-156-65288904 - LegacyCombat - Dress up of EoC
- I agree that I want to see more be done and that I'm worried that it will feel like Jagex trying to dress up momentum and say it's bringing back old combat. The old animations were also a large part of the feel of old combat to me.
QFC: 15-16-593-65345051 - New prayer icons + Legacy?
- Not only do I prefer how they were pixelated before, but they're also more crisp/easier to tell apart. The new ones look like purple blurs and I actually have to look closely to tell if I'm using protect from melee or ranged which is annoying.
It also does not make sense for the activation of deflect curses to play the animation of you actually deflecting attack, when that is not even happening. I disliked that addition. Same thing for the activation animations added to sap/etc.
QFC: 355-356-53-65340350 - Legacy details
- Please, please do something about the animations when you implement Legacy, even if you don't do the whole re-statting thing I suggested.
QFC: 360-361-621-65287493 - Old animations, Legacy Combat
Second reply in the thread: "Make old animations available in Solomon store"
But for free.
QFC: 299-300-79-65346970 - What we want in Legacy
- "Strength skill matter again". I don't actually know how badly EoC changed that, but I definitely want to see it matter. I saw a suggestion to make it count towards mage/range, which sounds OK. Make it universal like defense.
- See next page for dual wield idea.
QFC: 16-17-258-65347893 - Legacy - PvP revival
QFC: 16-17-733-65348060 - My thouhts on legacy
-----
--------------------============[Disclaimer]============--------------------
I know Legacy is meant to bring the old combat system back but not a copy of Runescape like it was pre-EoC.
I know Jagex hasn't even opened that beta yet, but I know they're working on it and can't wait to see if it's done adequately or not.
I know they stated they won't bring back old item stats. I can still hope. This is what I was saying in 2014. Now it's 2016.
One of the things that worries me most about Legacy are the animations which as I've said, were a big part of the pre-EoC feel to me, as well as that interface switching and hybridding stuff.
Other than that, was also the impact of things like your 'max hit' and every individual hits. I believe I linked a thread talking about that as well. It's not just EoC's hitsplats are bad, but the feel of them is too because it turns everything more into the concept of "DPSing" and "spread out/damage over time" even for normal attacks.
Compared to Runescape where you can feel the weight of every hit more. It's hard to explain I suppose and you'd either get it or not. One good example was the feel of using special attacks. This is my other big worry as to how Legacy will be. Pre-EoC you felt heavy and powerful. RS3 makes me feel like darts, which is a bad restriction to me. Whether I'm using a 2H, sword/shield, or dual wield, nothing feels like it has impact.
I think mostly the hitsplats/damage amounts/animations are to blame largely for that. 2H swords used to feel heavy. As well as mauls. Making them use the same animation, as well as the animations themselves, just makes both feel weak.
Prayer feels less powerful. I can't "feel" the bonus of turmoil or piety at all anymore for example. It doesn't increase that impact feel anymore in the EoC. I've seen others complain that large 1k-9k hits contributes to this loss of impact. Level 85-99 str is a pointless blur.
-----
I eagerly await to see what Legacy will be like and whether it'll be satisfying, and to give feedback to hopefully get it as close to something I can enjoy again as possible.
Proposal for Legacy dual wields:
It'd certainly be nice to keep, but we want shields to still have their usage and other stuff have trade-offs.
As mentioned by QFC: 299-300-79-65346970 Xader_Master:
- Dual wielding would add 1/4 str bonus and work like defenders
(Dragon Scimitar: Str Bonus = 66 + Off hand Dragon Scimitar = 16.5)
My suggestion:
- Overall accuracy drops significantly, but you attack as fast as darts. Your max hit is also penalized.
Magic "dual wielding" is unnecessary altogether imo. Just make mage books be for offensive bonuses like before and give them rune-saving capabilities or other special abilities.
For dart-like cast speed, just release cool new spells or something like the staff of armadyl that affects cast speed with some sort of magic penalty like -40% magic modifier to counter the cast speed. Or rather, make wands become the fast cast speed type weapon, while keeping staves single handed.
And don't allow multi-class dualwielding to be effective. Like having a sword and crossbow. They should negate each other's effectiveness.
Also instead of off-hands, we could just decide what hand to wield something in.
Personally, I would limit dual wielding to melee. Rangers don't really need it either, unless Jagex some day releases flat out guns.
Melee's already had one dual wield for years pretty much... Torag's hammers.
Also instead of off-hands, we could just decide what hand to wield something in.
Personally, I would limit dual wielding to melee. Rangers don't really need it either, unless Jagex some day releases flat out guns.
Melee's already had one dual wield for years pretty much... Torag's hammers.
Proposal for Legacy action bar:
Legacy users don't like abilities, but that doesn't mean everyone will dislike having an action bar type thing for skilling.
Two immediate options come to mind:
1. Allow the action bar to be toggled on/off (off meaning, completely hidden - no enable button visible on screen or something) and only useable for skilling.
2. Just allow hotkeys to be bound to items in the inventory and give the option for the inventory to be like a cross between the action bar and an inventory.
3. Both of the above would be a nice way to satisfy people in the middle of EoC and Legacy.
-----
http://services.runescape.com/m=rswiki/en/Maximum_Hit_Formula
Expand pre-EoC soaking as a part of defence, or a combination of defence and HP (like melee was a combination of atk and str).
Having high HP gives you some inherent soaking.
Having high DEF gives you static defence bonuses and also contributes to inherent soaking.
EoC players have a max of 9900 HP and pre-EoC have 990. Higher defence leading to the bigger portion of soaking or something.
Let's say have level 50 HP gives 5% soaking. In Legacy terms, it's like you're actually scaling your health to be...
500 x 1.05 = 525 "total health".
In other words, if you have 500 HP and 5% inherent soaking, you would have to be hit for 525 to get one hit KOed. Hitting 500 will be soaked to 475 and the player survives with 25 hp.
This can be used to introduce balancing that protects players in pre-EoC from new 90 level+ gear, depending on what soaking values Jagex implements.
As I mentioned on my legacy thread I was going to look at pre-EoC damage calculation and try and come up with stuff from there. I hear one problem of level 90 pre-EoC weapons was that you'd be able to one-hit people, and DPS rates would be too high. All it takes to fix that is some equivalent scaling of HP/DEF with higher level weapons.
Commonly used abbreviations:
RSC = Runescape Classic
07RS = OSRS/Oldschool Runescape
RS2 = Pre-EoC Runescape
RS3 = Post-EoC Runescape, before Legacy
Legacy = Combined RS2+RS3, EoC/RS3 bias on updates/balance/features/viability
RSFIX = My proposal = Combined RS2+RS3, looks like RS2 but has many of RS3's item/combat rebalancing, similar to Legacy but with RS2 bias, RS3 being the "optional skin, though more effective due to abilities"
Classes = Melee/Range/Mage
Old system = Combat system in RS2
New system = EoC system / Combat system in RS3
Fixed system = My proposal
"But changing stats isn't really necessary"
It's true that you can balance things both ways.
This thread is basically taking aspects of the EoC I didn't dislike and applying it to RS2, though some aspects like this are ones that I could probably tolerate.
Changing the stats on equippables is only a small part of "changing stats".
The bigger picture is changing how the EoC put more emphasis on gear than your actual player stats. (I would like confirmation that this is the case, because it's what I heard from the like/dislikes of EoC thread I made). Or in other words, it's like reverting to RS2 and balancing the old combat system instead of changing to a new combat system.
Here are the balancing differences between RS2 and RS2.
RS2:
Stab/Slash/Crush/Range/Mage Atk+Def & prayer/summoning/mage%/str stats on equippables.
Melee had Accurate/Aggresive/Controlled/Defensive.
The difference was what skills you get EXP in, aggresive commonly being the best option ignoring EXP.
Range had Accurate, Rapid, and Defensive.
Rapid was commonly the best option, ignoring EXP.
Mage had Normal and Defensive casting. Normal giving mage exp only and defensive giving Mage+Def EXP.
Normal was commonly the best option.
These best options had the problem of making other options pointless/unused.
Melee weapons had additional depth relating to their Stab/Slash/Crush stats.
Mage armour: Worst defense stats against anything (generally). I believe their highest def stat was against mage itself.
Range armour: Best defense against mage. Average against melee and I believe it was weak/average against ranged.
Melee armour: Best defense against melee and ranged. Generally negative against magic.
PvP generally balanced, with some overpowered things regarding high level content.
PvM was melee biased. It was simply no cost over time to use a sword for stuff like slayer, compared to consuming arrows and especially runes.
RS3:
I really need to read up on what it was changed to.
Please correct me (I'm probably remembering wrong).
For equippables:
An atk/def stat.
Armour type (strong/neutral/weak against XYZ class)
Crits for melee/mage/range
Stab/Slash/Crush became enemy weaknesses in PvM or something. I'm not sure how it's different than RS2. Maybe it's not.
Stab/Slash/Crush became independent from Accurate/Aggresive/Controlled/Defensive.
The stats you gain EXP in became independent of both of those as well.
Mage made elemental weakness more apparent, similarly to stab/slash/crush. Air/Water/Earth/Fire.
Or something like that? All I remember is that Jagex added a bunch of weaknesses to monsters for PvM across the world.
They also made ancients elemental and removed some other god spells, until recently.
Not sure how it worked with ranged.
They also introduced dual wield / sword+shield / 2h as a standard for all classes (homogenization).
Dual wield/2H were stated to produce the same DPS during the beta, thus were an aesthetic choice. Sword+Shield was meant to be for tanks.
Looking at some recent threads, I hear that it's become the case that specific abilities have become optimal for certain reasons that introduces an undesireable bias towards them.
Effective stats of weapons are based on the equip requirements, or tier of the item.
I keep hearing that strength was especially hit hard. Enough that some people quoted "removing the skill".
It's kind of hard to sum up what the EoC changes, when it is a work in progress in itself.
Goals of the EoC:
Promote "Combat Triangle"
Balance classes
Remove "Melee Bias" (mostly a PvM issue)
Make combat "less boring/stale"
I personally dislike the homogenization of the classes. E.g. I like being able to achieve an arcane necklace or korasi sword and have it be viable everywhere even when I'm maxed. I liked the differences between classes in RS2.
Example comparison:
RS3 armour all became like RS2's minigame hybrid armour.
Damage rates between classes were made near-identical.
Damage increase primarily comes from tiers of gear instead of skills.
Armour has its own HP attached to it.
Balancing classes lost the old variety inherent to classes.
Seemingly, they're trying to revive/release hybridding stuff.
What I aim to do is all of the following:
1. "Revert" the game to RS2
2. Keep RS3 items, such as level 90 gear that would be OP in RS2
3. Keep RS3 class rebalancing, especially for PvM
4. Address PvP issues from RS2
Stat comparison RS2 vs RS3
Full rune armour:
Full mystic armour:
Full black dhide:
Full bandos:
Full armadyl:
Full Pernix:
Full Torva:
Full Virtus:
Full Battlemage:
Full Trickster:
Full Vanguard:
Dragon scimitar:
Whip: http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/Abyssal_whip
Korasi sword: http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/Korasi%27s_sword
Chaotic maul: http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/Chaotic_maul
Chaotic rapier: http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/Chaotic_Rapier
CHaotic longsword: http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/Chaotic_longsword
Saradomin Sword: http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/Saradomin_Sword
Godsword: http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/Godsword
Barrelchest anchor: http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/Barrelchest_anchor
Magic shortbow:
Magic longbow:
Crossbow:
Mystic staff: http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/Mystic_staves
Staff of light: http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/Staff_of_Light
Ancient staff: http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/Ancient_staff
RS3 items as if they were in RS2:
Adamant longsword: lv.40
Style: slash
Dmg: 490
Acc: 628
Stab: 20
Slash: 29
Strength: 31
Rune longsword: lv.50
Style: Slash
Dmg: 612
Acc: 850
Stab: 38
Slash: 47
Strength: 49
+18
+18
+18
Dragon longsword: lv.60
Style: Slash
Dmg: 735
Acc: 1132
Stab: 58
Slash: 69
Strength: 71
+20
+22
+22
+38
+40
+40
Chaotic longsword: lv.80
Style: Slash
Dmg: 980
Acc: 1924
Stab: 107
Slash: 124
Strength: 120
+49 23 + 26
+55 26 + 29
+49 23 + 26
Drygore longsword: lv.90
Style: Slash
Dmg: 1102
Acc: 2458
Stab: 137
Slash: 154
Strength: 154
+30
+30
+34
HP*(1-(DEF/100))
Suggestions that could just be implemented in Legacy.
Spell costs:......|RS2..................................|RS3.............|
------------------|-------------------------------------|----------------|
Air strike |1 air, 1 mind |1 air...........| This was eventually changed to 1 air for RS2 as well
Water strike |1 air, 1 mind, 1 water |1 air, 1 water
Air surge |7 air, 1 death, 1 blood |5 air
Water surge |7 air, 10 water, 1 death, 1 blood |5 air, 5 water
Fire surge |7 air, 10 fire, 1 death, 1 blood |5 air, 5 fire
Smoke rush |1 air, 1 fire, 2 chaos, 2 death |3 air, 1 death
Smoke barrage |4 air, 4 fire, 2 blood, 4 death |5 air, 2 blood
Blood rush |1 blood, 2 chaos, 2 death |3 fire, 1 death
Blood barrage |4 blood, 4 death |5 fire, 2 blood
Ice rush |2 water, 2 chaos, 2 death |3 water, 1 death
Ice barrage |6 water, 2 blood, 4 death |5 water, 2 blood
Applying this to RS2 would have really highlighted how OP ancients can be due to making them much more common.
Price and the work needed to unlock it are not always an adequate excuse for something to be extremely powerful against other stuff.
So what would have to be done to balance these being more widespread?
????The change to defence and soaking should help.
And for people who like to use special attacks as KO weapons, we can do something like decreasing how much the opponent gets to soak from special attacks.
For example, take the attacker's attack level into the equation.
99ATK+99STR vs 99HP+99DEF
990 HP, soak 33% from dmg >= (990*0.01 + floor(ATKLVL*1.5) = 158)
200+100+50+50=400 | 42+0+0+0 * 0.66 = 28+0+0+0 | 186+100+50+50=386
308+154+87+77=626 | 150+0+0+0 * 0.66 = 99+0+0+0 | 257+154+87+77=575
400+200+100+100=800 | 342+42+0+0 * 0.66 = 226+28+0+0 | 384+186+100+100=770
640+320+160+160=1280 | 482+162+2+2 * 0.66 = 318+107+1+1 | 476+265+159+159=1059
We could also do ATKLVL*2 and it'd be near a 200 minimum like before.
Well the old stats looked like this:
CLS:
-Offense-
Stab: 107
Slash: 124
Crush: -2 (boy do I miss flowers)
Magic: 0
Range: 0
-Defense-
Stab: 0
Slash: 0
Crush: 0
Magic: 0
Range: 0
Summoning: 0
-Soak-
Melee: 0%
Range: 0%
Mage: 0%
-Other-
Prayer: 0
Strength: 120
Ranged Strength: 0
Mage %: 0
I agree EoC does simplify it in a good way, aside from creating completely new stats for everything.
Class: Melee
Style: Slash
Damage: 980
Accuracy: 1924
Armour: 0
Life: 0
Prayer: 0
Crit melee: 0%
Crit range: 0%
Crit mage: 0%
I think I'm going to need to login again to confirm how the new system works, but iirc from beta your class is determined by your most prominent armour... or weapon combo? Or something. Your defense against other classes was based on the combat triangle.
They could do what you just mentioned, and if we're really lucky, scale down numbers anyway lolo.
I'm not sure how true this statement is, but EoC beta made it feel like you can't mix and match without ruining things. I think that's one thing I miss a lot about the old system. You could wear full black dhide but melee in it. Whereas (at least in beta), wearing black dhide made your class ranger or something and wasn't synonymous with your melee weapon. I'm not really sure what it's like now.
RS2:
Melee armour gave no offensive stats and great melee/range def. Melee weapon offense was pretty high anyway.
Mage armour gave mage offensive stats and really weak defense in general.
Range armour gave range offense and average melee and strong mage defense.
RS3 (at time of beta at least):
All armour became something like the RS2 minigame hybrid armour and decided your class. Weak to one other class, neutral to the same class, and effective against the last class. No armour had offensive bonuses.
Or something like that. I'll go look up what the system is like now cause I completely forgot lol.
I suppose if what I remember is correct, I want to remove how EoC does classing. As far as I can tell, I guess this hybrid update in this beta is meant to address that or something.
Back to damage soaking:
Constitution not only increases HP, but also increases a certain amount of damage you can soak.
Defense increases your buffer zone for soaking. At level 1 defence, only hits greater than 99% of your HP will be soaked. At level 99 def, hits greater than 1% get soaked.
I think a max of ~33% soaking is a fair standard.
So you can soak HPLVL/3.
10 HP
1 DEF
100HP, soak 3% from dmg >= 99
50 HP
1 DEF
500 HP, soak 17% from dmg >= (500*0.99 = 495)
500 dmg, 5 dmg gets soaked by 17% (=4.15). Becomes 499 dmg.
50 HP
50 DEF
500 HP, soak 17% from dmg >= (500*0.5 = 250)
Take 100 dmg, 0 is eligible for soaking.
Take 500 dmg, 250 is soaked 17%. 250*0.83=207.5 | Dmg taken = 458
Take 990 dmg, 740*0.83=614.2 | Dmg taken = 864 (you died anyway)
99 HP
99 DEF
990 HP, soak 33% from dmg >= (990*0.01 = 10)
Take 100 dmg, 90 is soaked 33%. 90*0.66=59.4 | Dmg taken = 69
Take 500 dmg, 490*0.66=323.4 | Dmg taken = 333
Take 990 dmg, 980*0.66=646.8 | Dmg taken = 657
And for people who like to use special attacks as KO weapons, we can do something like decreasing how much the opponent gets to soak from special attacks.
For example, take the attacker's attack level into the equation.
99ATK+99STR vs 99HP+99DEF
990 HP, soak 33% from dmg >= (990*0.01 + floor(ATKLVL*1.5) = 158)
200+100+50+50=400 | 42+0+0+0 * 0.66 = 28+0+0+0 | 186+100+50+50=386
308+154+87+77=626 | 150+0+0+0 * 0.66 = 99+0+0+0 | 257+154+87+77=575
400+200+100+100=800 | 342+42+0+0 * 0.66 = 226+28+0+0 | 384+186+100+100=770
640+320+160+160=1280 | 482+162+2+2 * 0.66 = 318+107+1+1 | 476+265+159+159=1059
This achieves the EoC goal of making defense important, but you can still have pures if you want. Of course they'll still be many ways less effective than true mains.
Additionally, you can remove soaking from armor to clean up pre-EoC's stat interface a little.
Ranged would need more special attacks probably.
Magic is already pretty devastating in PvP.
Dunno if it really needs its own form of special attacks when you can use ancients and whatnot.
Eh, there was still combat triangle in RS2. But it came more in the form of hybridding in terms of PvP. You'd be at a disadvantage sticking to one class. That's one of the things bigger things I enjoyed about the old system, now that I think of it. Most of what I was doing before I quit was playing minigames in the hybrid armour and switching either between two or all three styles.
That's one huge thing that this Legacy won't bring back, that actually reverting to the old system with many of EoC's balancing concepts would.
It would have been nice to see an even mix of melee/range/mage/hybrid users in PvP minigames like soul wars, instead of a majority of melee only players and some hybridders. The rune cost reduction from EoC would've probably been enough to do that. People not bridding would be doing so just to play casually and bridders were just try hards. At the very least, revert to the old system and add more negative stats as a way to make bridding less extremely effective, but still allow it to be better than using one style.
And yeah, the triangle pretty much wasn't there in PvM.
[quote id=360-361-745-65348630-63-330871569]
THAT'S WHAT JAGEX DID! Ranged armour for melee give lower accuracy...
You just reinvented the wheel...[/quote]
... Obviously they did that in the EoC. And I just told you that could have been done in RS2.
"copy-paste pre-EoC and then try to squeeze EoC with it"
That's exactly the same as using the old system, with/without specific aspects of the EoC (like abilities).
"The point of soaking is to make it depending on armour not stats..."
You're right that it's an oversight to allow players to soak damage without any armour on.
Solution, make the skill-based soaking only apply with armour on.
Each piece of armour gives you access to a portion of your soaking.
"You don't care about balance, you only care about nostalgia."
Despite clearly offering to throw away many aspects of the old system for the new system. Your argument, on the other hand, is becoming quite emotional.
I care about both. It's definitely possible to balance the old system.
I've already admitted various times to what things I only care about for nostalgia and what things I want to see balanced or retain from the EoC.
"In no other way can pre-EoC be incorporated within EoC if everything gets reverted (including how armour works).
I don't understand what you're saying.
I don't see how it's impossible for Jagex to modify their own game.
"Combat triangle will stay."
I never suggested it should be removed...?
"Legacy is not pre-EoC."
I've not stated otherwise...?
"The point of pures was not to work in all PvP minigames, only Wilderness."
I already alluded to that when I mentioned pure vs pure combat and pure vs evenly leveled low level mains while quoting suggestions to make evenly leveled players better or on par with pures.
"Sadly, you ask for armour to be reduced even further and making it even more easy to pure."
I mentioned in the other thread, to make the soaking thing also armour dependent. Thus armour wouldn't be reduced.
"It isn't a simple fix"
And yet here I came, saying that it's a simple fix to keep the 100-990 HP ratio, keep lv.90 items balanced, perform this balance better than pre-EoC soaking+nex armour, go one step towards defeating the purpose of pures, retain the important of special attacks as KO weapons, etc.
And I gave you the math.
The mechanics behind them are definitely not unknown to Jagex. They can always take a suggestion and try to do something with it themselves.
Not to mention, it was possible to approximate your max hit fairly closely (and thus average damage and dps).
Besides, does it matter if old mechanics are unknown if we're replacing aspects of them?
"Anchoring Defence and Constitution is easily fixed"
And my suggestion also attributes to nearly a 50/50 split in terms of importance.
"How will you achieve that? How will you make sure that a pure and a main of the same combat level can fight and the pure will definitely lose?"
I already have.
Pures:
High offense
No defense, unable to equip good armour, get nearly no soaking
Mains:
Normal leveled stats, gain the soaking benefit that I already anchored between HP/armour
In addition to soaking, fix the relationship between accuracy and defence
This way, pures take full unprotected DPS against mains.
Mains will take reduced max/average damage, and be hit less overall.
E.G. move the standard "main vs pure" = "rock vs jello" to occur at ~40 defence instead of 75+. Or in some way that scales between your atk/def ration. I'll try to come up with numbers to supplement that.
Basically, it would be like dragon darts vs a steel 2H.
Here's a couple of things that can be done to fix the old system for both low defence pure abuse and lv.90 items one hit KOing people.
Old CBF:
X = Highest of 1.5 x Magic || 1.5 x Range || Attack+Strength
CBL = ( 1.3*X + Defence + Constitution + (Prayer/2) + (Summoning/2) ) / 4
New CBF:
X = Highest of Ranged || Magic || (Attack + Strength)/2
CBL = ( 2.6*X + Defence + Constitution + (Prayer/2) + (Summoning/2) ) / 4
Pure:
45hp 60atk 99str 1def pray/sum 1
Combat level: 63
drag scim+dclaws+monk robes
Scim max: 228
Claw spec: 211-105-62-52 (430), 211 no spec
450HP, dmg >= 446 gets soaked for 0% (no armour, thus no 15% soak that would apply to only 4 damage anyway)
vs
Main:
50hp 50atk 50str 50def pray/sum 1
Combat level: 57
rune scim + rune armour.
Scim max: 190
500HP, dmg >= 250 gets soaked for 17%
EXAM:
Max hit: 400
99 Atk/Str/Def
Immediate flaw noticed: the static 1-(DEF/100) definitely needs something else. Probably a relation to attack levels.
Soaking needs to scale more with what kind of damage outputs you can attain at specific combat levels.
Let's say your accuracy is effected like this: ATK-(DEF/1.75) and the levels represent a literal %hitrate.
~Owner/Dev of a modded TF2 server community.
60-33=31% hitrate
50-1=49% hitrate
99-57=42% hitrate (99atk vs 99def)
99-1=98% hitrate (99atk vs 1def)
Just for kicks, let's say we multiply that hitrate by a modifier derived from our attack and defence level.
In other words, knowledge/experience of defence contributes to the ability to get around defence.
1+(atk+def/150) (atk/def from the same player, not my attack vs enemy def)
1+((60+1)/175) = 1.35 *31%=41.85% hitrate
1+((50+50)/175)= 1.57 *49%=76.93% hitrate
1+((99+99)/175)= 2.13 *42%=89.46% hitrate
1+((99+99)/175)= 2.13 *98%= cap at a 95% hitrate or something
Average damage at this point, would be something like (Max/2)*hitrate.
Pure: 47.709
Main: 73.084
EXAM: 190
We could also look into minimum hit.
Min = a certain %age of your max determined by your attack vs enemy def, assuming you hit in the first place.
Make defence effect that minimum hit.
Let's say we go for a minimum of 15%
Min = Max * ((Atk-Def+1)/100) + Atk/1000
Pure:
Scim min: 228 * (((60-50+1)/100) + 0.06) = 228*0.17 = 39
Main:
Scim min: 190 * (((50-1+1)/100) + 0.05) = 190*0.55 = 105
400 * (((99-99+1)/100) + 0.099) = 400*0.109 = 44
This way, allowing your defence gap to be larger gives people a huge advantage over you, while more even players don't have to worry nearly as much and will be more evenly matched.
Let's look at average damage after this:
Pure: 41.85% hit 039-118 | 58.15% miss | 078.5 | Weighted average damage: 33
Main: 76.93% hit 105-190 | 23.07% miss | 147.5 | WAD: 113
EXAM: 95.00% hit 044-400 | 05.00% miss | 222.0 | WAD: 211
33 average vs 500 hp is 15 hits.
113 average vs 450 hp is 4 hits.
211 average vs 450 hp is 2.13 hits.
Note: 45+60+99+1 = 205 | 50+50+50+50 = 200 | They should actually be pretty even in combat given this. It's level 63 vs 57.
Unfortunately, it may seem a little ad-hoc to make defence play a role in your accuracy. I'm still trying to come up with different formulas. You could even skip that defense multiplier and adjust the minimum hit thing to help with that and adjust accuracy another way.
But, in argument for making defense affect accuracy:
At level 10 defence you had little knowledge about how to defend yourself but learned how to block some things.
At level 20 defence you have more knowledge about how to defend yourself, and you now know what kind of things got past your previous level 10 defence.
At level 10 accuracy (atk/range/mage) you're bad at aiming darts, channeling magic, or swinging a sword properly to get a good hit on the opponent.
At level 20 accuracy your proficiency with weapons gets better, but not necessarily your knowledge of the workings of defence.
Similarly, in RS2 your magic level helped increase your defense against magic. The difference may or may not be negligible but you could apply it to all 3 classes.
Though even if you have knowledge of certain attack patterns, it doesn't mean your durability is higher.
So pures don't necessarily need to be made terrible against evenly leveled players.
But there needs to be trade-offs, and we want them to not be in favour of uneven stats.
At the same time, the pure's stat total is still higher than the even leveled player, given this scenario. You could take off 5 HP and make the stats the same but it'd be lvl 62 vs 57.
We also want people who are maxed to hit more often, but not make the two hit KO line too apparent.
How high above your level should someone be, for them to completely demolish you? Like 20 level dif is kinda far and 10 level is kinda close.
"Do you wish to undo the accuracy penalty yes or no?"
I'm not sure what the current accuracy penalty is, but I've been working on a way to solve pures in the old system and it involves an accuracy vs defence thing. I'm still working on the math and alternatives however.
"You should/mistakenly see Legacy as X"
I have not claimed to know exactly what legacy will be like. However, I've already given reasons as to why I believe it will be missing some major portions of the good stuff of pre-EoC.
- Jagex not changing armour to get rid of the class attachment to armour was deliberately made to get rid of hybridding
- Jagex not using the stats that had various stats for/against all 3 sections of the triangle ruins hybridding
- Homogenization of the classes
"Throwing away an EoC concept"
Not everything in this thread is necessarily about improving the EoC, but I was going to look into shield stuff in the EoC to see if there's something that could be utilized from that later. If you have a problem with new/fresh ideas, that's your issue.
Additionally, I was going to look more into the strong/weak/neutral armour thing more because for hybridding to be viable it's mostly important for the offense to work than to have defense that perfectly matches your attack style. We could have a cross between the armour weakness and separate weapon offensive that would be similar to pre-EoC hybrid armour.
Basically just remove the class restriction on damage, and make it so individual armour pieces contribute to their classes's offense differently. What I'm saying here would be pretty much the same as pre-EoC, but you get to keep EoC's stat system.
"old system is gone, Legacy isn't pre-EoC, Jagex will not revert everything back"
I've said many times that I already know this. I have never claimed that they will revert things back. Please read before you reply.
"Start from EoC and make it like pre-EoC"
That's almost the same thing as what I'm doing already.
Reverting to pre-EoC and then adding:
EoC new items
EoC new combat formula
EoC food
EoC changing the relation of atk/hp/def/str/mage (especially def)
Is the same as
Keeping EoC and removing:
Abilities
Class homogenization
Class specific armour
Which way do you want me to word it? Balancing the EoC with those 3 things removed is pretty much the same as pre-EoC with EoC concepts.
Debunking EoC: It's about time Jagex undid or redid EoC.
I'll be frank here, I keep titling these posts as "Debunking the need for EoC", but a lot of what I'm saying is that a lot of the balance changes from EoC actually were okay and Jagex had a good incentive going.
The real problem was that they tried to implement all of the balance changes into one single update. Here I could make over 50 blog posts about different problems and solutions for RS2's game balance, and every single one is something that should be a single update at a time. Or at least a batch of updates.
I'll make it clear, the main things I personally disliked about EoC, the things that make Legacy mode meaningless to me, are the addition of abilities, tierscape, changes to how item stats work, class homogenization, weapon homogenization, monster weakness copy pasting, and loss of Runescape's uniqueness overall.
My desired game is RS3 but with RS2's combat system. Bring back stab/slash/crush as separate stats, and how all of the combat skills used to work. Then work forward from there and rebalance RS2's balance problems with the RS2 combat system. Don't try to make an entirely new combat system and "balance" it from scratch.
Now why do I say Jagex should undo or redo the EoC? #EndOfCombat #EvolutionOfCostumes
Look at Runescape's player count right now.
http://runescape.com: 60,481 Online
http://oldschool.runescape.com: There are currently 31416 people playing!
60,481 - 31,416 OSRS = 29,065 EoC
Here is a snapshot of the number of players in OSRS worlds.
Adds up to...
----
31,496 over 70 worlds. Average 450/2000 players per world.
And RS3's worlds:
----
22,626 over 116 worlds (average ~195/2000 players per world... what happened to that 800 average years ago?). It's 116 instead of 141 because some numbers are skipped in the available world's list, probably for french/german worlds or something.
Those missing worlds might add up to the missing ~7000 from the main page. Though I hear rumors that the main page's count also includes people AFK in lobby, and even the 40-70 people on the forums. Who knows.
I hear RS3 polled about reducing the number of servers and it didn't pass... but with most worlds being more or less than 10% full, it sounds like a ghost town compared to 2011 and earlier. Actually, I looked, and it really is a ghost town. All sorts of places are empty now.
Lumbridge even plays some very desolatemusic ambiance now, ever since whatever that god wars update was that was supposed to reshape Runescape.
----
For the past 4-5 years since the EoC was released in 2011, every year, there are still people asking for 2011scape or to remove the EoC. And Jagex was equally in a rush to try and get people back. There are a lot of players who immediately quit with the release of the EoC, just like me. Some of them also pop back in the Runescape forums from time to time. They were never given their own choice in the whole matter. They're offline now.
2007scapeis starting to get has more players than EoCscape.
2007scape gets all sorts of content suggestions asking to bring back things from 2008-2011 to OSRS. Post-EoC tends to get shot down due to all of the animosity regarding the EoC, enough so that it's prominent that OSRS players don't want to go down the same path as RS3 stuff, but ... well, I'll post more on that later.
Legacy mode. Ah legacy mode. It's a nice reskin, but it doesn't fix any of "tierscape", "stat changes", "existence of abilities", "class homogenization", "weapon homogenization", nor "copy pasted monster weaknesses".
I must say the Runescape Wiki covers its history nicely: Legacy Mode
Take important note of the red table regarding 2012 worlds. We all know Jagex claimed that they don't have a backup of 2011/2012's version of the game. But Jagex said this only days after the EoC was released. Considering how hard Jagex was trying togain acceptance of force the EoC onto us, I wouldn't put it past them to have made a little white lie on that statement.
That red table, quoting Jagex, is saying that they could have made a 2012 world, they just wouldn't have been able to deal with pooling resources into it and it wouldn't be updated and would die, like OSRS almost did.
Almost as important as that, is this: "The option for Legacy Mode won with 81% of the votes".
This many people playing Runescape in 2014 wanted to get as close back to 2011 as they could. Keep in mind that Legacy Mode is played without abilities. This is quite an overwhelming majority.
Also, that's 201,249 players vs 47,777 players.
-----
Runescape is in a unique scenario where a lot of "retired" players, retired because the game they played was practically shut down. They want to come back, but can't. So open up the game again.
I understand though, it takes 1 bad impression to lose a customer and 10 major improvements to get them to even look at you again. Restarting from 2011 is worth 100 major improvements.
------
The real problem was that they tried to implement all of the balance changes into one single update. Here I could make over 50 blog posts about different problems and solutions for RS2's game balance, and every single one is something that should be a single update at a time. Or at least a batch of updates.
I'll make it clear, the main things I personally disliked about EoC, the things that make Legacy mode meaningless to me, are the addition of abilities, tierscape, changes to how item stats work, class homogenization, weapon homogenization, monster weakness copy pasting, and loss of Runescape's uniqueness overall.
My desired game is RS3 but with RS2's combat system. Bring back stab/slash/crush as separate stats, and how all of the combat skills used to work. Then work forward from there and rebalance RS2's balance problems with the RS2 combat system. Don't try to make an entirely new combat system and "balance" it from scratch.
Now why do I say Jagex should undo or redo the EoC? #EndOfCombat #EvolutionOfCostumes
Look at Runescape's player count right now.
http://runescape.com: 60,481 Online
http://oldschool.runescape.com: There are currently 31416 people playing!
60,481 - 31,416 OSRS = 29,065 EoC
Here is a snapshot of the number of players in OSRS worlds.
----
31,496 over 70 worlds. Average 450/2000 players per world.
And RS3's worlds:
22,626 over 116 worlds (average ~195/2000 players per world... what happened to that 800 average years ago?). It's 116 instead of 141 because some numbers are skipped in the available world's list, probably for french/german worlds or something.
Those missing worlds might add up to the missing ~7000 from the main page. Though I hear rumors that the main page's count also includes people AFK in lobby, and even the 40-70 people on the forums. Who knows.
I hear RS3 polled about reducing the number of servers and it didn't pass... but with most worlds being more or less than 10% full, it sounds like a ghost town compared to 2011 and earlier. Actually, I looked, and it really is a ghost town. All sorts of places are empty now.
Lumbridge even plays some very desolate
----
For the past 4-5 years since the EoC was released in 2011, every year, there are still people asking for 2011scape or to remove the EoC. And Jagex was equally in a rush to try and get people back. There are a lot of players who immediately quit with the release of the EoC, just like me. Some of them also pop back in the Runescape forums from time to time. They were never given their own choice in the whole matter. They're offline now.
2007scape
2007scape gets all sorts of content suggestions asking to bring back things from 2008-2011 to OSRS. Post-EoC tends to get shot down due to all of the animosity regarding the EoC, enough so that it's prominent that OSRS players don't want to go down the same path as RS3 stuff, but ... well, I'll post more on that later.
Legacy mode. Ah legacy mode. It's a nice reskin, but it doesn't fix any of "tierscape", "stat changes", "existence of abilities", "class homogenization", "weapon homogenization", nor "copy pasted monster weaknesses".
I must say the Runescape Wiki covers its history nicely: Legacy Mode
Take important note of the red table regarding 2012 worlds. We all know Jagex claimed that they don't have a backup of 2011/2012's version of the game. But Jagex said this only days after the EoC was released. Considering how hard Jagex was trying to
That red table, quoting Jagex, is saying that they could have made a 2012 world, they just wouldn't have been able to deal with pooling resources into it and it wouldn't be updated and would die, like OSRS almost did.
Almost as important as that, is this: "The option for Legacy Mode won with 81% of the votes".
This many people playing Runescape in 2014 wanted to get as close back to 2011 as they could. Keep in mind that Legacy Mode is played without abilities. This is quite an overwhelming majority.
Also, that's 201,249 players vs 47,777 players.
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Jagex has an opportunity to unsplit the playerbase.
adasdf
Do you see what I'm alluding towards here?
There's a good amount of OSRS players that want things from the 2011 years.
The majority of Runescape's online players are playing the game with the old combat system.
Legacy Mode, which has no abilities and brings back 2011's attack animations, hitsplats, and health values, won with an 81% majority vote when polled by players.
That 81% is over 200k players vs around 50k players. Right now, only about 30k players play RS3. This gives us a bit of an implication about how many players want to go back to 2011's state of the game.
That 81% is over 200k players vs around 50k players. Right now, only about 30k players play RS3. This gives us a bit of an implication about how many players want to go back to 2011's state of the game.
The truth is, a majority of players from both games want to go back to 2011.
RS3 players are basically asking for it. Some OSRS players are asking for it, and I think all of them would have the easiest time assimilating back to a 2011scape.
A year ago it was a lot harder for me to suggest this, because the EoC was new and some people liked it. Jagex didn't want shut down EoC's changes for people who liked them. They also wanted to try and make amends towards the mass of players they pretty much did shut down the game for. In any case, I had to think of a RS2-RS3 compromise that was weighted towards EoC lovers.
But as time goes it seems like the EoC is dying more and more.
The truth is, RS2 was truly unique. It didn't need a super dynamic or exciting combat system to be hugely popular and successful.
The EoC's attempt to make that only managed to make my quit the 7+ year concurring membership I had at the time, instantly when the EoC was released. On top of that, it made me finally move on to newer more modern MMORPG.
And playing newer more modern MMORPG with action combat and non grid-based worlds, really made me realize how inferior the EoC is compared to MMORPG. It literally looks like a lame attempt at copying modern MMORPG now that I've actually looked at modern MMORPG.
However, I still miss the Pre-EoC state of Runescape. Despite me moving on to other games, I still wish I could play Runescape along newer games like Blade & Soul or Phantasy Star Online 2.
Infact, I know, if the EoC never happened, I'd now be a 10 year straight veteran member. My main account recently got the 10 year cape near the end of 2015. I would still be playing Runescape alongside recent MMORPG because Runescape 2 is unique.
No other game offers the kind of experience Runescape 2 did. It's a game I can open at the same time as heavier modern 3D games without it being too resource intensive, and I can semi-afk level up in Runescape while playing another game to boot.
On top of that, there are plenty of non-afk things for me to do in Runescape 2 that actually are engaging and fun to play. Quests. PvP. Minigames. Combat in general. Some of the more active types of skilling.
This is what Jagex should be selling. This is what players want from Runescape. This could even bring the community back to together (though yes, there will still be different factions now).
Mod Reach: We can appeal to veteran RS players, both currently engaged and retired, but to re-engage those players can be quite a challenge as their experience has already been exhausted or tainted. Winning back a retired player can be a lot harder than interesting a new player. Going to market as a 'Retro game experience' where we demonstrate our originality, our 'MMO Firsts' and hands on approach to development could be very significant in growing and popularising the game.
Mod Reach: We can appeal to veteran RS players, both currently engaged and retired, but to re-engage those players can be quite a challenge as their experience has already been exhausted or tainted. Winning back a retired player can be a lot harder than interesting a new player. Going to market as a 'Retro game experience' where we demonstrate our originality, our 'MMO Firsts' and hands on approach to development could be very significant in growing and popularising the game.
I understand though, it takes 1 bad impression to lose a customer and 10 major improvements to get them to even look at you again. Restarting from 2011 is worth 100 major improvements.
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Now, people who do like abilities, I don't blame them, and I'm not saying we should get rid of that.
I can compromise for the new RS3 interface, actually, it's a really good thing. I can compromise for the new player models, even though I dislike them. Jagex... could give us an option to give back the 2011 icons for prayer, curses, spells. The pixelated icons were way cooler and more retro.
But there are ways EoC players can compromise the EoC to go back to 2011.
First off, reverting the EoC item stats, reverting tierscape, reverting class homogenization, reverting weapon homogenization, and reverting the "copy pasted monster weaknesses".
All of these are merely changing numbers in the eyes of the player. And I think the 2011 set of numbers has more potential for game design to flourish in. I know it may be a bit of a bigger task for the developers to backtrack, but big mistakes call for big cleanups.
All of these stat/number based reverts can be done while keeping EoC abilities and the adrenaline bar for EoC mode players.
This would be a huge step towards bringing back many of the people who quit in 2011.
I'm saying to revert all armor to how they were on the day before EoC. All weapons. Our combat skills too.
Then rework EoC abilities to work based off of that system instead. EoC would become the "legacy mode" instead of legacy mode being legacy mode. In other words, give 2011ers the main game and give the EoCers the "compensation version of the game".
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I may venture that various EoC abilities could be reworked into new special attacks, or even just a lot of them could be dropped. Just look at my Special Defend suggestion.
Remember how Jagex said they were removing special attacks, but then tried to clean up the player back lash by saying it was moving to abilities? For example, Dragon Claw's Slice n Dice was now going to be an ultimate ability called Flurry that can be used by any claws, or something.
How about we do it the other way around. Remove abilities, and add more unique and interesting/sought after weapons.
Of course, a lot of abilities were just too similar to each other. Also, I might advise against turning the game into "Special Attack Scape", since melee already has tons of special attacks. I'd pick and choose the most unique abilities that would be good for such a thing.
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As time has shown, it seems like Legacy Mode didn't bring everyone back. Jagex needs to take it a step further. Let's look at what Jagex said we "won't have" with Legacy mode:
All of these stat/number based reverts can be done while keeping EoC abilities and the adrenaline bar for EoC mode players.
This would be a huge step towards bringing back many of the people who quit in 2011.
I'm saying to revert all armor to how they were on the day before EoC. All weapons. Our combat skills too.
Then rework EoC abilities to work based off of that system instead. EoC would become the "legacy mode" instead of legacy mode being legacy mode. In other words, give 2011ers the main game and give the EoCers the "compensation version of the game".
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I may venture that various EoC abilities could be reworked into new special attacks, or even just a lot of them could be dropped. Just look at my Special Defend suggestion.
Remember how Jagex said they were removing special attacks, but then tried to clean up the player back lash by saying it was moving to abilities? For example, Dragon Claw's Slice n Dice was now going to be an ultimate ability called Flurry that can be used by any claws, or something.
How about we do it the other way around. Remove abilities, and add more unique and interesting/sought after weapons.
Of course, a lot of abilities were just too similar to each other. Also, I might advise against turning the game into "Special Attack Scape", since melee already has tons of special attacks. I'd pick and choose the most unique abilities that would be good for such a thing.
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As time has shown, it seems like Legacy Mode didn't bring everyone back. Jagex needs to take it a step further. Let's look at what Jagex said we "won't have" with Legacy mode:
- Changes to bosses
- Its own sets of equipment and monster stats
- Changes to how experience is gained
- Action bar/Abilities
Bosses. As mentioned in previous blog posts, EoC bosses don't really require EoC mechanics. They can be done with the RS2 combat system, provided some new items are added to the scene.
Stats for equipment and monsters. Jagex needs to revert this entire thing. The players prefer it. I can come up with so many more interesting combat content suggestions with the old system. Balance the old system, don't replace it.
Because of tierscape there's no point in me trying to suggest a unique special attack weapon or a unique weapon with some passive ability. If it's a level 80 weapon, it's as good as other level 80 weapons in tierscape. There's no point. No uniqueness.
Combat experience: Okay I know it's not just combat experience, I hear complaints about Runescape becoming "too easy" to level up.
I don't think that is inherently bad. Making the grind easier is a good thing. We're wasting less time on repetitive skilling. It wasn't too terrible, aside from a few skills, but things like Runespan are nice because without it, training Runecrafting was just way too ... ugh.
But let's talk about what they did to combat experience.
Pre-EoC: Combat experience was rewarded based on damage dealt to a monster. A percentage of that was automatically given as Consitution exp. Changing attack styles changed how you gained exp.
Dwarf multi-cannons gave ranged exp with no constitution exp.
This was awesome, because I have a high level 9hp combat pure
At one point all of my stats were 9.
I eventually got in to leveling combat. In RS3, my 9hper is currently 88 combat with 60/50/70 Atk/Str/Def, 55 Rng, 52 Prayer, 95 mage, 54 slayer, 56 summoning, and 15 dungeoneering.
But my goal was to some day unlock Ancient Magicks on her... sadly, she is only about 9 constitution exp away from level 10 hp. I couldn't kill that fire demon guy who requires ice arrows. I was even ready with deathtouched darts when they were first released...
I also wanted to equip minigame hybrid armor, which required level 85 combat stats.
.
Post-EoC: When a player defeats a monster, an amount of experience points is awarded according to its life points, combat difficulty and the damage dealt by the player. The experience earned per life point is not constant: generally speaking, monsters with a higher combat level award more experience for the damage dealt.
Players can change which combat skills receive experience via Combat Settings, in the Powers interface. Experience earned with each combat class can be put toward its related skills, or to Defence, or split between them. An extra 33% of all combat experience earned is put into the Constitution skill.
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There wasn't really much of a problem with gaining exp for damage. I think the justification of the change was that the amount of exp you gain for killing a monster varied in a weird way. A level 27 monster with 1000 hp gave more exp than a 60 with 200 hp, or something like that.
This is an example of Jagex trying to look at a problem, and rush a solution, where one was not needed. Fixing what isn't broken. Even worse, is trying to fix what isn't broken, based on your opinion of what is common sense.
I think the real reason for this, was Jagex's attempt tofix copy the formula for attaining drops from killing enemies from other MMORPG.
Pre-EoC: People who did the most damage got the drop. You could also kill steal because of this.
For bosses like the Corporeal Beast and things that could lootshare, drops were split but the person who did the most damage had the best chance at getting the best portion of the drop. I think. I'd really have to look this up. All I know was most damage = drop.
Post-EoC: Whoever hit an enemy first now would flag it and get the drop. Dwarf multi-cannon was fixed to not flag anything.
This actually isn't a terrible change. And the dwarf multicannon change is actually quite good. That thing was terrible in single-way combat and in multi-combat and with kill stealing.
However, it's not that terribly better. Sure you could killsteal with the old system, but the new system still lets you steal the kill before someone else even attacks it. Also, what if you flag many enemies at once? I don't think I heard of anything accounting for that.
I think the older system was better. Combine that with the fix for dwarf multicannon. Cannon damage shouldn't count towards your chance to get the drop, it should just help make kills be faster.
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I think the real reason for this, was Jagex's attempt to
Pre-EoC: People who did the most damage got the drop. You could also kill steal because of this.
For bosses like the Corporeal Beast and things that could lootshare, drops were split but the person who did the most damage had the best chance at getting the best portion of the drop. I think. I'd really have to look this up. All I know was most damage = drop.
Post-EoC: Whoever hit an enemy first now would flag it and get the drop. Dwarf multi-cannon was fixed to not flag anything.
This actually isn't a terrible change. And the dwarf multicannon change is actually quite good. That thing was terrible in single-way combat and in multi-combat and with kill stealing.
However, it's not that terribly better. Sure you could killsteal with the old system, but the new system still lets you steal the kill before someone else even attacks it. Also, what if you flag many enemies at once? I don't think I heard of anything accounting for that.
I think the older system was better. Combine that with the fix for dwarf multicannon. Cannon damage shouldn't count towards your chance to get the drop, it should just help make kills be faster.
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Another example of fixing what wasn't broken, was single way vs multi way combat. EoC made everything multi combat. Jagex's justification was that it, "didn't make sense that some areas were magically single way combat". They even applied this to the wilderness, which was a huge mistake and they actually reverted that one.
Don't try to justify logic in a fantasy game. The actual game design is more important. I remember reading someone mention how you had to learn and strategize around what areas are multi and what areas are single way combat.
And I agree. Multi-way combat zones were scary. Jumping into a dungeon where everything can pile you... remember those scarabite dungeons in the trap filled pyramids over at Menaphos? Way more compelling to have game design tropes like that.
You want a logical justification for some areas being single way combat? Protection of the Runescape gods. The will of Guthix. What have you.
Sunday, February 28, 2016
Debunking EoC: Abilities & "Exciting" Combat
Short post.
EoC is nothing compared to other MMORPG.
With abilities, RS is still capable of afk combat.
With abilities, RS is still a "statue vs statue" type of game.
Abilities are cheap knock-offs of real mmorpg.
Abilities remove what was unique about RS.
Jagex is trying to modernize a 2002 game and compare it to 2012+ games.
Playing Blade & Soul and other action combat games really made me realize this.
Runescape has its silly grid based ability for mages or rangers or something that makes you move back 4-5 squares.
Meanwhile B&S is a free-explore action combat with a full 3D movement backstep.
And all of its cooldown skills seem quite compelling so far, at least on my assassin.
People either like or dislike the RS2 combat system. Actually, I'd venture to say that a lot of people liked it. A lot more than they like the EoC.
People who like it will find it exciting in its own way. I found it exciting in its own way. It's something I would still play if it existed, despite me recently starting Blade & Soul.
You can't see it in the video, but I was so excited that I oopslolwut. Near the end of my Runescape career I was doing the caves with melee in full Penance armor and tribridding the Fight Kiln.
Jad was fun. Fight Kiln was fun. PvM was fun. Minigames were fun. PvP was fun.
Jagex merely wanted to try and rope in the people who were never interested in Runescape in the first place, the people who think Runescape looked boring compared to other MMORPG.
I still miss this gameplay. I know I'm using claws in this vid, but I still liked the combat for years before I had claws and for years before they existed in the first place. I loved turmoil and soul split. It felt like such an accomplishment to have obtained them.
Oh, I also miss the inventory icon and 3D model of those claws. I do agree that they were OP for a level 60 weapon, and have posted a bunch on the OSRS forums about how to rebalance them. Something that may be better for 2011scape, as a lot of OSRS suggestions are.
If I want to play an ability based game... I'll play Blade & Soul. Even playing that continuously gets a little tiring. But Runescape doesn't, it's not a constant effort to spam abilities. I'll always come back to ye olde' Runescape gameplay.
EoC is nothing compared to other MMORPG.
With abilities, RS is still capable of afk combat.
With abilities, RS is still a "statue vs statue" type of game.
Abilities are cheap knock-offs of real mmorpg.
Abilities remove what was unique about RS.
Jagex is trying to modernize a 2002 game and compare it to 2012+ games.
Playing Blade & Soul and other action combat games really made me realize this.
Runescape has its silly grid based ability for mages or rangers or something that makes you move back 4-5 squares.
Meanwhile B&S is a free-explore action combat with a full 3D movement backstep.
And all of its cooldown skills seem quite compelling so far, at least on my assassin.
People either like or dislike the RS2 combat system. Actually, I'd venture to say that a lot of people liked it. A lot more than they like the EoC.
People who like it will find it exciting in its own way. I found it exciting in its own way. It's something I would still play if it existed, despite me recently starting Blade & Soul.
You can't see it in the video, but I was so excited that I oopslolwut. Near the end of my Runescape career I was doing the caves with melee in full Penance armor and tribridding the Fight Kiln.
Jad was fun. Fight Kiln was fun. PvM was fun. Minigames were fun. PvP was fun.
Jagex merely wanted to try and rope in the people who were never interested in Runescape in the first place, the people who think Runescape looked boring compared to other MMORPG.
I still miss this gameplay. I know I'm using claws in this vid, but I still liked the combat for years before I had claws and for years before they existed in the first place. I loved turmoil and soul split. It felt like such an accomplishment to have obtained them.
Oh, I also miss the inventory icon and 3D model of those claws. I do agree that they were OP for a level 60 weapon, and have posted a bunch on the OSRS forums about how to rebalance them. Something that may be better for 2011scape, as a lot of OSRS suggestions are.
At least, if I could. 5 years and I'm still fighting for it from time to time.
Quitting Runescape after the release of EoC not only showed me how inferior the EoC is to modern MMORPG... I appreciate and miss what RS2 used to be even more.
Quitting Runescape after the release of EoC not only showed me how inferior the EoC is to modern MMORPG... I appreciate and miss what RS2 used to be even more.
Debunking EoC: Modern Monetization
Jagex wanted to add more marketing methods to compete with recent MMORPG.
And personally, there's nothing wrong with that. Jagex has been a free to play game for years before many other games started adopting the F2P model.
And all Jagex was trying to do was update their F2P model to be a little more profitable.
This is actually a debunk against players who dislike Jagex's business ventures.
This is actually a debunk against players who dislike Jagex's business ventures.
If you think about it, a $5-10 per month subscription limits the amount of money Jagex can make from each player to just that.
Adding microtransactions is as healthy for the game as it is for Jagex. It doesn't really harm people that don't buy from it. And people who do buy, it's their choice.
Back when Jagex was worrying about opening the road to more "modern" business with microtransactions and whatnot...
I never really had a thing against it. I only had problems with how it was done, how it was being presented to players, etc. There was clearly a problem considering all the player backlash.
Squeal of Fortune: So many people hated it. Jagex tried to act as if we liked it because people use it, but that's just because it was free items. Even people who hate it would still use it for free items.
Why did people hate it? I'm not entirely sure. I think the biggest reason was for buyable exp. I don't think that was really fair either.
But increasing ways for Jagex to do business is important.
Pre-2011 all Jagex had was membership subscription.
A lot of recent F2P models are based on microtransactions just like Solomon's Store. It gives a company a way to chase "whales", or players who are willing to spend large amounts of money on a game.
There's no problem with that really, companies need to flourish. RS already had one of the best F2P models for years, but once you spend $5-10 a month, there's nothing else to spend on. Jagex saw that room for improvement.
After looking at other MMORPG, I'm seeing many western players dislike the notion of "RNG Rewards", especially cash related, terming it as a "Cash grab" tactic. This may explain another reason many people protested the Squeal of Fortune.
Also note, I have no idea what Treasure Hunter is like now.
Personally, I would've liked SoF if the possible exp lamps you could get were extremely negligible compared to what people were doing with buying 99 stats in multiple skills. They either have to be negligible, or limited as to how many lamps you get.
Otherwise getting random free items, with a rare chance for crazy rares like Lucky items, is quite tempting on its own. I'm fine with that.
I don't know what all Solomon's store has right now, but the fact that they have a store, is good.
Microtransactions aren't wrong in themselves. What's available inside of them is what can be considered good or bad.
For example, some eastern MMORPG have cash shops that let you buy weapons exclusive to the cash shop. Even games with PvP. I don't know about eastern marketing, but westerners HATE Pay 2 Win. You don't want to introduce marketing that makes you look like you don't care about the game at all.
The huge exp available from SoF was an example of this, while not a pay to win thing and more pay to advance (faster), it was hugely looked down upon by the community.
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Back in 2011 I was going to suggest alternative microtransaction ideas, saying that all RS needed to do, was offer its players special outfits, animations, particle effects, only available in cash shop.
Actually, that's what they're doing. Good on them.
However I dislike some of the cosmetics they added, a bit too non-Runescapey. I also kinda disliked the EoC player model/animations from the start. Bad on them.
Also, the loyalty membership auras, that was awesome. It really felt great having 7 year concurrent membership and really motivated me never to drop my membership, even though I already had it running since like 2005 or something.
EoC made my cancel my membership instantly when it was released though. There goes my $5 subscription cost. I wonder if anyone still even has that.
I think RS players weren't open to micros because for years Jagex operated without it. But a lot of F2P models actually use it now.
Here's some videos from ExtraCreditz on this topic:
Without you having to look at the vids, I'll tell you that these all point out things that Jagex is doing the right way.
Without you having to look at the vids, I'll tell you that these all point out things that Jagex is doing the right way.
I think Jagex is doing a good job of avoiding many of the problems with F2P models that ExtraCreditz talk about.
So far premium in Runescape is one of the most worthwhile buys in any multiplayer game I've ever seen. This is the only game I would ever consider buying a monthly fee. At least RS2 was.
Jagex does great that way.
Bonds are also okay in that way, as it (supposedly) dampers gold sellers, gets Jagex more money, and gives players more ways to get free members.
I'll go look at the current day Solomon store.
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From the start I disliked having reskinnable weapons, but now I think I realize that's more because I dislike the new player models. For PvM it's just fine. For PvP, you can't really use them.
I really dislike the new model for claws.
Weapon reskins: Good idea.
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Heroic crit / hitsplay reskin / interface reskin: Good.
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Animations/Emotes: Good, though I dislike how some animations look as being too non-runescapey last I remember. Maybe more of me not liking the EoC playermodels.
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Equipment: Seem okay. Nothing here is like some special kind of food, weapon, exp lamp, etc. It's all misc stuff that's fun to buy.
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Titles: Good.
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Services: All good. Especially that action bar monetization. Too bad I don't play anymore.
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Hairstyles/Pets: Good
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Auras: This is the only part where you can start to question them, because I do remember there being auras that give small bonuses like vampire/prayer bonuses.
But from what I recall, it was only for 1 hour, and couldn't be used in risk PvP. I think it was useable in PvP minigames though, but really, the bonuses were so small, it was pretty much very negligible.
Personally, one of the things they could've improved was to make those Wing auras able to be worn and activated without the stat bonus, so you can have the cosmetic wings equipped for more than an hour.
It passes.
Also, I wish they'd base the new player model more on the 2011 version. That weird dwarf face... the wierd hands... the weird animations. Etc.
Also, I wish they'd base the new player model more on the 2011 version. That weird dwarf face... the wierd hands... the weird animations. Etc.
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I think the playerbase itself just needs to be more complacent with business that doesn't really harm people who don't spend on it.
Jagex already has a much better F2P model than many other games, it's even doing microtransactions better. (Dunno what to say about spin2win tho).
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I'll go look at what Treasure Hunter is like some day. I guess it's the replacement for Squeal of Fortune? idk.
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Now let's go compare Runescape to other mmorpg.
Let's look at Runescape's $5/200 Runecoins (RC). Technically buying in bulk is cheaper, as $20/900 RC comes out to $5/225 RC. We'll go with $5/200 which is $0.02.5/rc.
You can buy a pack containing a full outfit, multiple emotes, a few animation reskins, weapon reskins, and other things for 459 RC - 720 RC - 1620 RC.
In other words, $11.48 - $18 - $40.5 if you buy RC in the most inefficient way. Members also get a 10% discount, and we'll assume most RS players are interested in being a member.
Weapon reskins have prices between 120-160 RC, so less than $5.
In the mean time, let's look at Blade & Soul NA's Hongmoon Store, which uses NCoins.
400NC/$5 and 1600NC/$20. Okay, no 'buy in bulk' I guess. $0.01.25/NC
Outfits: General a shirt+pants in one, sometimes comes with a hat an another "adornment".
Prices range from 1000-1400 or so. $12.5 - $17.5 for just a shirt+pants. We also recently saw an outfit bundled with a hat and some cheap in-game items/resources for 1999, or $25.
Comparatively, I like some of BnS's outfits a lot. It was annoying that the $25 bundle's only worthwhile part of the buy was the outfit and the rest was useless.
Runescape's bundles are fine to me, aside from my dislike of the EoC player model in general. They really pack a lot of stuff into it.
Anyway, BnS weapon reskins. Generally around 960NC or $12. Quite a bit more pricey than RS, not to mention there isn't an existing weapon reskin right now that I think looks good. Technically, I haven't seen one for RS that I like either. But it may be because of my dislike for the new player models.
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Despite games like BnS or PSO2 or BDO or TF2 with better graphics, better combat systems, different communities, these are all things I'd play alongside RS2 because it's still unique and different.
And while I would rotate out of the similar BnS/PSO2/BDO/TF2 games, RS2 keeps me here because it's vastly richer in content and having more things to do. It's the bigger and better game.
At least, if the base game weren't thrown out. Now that the combat isn't enjoyable, engaging in all of that rich content isn't worthwhile of the "chore" combat is now.
As a side note I never played WoW cause of its pay 2 play and never will at this point.
Jagex has both done really bad things to its community, yet is also one of the best companies in terms of how it deals with community.
That is one of the only reasons I am still here today hoping to appeal to them, because I know they are one of the only companies that will listen to the player's problems.
RS2 was their real competition in the MMORPG market. Not trying to copy other games.
The EoC is backfiring on them, as a recent Reddit poll indicates.
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Now let's look at another shard of this topic:
Bringing in new players. Allocation of Jagex's resources (time and dev teams) towards contents that is worth developing.
I'll elaborate on this later, but I'm just going to point at that Jagex's excuse that they need to spend development time and resources on updates was used during the EoC to help them fight and resist the players who didn't want the EoC in the first place.
After it was released, it was their excuse not to immediately revert, and I think their business venture went down a very bad path compared to what could have happened.
Edit: So I've looked at some stuff.
180k people voted in the 2014 poll to bring Legacy to RS. The 250k comes from the RSWiki, but Runescape's official archive of the poll shows a total of 182,432 votes. I dunno where that disparity is from, but it doesn't change much about my message.
100k people voted in the latest poll in 2016 as archived on the Runescape website.
85k people voted in a 2014 poll directly above the Legacy poll.
Considering that, people who think old players won't jump back into the game, don't have a strong argument.
Being able to more than double their current playerbase is definitely a worthwhile business venture if done right.
The EoC didn't need to happen. This could have been applied to RS2.
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Now let's go compare Runescape to other mmorpg.
Let's look at Runescape's $5/200 Runecoins (RC). Technically buying in bulk is cheaper, as $20/900 RC comes out to $5/225 RC. We'll go with $5/200 which is $0.02.5/rc.
You can buy a pack containing a full outfit, multiple emotes, a few animation reskins, weapon reskins, and other things for 459 RC - 720 RC - 1620 RC.
In other words, $11.48 - $18 - $40.5 if you buy RC in the most inefficient way. Members also get a 10% discount, and we'll assume most RS players are interested in being a member.
Weapon reskins have prices between 120-160 RC, so less than $5.
In the mean time, let's look at Blade & Soul NA's Hongmoon Store, which uses NCoins.
400NC/$5 and 1600NC/$20. Okay, no 'buy in bulk' I guess. $0.01.25/NC
Outfits: General a shirt+pants in one, sometimes comes with a hat an another "adornment".
Prices range from 1000-1400 or so. $12.5 - $17.5 for just a shirt+pants. We also recently saw an outfit bundled with a hat and some cheap in-game items/resources for 1999, or $25.
Comparatively, I like some of BnS's outfits a lot. It was annoying that the $25 bundle's only worthwhile part of the buy was the outfit and the rest was useless.
Runescape's bundles are fine to me, aside from my dislike of the EoC player model in general. They really pack a lot of stuff into it.
Anyway, BnS weapon reskins. Generally around 960NC or $12. Quite a bit more pricey than RS, not to mention there isn't an existing weapon reskin right now that I think looks good. Technically, I haven't seen one for RS that I like either. But it may be because of my dislike for the new player models.
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Despite games like BnS or PSO2 or BDO or TF2 with better graphics, better combat systems, different communities, these are all things I'd play alongside RS2 because it's still unique and different.
And while I would rotate out of the similar BnS/PSO2/BDO/TF2 games, RS2 keeps me here because it's vastly richer in content and having more things to do. It's the bigger and better game.
At least, if the base game weren't thrown out. Now that the combat isn't enjoyable, engaging in all of that rich content isn't worthwhile of the "chore" combat is now.
As a side note I never played WoW cause of its pay 2 play and never will at this point.
Jagex has both done really bad things to its community, yet is also one of the best companies in terms of how it deals with community.
That is one of the only reasons I am still here today hoping to appeal to them, because I know they are one of the only companies that will listen to the player's problems.
RS2 was their real competition in the MMORPG market. Not trying to copy other games.
The EoC is backfiring on them, as a recent Reddit poll indicates.
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Now let's look at another shard of this topic:
Bringing in new players. Allocation of Jagex's resources (time and dev teams) towards contents that is worth developing.
I'll elaborate on this later, but I'm just going to point at that Jagex's excuse that they need to spend development time and resources on updates was used during the EoC to help them fight and resist the players who didn't want the EoC in the first place.
After it was released, it was their excuse not to immediately revert, and I think their business venture went down a very bad path compared to what could have happened.
Edit: So I've looked at some stuff.
180k people voted in the 2014 poll to bring Legacy to RS. The 250k comes from the RSWiki, but Runescape's official archive of the poll shows a total of 182,432 votes. I dunno where that disparity is from, but it doesn't change much about my message.
100k people voted in the latest poll in 2016 as archived on the Runescape website.
85k people voted in a 2014 poll directly above the Legacy poll.
Considering that, people who think old players won't jump back into the game, don't have a strong argument.
Being able to more than double their current playerbase is definitely a worthwhile business venture if done right.
The EoC didn't need to happen. This could have been applied to RS2.
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