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Alphanos

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Alphanos last won the day on February 2 2013

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    scryers$$The Scrying Pool
  1. The reason I have trouble seeing Dungeoneering as a skill is because it is a player-skill, not a character-skill. With other skills (character-skills) your character becomes more proficient and learns to perform the relevant tasks better. With strength, your character becomes stronger and deals more damage. With woodcutting, your character becomes more proficient at chopping trees and can chop faster or more efficiently. With hunter, your character becomes better at laying the traps just-right. Levels in these skills represent the proficiency of your character as they learn from their experience. By contrast, Dungeoneering is a player-skill. Your character learns very little as you gain levels; instead the levels represent the learning, experience, and proficiency of the player. The contextual meaning of the word "skill" is entirely different, because it is a different entity's skill being measured. It would be like if you listed typing speed as one of the numeric specifications of your computer.
  2. That's the kind of stuff I sometimes hear from people, but about Java instead of HTML5. The selection of a programming language for a project has to depend upon your goals and requirements. Originally, the Gowers wrote Runescape as a Java applet because they wanted the game to run inside a web browser window. They could have picked from any number of other languages otherwise. But they identified the ability to play the game without having to download anything as a major feature. This wasn't a mistake; it worked beautifully. For many years Runescape had a large audience of players who would not have even been able to try playing if a download had been required (i.e. kids in school). At the time the Gowers made this decision, Java was the only option if such a feature was required. Over time, bits of Runescape have been migrated to C/C++ DLLs for a variety of reasons. I'm sure the developers might have liked to clean things up with a full-scale re-write, but there was no business argument to justify such an expense. But now, for the first time, there is: casual mobile users. This is a huge potential market, and it's worth the expense of a re-write to be able to target it. Nowadays there are a lot more options than Java out there. So which option should Jagex pick? Back to goals and requirements. The entire point of the re-write is to make the game accessible to casual mobile users. Which platform(s) will make that possible? Apple has gone to great lengths to prevent Java and Flash from running on their iOS devices. This is in large part due to their financial strategy of seeking to get their 30% cut on all apps. Only by breaking or blocking other sources of apps can Apple achieve this. But now Apple has backed themselves into a corner. Their entire official justification for why it was okay to block those other platforms was that HTML5 would be able to meet all of the needs of users. So now Apple can't block HTML5. So the only platform Jagex will be able to rely upon most of its target users having access to is HTML5. Neither in the original Java case, nor now, did they evaluate many options and pick the one with the best performance. In both cases they chose the only option available to them given the goals of the project. Any performance improvements, while welcome, will be incidental.
  3. Yeah, I really don't understand this change. WebGL doesn't really offer any benefits over what Java can do. If they really want to move to another platform, they should use C++. I don't know how or why players somehow got the idea that the HTML5 update is being done for performance reasons. That's basically nonsense as far as I can tell. The primary reason to move to HTML5 is that Jagex wants to sell the game to iPhone, iPad, and Android users. They would (will?) be the first major MMO to make a serious attempt at capturing casual mobile users, which is a huge potential new market.
  4. That isn't what HTML5 means. Unfortunately it doesn't mean "some new faster technology". The only clear benefit to HTML5, in and of itself, is that it should allow Runescape to run on tablets and smartphones. The main CPU drain issue with Runescape now doesn't have much to do with Java. It's due to Jagex's efforts to counter bots. Basically they decided that the best way to make it hard to write bots was to screw around with Runescape's guts so that it would be too confusing to figure anything out. This had the side effect of making it hard even for Runescape to figure itself out. If they change their anti-bot tech at the same time as the switch to HTML5, then speed could go up. But if you're interested in speed, the main thing to watch for is new anti-bot updates, not HTML5.
  5. By my estimation this is roughly where spambots end and real players begin: http://services.rune...pe=0&page=35790 Meaning there's about 787,000 accounts (ignoring obvious spam bots) that can possibly vote, so it'd be a close run thing for sure. Knock off a few thousand more for inactives and other bots and we prob looking at like 760-780k actual possible voters; then considering want it vs do not care/do not want I'd imagine anything over 600k votes (to be generous) is unlikely, realistically I'd be quite surprised if it got past the 300k region. Personally I'm not interested in 2007-scape. But I wonder if, for example, the guys heading up swarms of goldfarming bots will decide that it's in their interest to vote yes. New markets?
  6. Guys, don't be cruel :P. I think Suomi has achieved more than enough in Runescape :).
  7. I'm surprised that nobody has pointed out some of the more critical updates that would definitely be missing. For example, as I pointed out in another thread recently, fullscreen and variable-resolution modes were added in mid-2008. If this old version is restored, it will be played in a tiny fixed-size window. Jagex talked about adding anti-bot measures in their post, but they made no mention of adding any graphical features like this. Also, people claiming that you should vote for it for the sake of other people don't understand the purpose of this vote. If Jagex get 900k "Yes" votes, but 700k of those were from people who would never play it in the first place, then they've just committed to their most expensive option for a lot less revenue than they're expecting. This would drain money and resources out of the main game. If you don't want to play 2007-scape, then the responsible thing to do is to abstain.
  8. People have several times mentioned math showing that you should always use merchants on your voyages. However this only applies when unlimited possible use for port resources exists. As-is, there's a finite limit to how much use you can get out of extra resources, because eventually you'll get all of the upgrades and buildings. So unless you're going to be repeatedly swapping buildings around, in the end game merchants would only be useful for trade goods missions. I think you're better off sticking to just two merchants, and using the extra slots to level up crew that will be useful for increasing success rates.
  9. You know you can get 240k xp and 24k tokens in less than 10 minutes of work, too, right? Sure, for F60 with an impressive team. But if you consider F1-60 as an average, it isn't 240k xp/24k tokens per ten minutes over that time. In fact, over that time the average probably resembles the average you would get at sinkholes. I hate the recent RS culture where you can't do anything unless it is the very very top xp (token) rates. Sinkholes were fun, and they have decent, even if not the best, rewards. Isn't that enough of a reason to play them? And isn't it enough of a reason not to be condescending to anyone who does want to have a bit of fun? I think the irritation was meant to be directed at Jagex, not the players. If Jagex releases a new D&D like this where you have to take extra time out of your schedule to travel to and from it, plus it's even limited to a certain number of times per day, then logically they should make it have substantially better rewards than a similar amount of time in normal gameplay. They're already limiting the use, so it shouldn't be just equal, or even less. The real problem is ultimately Jagex's attitude that player fun should be penalized. This is seen throughout their updates. Fun activities should, in their minds, always give less experience compared to boring ones. Because the fun is part of the reward; it's substituted in place of experience. Why can't they just make the fun little D&Ds efficient as well? Would that be so horrible?
  10. I think anyone blaming "efficiency" for community problems has chosen an especially odd scapegoat. Just for starters, you likely won't even hear people talking about such things outside of a few specialized forums, because the vast majority of players don't care a whit for efficiency. This is mostly a guess, of course, because there's almost no way to tell whether other players are playing efficiently; it doesn't affect you in any way. As a personal, stylistic choice, players of both camps also need to recognize that efficient advice versus for-fun advice aren't meant to compete with or insult each other. If someone asks how to get to a particular place a ways out of town, there can easily be two responses. A) Take highway X and you'll get there in 30 minutes, and B) There's a lovely scenic route which lets you pass by a lake-filled valley, taking only 10 minutes longer (40 minutes total). Neither of these are wrong. People taking the highway aren't insulting the valley. If you prefer the scenic route, then just take it; nobody's stopping you. This tangent aside, as someone who dislikes EoC, I've never been interested in PvP. In my personal limited knowledge of PvP, I figure that PvP is actually the one area which will very clearly benefit from EoC over the long run as players adjust. EoC now requires rapid clicking in combat to i.e. rapidly cycle abilities. That, to me, is far more of an irritating grind than anything else. IMO, it's like they changed combat to make it more like agility. It's not harder, but it requires more clicking for no real reason. I'd prefer the previous form without the useless clicks. Yes, they did create Momentum, but it was a last-minute and grudgingly-added addition. Mod Mark in particular feels like Momentum doesn't fit his vision for how RuneScape combat should be, so I'm sure that Jagex will further decrease its effectiveness in the future or further increase the effectiveness of rapid ability combat.
  11. Can't wait for "this"? Can't wait for what? Jagex hasn't promised you anything, in fact they haven't even hinted they'll do anything. They're trying to trick players like you in a, frankly, incredibly slimy and sleezy way. The only thing Mod Mark has done is list some of the most popular requests they've gotten. That's doesn't mean Jagex is doing anything about any of those things. Basically Mod Mark is trying to scam players like you into believing what you want to believe about Jagex's intentions without them actually agreeing to anything. People like this I estimate would last 1-3 months before the lack of a GE and dwindling player numbers made them lose interest. Purely because they will come to see Nostalgia-scape and Reality-scape are nothing alike due to a mixture of rose-tinted factor of nostalgia, lack of the original community that played a big part in making the game what it was, the lack of modern conveniences we are all used to (eg the GE) and the ever-dwindling player-base. [/hide] I think people underestimate the game we want to play. We loved what it was back then and thats why it was so fun. I dont see harm in wanting or getting that. And I think its wrong for someone to oppose something that doesn't effect them the slightest. [hide=More...]Nostalgia is a beautiful thing. But I can assure you I want pre EoC not for that but for the game I loved to play. Its like when I reply the original spyros, I love them. I have great childhood memories but I still love it. I replay it multiple times a year. I hate new Spyro games because they destroyed it. With lack of homeworlds and gem collecting is not as important etc. The point is. Thats the RuneScape we loved to play. Nostalgia has a small influence. Im quite excited to build RuneScape from the ground up if it were to be released. Whilst you all say ohh its just an opinion. Dont forget that your points are all opinions too! If you want any legit feedback or discussion about these things. You'll allways have to find a middle ground and that in all fairness would lead to pre-eoc servers. It doesn't effect the EoC/Jagex lovers. And the old loyal players will be able to play the game they want. Anyone whos selfish enough to oppose to such things out of hate in an arguement doesn't deserve a legit statement in the topic. Its like your country giving a 3rd world country food/water/medical. It doesn't effect you dirrectly yet some people moan about helping them. Which is just being a bad person.[/hide] I think maybe this is where the miscommunication is taking place. You seem to think that you're in support of 2006-scape and are arguing why Jagex should do it, while the rest of us are against it, arguing why Jagex shouldn't do it. But most of the people here aren't even arguing against you. We're just explaining why it doesn't matter what any of us think about the prospect, because Jagex would still never do it in a million years. Your arguments are futile :(.
  12. [/hide] As a software engineer I do have some expertise in this and I can tell you that if they follow proper version control practices then it should be just that easy. I have been working on a project for years, and even though the software has been continuously updated, at any point I could look at a copy of the software from the beginning of the project by simply using a different "view". Just google software version control. Since you're someone with experience in the field, please don't allow misunderstanding to spread due to vague English. Assuming, for example, that they're still using the same version control system that they were in 2006, then it should indeed be "just that easy" to look at the code, sure. That doesn't mean the game would be in a ready-to-play state. Too many people in this thread have done as you said, googled SVC, and came away with just that faulty impression. [/hide] My main problem is EoC as well. I dont even care if its not 2006 they bring back. EoC ruined the game. Not just the combat but everything around it. Thats why I hate it. I'd actually be interested to hear more about this. Personally I don't like EoC, and I prefer the old combat system. But I'm not sure what you mean when you talk about EoC ruining other things as well. [/hide] Minigames died are empty, Wild dead, I heard staking is dead to. Alot of monsters are not practicle to fight. Combat triangle too harsh. Most weapons and rewards from quests are useless. Markets crashed. Ultimately all of those things are combat-related, but it's true that the effects are incredibly wide-reaching. As you say all kinds of minigames were affected. Many quests and quest rewards got messed up. Some of these are done very infrequently these days, and we know Jagex's QA is far from all-encompassing, so I wouldn't be surprised if we discover another year down the road that some novice level quest now accidentally requires 120 combat due to an impossible boss fight. Another factor I think Jagex may have underestimated is that years upon years worth of player tips, guides, and walkthroughs for all parts of the game are now practically useless for the combat side of things. That stuff won't re-accumulate easily, especially when Jagex clearly states that they fully intend to do regular major updates/re-works for a long time to come. Similarly that will have to contribute to market instability. Not that avoiding the updates would be better, mind. Also, this is just my own opinion, but I don't think that monsters' relative strengths should have changed due to EoC. Some monsters which were a real pain to fight before are now easy, while some previously easy monsters are now hard. Throwing all existing player knowledge and expectations out the window isn't a great way to win people over to the new system.
  13. [/hide] As a software engineer I do have some expertise in this and I can tell you that if they follow proper version control practices then it should be just that easy. I have been working on a project for years, and even though the software has been continuously updated, at any point I could look at a copy of the software from the beginning of the project by simply using a different "view". Just google software version control. Since you're someone with experience in the field, please don't allow misunderstanding to spread due to vague English. Assuming, for example, that they're still using the same version control system that they were in 2006, then it should indeed be "just that easy" to look at the code, sure. That doesn't mean the game would be in a ready-to-play state. Too many people in this thread have done as you said, googled SVC, and came away with just that faulty impression. [/hide] My main problem is EoC as well. I dont even care if its not 2006 they bring back. EoC ruined the game. Not just the combat but everything around it. Thats why I hate it. I'd actually be interested to hear more about this. Personally I don't like EoC, and I prefer the old combat system. But I'm not sure what you mean when you talk about EoC ruining other things as well.
  14. "Useless" is subjective, especially if the future strategy is driving finances and resources in the front door, then it ceases to be useless. No, they derail their current workflow to accommodate this new project. Normal game development would be incredibly strained. They may not have to pay for new servers, but they'd have to have the ability to run both versions of the game, and that could be seen as an administrative nightmare. After six months they realize it was a flop, and they've pissed countless hundreds of thousands of dollars out of the window. That's a problem for a company that had to resort to tactics it swore it'd never do just to make ends meet. :wall: It's not that simple! There's a lot of work involved in porting over that code to Java 7. There's a lot of legwork that needs to be done to ensure that the servers that this is deployed on can handle both versions of the game. There's a whole BUNCH of risk involved if no one ever likes these servers for whatever reason. All for what, a nostalgia filter? That time would be better spent researching what players really want and developing towards that. It's not as simple as pressing a few buttons or clicking a few modals. Trying to revert to the old system could be financial suicide. The risk involved in that project is far too great to consider it "an experiment". [/hide] Game content wont be strained at all! If SoF/SGS workers are put to it. (the content for thats already there. Its not like constant new items are going to increase revinue that much) Also I dont see the risk, I dont see the problem. If you personaly have a problem with such a server existing. Then thats your problem to be ignorant about it. If RS2006 can do it. Jagex can. Hundreds and thousands of dollars? Wow over reacting Businesses everywhere have to operate using understanding of a concept called opportunity cost. That means that the costs of a project are evaluated not only in terms of physical dollar bills being spent, but in terms of what else the company could be doing instead with those same resources and in the same time. For example, a company might evaluate a project where they'll spend $300,000 in resources over 6 months, and at the end of that time they expect to make $450,000 for $150,000 in profit. That sounds great, right? But businesses often turn down opportunities just like these because of opportunity cost. If the business only has enough resources to pursue one project, then there might be a different thing they could do that will make $250,000 in profit instead. In the same way, Jagex wouldn't and shouldn't consider the cost of developing 2006-scape to be $0. I guessed earlier that they'd probably need at least 10 dedicated staff to get it off the ground in a reasonable timeframe. Sure hobbyists were working on something similar, but when a hobby project crashes or rolls back or becomes inaccessible randomly, there's a lot more tolerance than when a big company's game does the same thing. So for a serious business to be paying 10 employees salary for 3-6 months to work on 2006-scape, the costs can very easily reach hundreds of thousands of dollars even before any snags or complications arise. As has been stated, the alternative is updates that many find annoying, but which make Jagex a lot of money. Just like with the $150K versus $250K example, Jagex as a business will choose the option for more money. I'm not one of those guys who always supports Jagex's decisions. There are a number of their decisions that I disagree with; particularly Mod Mark's view of the players and the game. But basically 2006-scape will never happen in a million years. It has nothing to do with what you want or what I want, it's just the reality of the situation. You'd be better off pursuing the idea of a reset/ladder server with a separate economy and set of accounts. That would be comparatively very easy and cheap for Jagex, and I think they'd realistically do it if there was enough player support.
  15. [/hide] What's stopping them from having minute to minute price changes? I really have no idea and would love someone to explain to me why we don't have something this obvious. Minute-to-minute price changes would give enormous power to large merchanting clans. The vast majority of players don't have any idea of what prices are "supposed" to be like; they just figure that market median price is probably the expected result. With rapid price changes, a clan of 100 players, each with a billion or more in cash, could temporarily buy out the entire stock of a popular staple item and thus raise its price drastically. There are buy limits on many items of course, but that's why merchanting clans formed. So with minute-to-minute price changes, they could for example raise the market price of a Fury from 3M back to 20M in a few hours' time. Even though more furies would still trickle in afterwards, the average sellers would have little incentive to sell at what they see as 1/6 of the valid and proper price according to the GE. So then even if the merchants sell for "only" 10M, average buyers might think they got a deal while the merchants just ran a scam tripling their cash. Not having enough foresight to see the effects beyond the first week of a 2006 server is equally unfortunate. Ask yourself if you would risk a lot of money to bring back obsolete content and try selling it to some of the most fickle people in the whole game, instead of acting like everyone is on a personal crusade to make you unhappy. [/hide] Im sorry, wheres the risk? They have eras of runescape backed up. They dont delete the coding, or graphics. It would be extremely stupid to do so. This is how RS classic is there. All they need to do is set the start up which wont take long at all with their development team (lets be honest they can hold of SoF developers just to set it up) Convert some current servers to RS2006(or what ever gets the most vote) and they dont loose server money. People are way over dramatic about this. As long as they keep the servers open and not closed like they did with RS Classic. They would be fine. More than fine even. Not having enough foresight to see the effects beyond the first week of a 2006 server is equally unfortunate. Ask yourself if you would risk a lot of money to bring back obsolete content and try selling it to some of the most fickle people in the whole game, instead of acting like everyone is on a personal crusade to make you unhappy. Im sorry, wheres the risk? They have eras of runescape backed up. They dont delete the coding, or graphics. It would be extremely stupid to do so. This is how RS classic is there. All they need to do is set the start up which wont take long at all with their development team (lets be honest they can hold of SoF developers just to set it up) Convert some current servers to RS2006(or what ever gets the most vote) and they dont loose server money. People are way over dramatic about this. As long as they keep the servers open and not closed like they did with RS Classic. They would be fine. More than fine even. The risk is that there would be nobody playing long term. People who left after 2006 that would sign up again to play it have moved on in the past 7 years. People that still play Runescape would most likely be paying members already. People might play it, but there would be few who would pay solely to play it I'd imagine. [/hide] If it died after a few years. They can easily reduce servers. They really are not risking anything but a weeks development time (give or take with complications). Personal I would be very excited to start as a noob again. Mining that copper and tin. Getting my first set of armour. Building the economy up. It would be a better adventure than the live game where everythings gone to chaos because of poor development vision and expecially EoC. Near 0 risk. Not really a problem at all. People have been trying to tell you that it's more complicated than you think. Both in terms of technical issues and for more esoteric business reasons. I can assure you that whatever Jagex wants/intends, the people on this thread have no interest in spoiling your fun. Personally I'm not a fan of EoC either, but I don't expect that it's going anywhere. Jagex thinks that one reason WoW, for example, is more popular is because players get all kinds of ability buttons to click. I'm not saying they're wrong, because I haven't done market research and there's a decent chance they have. But even though that doesn't do anything for me, I can understand why they did it. It's the same reason why max hit points used to be 99, and now players can have over 9000 life points :(. However, one suggestion I think people might possibly be able to get traction on is the idea of "reset" servers. It could be almost like the old ladder system from Diablo 2. Every year, they'd open a fresh new environment to new account creation. It'd be completely separated in terms of markets, trading, world hopping, old accounts, etc. But it would always use the same updates and current code as the "main" game. It would only be different in terms of a separate marketplace and ranking system. This would allow all kinds of different competitions relating to such a new and fresh game world. With Diablo 2, at the end of each ladder season I think the old ladder characters were moved to the main game, but if Jagex found the idea popular enough they could keep prior ladder environments open. For the best early-RS, close-knit-community feel, I think they'd be best to run only one or at most two servers for this environment, at least unless it proved far more popular than that. If this is something that sounds interesting to you, work at supporting this to Jagex. I can basically guarantee you that they'll continue to outright ignore requests for 2006-scape. They tried re-opening Classic a while back and apparently the results weren't too great from their perspective. But something like this ladder/reset world system would only require a separation in the database, and would be about 100x easier for them to do if players showed an interest.
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