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Observations from a "Noob"


muggiwhplar

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Back in March while doing a bunch of quests in 07, I couldn’t help but wonder how much quicker these quests would be if I made a noob account in EOC where the two biggest woes of questing wouldn’t be an issue: run energy (basically infinite in EOC) and quest item requirements (Grand Exchange).

 

So I decided to fork over the $7 or whatever to see what the EOC is like fresh off of Tutorial Isl—err, Burthorpe.

 

I was expecting everything to be handed to me on a silver platter—leveling, questing, making money, etc. And to be fair, yes, thanks to the SoF, it’s very easy to make money and level up skills. All of my income came from SoF. I ended up with about a dozen of those Midas gloves from quest reward SoF spins. But I digress…

 

Ultimately, I was actually surprised at how “difficult” the game is as a low level player in EOC.

 

The game is not catered to low-leveled players.

 

In the past, any noob could more or less train on any monster they saw and get decent XP rates. But in EOC, you’re forced to fight monsters weak to your combat style, with the best possible equipment for your level. Which to the experienced player may not seem like a big deal, but I really can’t imagine any genuinely new player being able to figure this out for him/herself.

 

So I did some research and, surprisingly, there were no guides anywhere written with low level combat training in mind. All of it was obsolete from pre-EOC. So if you’re a new player, you’re on your own to figure out how to train. This, again, wouldn’t be such a big deal if training in EOC wasn’t so niched. If you’re fighting monsters below your tier, your XP rates will be abysmal. If you’re fighting monsters above your tier, you won’t make a dent in them and they’ll destroy you. Additionally, every training spot is multicombat, so if the monsters are aggressive, you’re screwed.

 

Take ranged, for example. At level 20, you can use steel crossbows. The only problem is, nobody sells them in the GE. Even for 10x their exchange price. So you’ve gotta buy all the materials yourself and request assistance to get your own. I thought it was kind of disturbing how most low-leveled equipment wasn’t being traded.

 

And then there’s dungeoneering. If you made the mistake of doing the Waterfall Quest before everything else, you’re kind of screwed when the dungeons are created with your 30 att/str in mind. It isn’t like the later levels where you can just use a level 99 shortbow and plow through dungeons, ignoring monster weaknesses and not having to worry about armor. For low level dungeoneering, your stats have to be balanced. So basically I had to quit dungeoneering until my range and mage caught up with melee. Additionally, with limited binds, it’s nearly impossible to rush dungeons. If you don't have body armor, you'll get destroyed. But if you have body armor bound, you can't hybrid and therefore are going to have a very difficult time clearing out guardian doors. Fortunately, though, solo XP is very good at low levels.

 

Ultimately, the biggest concern in my experience was the fact that I felt alone. There were never any other players around my level at any of the training spots—the game felt like a ghost town. If there were any players remotely close to my level, they were bots.

 

Thus, while I have no idea what the actual figures are, it really wouldn’t surprise me if this game has very few new players coming into the game now because of this. If I were to lose my main account and be forced to start anew, sure, I could adapt and level up pretty quickly. But if I was a new player with no clue how the game works, I’d probably end up giving up pretty quickly and moving on to a different game.

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It's worth noting that there are also a lot of things in the early game that are somewhat counterintuitive. Ingame shops are likely to be your go-to source of low-level items, but they're scattered all over the world and don't match up at all with modern prices (like steel platebodies that sell for the price of a mithril set).

 

And that's not getting into the fact that the game's flavor encourages all three styles while the game itself is built around one. Have fun picking up low-level ranged and magic items.

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Yeah EoC made low levelled combat and combat based activities much less accessible.

 

Which is a problem, as I imagine new players who never got to grips with and enjoyed the old combat system would probably like the EoC style of combat more than the wider RS community.

 

Low levelled gameplay in general could do with an overhaul. That burthorpe tutorial is both boring and useless for a start.

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Interesting. I don't know the amount of new players that start the game. Dungeoneering in general is a higher level skill though. But yea it would be kinda complex to learn. The amount of new players not coming in compared to new bots was a problem before eoc. If you had just played 07 where everyone started off as a noob then yea you would feel alone starting in 13. Yea its annoying how much more gear based 2013 is.

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Yea its annoying how much more gear based 2013 is.

You'll be happy to know that this won't be the case as of next week.

I certainly hope so.

 

Yeah i'm really curious how things will turn out to be.

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It's somewhat ironic that the only world in which you can find players in the starting area is actually the total level 2400 world. (cooking at the fire by the chest in burthrope)

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I think one thing Jagex really needs to pull their finger out and do is move the Combat Academy to Burthorpe, design wise it'd roughly fit in tht circle bank chesty area anyway and would make a good prelude to the whole troll attack story of the current tutorial.

 

I also wonder whether world choice influenced things here, yes the buying of gear is still an issue but if you paid the $7 I'm assuming you were on a members world, whilst most noobs would be on a f2p world.

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I had also recently trained up my account from level 1 in all combat stats.

 

It wasn't all that bad honestly - training on men in Edgeville or cows in any cow pen is actually really nice xp earlygame. And then there's also items like chargebows and mindspikes for people who don't like melee.

 

Although, I do agree that the Burthorpe tutorial is sort of messed up.

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I also wonder whether world choice influenced things here, yes the buying of gear is still an issue but if you paid the $7 I'm assuming you were on a members world, whilst most noobs would be on a f2p world.

 

Yeah I went to a f2p world recently and the low-mid level community seems a lot better there, so perhaps they're spending most of their time in f2p and leveling up before transitioning in to p2p.

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Thanks for a well thought-out post :). I never realized it could be a pain to start playing.

 

I think a large part of it is that lower levels mean nothing. 1-30 attack is the same amount of time as 60-61 and levels only get longer. Level balance in RS is generally pretty bad, so there's virtually no incentive not to level up. Even 'throwaway' pures got granite maul or dds (pre-eoc), which is way beyond the start of the game.

 

By the way, I hardly think you qualify as noob muggi :P.

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I also wonder whether world choice influenced things here, yes the buying of gear is still an issue but if you paid the $7 I'm assuming you were on a members world, whilst most noobs would be on a f2p world.

 

Yeah I went to a f2p world recently and the low-mid level community seems a lot better there, so perhaps they're spending most of their time in f2p and leveling up before transitioning in to p2p.

 

That actually makes a lot of sense to me, to do low levels in f2p before becoming a member. It lets you get a feel for the game and make sure the cash investment is worthwhile (especially if you go for one of the long-term membership packages instead of paying by month).

 

But yeah, they should still definitely work on making life easier as a nub.

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I think all that really needs to be done is help locate some of the newer gear shops in burthorpe/taverly, so that it is easier to find things.

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Another factor that would help matters a lot is to squash mining and smithing (and some crafting and fletching) stuff down to be level appropriate for the gear they make.

 

Eg: Rune should be around the 50s for mine, smith and fletching the cbow.

 

Hopefully it's not too big an ask either as rumour from jmod land few months back suggested that si exactly what they intend to do for mine n smith, but god knows when.

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That should really be done, though possibly maybe a bit higher (like 5-10 lvls above level requirement) But definitely make the gear not spread out over levels. Then add higher level interesting things, like minor enhancements.

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I feel that the game was harsh toward low levels since way before EoC was implemented. Sure EoC didn't help, but as a player who started when there were forced 3 rounds of attack in RSC, long before Home Teleport and low level handouts, the game seems easier in some aspects while still hard in others.

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The game definitely changed. There is so much content that newer players can be overwhelmed. Also, there are a lot of issues with availability.

 

Some things could be done, but definitely is a big issue to tackle.

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Another factor that would help matters a lot is to squash mining and smithing (and some crafting and fletching) stuff down to be level appropriate for the gear they make.

 

Eg: Rune should be around the 50s for mine, smith and fletching the cbow.

 

Hopefully it's not too big an ask either as rumour from jmod land few months back suggested that si exactly what they intend to do for mine n smith, but god knows when.

I still think that all equipment should be able to be smithed at the level required to wear it. For example, adamant armor should be able to be made at 40 smithing. Adamant plates shouldn't require a higher level than adamant knives. Then there's the opportunity to fill in the empty levels with all kinds of cool things, such as attachments and enchantments.

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I was only going for the "it takes more effort/skill to make something than to use it" idea.

 

But I do agree, it would make more sense the other way in terms of gameplay.

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I think it'd work best if for smithing it was divided over like 3-5 levels per metal.

Eg

lvl 1 = 2h bronze weps + arrow heads etc.

lvl 2 = lower bronze armour (eg sq and chain and med)

lvl 3 = mh bronze weps

lvl 4 = higher bronze armour (full, pl8 etc)

lvl 5 = oh weps

 

Or something like that, just so its not to densely packed up, but its not soooo stretched out either.

There's even potential for say Steel onwards to have its third tier be on lvl so like rune would be unlocked at 48, 49, 50, 51, 52

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While I think it would be better if people could make their own armour at lower levels like this, I do wonder how you would then balance the experience rates? If you leave them as is, then a person with level 50 smithing would be able to get the same xp rates as someone with smithing in the 90's currently can. Leaving aside the ability of higher levels to acquire the resources in larger numbers. If you lower the experience received from making armour then until you add the things such as enhancements etc, you're making it very slow for higher levels to train smithing.

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