Debunking the need for Runescape's Evolution of Combat: Index

I've determined that, considering the amount of content and complexity and sheer number of balance issues and changes between RS2 and RS3, I'm going to need multiple posts to vent out all of the stuff I've thought of.

I'll start by making an index of problems that Jagex was trying to solve about 2011's game balance and the state of the game in terms of whether or not combat was exciting enough or not.

Pre-EoC Balance Problems:

(Some of these might not have actually been problems.)

• Players didn't have the survivability to deal with the power creep of level 80+ weapons and special attacks. Melee could OHKO max HP players. At lower levels, you could one hit people with 600-700 HP. DPS was getting too high. People were becoming able to deal too much damage too fast and it was overpowered. Burst damage was OP. See: Special Defend Shields

• Chaotic rapier had way too high DPS. Storm of Armadyl was OP DPS. X had OP DPS. See: Special Defend Shields

• Releasing level 90 gear would be way too strong in 2011 combat. (For PvP). See: Special Defend Shields

• Mage costed too much for general use.

• Ice Burst/Barrage + Soul Split was overpowered tank/healing.

• Mage on its own was weak against melee's stronger weapons.

• Range lacked special attack gear, and was locked into being the Rune Crossbow class.

• 100% Protection prayers were overpowered and limited creativity with boss design and dungeons.

• Jagex felt that with the old system, you couldn't make things like the newest EoC bosses.

• Some content was trivial if you were high leveled.

• Some items were more or less unused, such as daggers, warhammers, maces, shortswords, longswords. Jagex wanted to encourage more of a variety of equipment.

• The combat triangle was biased towards melee. Instead, we had a combat dot. See: Special Defend Shields

• Jagex worried about the combat system needing to be "more fun" and more interactive, compared to "AFK combat". See: Special Defend Shields

• Combat needed to be more skill based than a numbers game. See: Special Defend Shields

• Interface switching based combat, animation stall rushing, rushing in general, were looked down upon by Jagex.

• Melee damage comes from the weapon and can be used with any armor, whereas rangers/magers needed to use their on-class armor for better damage/accuracy. Not as bad for rangers, but quite prominent for mages.

• Multi-combat kill stealing and dwarf cannons.

• Low levels were using higher level food. Why use lower level food at all?

• Jagex wanted to add more marketing methods to compete with recent MMORPG.

• High level PvP hitting two many zeroes. See: Special Defend Shields

• High level PvP having matches that were too fast / near instant deaths. Yes, these are both separate complaints players had. We'll have to analyze why. See: Special Defend Shields

• Attack and Strength were both melee stats, whereas Mage/Range have one stat.

• Seemingly low level players were able to demolish higher level players if they were leveled up a certain way. See: Special Defend Shields

• Unbalanced stat players were dominating people with balanced stats + defense. See: Special Defend Shields

• Things like dragon claws are overpowered. A special attack as strong as a level 75 weapon is on a level 60 weapon. All other dragon weapons pale in comparison. See: Special Defend Shields

Problems introduced by the EoC:

(Some of these might not have actually been problems.)

• Tierscape

• Homogenized combat triangle

• Homogenized weapons

• Loss of weapon uniquity (DClaw, Godsword, Korasi, Voids, Helm of Neitz, Excalibur).

• The game used to be overly centric around melee. Melee was free and universal in usage. Melee was strong. This is not a combat triangle, but a combat dot. Jagex wanted to fix this by making mage and range more viable and changing the balance between classes. In other words, each class was made into the same DPS. Mage/Range got tons of new armour to make armour choices nearly as versatile as melee. Mage armour became effective against melee.

• PvP is dead.

• I don't know if it's been fixed yet, but PvM cross the world and especially in dunge became unbalanced.

• A large portion of the old community left.

• Community was divided.

• Dislike of the ability system

• Dislike of new graphics, icons, and interface

• Dislike of new marketing methods.

By the way, the only one I consider not a problem, are new graphics/icons/interface/marketing.