Yoko Kurama

@Sy: Actually, no. One delay is forgivable, or even a few, but when you're getting several things delayed, you know there's a problem. We have had quests delayed this year, we have even had several indefinitely delayed. We were supposed to get another 2-3 quests for the end of 2013 according to Mod Mark, and a World Gate Quest in January. They are all delayed and no one knows what happened to them. Ports was supposed to be December, it will now be January. There was a Range buff that was supposed to be December or January, now it looks to be neither. Skills were delayed. There was a construction rework, also. These are not some trivial last minute things; it's pretty clear that they are pathologically unable to deliver commitments or manage their time. A few times, it is forgivable, but when it is constant, it can't be brushed under the rug as if it was some minor mishap. I don't have the numbers at hand, but I am almost entirely certain that we haven't had an update each week (and no SoF and SGS don't count). I can distinctively remember weeks without updates. As for the quality, yes that's subjective, but it's a common enough complaint that it merits some consideration. Boss battles have objectively become much more time consuming and cumbersome to such an extent that forums for PVM activities are much slower than before, as is participation, and the learning curve is very steep. In the recent poll on the main page, the two major bosses this year (Barrows and Vorago) were dead last in the category for favorite updates. I do both regularly, but it's clear that I am in a very small minority of players and even I detest the experience and only do it because there are no other alternatives. As for Quests, they were incredibly sparse this year, and with several quests that were slated for this year not happening at all, and at least one major quest (Birthright of the Dwarves) being considered by most players to be a complete and rushed disaster. There was not a single quest (with the possible exception of TWW, and that is debateable) that was up to the standard to ROTM or WGS or Branches of Darkmeyer. Actually it is new, the level of neglect and lack of seriousness with which these issues have been treated. I have personally worked with the Ninja team and a lot of serious things which could easily be fixed have been neglected. T90 Mage is 3B, while T90 Range is 500M, while T90 Melee is 150M. Mage is useful for everything, while Melee despite being having high DPS is very restricted in a lot of places, and Range is utterly useless. It's been one year since EoC went live after an extensive testing period, and these problems were continually brought up and absolutely nothing has been done. There's a GLARING problem at the heart of EoC (which was supposed to balance the triangle), and it's just allowed to continue month in and month out. A lot of the specials for could could be fixed with some quick Ninjas within a week to make Range viable -- but is anything done about it? Nope. Vorago's difficulty could be tampered to make T90 Mage more common (just as Nex's drops were made common within 4 weeks of release). Instead more efforts have been made to make him more difficult. Most bosses are still about DPS, thus making tank gear and shields effectively useless and underpowered. T80 Mage is actually more useful than T90 Range (or at least it was until recently). And so on. These are glaring problems, and aboslutely nothing has been done, and there are no discussions about them. There are J-Mods working on concept art competitions for SGS stuff, but not this. It's a joke.

No. Simply no. It is transparently obvious unless you're in some alternate universe with an alternate Runescape and alternate Jagex, that dozens and dozens of updates are being delayed, the quality and quantity of updates per month has drastically declined, and longstanding and glaring problems are being ignored month after month. They are obviously hideously incompetent or they are cutting development time, or possibly both. I can't take anyone seriously who tries to dispute the above, I simply can't.

It's quite easy. Though, if you haven't learned it by now, it probably isn't worth it (money-wise).

Servers just crashed for the 3rd or 4th time in recent days and there will be no rollbacks or acknowledgements as usual. Thanks a lot, Jagex. Power to the Players and Year of the Player, indeed.

I have pestered various J-Mods on those issues over the past weeks. They are basically all clueless and hopeless. They have absolutely no awareness of core issues and problems, and no intention to fix them. They are mostly flippant when approached about these issues.

Still no range fix; only been like well over 1 year since EoC went live. Not even a discussion about it. Seriously, what are they spending all this time on? They keep postponing stuff (we were promised another 2-3 quests for the end of 2013, but they are postponed and won't be coming in January either, PoP was also delayed, as were other things), and each month seems sparser in updates than the last. It seems they barely get anything done these days.

Seems like a lackluster month to me. The only thing I cared about (range buff) has been postponed. Lame.

This. I don't know why anyone would play F2P. In the old days, I would do some F2P in between my P2P runs, but I definitely wouldn't do that in 2014, given the transparent neglect of it. The fact that F2P has a diminutive player base as opposed to a massive one just a few years ago seems to confirm, for me, that others feel the same way.

Oh, please. Most players are far more informed and up-to-date than Jagex is. It's more like Jagex just took some power away from the inmates (i.e., Jagex) and gave it to people who might do a better job.

And by high-level content they are referring to things that less than 5% of players actually enjoy (on the latest best update of 2013 poll, Vorago was almost dead last with 4%) which is designed in such a way as to be inaccessible to most players (even the target demographic), and the only way to excel at it is to grind like a zombie. Yeah, that doesn't appeal to me either. Someone, or perhaps several people, in Jagex HQ are clearly out of touch and need a good talking-down to immediately.

I thought in a recent poll the Elf Quest qas the most popular choice amongst future updates? I think it has a decent chance. Remember, that Inventor was said to come out sometime by April or something of this year (still a few months off), it's not like even if it wins the poll they will be in a position to release it early -- more than likely that they will probably delay that. --- Also, I know everyone is excited for Elf City, but I imagine it will be like a lot of other fairy ring places or something, some big 'spacey' looking city with quest stuff which one probably won't revisit afterwards.

Most of it is the usual "it's the year of the player" stuff which doesn't impress me anymore. I did find interesting that EoC updates were left out of polls, when there are such hideous inadequacies with it, which are known to players and have been for one-and-a-half years, that would immediately become clear to Jagex. I don't know why they won't do it. Hopefully they will rework the drop rates of Vorago (doesn't look likely given the flippancy with which [Chris L] some mods have treated such questions) so it isn't a complete grind spanning several months, and Ranging.

So that lower level players can actually participate in the PvP side of the event without getting massacred the minute they set foot near a node. The event is for everyone, after all, and it's only really a "reward" because Jagex is shit at balance: if they were at all competent in this regard it would basically just make combat less one-sided (Aren't you one of the people that's usually in favor of that sort of thing?) Better to just segregate people by levels or something, rather than making a mockery out of the whole notion of a combat level hierarchy. All the current solution does is give lower level players an unfair advantage.

The old combat formula was far from perfect and was not my preference, but at least it had some use. The new one is far far worse and has practically no use. One of the most startling indicators is at Dungeoneering or bossing. Before, if I saw someone that was level 120-130ish or 138, I could be very certain that they were competent at combat. Nowadays, everyone is 200 combat and I have absolutely no way to distinguish them with combat. This is not a post in favour of the old combat formula, but rather how horrible the new one is. Also: the combat formula should be a hollistic thing. As it is, most of the old pures, or people who focused at a particular combat stat to the detriment of others (such as a mage pure) are for the most part gone. Most people these days try to train combat across the board. Max combat (the highest level) should only be available to those who are maxed in combat; they can have variations or some sort of indicator for certain situations, but max combat should mean... max combat.

It was a hundred times better than the current one which asserts that someone with 99 in all combat stats and someone with only 99 defense and 99 Mage are both maxed. The current combat formula also has the audacity to suggest that prayer is non-combat - a joke. There are 8 combat skills, and yet the current combat formula suggests that if you have 2 out of 8 (or one-fourth) at 99, then you're maxed. It's as sensible as Jagex handing out Max Capes to everyone who has 1/4 of all skills at 99. It was obviously designed to placate noobs and make them feel as if they were maxed combat even when they aren't.

This would be grand and great if we lived in a world where people looking to pvp only went after people equal to them in order to have a good fight allowing lower geared and lower levelled and fighting chance of surviving/experience pvp with their equals. But alas we live in a world where Drygore Bob, Ascension Susan and Seismic Joe will go on a merry slaughtering spree repeatedly killing anyone and everything that crosses their path with no second thought of the fact they are weaker people with no chance of survival who don't offer a real in-depth pvp experience or that their hapless slaughtering spree can quite dramatically ruin the entire notion of pvp for these fledgling players who really need to stick with it in order for pvp to flourish once more, driving them away from ever touching pvp again. People will inevitably PJ people, and do 10v1. I have seen plenty of noobs PJ higher level players in this event. How is this any better than higher level players going on a killing spree? At least the higher level player owning others, sort of makes sense. All damage scaling does is give noobs a totally unwarranted advantage.

I don't understand damage scaling. Why are we rewarding lower level players for being... lower level players? If I'm higher combat than you, I'm sort of supposed to own you in combat -- that's sort of the whole point. As if the combat formula in EoC wasn't nooby enough.

The festive cracker drop parties at Fally Room; will those be in every world? Or one world?

Actually I found it quite fun! Then you're in a minority. The general consensus is that it was an extremely tedious, pointless, and boring event.

Patch notes were awesome today, quite a few things I personally suggested to Mod Ryan a few weeks ago were finally fixed (Comp Cape kept in gravestone, Drakan's Medallian, Sixth Age Ring kept in gravestone). And multiple Sunshine/Swiftness is awesome as well. The Christmas Event though sucks. It's just tedious tasks being done again and again. Lame. Mod Ana always makes everything boring and tedious.

It's akin to the BoL bonus titles. You can get them randomly through the event. Currently, if you switch sides, you lose the Warmaster of Bandos/Vanguard of Armadyl titles. Is this a glitch or intentional?

Now we can get all rewards; awesome. Mod Moltare is awesome. It's so nice to have a J-Mod who listens to concerns and then.... actually does something about them. Take some notes, Mod Chris L.

Maybe some people want both for aesthetic purposes, and maybe people have become accustomed to this because of the last event?

Any affection I might have had for her died after Divination came out. :cry:

I think Jagex certainly did renown right; it takes about 30 minutes a day to get full as opposed to last time where it took 1-2 hours to get the full. However, the sacred metal fragments were changed for the worse. They are completely luck based and a lot harder to get this time around.