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 desolate music 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.

2007scape is 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 to gain 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.

-----

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.

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.

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.

------

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".

-----

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.

-----

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

This is now a list of what Jagex should do.

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.

------

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 to fix 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.

-----

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.