Makoto_the_Phoenix

But you're missing the point. Combat is becoming one-sided again, just like it was in Classic - now instead of the most awesomely powerful weapons being solely used, you have players using weapons that are only at the speed of a Dagger. That's insane. I did not know that. It's only obtainable as a drop on PvP worlds but I'm pretty sure it can be used on non PvP. While your suggestions for F2P are very generous, being a F2Per, I would say that they imbalance the combat situation. In my opinion, rangers and meleers are relativly equal in damage output capability. With around 90+ ranged (aquirable at low combat levels) ranged hits rapid 16-17s with very high accuracy, much greater than any meleer at the combat level. Of course, this evens out when we get near maxed combat because meleers get high accuracy (attack) and power (strength). However, that's the problem of combat levels, irrelevant to this thread. My point is that range really doesn't need a power buff. Having said that, crossbows and bolts in F2P are completely ignored. Maybe crossbows and bolts of equal power to the current bows and arrows? Mage most certainly needs an update. Possibly wave spells, although this could overpower it. Snare is needed and so is teleblock. I haven't heard of many players using any PvP weapon on a non-PvP server, mostly likely because they're so damn overpriced, but that's just me. Anyway, perhaps Melee and Range are on even footing as far as power goes. It's not uncommon to simply defeat meleers my level with nothing but rune arrows or bolts. I'm more than willing to give freeplay Snare, teleblock, and Wave spells. What self-respecting PvP Mage would use standard magic, anyway?

How is 150K for a pair of claws unreasonable again? What person wants to pay over 10M, let alone any price on the forums, just for a pair of claws? And you still haven't addressed my question - you really think that 10M+ is the correct price for those claws? So you are the only person who can determine "reasonable"? Some random price that only you find acceptable? Sorry, markets don't work like that, no matter how big you think you are. A Partyhat serves no purpose to the blunt majority of players in the game, nor does any rare. "Reasonable" can be seen as a price that a player is willing to pay for this rare item that has absolutely no use to them whatsoever. I'm not determining it, I'm just giving a decent ballpark. Do you think 500M to buy a Partyhat is reasonable? Do you really? Exactly. But seriously, would you sell your rare pair of dragon claws for 490k on the GE when it's worth easily over 50 times that, just to fix a mistake you had nothing to do with? Your argument would only hold weight if the prices started at something reasonable for a new, powerful weapon release, but they didn't, and this mess is what you get. For the last time. They're claws. Just claws. Their drop rate wasn't nerfed or anything. It's not something that Jagex can fix when it's the fault of merchants, who happily jack the price up on every new item release. I'd pay 450K for the claws, but that's about as high as it goes - it's not a Dragon plate. Comparing Dragon Claws to the Dragon Plate is like comparing a cloud to a buffalo. Claws aren't hard to get, and the plate requires three separate pieces + 92 Smithing to put back together. Why shouldn't the item with more effort command a significantly higher price? Again, it's not Jagex's fault that merchants can't get enough of junk trades to jack prices up on items. Talk to the merchants if you want that fixed, but it isn't likely you'll get through to them unless you're holding something of value.

I'm not so sure that Junk trading needs to be completely obliterated, but rather get rid of the main benefactor of it - junk. Figure out a way for us to actually send it off someplace, so we can earn a little more profit for our time, and you'll have less junk traders, less junk trades, and more GE users. QUESTION: Why the hell would I pay 20M for a pair of claws? Claws?? And why do you think that this is Jagex's inability to update the GE? You can't think of this as just some idiot phase that *every* new item goes through? Remember when the Dragon Spear went through something similar? Prices won't stay high for those claws forever, you know, and 350K may be reasonable for them. Let's see. No demand and a high price for items that require only level 65 defense, rarer than a Shield Left from Skeletons, and has worse stats than Barrows. Hmm. What's wrong with again? Did you want them cheaper? Because that would devalue the point of getting them from clue scrolls in the first place. Think about it - I'd be pretty upset if I got a 3A kite from a clue, and the highest I could sell it for on the GE was 4M. As far as Partyhats goes, they've been falling for over a year now. Over a year ago, Blue partyhats were "worth" over 500M; now they're at a much more reasonable 343M. In terms of "fixing" items, the players have to decide to (finally) use the GE to actually get the price to move. If they don't do that, then they're essentially complaining about a problem that they themselves have every ability to fix, but are either unwilling or stubborn to fix for themselves.

Preface: This [rough] draft covers the basics of the three points of the combat triangle; Magic, Ranged, and Melee. Summoning is not included. Many of the examples also underline the older standards/tactics of PvP and PvE combat, with an [interestingly] heavy bias towards freeplay; if you feel that I should update that part, let me know. Foreword: This rough draft attempts to inform and address the problem of the current Combat system in RuneScape. It can be seen as a giant wall of text; please don't write this off to tl;dr. Read it thoroughly and completely before passing judgment -- it is just a rough draft, after all :P I: Current State When it comes to fighting in RuneScape, one has a large amount of options. They can choose what whichever weapon they please, whichever skill they like, or even which Magic spellbook they wish. With these options come some benefits, but even larger drawbacks. For instance, one can choose to use a Dark Bow with Dragon Arrows (superior to most Ranged weapons by any standard), but this would come at a price able to hit insanely hard once about every eleven seconds. For Warriors, they can chose the all-power Godsword or the highest metal 2H they can wield both can hit hard, but both weapons are painfully slow to use for practical use. Magicians are rather stuck when it comes to speeds their spells are cast at about Longsword speed but have a decent edge when it comes to damage. One such spell can hit up to 32 and slow their opponent's attack down for 48 seconds. II: Major Issue If you haven't noticed it by now, I'm referring to each weapon by its speed. Weapon speeds haven't really been a critical factor up until the release of RS2, as back then, most every player still believed in their their Rune 2h or a Dragon Battleaxe (which suffered absolutely NO speed penalty). If you'll recall, Jagex reworked their entire combat system with the release of RS2(1): This meant, in effect, that a Mace or a Scimitar, both previously considered useless and novelty weapons, should have had a major use in the upcoming version of RuneScape. However, shortly after the launch of RS2, players realized how unforgivably slow Battleaxes and 2-Handers had become, so they switched to Longswords, Shortswords (where available), Daggers, and the Scimitar. Does anyone notice a small trend with that? Instead of of the eleven different types of weapons available to one at the time, only four were being actively used, and that was effectively reduced down to two. Before a whole year had passed, the Scimitar had become the de facto weapon of choice for many players, and the major problem of weapon bias and imbalance had once again became prevalent. This problem crept into the realm of Rangers as well, as they were not overlooked in the Combat update with the update came the overwhelming dominance of the Magic Shortbow, or any Shortbow for that matter Crossbows and bolts would be under-appreciated for about three more years(2). Magicians had received the proverbial short-end of the staff by having an invariable casting speed. The exception to this would be the God staves; they had a single point of speed over the staffs or battlestaffs of the time. To this day, the fastest casting staves are the God staves and the Ancient Staff a stat that really hasn't changed since the days of old. Their spells also lack true punch with the standard speeds that they can cast, the most one can do with Standard Magic is either 14 on Freeplay, or 25 with Iban's Staff. Magic was also supposed to be able to fight truly effectively against Warriors, and be able to bind them in place for up to 15 seconds (practically doubled with the introduction of Ancient Magicks on 18 April 2005). However, their rate of casting and amount of damage pale in comparison to a well-equipped Warrior with a Scimitar he could probably hit about four times harder and faster than a Magician, even with Entangles. III: Introduction of Slayer With the Slayer update in 2005, and someone achieving 85 Slayer subsequently (don't really know when, probably late-July or early August), a new, fast and powerful weapon was spawned the Abyssal Whip. In terms of melee combat, it is second-to-none because of its speed and flexibility. A one-handed weapon that was insanely fast, and hit insanely hard the face of RuneScape combat was guaranteed to be changed forever, and not for the better. The skill level required to kill an Abyssal Demon for one of these was immense (the skill was released in January, I'm saying that it took about six months at the earliest for someone to get 85), and the weapon itself, being a force to be reckoned with, left demand virtually unchanged even to this date at absolutely got to have it or you're not fighting anything. To date, most every new weapon (or weapon class) has been compared to the speed of the Whip and Scimitar if it's slower than those, then it's not effective at what it does. IV: Wielding/Shooting Dragonfire, the Godsword, the Dark Bow, and Miasmic Spells I'm going to take a time-jump here to reiterate a few of the newest talents for each class here, since they themselves are very popular in PvP circles. The Godsword was released in late 2007, virtually eclipsing any and all weapons of the time with its awesome strength and special attacks here is the only time that speed was not largely considered as a negating factor. The Dragonfire shield can be used to throw literal Dragonfire at one's opponent, and if they are unprepared, one can become an instant barbecue victim. The cheaper alternative to that would be Dragonfire-enchanted bolts, which, if activated, hit an impressive 64 (otherwise hit rather high anyway, upwards of 38 without any activation). Miasmic spells are a relatively newcomer, with the addition of PvP worlds, as they are the only class of Magic spells to hit above 30, and with an added effect, slow their opponent's attacks down. Lastly, the Dark Bow is an awe-inspiringly powerful bow, with the ability to deal up to 48x2 damage, and specials that will never hit below a certain threshold. Each weapon and addition has its pros, but each has major cons: Dragonfire Shield: Must be charged to be used to throw fire (obviously); cannot be used very quickly; expensive, so not likely to be used against players; not likely enough to be used against NPCs as none pose that serious of a challenge Dragonfire bolts: Expensive, time-consuming to make and enchant; canceled out by an antifire/Dragonfire shield; uncontrollable special ability Godsword: Impractical (but not unheard of) to use in PvP situations; slow, expensive, may not always be an accurate-enough special Dark Bow: Unforgivably slow this alone is enough to reduce its usefulness outside of PvP situations Miasmic Spells: Cannot be used without the aid of a special staff, which is only usable on PvP worlds V: Theories and Solutions So what can be done to fix this major issue? One way would be to remove weapon speeds on all weapons, but this reintroduces the very issue that RS2's combat system was intending to fix weapon bias and elitism. Another fix would be to introduce new and better weapons to faze out the older class, but this creates even more problems. The way that I would go about fixing this would be as such. [Melee] Introduce weapon skill levels. Allow a person to become exceedingly skilled in a particular class (or classes) of weapons, to improve weapon speed (certain weapons would be excluded). [Melee] Include the ability to knock-down or stun an opponent with a rather hard hit. [Melee] Allow armor to reduce damage done. [Range and Melee] Cap the amount of damage that a faster weapon can do. For instance, the faster it is, the weaker it can hit; the slower it is, the higher it can hit. Ensure that the slower weapons can not hit below a certain, reasonable threshold, and ensure that all weapons cannot hit above the same threshold. Some exceptions will apply (Barrows). [Melee] Introduce the Dragon set effect, whatever that might be. [Range] Improve the benefits for using a slower Ranged weapon (probably more damage or higher Magic defense) [Range] Allow up to Red Dragonhide armor on Freeplay. [Range] Allow up to Adamant bolts (absolutely no tips) on freeplay. [Magic] Allow magic level to improve damage on the following ratio: D = (floor(S) + (L*.15)). This means, if I have 99 Magic, I can hit up to 47 with a spell that does an initial 32 damage. [Magic] Give Snare and Entangle to Freeplay. Five seconds does not last long. [Magic] Allow casting speed to be determined by level. VI: Closing Thoughts This is to be debated, as this is just a rough draft, and what I feel on the matter. I'd really like to see this system get the appreciation that it deserved from the introduction of RS2. Sources: 1) http://news.runescape.com/newsitem.ws?id=145 2) http://news.runescape.com/newsitem.ws?id=620

Now, you just know that the rant is absolutely stupid when 123Yourgone starts making perfect sense... Needless to say, I'm going to agree with him here. Next time, read up on Revenants and figure out their strengths. Or be smart and have your friends bring Sprit Wolves with "Howl", eh? To answer your question, about why we can't choose what we keep on death: Imagine a place where if you died, you didn't lose your Partyhat or full set of Dragon. What the hell's the point in "dangerous" parts of the game if you can decide what you will or will not keep? Haven't you heard of a little risk?

Planning, testing, coding, major bug fixing, repeat until complete. You must never have worked on a project much bigger than a few lines of code, have you...?

The inconsistency is that the player, whom was allegedly muted, was still able to PM you. Didn't know that was a feature of QuickChat. But at any rate, it's good that he was removed from power. Can't have irresponsible folk like that around.

As far as I know, if you've upgraded your machine since this past September at the latest, then you should be alright. More or less, this was affecting specific DNS servers, and they should've patched those things up by now.

First of all, a Player Moderator should be ready to report/mute an online predator, which is in fact, a federal crime. It wouldn't make sense that they shouldn't handle it, especially when they're in a position to take immediate action. Second, while it's arguable that leaving your wireless internet means is not technically theft, there are two clauses to it: a) It's not a federal offense, not in the United States. Source In the source, the highest punishments go up to, it looks like, is twenty years, under some serious cases. Using a wireless signal to commit a federal offense overrides the smaller offense, naturally, as the case would be tried in Federal court anyway. B) It's still unethical. Just because I leave my wireless signal open doesn't automatically give you the right to tap in and use it whenever you damn well please. I'd still lock my router down as much as I could anyway. I wouldn't just use anyone's old wireless signal, unless I had permission. Of course, that doesn't change the fact that there are dozens of free wireless signals around here...

It's real, just told in a nice way. The DNS poisoning attacks are very, very real, and many people had become susceptible to it. Now, unless you haven't updated your machine since the dawn of time, you're protected from it.

Three long beeps? Most likely a memory issue. It may be different, but with all the machines I've worked on, three long beeps usually means bad memory. I've noticed that sometimes the machine will want to boot afterwards, but only if I do the following: 1) Unplug it from power 2) Wait about 10-15 minutes for the RAM to completely flush Afterwards, I run a little utility called memtest86+, to make sure that my memory isn't corrupt. If it is, you'll likely have to buy new sticks (and you'll have to make sure that they're compatible with your board). If you want to give memtest86+ a shot, it can be found here. As a general rule, LOTS of red is a bad thing.

Here's a twist of irony for the situation. [[Link removed]] <- Someone actually WANTS the drop rate to stay insane. -.- Okay, that was weird. I linked to the RSoF and it filtered it. Anyway... QFC=15-16-438-57972117

Well, what I've noticed about the other *three* specials, if they hit, was that they were always within 1 point of each-other. If the highest number you hit was odd (39), then the other three would add up to that minus 1 (38). Vice-versa if it were even. However, I can't really explain that one. Yet.

I think that I have the formula figured out. I might not, but this is as rough an estimate that I've seen so far. First, we can agree that the maximum hit for these claws is 42. That means that the amount of damage that is possible is as follows: Let x = Highest hit. Then: TotalDamage = x + (x/2) + (x/4) + (x+1/4), if x is an even number. TotalDamage = x + (x/2) + (x/4) + (1-x/4), if x is an odd number. I've also noted that x isn't set in stone, so you can hit a zero on one swipe. However, the algorithm changes from there. TotalDamage = (x)(z)+ (x/2)(z) + (x/4)(z) + (x/4-i)(z), where i is the number of misses, and z is a potential zero. However many times you miss, your second highest hit will be reduced by one. For example, if you hit a 25 on the first swipe, and miss on two consecutive swipes, your next highest hit will be 23. However, if you miss on the first couple, the last couple will still be affected by this algorithm. Again, I only arrived at this rough-handedly, so don't yell at me too harshly. I also think that the maximum hit is probably 83. Not too hard to wager that there *could* be a nerf, so use it at the Demons while you still can.

What are you talking about? The only real requirement of Smithing in this quest is that it be at 69 or beyond. Making the Dragon Platebody is extra, and while I don't necessarily believe that it should've been lowered from 99 to 92, I still believe it should have been lowered. [besides, the quest is still damn hard, with or without 99 Smithing.]

Just a heads-up, you can now be assisted to make the Dragonplate body, and they'll be lowering the Smithing requirement to 92 sometime next week. [Source]

[Source] Might seem a bit lame, but it was intentional.

I'd definitely give back the $100. Losing that is just heart-wrenching, especially when you're out to pay a bill. I'd attempt to contact whoever died with the 11M, but if I couldn't find them, oh well I suppose.

Not going to argue that it was what players [like me] have wanted for years, but it was really the mistake of launching Barrows equipment. Instead of complaining that they've completely wrecked the set of Dragon forever, I'll rather suggest that they innovate to make it worth having (such as set effects, boosted stats, hardened defense bonuses, etc).

Dragon was never in a competition for best armor. Well, at the start, when Rune was only available, it was, but now that Barrows has practically usurped that, Dragon is only really usable for looks. Kinda like the useless Partyhats that you see some people with nowadays, eh? For clarification, yes I would get a Dragon Plate. I can't say that I really care about cost-effectiveness, nor do I care to repair my armor twice a week - I'd rather just keep going with my Slayer tasks, thanks. [No, I don't have a huge wad of cash, but what good is 21M + items doing me if I can't have fun with it? Can't say I'm the type of person to sit there and stare at wealth, and call that fun, either.]

Actually, considering some of the updates having a decent CS where we don't get banned unfairly for stupid things all the time would be better. Well, you're going to have to define "stupid" things to begin with, but I'd much rather an update of any kind, as opposed to unbanning "unfairly" banned accounts. Note that I mean the questionable "unfairly", not the really unfairly, as I know it's happened before [hey, they're human, but when they find that mistake they usually correct it].

I won't get a chance to do this quest until probably late December or early January (finals, job, registration, etc), but when I do, I'm at an impasse as to which skill to put it all in. Contenders are Smithing, Slayer, Summoning, and Crafting. Can't see putting it in any other skill since it's simple enough to train them (yes, even Mining - I'm just praying for an update to it so I can get started on it again). Maybe I'll use it on Smithing. Or Slayer. Or Smithing. Geez...

Care to elaborate why? A handful of quests stand in your way (since all of the requirements are from previous quests, which is why Smithing isn't required at level 77 or something).

[hide=Spoiler]According to the RS Wiki, the plate comes with +10 Strength and +4 Prayer. Can't wait to confirm that.[/hide]

1) Why can't people learn to use hide tags? 2) That means that the reward IS real, then.