One of the problems in RS2 was that if level 90 weapons were added to the game, they would end up being way too powerful in PvP. Level 80 chaotics were already hitting constant 400s.
While the Wilderness had self-moderation in which people just run if you use "cheap tactics", balance in the wilderness could have been improved.
What I thought of was having an equipment wilderness level restriction. In other words, at level 1 wilderness, you can only use level 50 armor (runite) and level 75 of lower weapons (most of what you saw in Edgeville was around there).
At level 10 wilderness, you could use level 60 armor and level 77 weapons. In other words, the wilderness level adds to the level of armor you can use and 1/4th of the wilderness level adds to the weapon requirement (rounded down). Spells may or may not be subject to this too.
At level 50 wildy you'd be able to use level 99 armor and 87 weapons. At 60 wildy you'd see level 90s. Anything above that would be deemed too powerful everywhere. Actually, I don't think the Wildy goes up to 60, so the number may need to be adjusted a little bit, like 0.3 instead.
This is of course, a very awkward solution that could cost inventory space if you are required to unequip things, which I am against doing. I would merely mark the items as ineffective and act like their stats are 0 until the correct level is reached.
It may be possible to prevent entering the Wildy at all if your equipment is too strong, requiring you to jump levels by going through canoes, using a game's necklace teleport, or entering through Ardougne's wilderness lever.
On top of that, we could make it to where only a vertical strip of the Wilderness has these rules applied, possibly north of East Varrok.
This keeps an area in which the usual wilderness balance is enforced, despite additions of new and powerful level 90 gear. In RS2, it's entirely possible for people levels lower than you to get kills off you if they're built a certain way, and this might highlight that.
Already in EoC I see people complain about how level 90 weapons destroy people too fast, and level 90 armor makes you too invincible. No matter how you introduce new items in any system, powerful weapons are going to destroy the runite everyone usually PKs with.
This also does push people using bandos armor or similar a little further back into the wilderness, which I think might not be the best thing, but if the unrestricted strip of wilderness is still there, it should still be fine. It could also be world based.
----
In PvP minigames where you can go all-out on gear, power creep didn't seem to be too bad of a problem, because you can go all-out on gear. The addition of minigame hybrid armor also greatly leveled the playing field in my eyes, because it gave anyone good armor for free.
Of course, the more power creep, the more the gap there would be between high level players and low level, but hopefully other stuff can help to mitigate that, such as adequate defense creep.
Sunday, March 13, 2016
Friday, March 11, 2016
Debunking EoC: Range's lack of unique gear
Between melee with all these cool special attack weapons and mage with all their unique spells, ranged always seemed a bit... lacking.
And actually, this is one of the things about Runescape that I seem to be the lowest on for creativity.
However, I have seen some interesting ideas from other people.
One example is making bolts able to affix any gem tip from their level to the lowest level.
In other words, instead of Runite bolts being able to have Diamond, Dragonstone, or Onyx, Runite would have access to anything from Opal to Onyx. Mithril bolts would have access to anything from Opal to mithril.
http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/Enchanted_bolts
Personally, I would've gone for Opal Rune Bolts (E). Lucky Lightning had a cool graphical effect, sound effect, and the effect hit for 10% more damage.
And I'd totally get Pearl Runite Bolts for Fight Kiln.
Some people might like to use Smite in conjunction with Saphire Runite Bolts, which have a chance to leech prayer points.
Of course, Enchant Bolt may need to be edited to be based on the metal of the bolt instead of the gem.
Truthfully, making use of these already existing effects already adds a lot of fun and unique options for rangers.
----
One thing I would've been interested in seeing was a dragon thrownaxe, and then having the rune thrownaxe special attack moved to the dragon version, and then making the special attack cost 1% or 5% special attack instead of 10-20% or whatever it had. But then make it cost 50% and triple-hit a target if it's a single-way combat zone.
I personally think they could've stood to make throwing knives more obtainable, because those were one of the most fun ranged weapons to use, yet the most expensive. The fact that Vanstrom's fight made them worthwhile to use and fairly easy to get a good number of, was a lot of fun.
Actually, that toxic blowdart in OSRS sounds and looks like quite an interesting weapon.
----
Other than that, I guess I'd say rangers just needed more gear to fit their gaps, which is another one of the good ideas that the EoC did wrong. Things like putting a focus sight on your longbow were cool, albeit didn't make much of a difference in your weapon choice.
----
I'd love to hear other's ideas on giving ranged more interesting options.
And actually, this is one of the things about Runescape that I seem to be the lowest on for creativity.
However, I have seen some interesting ideas from other people.
One example is making bolts able to affix any gem tip from their level to the lowest level.
In other words, instead of Runite bolts being able to have Diamond, Dragonstone, or Onyx, Runite would have access to anything from Opal to Onyx. Mithril bolts would have access to anything from Opal to mithril.
http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/Enchanted_bolts
Personally, I would've gone for Opal Rune Bolts (E). Lucky Lightning had a cool graphical effect, sound effect, and the effect hit for 10% more damage.
And I'd totally get Pearl Runite Bolts for Fight Kiln.
Some people might like to use Smite in conjunction with Saphire Runite Bolts, which have a chance to leech prayer points.
Of course, Enchant Bolt may need to be edited to be based on the metal of the bolt instead of the gem.
Truthfully, making use of these already existing effects already adds a lot of fun and unique options for rangers.
----
One thing I would've been interested in seeing was a dragon thrownaxe, and then having the rune thrownaxe special attack moved to the dragon version, and then making the special attack cost 1% or 5% special attack instead of 10-20% or whatever it had. But then make it cost 50% and triple-hit a target if it's a single-way combat zone.
I personally think they could've stood to make throwing knives more obtainable, because those were one of the most fun ranged weapons to use, yet the most expensive. The fact that Vanstrom's fight made them worthwhile to use and fairly easy to get a good number of, was a lot of fun.
Actually, that toxic blowdart in OSRS sounds and looks like quite an interesting weapon.
----
Other than that, I guess I'd say rangers just needed more gear to fit their gaps, which is another one of the good ideas that the EoC did wrong. Things like putting a focus sight on your longbow were cool, albeit didn't make much of a difference in your weapon choice.
----
I'd love to hear other's ideas on giving ranged more interesting options.
Debunking EoC: Being Maxed Trivialized Content
One of the concerns I heard from 'someone' during the EoC betas, was that if you were a high level or maxed player, certain content became trivial or too easy.
That's simple to address. First of all, they higher leveled you are, the more convenient everything should be for you. That's fairly normal.
But back in 2011, Runescape didn't have a lot of things that actually pushed the limits of what players could do. Corporeal Beast and Nex were meant to be unsoloable, but eventually people were finding ways to do that to both.
The solution to the game becoming easier as you max out, is to accept what has become easy and for Jagex to release things that are actually difficult or balanced around a maxed level player with powerful gear.
Actually, I think RS3 tries to do this with EoC bosses nowadays. Things like Fight Kiln were sort of reaching that point, but you could still do that a couple 30-40 levels below being maxed.
The thing is, at least as soon as EoC came out, EoC hugely trivialized all of the PvM in the game. Suddenly all PvM became super easy. I actually theorized that that is part of why some people decided to upvote EoC in surveys, since they could now kill every monster in the game that wasn't really adjusted for EoC combat - which was the entire game.
Infact, I remember them releasing it while not bothering to adjust even the health of monsters in Dungeoneering, so you were pretty much doing 10x damage. Jagex just said they'd fix it later.
Dungeoneering though, was like a master piece for RS2 combat and skilling. Don't get me wrong, doing more than one Dunge for me got extremely tiring because of the effort involved, and I'm the type of player who did Barbarian Assault for full Penance and the Master Trident, and who did Pest Control for full elite voids + deflector + void knight mace. I was a minigame fanatic.
But the way Dunges always worked out... you really had to use all the resources you could get. No matter what your party structure was, apparently the Dunge was designed to fit whatever skill levels you all had.
Most importantly, you really had to scrounge for food, armor, and weapons for the boss, you really had to try for the boss, and you could really really feel it. I mean, really feel the difference in how difficult the boss is based on how well you raided the dungeon or how badly you lazed out on raiding.
It was like the epitome of doing everything you can with everything the game had to offer. Heck, even your choice between stab/slash/crush was very important.
That's simple to address. First of all, they higher leveled you are, the more convenient everything should be for you. That's fairly normal.
But back in 2011, Runescape didn't have a lot of things that actually pushed the limits of what players could do. Corporeal Beast and Nex were meant to be unsoloable, but eventually people were finding ways to do that to both.
The solution to the game becoming easier as you max out, is to accept what has become easy and for Jagex to release things that are actually difficult or balanced around a maxed level player with powerful gear.
Actually, I think RS3 tries to do this with EoC bosses nowadays. Things like Fight Kiln were sort of reaching that point, but you could still do that a couple 30-40 levels below being maxed.
The thing is, at least as soon as EoC came out, EoC hugely trivialized all of the PvM in the game. Suddenly all PvM became super easy. I actually theorized that that is part of why some people decided to upvote EoC in surveys, since they could now kill every monster in the game that wasn't really adjusted for EoC combat - which was the entire game.
Infact, I remember them releasing it while not bothering to adjust even the health of monsters in Dungeoneering, so you were pretty much doing 10x damage. Jagex just said they'd fix it later.
Dungeoneering though, was like a master piece for RS2 combat and skilling. Don't get me wrong, doing more than one Dunge for me got extremely tiring because of the effort involved, and I'm the type of player who did Barbarian Assault for full Penance and the Master Trident, and who did Pest Control for full elite voids + deflector + void knight mace. I was a minigame fanatic.
But the way Dunges always worked out... you really had to use all the resources you could get. No matter what your party structure was, apparently the Dunge was designed to fit whatever skill levels you all had.
Most importantly, you really had to scrounge for food, armor, and weapons for the boss, you really had to try for the boss, and you could really really feel it. I mean, really feel the difference in how difficult the boss is based on how well you raided the dungeon or how badly you lazed out on raiding.
It was like the epitome of doing everything you can with everything the game had to offer. Heck, even your choice between stab/slash/crush was very important.
Monday, March 7, 2016
Debunking EoC: Innovative Boss Design: Protection Prayers
Ah the 100% protection prayers.
With the EoC, Jagex removed them after claiming them as being overpowered.
To an extent, you could view it that way. You could turn off damage from one point of the combat triangle. You could devalue food. It over centralized prayer pots and similar.
Actually, they're kind of inconsistent with that. From the RSWiki:
But anyway, the thing is, 100% protection is something that nobody ever complained about for 10 years. It's something Jagex only brought up.
Now, as a game developer, I know, it's a good thing to actually notice things like this and seek to change it.
Jagex's problem with it is that it limited what they could do with boss design in the future.
They would have to keep creating bosses that switch attack styles if you pray, or are an exception and can bypass it for no real raisin.
Technically, it's also a problem for dungeon design. It'd be silly if every dungeon were like those Locust Priest dungeons under Sophenam.
That's something I agree with having fixed. Even though players are used to it and are pretty much just fine with it.
However, it's also not entirely necessary to be fixed. OSRS has gotten new bosses and they're still as deadly and unique as ever with 100% protects.
So I've thought of a viable in-between.
You know how protect prayers only have 40% protection against other players?
Make protect prayers have 100% protection against weak/normal enemies and only 40% protection against bosses.
Weak/normal enemies could either be defined as any non-boss enemy, or it could be based on your combat level (since plenty of enemies are above max combat level anyway).
This gives Jagex the room they need for better boss design, but also keeps 100% protection prayers in a way that is a bit easier for people to get their feet wet with.
The good part is, this can be defended easier by making it part of the lore. Saradomin can offer protection for you, but it is limited against other players and very powerful enemies.
If a normal enemy is more powerful (higher level or perhaps multiple levels above) than you, your prayer is ineffective because you yourself are weak.
On top of that, we could say that extra powerful attacks flat-out ignore prayer, much easier with that backstory.
Jad is tricky though. It's true that he's based on 100% protection prayers. Protect prayers actually only affect the chance of the enemy hitting you, not how much damage they deal.
I think a neat solution to Jad would be to make the prayers reduce 40% of his damage, turning the 990 instant kill to at most a hit for 594.
Now you actually have to use some food/healing on him on top of the old fight. It's a bit of an inconvenience and makes him all the more scarier, but it encourages gearing up against him instead of fighting him with red flowers.
In RS2, who or what could hit through protection prayers was pretty inconsistently defined. This would help with that.
Whether or not protect prayers would 'always' reduce damage in PvM, I dunno. They could do that I suppose. I'd be against it myself. I mean, it could also be an "only Jad" thing, in which case it may be considerable to make it 100% only on Jad too.
Making one exception in game design like this is perfectly okay if the players enjoy it and prefer it that way.
Jad could be defended through lore by giving him a backstory where Jad creatures aren't in tune with your human prayers or something, who knows. Maybe it could relate to Elder Gods.
----
The next part of this is to consider the impact of keeping 100% protect prayers everywhere else.
Before EoC, I was able to use protect melee for something like slayer, even if I were prayer flashing, for a limited time before I had to go back to eating sharks.
So in reality, it was a useful tool for prolonguing trips and after it ran out, I still had to use my food.
I was at around 119 combat before the EoC, and I hear higher level players could do slayer trips in one go with maybe a prayer pot or two.
That too, is a good thing, for higher level players to be having a more convenient time doing some things.
In many cases, prayer pots were always more expensive than food, so it was best to use prayer while it's free and then eat until you're almost dead. At least around my level. In some cases at lower levels, you might've considered going full prayer.
Prayer only really devalued food in situations where you really want to camp an area for hours or something. But I don't think that's such a terrible notion.
In many situations, sometimes good armor already made you tanky enough to replace prayer on normal enemies, which was a good thing because at some point you should be taking minimal damage from stuff way weaker than you.
In which case having 100% protect isn't much of a problem, as you could almost 100% tank it anyway. It becomes a convenience.
In some situations, you could Soul Split and end up with more health than you lost. Generally it was only if you were already tanky enough on your own. But in those situations, Soul Split would be considered more "overpowered" than 100% protection. While preventing damage keeps you at the same health, it cannot result in more health like Soul Split could.
Though, aside from combining Soul Split with AoE spells, I thought the 20% heal was very well balanced. And I've already posted about Ancients + Soul Split and how it could've been balanced.
All in all, it would've been nice to see it done this way instead of arbitrarily lowering it to 50% in all PvM situations.
Plus, this way, Jagex could've easily gotten away with 40% vs bosses instead of 50%, giving them a little more room to utilize other defensive concepts.
----
I might add, that Jagex having thrown 50% onto the protect prayers just seemed lazy. They only did it to nerf prayer but didn't put much thought behind it besides trying to figure out if it should be 25% or 50% or 75%.
From a game design perspective it just feels like they're ignoring lore and slapping on numbers without much foresight.
When I try to balance weapons on my Versus Saxton Hale server, to the best of my ability, I try to make buffs/nerfs actually relate to the original stats of the weapon or what the weapon looks like or is mean to do, or related it to the class at least.
I choose 40% for powerful enemies because it makes sense as something a lot of people are already used to in PvP, and it achieves the design goals that Jagex wants, and it doesn't completely get rid of 100% protect like players wanted.
It's an essentially more "outside of the box" way of "meeting in the middle" compared to just setting it to 50% for everything.
----
Another question about Protection Prayer balance is the fact that by level 43 (fairly low) you get 100% protection prayers.
Well, that kind of thing is why I suggested combat level related balancing, where enemies with higher combat levels hit through it.
However, we also have to consider how much that effects other things, like higher level content. For Fight Caves, how would you fight those level 256 or so giant mage enemies?
They're quite accurate and hit constant 400's. And you fight waves of them.
For that reason, I'd rather allow a level 40 to run around with protect melee in monk robes. It's honestly kinda badass where you can decide to use prayer armor + protect prayer to fight enemies. It adds to the lore and feel of the game. Even those 1def monk robe pures do.
Plus when dungeons come along where you have to use protection prayer to survive... you're already negating one form of combat yet the area is still so dangerous?!
What sounds like poor game design on paper, can be worked around, and is actually very compelling towards the lore of the game. How would that one Zanik quest go if Sigmund couldn't use protection prayers against you?
But if we're unsatisfied with level 43 protection prayers, some other commonly suggested ideas are:
Level 43 prot prayers give you 50% protection, but increase up to 100% by level 99.
Make 3 different sets of protection prayers that protect 20%, 40%, and 100%, unlocked at level 25-43-65 or so. Do note that I'm just typing random numbers as I go, I didn't go look at a prayer book.
Make protection prayer stronger if you get attacked my multiple enemies at once, but stay weak in 1v1 or something. Someone posted this on the RS forums and it sounded a bit more poetic there.
With the EoC, Jagex removed them after claiming them as being overpowered.
To an extent, you could view it that way. You could turn off damage from one point of the combat triangle. You could devalue food. It over centralized prayer pots and similar.
Actually, they're kind of inconsistent with that. From the RSWiki:
- Protection/Deflection prayers only protect 50% (Except for TzTok-Jad and TokHaar-Jad; that's still 100% because the fight was originally designed for prayer-switching)
But anyway, the thing is, 100% protection is something that nobody ever complained about for 10 years. It's something Jagex only brought up.
Now, as a game developer, I know, it's a good thing to actually notice things like this and seek to change it.
Jagex's problem with it is that it limited what they could do with boss design in the future.
They would have to keep creating bosses that switch attack styles if you pray, or are an exception and can bypass it for no real raisin.
Technically, it's also a problem for dungeon design. It'd be silly if every dungeon were like those Locust Priest dungeons under Sophenam.
That's something I agree with having fixed. Even though players are used to it and are pretty much just fine with it.
However, it's also not entirely necessary to be fixed. OSRS has gotten new bosses and they're still as deadly and unique as ever with 100% protects.
So I've thought of a viable in-between.
You know how protect prayers only have 40% protection against other players?
Make protect prayers have 100% protection against weak/normal enemies and only 40% protection against bosses.
Weak/normal enemies could either be defined as any non-boss enemy, or it could be based on your combat level (since plenty of enemies are above max combat level anyway).
This gives Jagex the room they need for better boss design, but also keeps 100% protection prayers in a way that is a bit easier for people to get their feet wet with.
The good part is, this can be defended easier by making it part of the lore. Saradomin can offer protection for you, but it is limited against other players and very powerful enemies.
If a normal enemy is more powerful (higher level or perhaps multiple levels above) than you, your prayer is ineffective because you yourself are weak.
On top of that, we could say that extra powerful attacks flat-out ignore prayer, much easier with that backstory.
Jad is tricky though. It's true that he's based on 100% protection prayers. Protect prayers actually only affect the chance of the enemy hitting you, not how much damage they deal.
I think a neat solution to Jad would be to make the prayers reduce 40% of his damage, turning the 990 instant kill to at most a hit for 594.
Now you actually have to use some food/healing on him on top of the old fight. It's a bit of an inconvenience and makes him all the more scarier, but it encourages gearing up against him instead of fighting him with red flowers.
In RS2, who or what could hit through protection prayers was pretty inconsistently defined. This would help with that.
Whether or not protect prayers would 'always' reduce damage in PvM, I dunno. They could do that I suppose. I'd be against it myself. I mean, it could also be an "only Jad" thing, in which case it may be considerable to make it 100% only on Jad too.
Making one exception in game design like this is perfectly okay if the players enjoy it and prefer it that way.
Jad could be defended through lore by giving him a backstory where Jad creatures aren't in tune with your human prayers or something, who knows. Maybe it could relate to Elder Gods.
----
The next part of this is to consider the impact of keeping 100% protect prayers everywhere else.
Before EoC, I was able to use protect melee for something like slayer, even if I were prayer flashing, for a limited time before I had to go back to eating sharks.
So in reality, it was a useful tool for prolonguing trips and after it ran out, I still had to use my food.
I was at around 119 combat before the EoC, and I hear higher level players could do slayer trips in one go with maybe a prayer pot or two.
That too, is a good thing, for higher level players to be having a more convenient time doing some things.
In many cases, prayer pots were always more expensive than food, so it was best to use prayer while it's free and then eat until you're almost dead. At least around my level. In some cases at lower levels, you might've considered going full prayer.
Prayer only really devalued food in situations where you really want to camp an area for hours or something. But I don't think that's such a terrible notion.
In many situations, sometimes good armor already made you tanky enough to replace prayer on normal enemies, which was a good thing because at some point you should be taking minimal damage from stuff way weaker than you.
In which case having 100% protect isn't much of a problem, as you could almost 100% tank it anyway. It becomes a convenience.
In some situations, you could Soul Split and end up with more health than you lost. Generally it was only if you were already tanky enough on your own. But in those situations, Soul Split would be considered more "overpowered" than 100% protection. While preventing damage keeps you at the same health, it cannot result in more health like Soul Split could.
Though, aside from combining Soul Split with AoE spells, I thought the 20% heal was very well balanced. And I've already posted about Ancients + Soul Split and how it could've been balanced.
All in all, it would've been nice to see it done this way instead of arbitrarily lowering it to 50% in all PvM situations.
Plus, this way, Jagex could've easily gotten away with 40% vs bosses instead of 50%, giving them a little more room to utilize other defensive concepts.
----
I might add, that Jagex having thrown 50% onto the protect prayers just seemed lazy. They only did it to nerf prayer but didn't put much thought behind it besides trying to figure out if it should be 25% or 50% or 75%.
From a game design perspective it just feels like they're ignoring lore and slapping on numbers without much foresight.
When I try to balance weapons on my Versus Saxton Hale server, to the best of my ability, I try to make buffs/nerfs actually relate to the original stats of the weapon or what the weapon looks like or is mean to do, or related it to the class at least.
I choose 40% for powerful enemies because it makes sense as something a lot of people are already used to in PvP, and it achieves the design goals that Jagex wants, and it doesn't completely get rid of 100% protect like players wanted.
It's an essentially more "outside of the box" way of "meeting in the middle" compared to just setting it to 50% for everything.
----
Another question about Protection Prayer balance is the fact that by level 43 (fairly low) you get 100% protection prayers.
Well, that kind of thing is why I suggested combat level related balancing, where enemies with higher combat levels hit through it.
However, we also have to consider how much that effects other things, like higher level content. For Fight Caves, how would you fight those level 256 or so giant mage enemies?
They're quite accurate and hit constant 400's. And you fight waves of them.
For that reason, I'd rather allow a level 40 to run around with protect melee in monk robes. It's honestly kinda badass where you can decide to use prayer armor + protect prayer to fight enemies. It adds to the lore and feel of the game. Even those 1def monk robe pures do.
Plus when dungeons come along where you have to use protection prayer to survive... you're already negating one form of combat yet the area is still so dangerous?!
What sounds like poor game design on paper, can be worked around, and is actually very compelling towards the lore of the game. How would that one Zanik quest go if Sigmund couldn't use protection prayers against you?
But if we're unsatisfied with level 43 protection prayers, some other commonly suggested ideas are:
Level 43 prot prayers give you 50% protection, but increase up to 100% by level 99.
Make 3 different sets of protection prayers that protect 20%, 40%, and 100%, unlocked at level 25-43-65 or so. Do note that I'm just typing random numbers as I go, I didn't go look at a prayer book.
Make protection prayer stronger if you get attacked my multiple enemies at once, but stay weak in 1v1 or something. Someone posted this on the RS forums and it sounded a bit more poetic there.
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