Tip.It Times Tip.It Times - 4th August 2013

[tripsis]

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Enjoy the articles!

[darthaddict]

For the first article I do agree with the author and his grading of rs3. The split chat that we can have right now is terrible compared to the old one, and I miss it very much.

 

Second....Jagex said they already have different teams working on their other projects so those projects shouldn't affect RS updates.

[Kimberly]

Should bugs be part of the grade? I think it's fair at least to apply the same critical eye over every area. Arceus cites the infamous glitch with the action bar as one of the contributing factors of the NIS' low rating, yet the music gets a resounding A even though the music frequently glitched and fell out of synch, leaving you feeling like you've watched a horror film. It completely disrupted the otherwise beautiful atmosphere they created when you heard BZZZPTTPPZZZPPCHHHH every two seconds, or an audio track froze, or your axe swings didn't match up with its paired sound effects. Part of the audio's chugging was due to the high volume of people on those early days, which was one of the reasons why the introduction was rated slightly lower as well.

 

The biggest problem for the NIS was that a lot of old members had to "unlearn" what they took for granted. Function keys, click through interfaces, menu placement. If you were completely new to the game, this wouldn't have been as large a problem. And no matter if you were a veteran or as green as they come, if you spent some time going through each little button on the menu bar, you'd get a solid grasp on what shifted around. Most of it makes logical sense and once you start utilizing your hotkeys, things flow a lot better. All in all, it works out like many other games out there today. I personally think that's a great strength. There's comfort in the familiar. It's almost somewhat of a standard. Thanks to that fact it reduces that overwhelming "oh god what do i do" for new players, which can only help player retention.

 

I feel like the positives of this system -- shoved to one cramped paragraph praising it after a detailed rant about finding where the action bar was -- was downright criminal. The system might still have it's flaws, but the update was just short of revolutionary for ease of play and adaptation. Maybe it's easy to shed any feelings of awe over this change because with a few presets, it's almost like nothing changed at all. But the level of customization we have now is truly awesome.

 

In the misc section, it raised some really good points. This seemed like a prime opportunity to fix some old niggling issues such as the autocasting. Sadly it was thrown to the wayside. We also lost those features that you mentioned, like split chat. However, we did gain esc to close interfaces and a few other neat things like drag and drop. It wasn't a complete wash, but it definitely deserved the C rating given. And I especially agree with encouraging new and old players to try it out.

[iBe]

Good read. I made a new account to have a peak at RS3 just yesterday and I was less than impressed. I was disappointed when I saw some of my favorite clothing wasn't available while making a new character (just a plain top and shorts), and when I logged in game to find a strange, lag-infested cut-scene with a big yellow SUBSCRIBE button in the top of my screen, I just decided to log off.

[Gotta Eat]

Even with separate teams working on there projects, (which I know they said that previously) the bulk of the projects are big ones that can easily go wrong, no matter how many people you have dedicated to it. Separate teams or not, this next year will be very crucial in the future of RS in my opinion.

[Arceus]

Should bugs be part of the grade? I think it's fair at least to apply the same critical eye over every area. Arceus cites the infamous glitch with the action bar as one of the contributing factors of the NIS' low rating, yet the music gets a resounding A even though the music frequently glitched and fell out of synch, leaving you feeling like you've watched a horror film. It completely disrupted the otherwise beautiful atmosphere they created when you heard BZZZPTTPPZZZPPCHHHH every two seconds, or an audio track froze, or your axe swings didn't match up with its paired sound effects. Part of the audio's chugging was due to the high volume of people on those early days, which was one of the reasons why the introduction was rated slightly lower as well.

 

The biggest problem for the NIS was that a lot of old members had to "unlearn" what they took for granted. Function keys, click through interfaces, menu placement. If you were completely new to the game, this wouldn't have been as large a problem. And no matter if you were a veteran or as green as they come, if you spent some time going through each little button on the menu bar, you'd get a solid grasp on what shifted around. Most of it makes logical sense and once you start utilizing your hotkeys, things flow a lot better. All in all, it works out like many other games out there today. I personally think that's a great strength. There's comfort in the familiar. It's almost somewhat of a standard. Thanks to that fact it reduces that overwhelming "oh god what do i do" for new players, which can only help player retention.

 

I feel like the positives of this system -- shoved to one cramped paragraph praising it after a detailed rant about finding where the action bar was -- was downright criminal. The system might still have it's flaws, but the update was just short of revolutionary for ease of play and adaptation. Maybe it's easy to shed any feelings of awe over this change because with a few presets, it's almost like nothing changed at all. But the level of customization we have now is truly awesome.

 

In the misc section, it raised some really good points. This seemed like a prime opportunity to fix some old niggling issues such as the autocasting. Sadly it was thrown to the wayside. We also lost those features that you mentioned, like split chat. However, we did gain esc to close interfaces and a few other neat things like drag and drop. It wasn't a complete wash, but it definitely deserved the C rating given. And I especially agree with encouraging new and old players to try it out.

 

Firstly about the audio-I had quite a different experience! It did have a second or two of static once in a great while in Dungeoneering, but when training at other locations (for example hours of firemaking/cooking at the Grand Exchange) I didn't notice any of that. What were you doing/what were you training?

 

And regarding the NIS, yes I loved all the customization too but..it's not like it took a genius to come up with the idea. It's essentially adding a resize option to everything plus adding a whole bunch of hotkeys. While I admire all the technical work that the developers surely had to do to make it all work (and keep in mind it didn't work perfectly at first on the live game either), it's not really a revolutionary idea. It's similar adding colored text and quotes to RSOF after 10 years: a great convenience, but something that's been readily available in similar places for a long time.

[Kimberly]

Firstly about the audio-I had quite a different experience! It did have a second or two of static once in a great while in Dungeoneering, but when training at other locations (for example hours of firemaking/cooking at the Grand Exchange) I didn't notice any of that. What were you doing/what were you training?

 

I'm quite surprised since this seems to be a fairly common issue. Even going out of the battleground area, sound still stops abruptly, or gets stuck, or otherwise breaks. You must have been very lucky, then.

 

And regarding the NIS, yes I loved all the customization too but..it's not like it took a genius to come up with the idea. It's essentially adding a resize option to everything plus adding a whole bunch of hotkeys. While I admire all the technical work that the developers surely had to do to make it all work (and keep in mind it didn't work perfectly at first on the live game either), it's not really a revolutionary idea. It's similar adding colored text and quotes to RSOF after 10 years: a great convenience, but something that's been readily available in similar places for a long time.

 

That seems a pretty bland way of looking at the situation. So many game features can be trivialized with that mindset. Example: orchestrated music isn't a "revolutionary concept" and it's kind of boring because of it. Hopefully we can both agree it's how those things are done that matter most.

 

The bugs I experienced in the first few days with the dorky action bar failures at bad times and the horribly desynched audio hasn't taken away from my appreciation of the brilliant music and the useful customization for NIS. I will say though that in the first few days after RS3's release, I shared your opinion. Over time, I found that changing as I loved fiddling around with different interfaces, keybinds...things that I wouldn't have been able to do without NIS. I guess we're just different.

 

*resists the urge to sing Ebony and Ivory*

[Arceus]

There are several degrees between "boring" and "revolutionary" and I simply meant that it was somewhere between rather than one of those extremes :P.