LuciferMorningstar posted:

Kind of interesting to me that they would even be so aggressive in combating the bots anyway. People who bot are still paying membership fees. Was there any real reason beyond "cheating is bad" for going after botting?

LuciferMorningstar posted:

Kind of interesting to me that they would even be so aggressive in combating the bots anyway. People who bot are still paying membership fees. Was there any real reason beyond "cheating is bad" for going after botting?

Soulhunter posted:

As someone who spends a lot of time on both the RS3 and 2007 servers, the major complaints tend to revolve around the new interface and (unpolled, generally unwanted) combat overhaul. Prepare for .

Soulhunter posted:

As someone who spends a lot of time on both the RS3 and 2007 servers, the major complaints tend to revolve around the new interface and (unpolled, generally unwanted) combat overhaul. Prepare for .

Major issues with the new interface:
Unintuitive, lots of options hidden under sub-sections or unrelated tabs. Tabs within tabs within tabs. Cosmetic store tabs hidden in weird places (pets are next to your stats tab, split completely from the other Solomon's store tabs), lots of unlabeled buttons that you have to experiment with to figure out. The notes tab is hidden behind several other menus, the list goes on. Many options are put in obscure places, basically.

Combat issues:
RuneScape has never been a game that requires a lot of player input for combat, or anything else in the game. It's largely a grindfest where you click and wait for things to happen (ex: Fishing, Woodcutting, Mining, Divination and so on). The new combat system introduced a combat bar similar to that of WoW, and requires lots of active input to deliver maximum DPS. Most players seemed okay with this, because Jagex promised a Momentum skill that would provide the more AFK combat style players were accustomed to. As it turns out, Momentum wastes tons of ammo and is completely useless for most combat situations. If you're aiming for efficiency, prepare to mash the 1-9 keys thousands of times over. Furthermore, there's little diversity in the skills you place on the hotbar for any given situation. Ranged and magic setups basically have one set of hotbar choices each.

The weapon/armour stats were totally overhauled with the changes to the combat system as well, creating strictly defined hybrid, "all", melee, ranged, and magic armour types. The "hybrid" type of armour effects your overall block rating differently from the "all" type, for no apparent reason. Otherwise, the system is fairly clear: Mage>Melee>Range>Mage. Additionally, armour/weapons were split into tiers, and combat stats were made fairly irrelevant outside of flat requirements for equipping items (i.e. your max hit would increase in an obvious way if you raised your strength level in the past, now its almost entirely tied to the weapon you use).

All of the weapon/armor stat overhauls ended up making lower-level armour and weapons useless to those who were at a higher level, where previously some lower-tiered weapons could be useful to a high-level player (Dragon dagger specials for pvp/enhanced excalibur for PvM, etc.). Now, its almost required to have weapons of T80+ to efficiently do anything, especially bossing, where one could get by with lower-tiered weapons pre-EoC.

Overall, I enjoy both the classic servers and the live game, but I think the EoC update was a huge mistake for Jagex. The overall players online has dropped sharply, falling almost immediately upon the release of the interface and combat overhaul from 120,000 players online at peak times down to ~70,000 at best (With that 70,000 including players on the 2007 servers in the total, of which there are typically 10-20k online). Many, many players on the RuneScape forums have expressed a desire for Jagex to scrap the EoC changes entirely in favor of the old system, but the damage has been done already through lost memberships.

Updates not involving the Squeal of Fortune or Solomon's store have really become lacking in quantity and quality (How many quests have we gotten in the past year?), and really failed to involve the players in shaping the game. Compare this to the last year of updates on the 2007 RuneScape servers, where a skeleton crew of developers has stabilized (and grown!) their user base by taking ideas for future content from the community and running monthly polls on what updates the players would like to see.

I truly believe that if Jagex advertised the 2007 servers on the front page of their site alongside the RS3 servers, and implemented F2P servers for the older game, you would see an equal amount of users on each game. It's incredible to me that a seven year old version of RuneScape accounts for 30-40% of online users at any given time as it is, while charging the same monthly fee for membership, and speaks to the quality of the development team and community.

tl;dr: Confusing interfaces, button-mashy combat that doesn't fit the generally AFK nature of the game, and a lack of quests and content not consisting of "Buy More Spins!" or "Click this for an hour to gain 50k bonus xp in a skill of your choice" events.


Essentially, this is why the new button-mashing combat doesn't really fit RuneScape. Combat bars are for games you actively play. RuneScape is the window you have open while you watch Netflix/study.

Some dumb idiot posted:

Honestly my biggest complaint with the EoC is that the introduction of Regenerate and Rejuvenate have really made combat too easy, like every Quest boss before EoC is a complete joke at this point, and pretty much every Slayer assignment can pretty much be done with no food just by using Regenerate every now and again.

And definitely rose-tinting the updates, I remember the days were every month would give us a terrible minigame that was dead within a week and included maybe one good reward behind a massive wall of bullshit boringness.

Soulhunter posted:

I don't hate EoC, I still play both versions of the game. I definitely prefer the old combat system to the new one though just because of its AFK-ability.

Revolution looks great right now on the combat beta, and I hope it brings some players back to the game. Even if we make the huge assumption the ALL of the dropped memberships were bots, a good portion of botters maintained main accounts as well, still contributing to the community in some fashion.

Magres posted:

Oh, okay. You sounded kinda like a pubbie for a second

nescience posted:

"You last logged in 282 days ago"

Oh dear god here we go again

nescience posted:

"You last logged in 282 days ago"

Oh dear god here we go again

Magres posted:

A lot of it depends on the timing - if the whole drop is in huge chunks over a month or two, I think that'd be mostly bots, but if it's a slow, more organic bleedoff, then I'm definitely wrong.

Moddington posted:

Well, does this meet your rigorous cleaning standards, Pizza Lady?

Soulhunter posted:

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any real multi-year data on average online users, but a couple sites have been tracking peaks/averages for the last year. A quick google search brought up http://www.misplaceditems.com/2007online.php which goes back to March 2013.

I looked over the updates for the past few years as well, just to see exactly how many quests we've had each year. I'm missing three quests from the total count, but from what I gathered, 2001-2007 saw ~125 quests released, with 2005 topping the years with 29 quests launched.

From 2008-2014 (so far), we've had almost half as many quests launched, totaling up to ~74 new quests, 11 of which were reworks of old quests, two of which were later removed/deleted (tutorial quests). 2013 was the low point, seeing only six new quests, two of which were reworked old quests.

I was going to add up how many updates were content/tech fixes versus SoF/Solomon's store updates but .

E: Quest release dates can be found at http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_quest_release_dates and a massive (though incomplete in some places) list of updates can be found at http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/Update:Game_updates if anyone else wants to sperg about content releases.

LemonyTang posted:

Stolen Hearts for example is hands down the best quest they ever made.

Magres posted:

There is no escape

LemonyTang posted:

Stolen Hearts for example is hands down the best quest they ever made.

SeaGoatSupreme posted:

This. I was completely blown away by the quality of their recent quests. The one black mark I could find on stolen hearts was the fact that the puzzle was completely broken to the point it was a two-minute-per-guess guessing game with an 88% chance of failure. Besides that? Perfect.

Disco Dickdog posted:

Some of y'all wanted to see my favorite birthday present, so here it is, the raddest jacket.

http://imgur.com/a/ivmJF

Dwarf posted:

Ew, why take the avatar? Grab a wolper for double berries or an ent for double fruit (also, plant and harvest papayas for 200-300k a day).

Magres posted:

Edit: I hope you don't mind if I suggest tweaks to your farming run: You can use the Ardougne Cape to portal to the Monastery right next to the Bush Patch there. It'll let you add another Bush patch to your rotation for like thirty seconds of work

Ardougne Cloak even has a warp to the main Ardougne patch, but only once per day until you've done the elite tasks iirc. The bush patch warp is infinite though!

Thanks again for writing up that guide, you have resparked my interest in farming

Magres posted:

E: Super barebones Farming run checklist - bushes, allotments, herbs, and mushrooms only - this is meant to go alongside Themata's and be something to use when you're not doing your daily extended run that includes trees and shops

Requirements for this that I can think of:
Lumb/Draynor Medium tasks, Ardougne Hard (Elite is bettter) tasks, Falador Hard tasks, whatever quests give you the Ectophial and Magic Secateurs, and My Arm's Big Adventure done (gives you a no-disease herb patch)
Enough stats to cast Trollheim Teleport
Morytania Medium (Hard?) tasks will keep your mushrooms from ever dying
Ability to cast Trollheim Teleport
Ability to use Fairy Rings without dramen/lunar staff (grab one of them from your bank in step 1 if you're a scrub and need the thing)

1) Go to bank, grab 24 allotment seeds, 5 herb seeds, 4 bush seeds, one morcella mushroom seed, ardougne cloak 3+, explorer's ring 3+, Falador Shield 3+, Magic Secateurs, Ectophial, two Law Runes, and two Fire Runes
2) Warp to Trollheim, we're doing that herb patch first to free up the inv slots from the runes. Skip to step 4 if you haven't done the quest (I don't blame you it's a dumb quest line)
3) Go West, Pay Troll Toll, Enter Boy's Hole aka Troll Stronghold. Go South, then West through the door, then North to the ladder. Climb up, enjoy disease free herb patch. Supercompost recommended still, it increases herb output and is easy as gently caress to make (use pineapples, they're dirt cheap). Plant your most expensive herb seeds here (Lantadyme)
4) Lodestone to Canifis, run Southwest to Mushroom patch. Harvest mushrooms, replant. Step into fairy ring.
5) Warp to CIP, it's your kingdom.
6) Run East, chop a bit of wood to keep your approval topped out, run East some more to the Bush Patch on the eastern island. Harvest, clear, replant.
7) Lodestone to Port Sarim, run West to Rimmington bush patch. Harvest, clear, replant.
8) Lodestone to Varrock, run West and South a little to the bush patch. Harvest, clear, replant.
9) Pop the Kandarin Monastery teleport on your Ardougne Cape. If you don't have the cape, just skip this step because the bush patch sucks to get to without it and isn't worth the time and effort. Go to step 11
10) Step outside to your bush patch. Harvest, clear, replant.
11) Cabbageport! BRASSICA PRIME PROTECTS AND GUIDES THE IMPERIUM OF CABBAGEKIND! CABBAGE MARINES! FARM THE ALLOTMENT PATCH! FOR THE EMPEROR! (I love WH40K fluff even if I don't play it)
12) Lodestone to Ardougne or pop your cape teleport to get there faster if you're not a scrub. Do your thing. Patch is northeast of Lodestone if you don't already know
13) Ectophial, go west to patch. Do what you do. Swear profusely because your Lantadymes are dead because Morytania is a shithole
14) Lodestone to Catherby, go South to the bank, grab 15 pineapples. Drop noted stuff off to make room for fruit+buckets.
15) Go to patch, empty compost bin and refill it with pineapples, shut bin to start compost. Harvest and replant patches.
16, optional) Go to bank, drop your poo poo off, grab a fruit tree, go east, harvest clear replant.

In general, if at any point you realize you're low on supercompost, just lodestone to Lunar Isle, drop off all your noted crap to make room, and grab pineapples before your next allotment patch, Morytania excepting because, again, Morytania is a shithole and doesn't have a bin. The other three have compost buckets. I always make supercompost at Catherby because it's the most convenient, and one batch is enough to cover one run.


Regarding flower patches - do the Falador Hard tasks, plant White Lillies in your flower patches, and never look back. Snape Grass is the only flower worth any decent XP and is expensive as hell because of it, you're better off with White Lillies protecting your allotments. Also it makes supercompost numbers line up neatly if you've done My Arm's Big Adventure - one run, one bin.

Themata posted:

Spergminer posted:

I think they've been making quests too long. See; every rework quest ever. One thing is doing three obscure tasks to get three keys to get a sword to kill a demon, another is watching endless cutscenes and doing 2 easy puzzles, kill a gimmicky and badly scaled boss and here's a 250 exp lamp, don't spoil yourself.

While Guthix Sleeps was the peak quest, it had both puzzles, give X to Y and cutscenes, without any of it feeling dumb and forced.

Ratcatchers is what happens when you go too far with gameplay. No story, 4 horrible puzzles that takes forever and can be become unbeatable.

Salt in the Wound is what happens when you go too far into the Storytelling area. Endless words about a kid who's now a man, a knight we never met before and a H.P. Lovecraft guy, forced DG segment, the part where you control 3 players at once and that loving pillar.


Basically, good quests are hard to make and bad quests are easy to make by accident. Terrible quests are mocked less than a year after their release.

Kgummy posted:

I think I remember reading the guy who wrote Salt in the Wound was basically "Yeah, I realize it was terrible. I'd rewrite it, but priorities are on older quests." Or something like that.