jettrider

Really, the eye opener here has been the rarity/perceived difficulty of construction. I guess we really need some incentives to go past level 69 (where you can easily build your own guilded altar). Construction is not a particularly hard skill and its pricetag has remained relatively unchanged while the value of gp has plummeted. The only problem is that nobody WANTS to train construction.

Sly Wizard - This is becoming impossible because we are accusing each other of using straw man arguments. Clearly we can't state what we think in a way that makes the other understand the point of view. I could echo your version of the call "read my post!" by asking you to quote the paragraph where I stated counterarguments to some of the things you said. Since this is a discussion about the morals of an already commonplace and controversial practice it was bound to get to this point, where counterattacks to what has been posted constitute entire posts and the core issues are being ignored. As much as I would love to respond to the individual points raised, it would only lead to further searching for holes in my memory from years past and arguing what they mean today. You're free to think whatever you like about my last post (which did have two inaccuracies) and about what I've tried to say, but I don't think I've done a very good job of addressing the key point. Much of that has to do with the fact that the only response has been to the tidbits. Well, count me out.

30k in those skills doesn't really come close to the time value of 30k Runecrafting exp except maybe Slayer, but you can't assist that. Moneywise, only herblore would be worthy of consideration for that 30k chunk of experience compared to runecrafting. But generally, for players that are even in the ballpark of maxing, time is more of an issue than money. (Ie, time spent earning money is no longer a factor.)

Construction and Herblore are only 'rare' because of the high cost. Cost must factor into the difficulty of a skill. However, Construction is much cheaper than prayer (so is smithing, especially with SC hammers) and so only the uselessness put them on that list. Farming is also a cheap skill if you buy the right seeds, it's just a constant commitment. Nowhere close to other skills in difficulty though. Herblore can cost more than 300m depending what potions you make. At a time value of 2m/hour for the average player that's 150 hours of moneymaking plus maybe 25 hours of potionmaking - that's an hourly rate of about 63k experience. However, many players have extra cash to burn and don't necessarily place a value on time. I would not say herblore is the hardest skill. One skill that wasn't mentioned was fishing. However, this can be done mostly AFK, and once you make it to level 90, you can practically leave your computer for 4.5 minutes at a time and still make a nice hourly profit. The exp rates aren't great, but it's decent enough that the ease of AFKing can be worked into anyone's schedule. Agility is around 55-60k hourly experience at the high levels for the average clicker; however, by playing Barbarian Assault you can significantly increase this to 75k+. Good teams are not hard to find even on w6 if you play at peak times and are smart in choosing other players. Though boring for many people it doesn't come close to runecrafting. Mining can also be significantly sped up from 50-55k at LRC to 70k+, and you don't have to click nearly as much while doing it. That leaves runecrafting and dungeoneering. Runecrafting is the slowest skill in the game except for Slayer, but since Slayer makes about the same amount of money as runecrafting and is much more fun for the average person to train, it's not considered a very hard skill. Few players, however, can do much more than 50k exp/hour at ZMI. In the 80s the average will be even less. Grahk runecrafting and crafting death runes through the abyss are popular ways of training in the 90s since they make semi-high hourly profits, but they are barely 25-30k experience per hour. In all runecrafting has the click intensity of agility combined with the slowness of Slayer and no longer makes such great money that these are minor inconveniences. Dungeoneering is very slow experience unless you find the good teams or join a clan. The average player in w117 is earning under 40k exp/hour no matter how fast they say they can rush. However, with batch 2 this will get faster and I predict that Dungeoneering clans will grow and expand to a lot more players. In addition, the class rings, new weapons, and other small improvements and bugfixes will greatly speed up the skill. With new floors and higher prestige I expect experience rates to soar and place dungeoneering past agility and mining.

In two days of monster hunting I only got level 3 clues. I did get a Zaros Page 4, but all the other clues were valued between 40-80k loot. That's still not worth my time - the guarantee of a TT-specific item simply does not noticeably boost the average clue. I'll only be doing level 4s.

Treasure Trail items are just for looks thank goodness. I'm just glad they released this without unbalancing the game, which is a lot to ask considering past updates.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I've been playing Runescape longer then you, and that you didn't start playing Runescape before 2005. For if you had, you would have known that Jagex revamped the KBD's lair, like, three or four times and changed the way his breath attacks worked in order to get people to stop solo'ing it. You would also know that when the KQ came out, it only had a magic and melee attack, and that after people figured out how to range solo the entire thing the whole way through, Jagex totally nerfed the rune throwing axe special and added a range attack to make it exponentially more difficult for people to solo. There were a few changes to the DK's lair, but that was mainly to get people to stop safe spotting Rex, and a few changes to GWD's in which also made it a bit more difficult to people to solo by hiding in the door frames. As it stands, no, boss monsters really weren't made to be solo'ed. History attests to this fact. I actually wish I still had the links to the updates Jagex gave us regarding the new game engine in the RSC -> RS2 conversion when they explained multi-combat areas. I've been playing on and off since 2002. Isn't it fantastic to put yourself on morally superior ground to everyone who opposes you on the premise that you've been around for longer? Even in RSC people found ways around all that to solo the KBD. Considering I remember being online the morning of the KQ update, I can say that tweaking the KQ's difficulty had more to do with how easy it was to not take damage (in a team OR solo) rather than to specifically target solo players. I'm not sure where you're going with the next two examples as Rex can still be easily safespotted and every GWD boss can be soloed for over an hour. The saradomin boss room shape was first abused (and for months) by a team, not by solo players. Point is, with the current game engine it would be very easy for Jagex to create a boss monsters that cannot even be attempted solo. However, they prefer to deal with the difficulty of the monster to adjust the difficulty for players trying to solo bosses. Even now the Corporeal Beast more or less requires the special attack of an elite piece of gear (the Statius Warhammer) to attempt to solo. If Jagex really wanted the Corporeal Beast to remain unsoloable, they would simply create a game mechanic where you can't enter the boss lair except with a team or nerf the special of the warhammer. If every boss was meant to be killed only with a team, then every world would have lootshare. You can speculate all you want about Jagex's intentions before Lootshare but it's really not relevant to the OP's point. I'm really astonished that: 1.) The concept of decency is lost upon some people. And 2.) You would think that Jagex would put boss-monster in multi-combat if it was meant to be solo'ed, and are content to ignore changes that Jagex has made to make it harder to solo boss monsters. 1) Take your cheap shot but there's a world of difference between mining a rock someone else is mining when there are a bunch nearby and forcing players soloing one TD at a time in the multi-kill spot to move to the single-kill spot. You seem to be taking the highest ground possible for the most vile crashing techniques and spreading it to everything in the game. 2) The point in the first part recycled. I addressed it above; solo play has been allowed and encouraged. Any claim that it hasn't is pure speculation until Jagex specifically creates a game mechanic to create instanced bosses for teams.

You enter a race knowing that only one person can win. It's an implicit assumption attached to the activity. People seem to be under some kind of illusion that boss monsters are in multi-combat because they were designed in order for people to prove how much better they are then someone. They weren't. They're that way because they were designed to be team activities, which is why-- once upon a time, at least-- Jagex was insistent on making sure that said NPC's couldn't be solo'ed. This after bashing people for "false" base arguments? At the only boss that Jagex seriously attempted to make unsoloable (the Corporeal Beast), crashing is not nearly as big of an issue and has only been mentioned mockingly in this thread. We've turned this into a debate about ethics and psychology when it really all started from a discussion about finding a spot for your character to kill some monsters. I think we've agreed by now that crashing without attempting to hop worlds is wrong, but I'm really astonished at the two concepts you have pushed forth so far - that the first player to as much as breathe on a resource should get full dibs on the rewards and that all bosses were created to be team/collaborative activities.

Please don't pull out the code argument. Companies deal with this all the time. The reason that Jagex delays updates is because they are concerned for the long-term good of the game and have no one to dictate a schedule. They make their own schedule and priority and that makes them pretty unique - we've seen some great updates here and there but it also means we deal with this. I do wish they would prioritize graphical updates last and not tie them to game content, but elite treasure trails will come out eventually and there is plenty of content to play in the mean time.

Good god, 84 slots devoted to Treasure Trails. Makes me glad I quit doing level 3s. Hopefully elite TTs aren't heavy on weird emote clue gear. I'm really hoping Jagex doesn't require an obscure piece of gear, rendering it unbuyable for several weeks.

I would never say something like that in public chat but I do get a bit nervous when I see someone in a Soul Wars Cape at TDs asking what brews are then promptly getting destroyed in combat

That would create a lot of unwanted side effects like lowering the price of the drops. Bandos gear (and most GWD gear) is stable because that particular boss is already being killed at peak rate on most worlds. Not necessarily a bad thing if it reduces crashing, but it's something to think about. Perhaps they should simply create a new boss monster. It's long overdue.

Worst logic ever, especially when you consider the fact that the majority of monsters in Runescape aren't in multi-combat. All GWD, DK's, KBD, even corp are in multicombat... Only single-combat is like Barrows lol. And? Once again I point out to you that the majority of monsters aren't in multi-combat. What's your point? :mellow: [/hide] Someone who has raised their combat stats to kill mithril dragons didn't raise their combat stats to crash anyone, nor did crashing anyone have anything to do with their decision to raise their combat stats. The majority of monsters in RS are single combat. But what about boss hunting? Like I pointed out, all major bosses are multicombat. And if you're maxed melee and killing mith dragons not as a slayer task, you're probably doing something wrong. Wait, what? It was bad enough that your argument was somehow predicated on the faulty notion that people get higher levels and better armor/weapons to crash people (the fact that not everyone crashes, and not everyone goes to multi-combat areas renders that notion decidedly false), but now you're assuming that the purpose of getting high stats is to fight certain boss monsters? Anyway, what about boss hunting? You've yet to prove that the purpose of getting better equipment and stats is the crash someone. And I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the reason you can't prove it is because it's not true, and is something you have merely assumed to be true for the purpose of your rant. I really hate to get in a long flamey thread chain, but I kind of feel compelled to respond. I didn't explicitly say that the exclusive purpose to get better stats/equipment is solely to MH. People get armor / stats to show off, for the feeling of accomplishment, and a lot of other things. What I did say is that some people (like me) did in fact train solely to MH. And when I'm monster hunting, I claim my stake in spawns that I want because I worked for it. You may want my spawn, and I'd give it to you if I felt like you earned it - but until you have, don't complain. Take heed at the fact that I didn't say that you said that the only reason people raised their stats or got better equipment was to MH. Anyway, thank you for proving my point. Your "part of the reason - incentive, even - of getting better equipment and stats is earning the right to crash people" line was in error, because crashing plays no part in the majority of the Runescape population's decision to level up or to obtain better items. As it stands, you can't really justify anything you've typed out except to say that you think that you have more of a right to kill some monster then someone else because you've got better equipment/stats then they do which, quite honestly, is pretty sad. And thus why I really do hate threads like these. Because it's generally one guy (or a group of people) stroking their e-peenors whilst claiming some kind of entitlement complex because they've spent X amount of days in-game, have X stats and X items and. Having better armor "entitles" you to get hit less (or in the case of mage/range armor, hit more often). Having better weapons "entitles" you to hit harder or more often. Having a higher herblore "entitles" you to make better pots, which can either let you hit more often, hit higher or stay in an area longer then you would be able to otherwise. Having better armor or stats then someone else doesn't "entitle" you to any spot or monster, nor does it "entitle" you to be a [cabbage] in-game. And I could only shake my head at the above emphasized. He's not doing a good job of explaining exactly what it means but I'll simplify it. The purpose of leveling up (besides having fun, unlocking other content, etc) is to access higher leveled monsters and more lucrative drops. However, past level about level 70-80 in any skill you have access to everything in the game, so levels past that point are for the sole purpose of being able to more efficiently play content you've already unlocked. This efficiency drives all players forward. It is the sole reason why people choose to train stats above the level 80 mark - to do better at high level content. Let's single out Tormented Demons (though DKs are fairly close in hourly profit) - they are unlocked after playing through most quests and getting a few stats in the 70s. A player at this level will only kill perhaps 10-15 demons per hour with subpar stats and equipment. The long term kills per hour average for the best gear with maxed stats is 45. Killing monsters three times as fast is an incentive in itself. If TDs spawned in an instanced area in which players didn't have to compete, high levels would pay off normally. However, with the release of Ancient Effigies this simply isn't the case. After Elite Clues are released next week (unless Jagex shows an unprecedented amount of foresight), killing TDs will be the most rewarding activity in the game by leaps and bounds. Elite Clues could push hourly profit up to 8 figures depending on the GE price of new items, an unheard of average. Ancient Effigies give 90k noncombat experience each plus a dragonkin lamp on top of that, making TDs a surprisingly fast source of hourly experience for noncombats. It's not surprising, therefore, that TDs are becoming packed on every world. Even less efficient players are spending their time wisely by killing them. The problem is that while there are numerous spots in the chamber to kill a single Tormented Demon, there are a limited number of spaces where multiple TDs can be easily killed at once. These spots are then often taken by level 110 players using a whip and broad bolts, killing one spawn at a time for that 15 kills/hour rate. In this situation, being able to more efficiently play high level content alllows you to play the content in the first place when competition limits the number of players that can do so. For the longest time I didn't crash anywhere. I stopped going to Bandos GWD, crash city, because the profits with a team are abysmal. If a place is crowded to the point of crashing, it is probably not efficient for moneymaking/training anymore. But this isn't true for the case of TDs or DKs, two places where I am now willing the crash the lowest of the lows I see after a few world hops. I'll honestly try to find a world, but if I can't, I'm sorry - if you can't use a spot to its full potential, and this spot is being widely camped to its full potential, prepare to compete for your spot.

Another sample of 50 effigies I saw was one per 118k slayer experience which matches yours. I guess it depends on which 5 tasks you block and if you skip any more - a decision that has been greatly influenced by effigies.

BS. If you investigate every stage of an effigy yourself you will get an average of 11,250 mining experience per effigy (90k total exp/8 possible skills). If you have 99 mining and use the final lamps on mining, you'll get an additional 48,029 experience for a total of 59,279 mining experience per effigy. Considering it takes 90-120 minutes to get an effigy from frost dragons, that's 30-40k experience per hour at 99 mining. That's ridiculously easy to pass even casually mining (not to mention you'd probably get less experience from the effigy depending on mining level). Yes it was an exaggeration and yes you need to consider money value, but it's faster to train individual skills than to camp effigy droppers if you are only concerned about one skill.

I feel that Tormented Demons and Frost Dragons, already crowded and packed with incentives to kill, drop them too often. Otherwise drop rates are good. I think effigies do a great job of rewarding players for getting stats in the 90s. However, I think assisting effigies is overpowered because dragonkin lamps give an unwarranted, disproportional percentage of an effigy's total experience.

An herb run makes more profit per unit time than any method of runecrafting. Unless you are making 2-4m an hour somewhere else, the time used for herb runs is always worth it. Plant high-profit seeds only. Trees: use calquat and spirit trees to cheaply boost the experience you're buying. Spirit trees can be obtained by setting your kingdom workers to collect maples. The choice between papaya and palm, maple and yew has to be made individually. Using med prices (and paying to protect fruit trees but only supercomposting regulars) here are some gp/exp values: Maples (11 gp per exp) vs. Yews (13 gp per exp) Papaya (being merched atm; 7.5 gp/exp baseline) vs. Palm (11 gp/exp) Judging from the above I would go with Yews and Papayas (after they crash). Regular trees are more expensive because they can be planted more frequently than fruit trees. If you are patient and want to save time and money, just do 1 farming tree run a day.

60 kills/hour is unrealistic. It's possible to hold that average for a while with frequent Restore Special doses and Dclaw specs, but not forever, and only a few players could or would want to use that method. As for the actual clues, I'm hoping that the clue scrolls will be rare enough so that each one can be a significant piece of gameplay. Steps should take longer (more secluded locations, must go through dungeons, etc) and the entire clue should take a noticeable amount of time. That will justify that each clue can guarantee a significant amount of money.

What we really need is a system that lets players rank each other as teammates in a particular activity after a round. Ex. while completing a dungeon, you can optionally rate the other players on a number scale (say, 1-5), based on how good they are at working in a team. One potential safeguard: the same person cannot rate a specific player more than a few times. There should also be a curving mechanism so that a player learning an activity can get a higher rating after playing badly through the first few games. A system like this would not be perfect but would GREATLY cut down the amount of clueless imbeciles who get put on serious high level teams. Low levels would also be able to use it to prove they are a worthy team member. The biggest problem with activities like Dungeoneering and Barbarian Assault are the number of useless players you have to sort through before actually being able to play. If we had cross-world sorting that took this team rating into account, they'd be a lot more useful. Investing some developer time into a system like this that could be used for all future activities would be worth all the filler quests currently in the game.

He didn't really confirm it - I'm sure they've thought about a great many things, but from his answer we won't be seeing Dragon Defenders for a very long time. Making the graphics and stats for a single item is very easy, it's the balancing and designing how the item is released that takes a long time, and that hasn't even started. All these "Jmod confirmation" threads get really annoying when they give safe answers that are interpreted completely wrong...

Seems quite paradoxal to me. How can you enjoy something you are not really doing? You mean you enjoy browsing forums or watching vids? I enjoy getting ranks on the game, but I like it even more when I can mingle that with reading/watching other materials while doing it. I do like doing "bank" skills while at the same time enjoying something else. If I was doing them without looking at anything else, I would probably get bored. It won't make much sense if you don't play for ranks like I do, but I can honestly say I find the RuneScape part more fun if my whole attention is not devoted to it. Part of the enjoyment comes from the outside materials, but I actually do find the clicking itself more fun than if I had been doing it with my entire mind (the exception is the bank skills that require a lot of clicking, like training herblore by making overloads). It's the reason why I don't find runecrafting and agility boring when taken in reasonable amounts. I can play another kind of game with those skills by trying to decrease my lap times by clicking at more efficient times. It's just a way to increase my rank while having a bit of fun at the same time. At the same time, I'm training fishing at Shilo Village instead of at Barbarian Fishing because there is no way I can make Barb Fishing easily AFKable without mousekeys. So fun still is an important aspect. Another example of this is training in PvP - it's not quite as fast experience as traditional methods, you need to pay slightly more attention, and it's dangerous -- but there's another goal in mind besides simply getting 13034431 experience.

I've enjoyed getting 91 slayer. I'll enjoy getting 99 when I eventually train it again, but at the rate that melee updates are coming, I'll be saving it for last: combat will be twice as powerful after another year or two of melee updates. I enjoyed getting 99 Hunter because it was my first 99, I was 132nd to 99, and the spots weren't very crowded because it was just released and red chinchompas were quite cheap. I've enjoyed training the AFK skills like woodcutting ivy since I can have fun in other places while getting all that experience. Herblore was possibly fun because the exp is so fast! A lot of the mindless refining skills were somewhat enjoyable to power through as well. My least favorite skill, by far, is mining. Even the Living Rock Caverns do not make mining bearable for me. It's one of my lowest skills and will probably be one of the last I level to 99.

The most efficient experience is usually around 25 gp per potion, but if you're making ingredients for overloads, it's not uncommon to pay 1m even for those 20k and 25k experience chunks.

The simplest solution might be to just set exp caps on the amount of extra experience you can earn for each skill during the weekend. For example, if there was a cap of 1m bonus experience (random number) per skill, there wouid be no massive influx of new 99ers. Players would only need supplies for a couple hours of summoning/herblore/prayer to get that bonus exp, rather than burning through dozens of thousands of supplies all weekend. An experience cap also greatly favors production skills as these are generally slower; for the skills in which it is not possible to bank experience, you can instead save a greater number of hours than the consumption skills even though you aren't saving any money. Even so, I don't want to see these very often. Jagex disappointed me with their attempts to maintain that the first bonus experience weekend was a "success."

How is expecting a potion to act similarly to every other potion in the game "bug abuse?" And to your first point, 16*4 aka 64 is how much each brew heals per inventory spot which is greater than any thing else in the game barring stackables. Okay you drink 64 doses of sara-brew and tell me how nice it attacking something with your 1 attack, 1 strength, 1 magic, and1 range. But, I know what you are going to say. Why of course I will bring 16 super restores as well. So in the beginning when the stupid pot came out you would have drank a sara brew, lost fast combat round (rapid knife speed), drank super restore, lost fast combat round, drank super attack, lost fast combat round, drank super strength, lost fast combat round, drank super def, lost fast combat round, and your ready to melee again. No idea when this bug appeared, probably during one of the many stupid runetek updates for the sake of graphics.... But, hey its fixed now so lets all cry about it... not. 64 is the health healed by 4 doses of brew. 4 doses of brew require 1.33 doses (a third of an inventory space) of super restore potion to recover. Therefore, you get 640 life points for 1.33 inventory spaces - that's why this potion is useful as a potion, without all the other things you can do with it. You are apparently unaware of how to drink potions. You need to drink a dose in the game tick after you attack with your weapon (not spam click, timed click); if you do this right, you do not lose any time whatsoever from drinking a potion during combat. That's why people are willing to put up with the annoying side effects of a Saradomin Brew potion to use it during combat. It's not food, it's a potion, it has several effects - one of which is boosting your life points. That's why Overloads are so effective - one sip and you don't need to lose a combat round until your next one. The potion dynamic has been around for years...there was no potion that did nothing but raise hitpoints. There were advantages to be had but disadvantages to work around. There was no cheapness. This "bugfix" did not do what it was intended to do - stop quick consumption combos - yet it had tremendously detrimental effects on one of the most widely used potions (and not used solely for 'sharkbrewing' against PKers).